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31: MacBook Review Special

 

00:00:00   *BEEP*

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:07   from relay FM this is upgrade episode number 31 today show is brought to you

00:00:14   by igloo and smile with PDF pen scan plus this is an extra special episode

00:00:20   today we have a second episode in the week you guys thought that we wouldn't

00:00:23   be back till next week to you have me but here I am I'm back from my holiday

00:00:27   and talking to mr. Jason snail hi Jason so hi Myke welcome back it was very

00:00:33   funny when I was listening to last week's episode and you're like oh Myke

00:00:36   be back next week and I'm like little do they know. Well did you see at the end of the uh and

00:00:41   that was that wasn't last week's episode that was this week's episode we just have another one um

00:00:46   at the end I said we'll be back next week and then I said we'll see you soon. That was foreshadowing

00:00:53   because I didn't want to say we'll see you next week because I knew we would actually be back

00:00:56   before then and so here we are. Here we are. So uh the reason we're doing this today is because

00:01:03   today the review embargo lifted for the new 12-inch MacBook. You have one of them and

00:01:10   you've been testing it out for a couple of weeks and are you happy to say that you like

00:01:14   it?

00:01:15   It's not a couple of weeks. I actually got home from my very long European journey on

00:01:20   Friday and Saturday morning I got it. I've only had it less than a week. I could have

00:01:29   have probably gotten it I think the previous Tuesday was when they were

00:01:31   gonna ship them out and I told them that I was in Ireland and that they should

00:01:35   they said we'll just ship it to have it arrive when you get home so that's so

00:01:40   how many days have you actually had it in your person this is day six so five

00:01:45   five days covering the writing of the review that I had it right and how long

00:01:51   so you would have had it for like maybe another four or five yeah I would have

00:01:56   - I would have had it for another four.

00:01:58   Yeah, 'cause the embargo was a Thursday

00:02:00   and they were gonna ship it out on Tuesday.

00:02:01   So, you know, really I would have had it for an extra,

00:02:04   yeah, extra three or four days.

00:02:06   - Okay.

00:02:07   - But I was having too much fun in Ireland,

00:02:09   so that didn't happen.

00:02:11   I asked them if they could send it to Ireland

00:02:13   and they said no, so it's fine, fair enough.

00:02:16   - Hey, it's worth the go.

00:02:17   - Yeah.

00:02:18   - So I have two very quick pieces of follow up

00:02:21   on last week's episode.

00:02:22   - You mean this week's episode?

00:02:24   - Oh, the last episode.

00:02:25   - Yes.

00:02:26   30, the Syracuse episode. Yeah, I got home a couple of hours ago. I'm kind of all over

00:02:32   the place. I don't know what day of the week it is. I haven't known what day of the week

00:02:35   it is for two weeks. It feels like Monday though, doesn't it? Because we're talking.

00:02:38   It feels like Monday now, and also I just recorded with Casey, so I don't know where

00:02:41   I am. I'm recording Connected later. I don't know what's going on. I know what that's like.

00:02:46   That was my weekend. Very confusing. I had no idea when I was recording with Casey. So

00:02:52   I have two sentences, that's all I have.

00:02:57   One, I thought that the ad reads were great

00:02:59   and you did a good job because you said

00:03:00   you thought they were bad and I thought they were very good.

00:03:02   - It was just weird.

00:03:04   You were in charge of this show.

00:03:06   This is the one podcast I do that I'm not in charge of.

00:03:09   And I had to be in charge of it, it was very strange.

00:03:12   - And the other thing is, I would like to issue

00:03:15   an open challenge to John Siracusa

00:03:16   to pull my beard at WWDC.

00:03:18   - To prove that you're the real Myke

00:03:21   or the, the, and not the clone.

00:03:23   - The twin mic.

00:03:24   I was on a plane doing that thing

00:03:27   where you're like shaking of laughter

00:03:29   and people think you're crazy.

00:03:30   - I know that thing.

00:03:32   - That was what was happening to me.

00:03:34   - Nice.

00:03:36   - So yeah, really great episode.

00:03:37   It was nice to hear you two talking together

00:03:39   and I'm very excited for Robot or Not.

00:03:42   - Yes, we're laying the foundations.

00:03:45   - I'm way more excited than John is, I think about that.

00:03:48   - We all are.

00:03:50   But he's warming up to it.

00:03:53   So we'll move this robot around.

00:03:55   - He was being very, very protective.

00:03:57   - Yeah.

00:03:58   - He wouldn't let you spoil it.

00:03:59   - I think that was telling that he thought

00:04:01   I was gonna ruin it by talking about it too far in advance.

00:04:04   So that's good.

00:04:05   Yeah, that was good.

00:04:06   I should say, we also got a lot of follow up from people.

00:04:08   We were talking about how when one of my complaints

00:04:12   about one section of the "Becoming Steve Jobs" book

00:04:14   is they talk about the iPhone being a,

00:04:17   the first iPhone being a disappointment

00:04:19   because it didn't run apps, which fits into their whole narrative

00:04:22   about how the App Store was this wonderful thing,

00:04:25   which it was, but, you know,

00:04:26   I thought people really loved the iPhone

00:04:28   and were obsessed with the iPhone.

00:04:30   It was a huge talking point.

00:04:31   Everybody was talking about they wanted one

00:04:33   and could they get one, and I remember that from the time,

00:04:37   and it doesn't really fit with their idea that,

00:04:38   oh, it doesn't have third-party apps,

00:04:40   so we're not excited about it.

00:04:41   I think that's a bogus claim.

00:04:43   And we said during that, like --

00:04:46   because they said it doesn't run powerful spreadsheets,

00:04:48   and John and I were both laughing about like who wanted powerful spreadsheets on their phones back then.

00:04:53   And we heard from everybody who was using Windows Mobile at the time that had like a mobile version of Excel saying,

00:04:59   well, actually, I was running powerful spreadsheets on my phone, which if we said no phones ran spreadsheets in 2007,

00:05:10   I will apologize for that. But I think you're missing the point.

00:05:13   The point is, I think regular people did not think of the iPhone and think,

00:05:18   That is a device that I would like to run a powerful spreadsheet on, or indeed, really,

00:05:23   third-party apps.

00:05:24   I think the iPhone was quite a phenomenon in the first generation before the App Store

00:05:29   came out.

00:05:30   That was what we were saying.

00:05:31   I think that the book is wrong in saying that it was a disappointment.

00:05:36   It was a disappointment to super tech nerds and to developers that they couldn't develop

00:05:40   for it right out of the box.

00:05:42   But I remember everybody I knew asking me about the iPhone when it was coming out.

00:05:47   were really excited about it. And so to say that the iPhone's first, like the

00:05:52   iPod, because it didn't run on PCs, the first generation, although we all thought

00:05:57   it was pretty amazing, it was not in the public consciousness. The iPhone was in

00:06:00   the public consciousness from the beginning and if your book claims that

00:06:04   it was kind of a swing and the miss and it wasn't until the App Store that the

00:06:07   iPhone caught fire, I think your book is wrong. So yeah I got to that part today.

00:06:13   like I've just gotten to that bit in the book and I was sitting on the plane

00:06:18   listening to it and like what are you talking about? Where did this

00:06:22   information come from? Well and you've been doing with Behind the App I mean

00:06:26   there's enthusiasm that developers had for it there's no doubt and we there

00:06:30   were several people I remember in the days afterward that I was on a podcast

00:06:34   with John Gruber and Merlin Mann where we we basically said there's gonna be an

00:06:38   app store in a year we were already talking about it's like it'll be next

00:06:41   year and it'll be curated and that's exactly what happened.

00:06:45   Where these guys, yeah, like I said, I feel like they're—the problem I have with the

00:06:49   book, because I don't dislike the book like John disliked the first 10% of the book.

00:06:55   Let's keep that in mind.

00:06:56   I don't feel as negatively about it, but I do have—at several points I see this narrative

00:07:02   they're trying to build and I say, "No, that's not real.

00:07:04   That didn't actually happen."

00:07:05   And that doesn't make me super enthusiastic about the other parts of the book that I don't

00:07:10   know the facts of because I have to take them at their word. And I get that they're trying

00:07:15   to tell a certain kind of story, but things that in it do not align with my recollection

00:07:21   of how the world was then. But anyway, the point is, if you used... I heard from somebody

00:07:26   who said they used a BlackBerry because they needed to do SSH and the first iPhone couldn't

00:07:30   do SSH connection. Okay, fair enough. And if you wanted to use Excel, you could do that

00:07:35   on Windows Mobile. Fair enough. I will grant you that, but that's sort of not... What's

00:07:40   not our larger point. That's all. That's all I wanted to say. So that was that was an interesting

00:07:43   trend that I heard that we were being dismissive of of apps generally not speaking of particular

00:07:49   applications with very technical people but sort of like the the mass of enthusiastic

00:07:55   regular people who were really excited about the iPhone even though it didn't run any apps

00:08:01   other than the ones that were stock.

00:08:03   Yeah, I was dumbfounded. Because you know you're saying about how a lot of it, and I

00:08:10   agree with you, we were talking about it last week, that a lot of the book comes from the

00:08:16   place of the business writer. And we were talking about the irrelevancy in Ewan Chan's

00:08:20   book about that again on this week's episode. I'm so confused.

00:08:24   Episode 30.

00:08:25   episode 30. episode 30, we'll go with that. Syracuse at times. and I get that they may

00:08:33   be a bit blinded by that but even from a business standpoint the iFilm was an incredible success.

00:08:40   I don't understand who said it was a bad thing. I don't know. I think that's actually of everything

00:08:51   that I've read that was the thing where I was like you guys have got that so wrong and

00:08:55   I don't know who proofread this for you. I don't know who fact-checked this for you because

00:09:00   they missed this. Really, I was very, very surprised by that bit.

00:09:06   So Jason, I have a couple of questions for you in regards to the review of two parts.

00:09:10   I want to get into those in a moment. But before we do that, let's take a break to thank

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00:11:04   So Mr Jason Snell.

00:11:06   Yes, Mr iMichael.

00:11:08   You have two parts of your review.

00:11:11   this on Macworld and one lives in Six Colors this time yeah? Yeah I so Macworld said

00:11:17   they wanted me to write the review and I don't work for them anymore so they have

00:11:21   to pay me to write it which is fine because I do freelance work now and I

00:11:25   think me writing me writing Macworld Mac reviews is something I'm I know how to

00:11:31   do that so I was happy to do that and if they hadn't wanted me to I would have

00:11:35   written it on Six Colors but they were they wanted me to do the kind of full-on

00:11:39   thing for them. So I did, and then as with the iPhone actually last fall, which is for

00:11:45   some different reasons, as I was leaving Macworld, I did a, you know, I did sort of like bonus

00:11:50   track material on Six Colors with sort of, which we used to do that sort of like both

00:11:56   of those stories on Macworld back in the day. So that seemed to be a way for me to put some

00:12:00   MacBook material on Six Colors and link to my review at Macworld.

00:12:05   I like it.

00:12:06   Well, I mean, it's good because you're a six colors reader, especially, you kind of get

00:12:09   everything because you see the link to the main review and then you get your extra part

00:12:14   as well, which is good.

00:12:16   Yeah, yeah.

00:12:17   And that lets me, I wrote that, I mean, I literally wrote them in order.

00:12:20   I turned in my 3500 word review to Susie at Macworld at noon yesterday.

00:12:25   And then in the afternoon, I wrote the notebook, which is like all the stuff I couldn't fit

00:12:29   in and maybe a little more personal take on some of the things that I was in there.

00:12:34   I got to work through some of my feelings about the keyboard.

00:12:38   I got to talk a little bit more about the display,

00:12:42   which is Apple made some interesting decisions

00:12:44   with the display.

00:12:46   And yeah, so that was the idea there.

00:12:49   I imagine I will write some reviews for Macworld

00:12:53   as long as they want to do it,

00:12:54   and if the timing and the pay works, then that'll be great.

00:12:57   And other stuff I'll just review on Six Colors,

00:13:00   and that's fine, too.

00:13:01   And you know, like I said, people will notice I've written stuff in a bunch of different

00:13:06   places. I am definitely trying to have freelance be part of what I do in addition to Six Colors

00:13:10   and the podcast stuff. It's all part of a kind of a whole of me trying to figure out

00:13:14   the best way to get to support my family and remain independent, which is what I'm working

00:13:19   at here, like you are.

00:13:20   Yeah, and you need to spread the Jason Snow message far and wide, you know?

00:13:25   Well, I think it's good for Six Colors for me to appear, especially Macworld readers

00:13:29   who know me but might not know that I am still doing stuff, that I can provide MacWorld readers

00:13:34   with the review they expect, and that's good. And then also, you know, they can say, "Oh

00:13:40   yeah, that guy, what's he doing now?" And I think that's good for me.

00:13:43   Right, so we have been asking our listeners to provide—our "upgradients," as you may

00:13:49   say—to provide their questions via the Ask Upgrade, but I've read through both pieces

00:13:53   and I have some questions and comments of my own, if that's okay.

00:13:56   Sure. So I kind of want to start off with a big one and maybe this will help lead into

00:14:03   some overall feelings about how you feel about the new MacBook. You got the space grey one,

00:14:09   that's right? Yeah. If you were going to design this machine, if Apple came to you today and

00:14:14   gave you the power to change stuff about this machine, what would you change? And this is

00:14:20   considering your needs first and then maybe also secondarily considering the needs of

00:14:25   average consumer. You can design two machines if you want to.

00:14:29   Ah...

00:14:32   You had to start with the most, like, outlandish

00:14:36   question. Okay, so let me get this straight. So I can make any change I want

00:14:41   for me, and then I can make any change I want for everyone else?

00:14:44   Yeah, so because my feeling about this is, like, I think, we're talking about the

00:14:48   keyboard a bit more, but I think that maybe you would change

00:14:51   that for you, but wouldn't necessarily need to change it for the world.

00:14:55   Yeah, well, wow. The keyboard, for me, the keyboard is the deal-breaker, and I'm not

00:15:05   sure it's an actual deal-breaker or whether it's just the thing that I like the least

00:15:10   about it, but that keyboard is not great. And it's interesting because talking to Apple,

00:15:20   I get the sense that, you know, sometimes you have your conversations with people at

00:15:25   Apple about products and they're like, they're hitting all the like, this is revolutionary

00:15:28   and it's going to be, it's everybody's going to love it.

00:15:31   And this is the way things are going to be in the future.

00:15:33   I didn't get that sense from them about the keyboard.

00:15:36   It felt to me like they were acknowledging, look, we know that the reduced travel, you

00:15:40   know, the keys physically just don't move very much up and down.

00:15:43   We know that that's a problem.

00:15:46   So we've engineered a bunch of other things to try and offset it as much as we can.

00:15:50   can't mitigate it. So they've got the new the little butterfly mechanism and

00:15:54   they've got the the stainless steel things that it's they're hitting on and

00:16:00   it sort of makes it a little kind of clicky. It's got the the wider keys,

00:16:06   they're more stable, they're all these things that they're trying to do all of

00:16:09   which is true and I think actually does improve the feel but in the end it still

00:16:16   doesn't have very much key travel and feels all, you know, like I said at the

00:16:21   time when when I went to the event, it's like halfway between a real keyboard and

00:16:25   it like typing on an iPad. There's more movement than the iPad where there's

00:16:29   physically nothing. You're just hitting glass. But not a lot more. It's

00:16:33   pretty dramatic. I think it's less than half of the movement of the standard

00:16:37   Apple keyboard. So I would change that because when I think about buying one of

00:16:40   these down the road here, that's the one that I'm like, "Would I really want that

00:16:45   to be the thing that I was doing all my typing on. Would I write, you know, hundreds of thousands

00:16:50   of words on that keyboard? And I was able to type. I went to typewracer.com, which is

00:16:55   my choice for testing my typing speed, and I was able to do 120 words per minute on it.

00:17:00   So you know, it was it was perfectly fine in terms of speed, but I just don't like the

00:17:04   feel of it. And I don't feel like I'm a giant keyboard nerd like John Gruber and some other

00:17:10   people who are like super obsessive about keyboards in a way that I'm not. I actually

00:17:14   like the current Apple keyboard design, but the MacBook keyboard just doesn't work for

00:17:19   me. You know, you get used to it, but I didn't like it. So I think that would be what I would

00:17:25   change first off is find a way to make a computer that's roughly this thin and light, but have

00:17:30   a better keyboard, have more movement in the keyboard. Maybe it's a magical thing that,

00:17:35   you know, when the computer's closed, the keys are all nestled snugly, and then when

00:17:41   you open it up, they pop out to reveal Mork travel. I don't know. I mean, this is why

00:17:46   they engineered it the way they did, and they knew it was going to be a compromise, but

00:17:50   I don't love it. So that would be the thing I would change. For everybody else, I mean,

00:17:54   obviously I would say you need a second USB port, and that would make things easier, or

00:18:04   an old-style USB port, or a Thunderbolt port, or something like that, just because it would

00:18:08   be more flexible that way. I think a second USB-C port even would be good enough. I would

00:18:13   also probably put an adapter in the box. But, you know, that would be if I had like magic

00:18:20   superpowers and there was no like economic reality and technical reality, which is, it

00:18:26   is the product that it is. But, you know, that would be keyboard for me, dealing with

00:18:31   the port issue maybe for everyone else.

00:18:34   So that question and my next question, they're like, the reason I'm asking these weird questions

00:18:39   is because I want to try and give a sense to people for how you feel about the machine

00:18:43   without rehashing the review, you know?

00:18:45   So my next question is, you talk about, and I know you speak, you are one of the people

00:18:49   that speak very fondly of the 12-inch power book.

00:18:54   What made you love the 12-inch power book that's missing from this MacBook?

00:18:59   Because in theory, this is a spiritual successor to that machine.

00:19:03   And this is the machine that, you know, everybody wanted that machine forever, right?

00:19:06   They wanted the 12-inch PowerBook, and they kind of got it with the 11-inch MacBook Air,

00:19:11   but just still only did that little thing.

00:19:13   And I assume that when Apple brought this out on stage, many people were like, "That's

00:19:17   it.

00:19:18   They've given me the 12-inch PowerBook again."

00:19:21   What they did with the 12-inch PowerBook was they said, "This is a computer that's defined

00:19:27   by the width of the keyboard, and we want to make it as narrow as possible, so we'll

00:19:30   make it exactly the width of the keyboard."

00:19:32   The MacBook is kind of like that, although there's a little bit more.

00:19:35   The 12-inch PowerBook is still the narrowest Mac laptop ever.

00:19:40   There's a little more space on this than there was on the sides, and it's a slightly wider

00:19:45   keyboard, I believe, than the standard Apple keyboard.

00:19:48   Just slightly, but it spreads slightly wider.

00:19:52   I think the 11-inch was a perfectly fine, you know, spiritual successor to the 12-inch

00:19:59   PowerBook as a, you know, making this as little as possible is the goal. As light and thin

00:20:05   and small as possible is the goal. And the 11-inch air feels like that, and certainly

00:20:11   this MacBook feels like that too. You know, I think the, I don't even know what to say

00:20:17   beyond that. I think the 12-inch PowerBook was more of a, it wasn't entirely like fully

00:20:22   featured, but you know, it had lots of ports and stuff. It was from an era where you needed

00:20:26   to have all of the ports.

00:20:28   And again, the one port,

00:20:31   I actually am not sure which is a bigger deal,

00:20:33   the fact that you can't have an external device

00:20:36   hooked into it and charge without extra stuff.

00:20:40   Or whether it's just that USB-C is different

00:20:43   and everybody's gonna have to buy adapters.

00:20:44   I think one of the biggest things is going to be,

00:20:47   if you've got one of these MacBooks

00:20:48   and you do presentations,

00:20:49   you're gonna need to buy probably a couple

00:20:53   of different video adapters

00:20:54   and just carry them with you everywhere.

00:20:55   which is a fact of life that many Mac laptop people

00:20:59   had to do in the past.

00:21:01   But for the last few years, you could, you know,

00:21:04   people, maybe not everywhere,

00:21:06   but that mini DisplayPort plug

00:21:08   had had a long time to propagate.

00:21:10   And so it was a lot easier to assume

00:21:12   that the right adapter would be there.

00:21:14   And you know, that's a change with this.

00:21:17   Although I think maybe the 12 inch PowerBook

00:21:18   had a weird video, like a mini VGA or mini DVI

00:21:22   or something that you always had to carry the adapter around.

00:21:25   It's in the ballpark.

00:21:26   I think these are all, the 12 inch, when it went away,

00:21:28   there was sort of nothing for a long time.

00:21:30   And like, I used an iBook for a while,

00:21:32   even though I consider myself a pro user,

00:21:35   I used an iBook for a while because it was small.

00:21:37   And then the 11 inch MacBook Air,

00:21:41   and the MacBook definitely fits into that genre.

00:21:44   It's very much of the kind.

00:21:46   And it is the first one,

00:21:47   'cause the Air had a lot of extra space

00:21:49   on the sides of the keyboard.

00:21:50   It is the first Mac laptop since the 12 inch PowerBook

00:21:54   have it like the keyboard is really the constraining feature of the product.

00:21:59   I want to come back to the keyboard because there's some other stuff that you talk about

00:22:04   in regards to that but this is something that many people have spoken about but I'm interested

00:22:09   for your take on it. Do you think it's fair to say that this Mac is the first Mac to take

00:22:15   big steps towards being closer to iOS? Like the software has been moving in that direction

00:22:21   But this machine seems to take hardware cues from it too.

00:22:24   And I know this is kind of crossing the line, but you mentioned that when you plug in the charging cord,

00:22:28   it chimes at you rather than giving you the light.

00:22:31   So it feels like, you know, with the battery and the way that you configure it,

00:22:34   where you buy it on the store page and you've got colors and you're taking away the illuminated logo.

00:22:42   And, you know, do you feel that this is maybe the first Mac which is kind of starting to bridge the gap?

00:22:49   Yeah, this is a Mac designed with...

00:22:53   I mean, this is the iPad of Macs.

00:22:57   That's how I feel like it is.

00:22:58   It's the iPad of Macs.

00:23:00   It comes in the iPad and iPhone colors.

00:23:03   When you plug it in, you plug it in with a little thing,

00:23:08   and it's, you know, the USB-C is bigger than Lightning,

00:23:10   but it's the same kind of shape, and you plug it in,

00:23:12   and it's got the one port,

00:23:14   and that port you use for any peripherals you want

00:23:16   or for power, just like the iPad.

00:23:18   It's got a headphone jack.

00:23:19   That's the only other jack on it.

00:23:21   It, you know, it chimes when you plug it in like an iPad.

00:23:25   If you've got it shut down and you plug it in,

00:23:27   the screen will actually light up briefly

00:23:29   and tell you how much battery is left.

00:23:30   That's a very iPad and not Mac kind of thing to do.

00:23:34   It definitely, the feel of it, it's informed by the iPad.

00:23:38   It's not an iPad. It's a Mac laptop, absolutely.

00:23:41   But this feels like the premise behind this product was,

00:23:45   can we take everything we've learned from the iPad

00:23:48   and put it in a in a in a MacBook. So let's go back to the keyboard. So right at

00:23:55   the start you kind of open your piece and you're talking about just

00:23:58   then with the PowerBook in that having a full-size keyboard dictates so much

00:24:02   about the design. It gives you dimensions and in some respects gives you a

00:24:07   thickness and that kind of stuff. If you want to have a full-size keyboard in

00:24:10   this thing it will dictate a lot of the stuff that you do. And then a quote from

00:24:15   review you say if you're not a keyboard snob you may not even notice the

00:24:19   difference but if there's any single feature that would make me reluctant to

00:24:22   buy a MacBook it would be the keyboard so I find it interesting that like you

00:24:26   know you you appreciate and it's definitely I think is the case that like

00:24:31   Apple constrained themselves from a design perspective to incorporate the

00:24:35   keyboard and as full a design as it can but actually in then in trying to do

00:24:40   other things they've made the keyboard worse do you think that Apple for did

00:24:44   themselves by insisting so much of the design focus on the keyboard that in and of itself

00:24:50   makes an inferior typing experience.

00:24:53   So they've pushed certain—they've made like, "It'll be this big because we want a full-size

00:24:57   keyboard," but the keyboard's still not as good as it could be or should be anyway.

00:25:01   So should they have actually then just made the keyboard smaller or made the whole thing

00:25:04   smaller?

00:25:05   Well, there's a philosophy at work here that is interesting, and it's design.

00:25:11   It's all about choices.

00:25:12   decided that thinness was important. They decided, and this is something that I believe

00:25:17   Apple has felt for a long time, which is the size of the keyboard is inviolate. You cannot

00:25:26   shrink the keyboard. Which I had somebody who at one point I wrote a story where I was

00:25:31   using a netbook that has shrunk down keys, and it was just, it was awful. Like, I could

00:25:39   not use it because all the keys now are in completely different positions than I had

00:25:44   learned how to type on, and every other keyboard in the world was not like that, but this one

00:25:50   was different, and it was terrible, and I hated it. And I think Apple said, "Look, we're

00:25:56   not going to mess with that. That is where we're starting here, is the keyboard is the

00:25:59   size that it is, and that's just how it's going to be. What else can we do?" And from

00:26:04   Apple's perspective, the reducing the travel but doing these other things to kind of offset

00:26:09   some of the issues with it was, that was the trade-off that they wanted to make in order

00:26:14   to get that, you know, physically to have it be that much thinner so that they didn't

00:26:20   have, you know, because the way it works, they have very little room to work here. And

00:26:25   so these keys are barely above the metal and they go down to, you know, essentially flush.

00:26:33   not a whole lot, and then there's whatever is under there, the mechanism and the light,

00:26:39   it's super narrow. So they decided that they weren't willing to sacrifice the thinness

00:26:43   of the computer to have key travel, but they weren't, you know, they weren't willing to

00:26:49   go beyond that. They were not willing to sacrifice the key layout. And, you know, fair enough.

00:26:55   an interesting set of trade-offs to make. And for me, as somebody who, you know, and

00:27:04   I want to put this in perspective, I do a lot of writing on a keyboard. This is, you

00:27:10   know, other than the talking part that you and I are doing, the other part of my professional

00:27:14   life is typing things. In my personal life, because I write books and stuff that one day

00:27:21   day, maybe I'll get back to when I'm not doing all these podcasts.

00:27:27   And so for me, the keyboard really matters.

00:27:30   And I type really fast, and so I have lots of opinions about keyboards.

00:27:34   So Apple's saying, "Look, most people aren't going to care.

00:27:37   Most people aren't going to care, and we've done some things to offset it, so it's not

00:27:40   that big a deal."

00:27:41   That could be wrong.

00:27:42   They could just—people could—you know, they'll do research.

00:27:44   I'm sure they'll do research and find out that people, you know, people's satisfaction

00:27:49   with the MacBook, maybe it goes down. And one of the reasons why is they don't like

00:27:53   the keyboard. Or maybe it doesn't change at all because nobody cares. And then they're

00:27:57   like, "All right, we made the right call there." The people who really care can use a different

00:28:01   device with a different keyboard. But, you know, the market for this, they're fine with

00:28:07   it. And I'm sure they will look at that. And honestly, if what they find is that this keyboard

00:28:13   is too great a compromise for a lot of people, then they'll put that on their list of, "Is

00:28:18   there's something else we could do to make the keyboard better. And they may already

00:28:21   think that. I mean, it doesn't sound very Apple to just accept, "Well, it's compromised,

00:28:25   but whatever. What are you going to do?" And then move on. They may still be thinking,

00:28:29   "Are there ways that we can make this better?" I hope that they're not thinking it's the

00:28:33   best and all of our keyboards will be like this from now on. I hope they're not thinking

00:28:37   that. But like I said, I got the vibe when I talked to some people at Apple that Apple

00:28:44   was aware that this is a compromise and that the other things they put into this keyboard

00:28:50   were maybe meant to offset the fact that they were taking all that key travel away.

00:28:56   Because at some point you might as well just have it be a touchscreen down there with the

00:29:00   Taptic Engine on it and just not even move and just have it be glass.

00:29:04   At some point, why even bother with having keys and calling them keys if they travel

00:29:09   almost nothing at all?

00:29:11   could just fool us like they do with the Force Touch trackpad at that point.

00:29:16   Had you thought of that before you just said that, like the idea of them just putting a

00:29:21   touchscreen down there?

00:29:22   Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. I mean, at some point, you know, you could do that and then you could

00:29:30   say, oh well, and it's programmable, it can be anything down there and it can be a control

00:29:33   surface and all that. I think that's a long way to go and I think there's a lot of extra

00:29:37   technology and that's another screen you have to drive and, you know, I don't know if that'll

00:29:40   ever happen on a Mac, but at some point your keyboard isn't much more than a touchscreen.

00:29:49   When you've got no travel left, or almost no travel, then why is it even there, other

00:29:54   than to fool you into thinking that the keys move?

00:29:58   And now Apple has technology that can fool you.

00:30:01   Yeah.

00:30:02   It's an interesting thought experiment.

00:30:05   Yeah, yeah.

00:30:06   And so everybody should try it for themselves.

00:30:08   to the Apple Store and just type around on it a little bit, and you'll see it's a very

00:30:13   different kind of experience. The keys don't move very much. And, you know, for a lot of

00:30:16   people, they probably don't care. And I think that's what Apple's banking on, is that most

00:30:21   people aren't going to care about this. I thought I would get over it after using it

00:30:25   for five or six days. I thought I would be used to it, and then I went back to my other

00:30:29   keyboard briefly, and I was like, "Oh my, oh thank God." You know, it was just like

00:30:32   a huge relief. And then I went back to the MacBook keyboard and I'm like, "Oh no, this

00:30:36   thing again and that's when I knew like I hadn't adapted to it. I had endured it but

00:30:41   I hadn't adapted to it.

00:30:42   Are you worried that we're gonna see new keyboards in this style? Do you think that Apple are

00:30:49   going to take things they've learned from this keyboard and adapt it out to the rest

00:30:53   of the line?

00:30:54   You know the Force Touch trackpad I think would be great everywhere and I think we will

00:30:58   see that everywhere eventually. This keyboard I don't know. If you had asked me when they

00:31:04   announced it. I've been worried about that they were going to think that this is the

00:31:07   thing that they should roll out everywhere. Now, you know, like I said, it seems like

00:31:13   Apple is aware that this is a compromise for thinness and that I hope that means, you know,

00:31:21   I hope that's code for we're only going to use this when we really absolutely need something

00:31:26   that's super thin and otherwise we're not because it feels like it's too far. I think

00:31:32   pushing this into every... if all the new Apple Bluetooth keyboards and all the, you

00:31:36   know, even on big laptops have this little tiny thing, I think that would be unfortunate.

00:31:41   But you know, I don't make the rules. So I'm hopeful that they're aware that it is a compromise

00:31:47   for thinness and maybe they wouldn't push it into other parts of the line.

00:31:52   What about the design? So like the bigger key caps and the San Francisco font?

00:31:57   Yeah, we're pretty far down in the weeds when we're talking about the font that letters

00:32:02   are printed on a keyboard. It's fine. It's nice. It's nice. The bigger keys take some

00:32:08   getting used to. I don't like the full-sized left and right arrows with the half-sized

00:32:13   up and down arrows. There are a bunch of us who have talked about this today on the internet.

00:32:17   Jim Dalrymple mentioned it. John Gruber mentioned it. Turns out that I navigate arrow keys.

00:32:23   I orient my fingers on the arrow keys based on the spacing around the arrow keys, which

00:32:28   is now gone.

00:32:30   So now you have to orient based on the fact that there's one key that is split in half,

00:32:35   and that's the up and down arrow key.

00:32:37   And it's just different.

00:32:38   I don't particularly like it.

00:32:39   I think all of it I would get used to.

00:32:43   You can, you know, the bigger spread keys mean you can miss more and still hit the key

00:32:50   key. If you're a less precise typist, that's a good thing. I think it's all fine. For me,

00:32:57   it all comes back to the travel. Also, I should say the backlighting, I find problematic.

00:33:05   They've got this new backlighting, everything's individually lit, and that's nice, but some

00:33:09   of the keys feel like they're not uniformly lit. Like the escape key, the E is sort of

00:33:16   half lit and there's some other keys where like the bottom part or the bottom left corner

00:33:22   or the bottom right corner it sort of gets darker which I don't think is good. I think

00:33:28   I you know that doesn't seem to be up to Apple standards. Does it matter in the end that

00:33:32   the escape key is not entirely equally evenly lit from behind? No probably not but it doesn't

00:33:38   sound very Apple-like.

00:33:40   We've got a bunch of Ask Upgrade MacBook focused questions so we should get to those.

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00:36:13   Thank you so much to SMILE for their support of this week's episode.

00:36:18   So Jason, I'm going to run through some questions from the Upgradians.

00:36:22   We have @mjedi.

00:36:25   Is the MacBook a good second Mac, for example travel or around the house?

00:36:30   Jedi has a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, is this something, if somebody has the means

00:36:34   and the desire to have a second laptop which is easy to use, nice and portable, would you

00:36:42   recommend it in this case? Like how you have your 11.

00:36:47   Yeah. Yeah. I think what I would say is what matters more to you, the keyboard or the screen?

00:36:58   If the screen matters more to you, I think the MacBook or the 13-inch Retina.

00:37:04   And if the keyboard matters more to you, it's the MacBook Air or the 13-inch Retina.

00:37:10   And if power matters more to you and ports and things like that, then it's the Air or

00:37:14   the Retina MacBook Pro and not the MacBook.

00:37:18   So it really depends on sort of like what you're looking for.

00:37:21   And there are choices, which is great.

00:37:22   You know, there are a lot of cranky people talking about this MacBook.

00:37:25   "Ah, bro, Apple did this. It's terrible and awful because I can't use it." You know,

00:37:30   we've talked about that before. It's not—maybe it's not for you. There are a lot

00:37:33   of people—it's just—it's not—it's not a computer for everyone. It definitely

00:37:36   isn't. The screen's great, and if you don't care about the kind of—the issues

00:37:41   that I have personally with a keyboard, then, you know, it's light and thin

00:37:44   and nice. If you don't care about retina, you know, you can get a MacBook Air

00:37:49   for cheaper that's faster so you know depends on what your priorities are

00:37:56   Timothy BT do you know I mean I've tried to look this up I can't see on the

00:38:01   website do you know how much the upgrade to the 1.3 gigahertz processor will cost

00:38:06   yeah yeah I think it's 250 okay somebody looked that that was reported I think

00:38:10   it's 250 to make it slightly faster okay we have MJ Huber jr. I'm gonna go with

00:38:18   Basically asking, with a multitude of adapters,

00:38:23   will the cinema display work?

00:38:25   And they list off a bunch of different adapters

00:38:28   from third parties and Apple,

00:38:31   and if you chain them all together,

00:38:33   do you have any idea if this machine

00:38:35   can power a cinema display at all?

00:38:37   'Cause what I'd understood is that the chipset

00:38:41   just wouldn't allow for certain things.

00:38:45   - What do you mean?

00:38:46   Do you mean like the Thunderbolt display,

00:38:48   or some other display.

00:38:50   - Let's go with a Thunderbolt display,

00:38:51   which I'm pretty sure it can't do.

00:38:52   - My understanding is, yeah, my understanding

00:38:54   is Thunderbolt and USB-C don't talk to each other.

00:38:56   I think otherwise, if you can chain things together,

00:39:00   it may support it.

00:39:01   It does support one external monitor,

00:39:03   and Apple sells a couple of adapters,

00:39:05   and I think it would probably drive,

00:39:10   I don't know the details of how big a,

00:39:14   I don't have an adapter to drive a monitor with it,

00:39:16   So there's nothing I've been able to test with it.

00:39:18   But I'm sure it'll—if you can get it out in the right form,

00:39:21   it'll drive sort of a normal-sized monitor.

00:39:24   It's not going to drive a, you know, 4K display or something.

00:39:29   But I'm sure it will drive your usual kinds of monitors

00:39:34   if you adapt them properly.

00:39:37   -Joe Historia has asked,

00:39:39   "Would you say that the new MacBook could be a good choice

00:39:42   for someone who's not used to using computers,

00:39:45   like a first computer? Is it a good choice?

00:39:47   Is it maybe better than an iPad or not?

00:39:52   -Oh, wow. I don't know.

00:39:54   It's for people who want to use a computer.

00:39:57   It's not an iPad. It doesn't have a touch screen.

00:40:00   It doesn't run those apps. It's a computer.

00:40:03   And if it's for somebody

00:40:04   who hasn't really had a computer before,

00:40:07   I don't know, the MacBook Air is cheaper,

00:40:08   but it doesn't have the beautiful display.

00:40:10   And then there's, you know, the MacBook and the MacBook Pro

00:40:13   that have the beautiful display.

00:40:15   So it depends on what, again, it depends on what your priorities are.

00:40:17   One of the nice things about the MacBook is that it is fitting into a product line.

00:40:22   This is not the only laptop.

00:40:23   This is one of, if you count the different sizes, one of five essentially choices that

00:40:29   you have on Apple's laptop line now.

00:40:32   So Fraser Spears is interested about video performance and how it holds up under thermal

00:40:37   stress and he's kind of given the idea of like if you're watching continuous flash video,

00:40:41   let's say you're watching Netflix or something like that.

00:40:43   you had any any kind of problems watching video for long periods of time

00:40:48   maybe when the machine starts to get hot and also supplementary question has the

00:40:52   machine got hot? So Fraser after he after Fraser asked that I I ran Major League

00:40:58   Baseball in Chrome streaming video via flash for an hour and a half and it

00:41:04   didn't stutter and it was perfectly smooth and it doesn't make any noise

00:41:07   because there's no fan and the bottom got warm but just warm and sounds like

00:41:13   you really wouldn't have enjoyed that homework.

00:41:15   Yeah, I was doing other things. I was listening to you and Casey, but I left it on because

00:41:21   I wanted to... It was like the New York Mets. I don't care about the New York Mets, but

00:41:26   there was. Sorry Mets fans, it's your team, not mine. People in the chat room, by the

00:41:30   way, are saying that according to Apple, it will drive up to 3840 by 2160 on an external

00:41:40   So, that's pretty impressive. So you just got to get the cabling right.

00:41:45   Yeah, you can have like 20 adapters all chained together, but if you can get it, you can get

00:41:50   it. Yeah, if you can get it to work, or probably,

00:41:53   or buy a cable. My guess is going to be, or buy a cable.

00:41:58   So yeah, my second question is, have you had it get warm or hot at all? Because this is

00:42:02   a fanless computer. Yeah, just like I said about the MLB streaming

00:42:08   that Fraser had me try, you know, flash video streaming just because that makes computers

00:42:12   cry. And it was warm on the bottom. Your mileage may vary. It felt warm to me. It didn't feel

00:42:19   uncomfortably hot. And it was sort of spread across a lot of the back, which is the I think

00:42:24   the idea there is to they've got some material that is like acting as the heat sink that's

00:42:30   drawing it across the back. And that's the whole idea is that that's where the heat goes

00:42:34   out as it radiates out of the metal on the back side of the bottom of the laptop. And

00:42:41   it was warm, but it wasn't hot. I don't think there's going to be one of those "Oh, I burned

00:42:45   my legs with my MacBook." I don't think that's an issue.

00:42:50   It's not like the original MacBook Air. My brother actually got a burn mark on his leg

00:42:55   from using the original MacBook Air. But that's a story for another day. We have @Scribb,

00:43:03   I've got a USB A to C cable.

00:43:06   Could the MacBook charge from a USB charger with it?

00:43:09   Do you know, have you tried any of this?

00:43:11   Like those external Mopi packs?

00:43:13   In theory, could you do it?

00:43:14   - I don't have any adapters that will allow me

00:43:17   to do any of those things.

00:43:18   In theory, yes.

00:43:20   It might take forever.

00:43:21   - Yeah.

00:43:22   - Or charge it only a little.

00:43:24   But in theory, yes, you could charge it.

00:43:26   In theory, you could charge it

00:43:27   from another computer probably,

00:43:29   if you have the right cables.

00:43:31   but I haven't been able to try a lot of that

00:43:33   because all I really have is the one USB adapter

00:43:36   and it is an adapter to a USB-A female,

00:43:40   which means that I can plug in other USB devices

00:43:43   like a DVD drive or something,

00:43:45   but not connected to a computer

00:43:48   'cause I don't have a USB-A to USB-A cable.

00:43:52   They didn't really make those.

00:43:55   They do exist, but nothing really shipped with one

00:43:58   because generally what you have on a USB device

00:44:00   is you've got the -- you know, you're either going

00:44:03   from the USB-A to, like, a mini or a micro,

00:44:06   or you're going to that big USB-B,

00:44:10   the square instead of the rectangle.

00:44:13   And I don't -- so I don't have the right cables

00:44:15   to try a lot of this stuff, unfortunately.

00:44:17   And Monoprice just announced that they've got those cables,

00:44:20   but that was too late for my review.

00:44:24   -Kay Bradnam asked, "The trackpad looks bigger

00:44:27   with a wider aspect ratio.

00:44:28   Did this make any difference in day-to-day use?

00:44:32   -Nope.

00:44:33   Feels like a trackpad.

00:44:35   Feels -- feels -- and that's saying something,

00:44:37   given that it doesn't actually, you know, depress.

00:44:40   It's all in your head.

00:44:41   But it feels like a trackpad.

00:44:43   It doesn't -- it doesn't feel -- it feels exactly --

00:44:46   as somebody who uses a MacBook Air,

00:44:47   it feels exactly the same.

00:44:50   -OJPUK, how's the performance of photos,

00:44:53   scoring for a large library and stuff like that?

00:44:55   Does the MacBook hold up?

00:44:57   So I haven't had a chance to spend any time in photos

00:45:01   on the MacBook because the MacBook I got came with 10.10.2

00:45:05   and I only updated it to 10.10.3 yesterday

00:45:09   because of course they have to build these things

00:45:10   and put things on the drive, image the drives

00:45:12   and put them in there and then ship them from the factory.

00:45:15   And since 10.10.3 came out yesterday,

00:45:19   all these MacBooks did not ship with 10.10.3,

00:45:21   they shipped with 10.10.2.

00:45:23   So my guess is that it works fine

00:45:25   because everything else, everything I did try,

00:45:27   and I got a lot of questions that were like,

00:45:28   well, what about this app?

00:45:29   Well, what about this app?

00:45:30   Which I totally understand,

00:45:32   but it's not possible for me to use every app.

00:45:34   And the reality is the amount of time you spend

00:45:37   testing a bunch of different apps,

00:45:39   what you find is the exact same thing with all of them.

00:45:41   So I did use Logic, for example,

00:45:43   because that's an app that I know pretty well

00:45:46   and that I can recognize the performance issues,

00:45:49   and it didn't have any.

00:45:51   Mostly, I mean, one of the big reasons is Logic

00:45:53   is so disk-based and having an SSD

00:45:55   means, you know, it runs pretty well. But photos in particular I didn't get a chance

00:46:03   to use because I didn't have 1010.3 on it until yesterday afternoon, and so I just haven't

00:46:09   tested it. But generally, everything's been fine that I've used. Yeah, it's a little slow.

00:46:13   I find the interface not slow at all, but anything that's like a super-intensive calculation,

00:46:17   like bouncing a track out of logic, you know, it takes a lot longer than on my Retina iMac,

00:46:24   for sure. It's slower when it gets into the processor-intensive kind of

00:46:28   cranking away at something, you know, it doesn't go as fast. But I never in my

00:46:33   regular use of it thought, "Oh, this thing is so slow." It just never

00:46:36   happened. If you try to play a game on it, you would, you know, even though the

00:46:40   graphics processor in it is fine, you know, it's, you know, it's slow. It's

00:46:45   not gonna blow you away. It's not a game machine. Don't buy it if you want to use

00:46:48   it to play games. That would be dumb. Don't do that. But anyway, so photos,

00:46:53   Photos, though, in particular, I can't say because it didn't ship with photos.

00:47:00   It shipped with 10.10.2, and I spent most of the time using 10.10.2 and not 10.10.3.

00:47:06   We have an email from Van Dan.

00:47:09   Van Dan has said, "I use an iPad for practically everything.

00:47:12   I end up using my MacBook only at work thanks to Xcode and OmniGraffle and some other software.

00:47:18   Because of this, I've noticed that the applications that I use tend to have a Mac app, an iPhone

00:47:22   and an iPad app. Considering the MacBook spec, and I'm sure that he said he's sure a lot

00:47:28   of users will be looking at getting the MacBook to replace their iPads, do you think that

00:47:32   people will feel that way? And if they do, does it make sense to do this?

00:47:39   You know, the iPad and the MacBook are just totally different products. They're totally

00:47:45   different products. I don't think there's a continuum there. I think you use a Mac for

00:47:50   Mac things, and you use an iPad for iPad things. And so, you know, this—I don't

00:47:58   think this is as dramatic a change as maybe you could make it out to be. The

00:48:03   11-inch MacBook Air is already really small, you know, and it's really thin and

00:48:07   it's really light. It's not as small and thin and light as the MacBook, but it is

00:48:10   pretty close, and it doesn't have a retina display. That's the big difference.

00:48:14   But, you know, this is not an iPad. This is a—this is a laptop, and you're gonna

00:48:18   to make judgments about it based on whether you want to use a laptop or an iPad. I don't

00:48:21   think somebody would say, "Well, I've been using an iPad, but I'd really rather just

00:48:25   use a Mac, but the MacBook Air is not good enough for me. Oh, now, but now that there's

00:48:30   this MacBook, now I'll make the switch." I don't think that's going to be a main—I

00:48:33   mean, maybe somebody will say that, but like those people who have spreadsheets on their

00:48:38   Windows mobile phones in 2006. But I don't think that's a broad statement that lots of

00:48:46   people would make. So, you know, I have a—I don't know how to answer that question other

00:48:51   than to say that this is a continuation of Apple making the laptops thinner and lighter.

00:48:55   I don't think it has any impact on the iPad. I doubt there are people using an iPad saying,

00:49:00   "I'd really rather use a Mac for this, but, you know, the existing Mac offerings are just

00:49:04   too big for me." It's, you know, it's still a MacBook. It's not some weird hybrid.

00:49:11   So my last question comes again from MJ.

00:49:15   I've said his second question today.

00:49:17   If you could get only one, which would you choose, the Apple Watch or the new MacBook?

00:49:21   Well, I have a MacBook Air 11, so the Apple Watch.

00:49:25   Are you going to be pre-ordering?

00:49:27   An Apple Watch?

00:49:28   Yeah.

00:49:29   Probably, probably, because I need to have one.

00:49:35   Yeah.

00:49:37   Yeah, yeah, I'm still hoping that I can talk somebody at Apple into giving me a review

00:49:42   unit to try out, but I can't count on that, and I do need to have one to write about,

00:49:47   so I will probably pre-order something.

00:49:51   So I think in summary, the way that I feel from talking to you about this, I wouldn't

00:49:56   say you sound down on this machine, but you're not super excited about it, which I think

00:50:01   echoes our original expectations, which is this is not your machine, so you're not crazy

00:50:07   about it, but it's got things that are good about it that will be good for some people,

00:50:11   but this is not one for you.

00:50:13   The USB-C thing is not a hang-up for me. In the end, what I would say, what surprised

00:50:17   me is that I think only the keyboard is the thing that really is bothering me. If you

00:50:21   had the MacBook Air's keyboard on this thing, then I would say yes, absolutely, the next

00:50:25   laptop I buy -- again, having a recent model MacBook Air, it's not going to be for a while

00:50:29   would be the MacBook. With this keyboard, I'll think about it. I'm not, you know, I'm

00:50:34   not entirely sold on it, but I think, I do think the keyboard is its

00:50:39   weakest point, and for a lot of people it won't matter, and so that's good

00:50:43   for them because the weakest point is irrelevant to them, and then don't worry

00:50:47   about it. But to me, the USB-C stuff is gonna take care of itself. I think the

00:50:52   battery life is pretty good. I know that there are some people who reported that

00:50:55   they did like serious battery tests and said that it didn't live as long as the

00:51:01   as the MacBook Air. That does not, I think Joanna Stern reported that and

00:51:07   ReCode reported that, that does not match with my usage at all. I suspect that this,

00:51:13   the power saving in here is doing some very interesting things that mean it has

00:51:19   a long battery life when you use it like a regular person, but that if you crank

00:51:22   everything up and and try to deplete the battery really quickly, it depletes

00:51:27   quickly. But I don't know if that's something that anybody would really see.

00:51:32   For me it felt like it lasted a lot longer than my 11-inch air. Take that for

00:51:37   what you will because I didn't run any formal tests because I'm only one person

00:51:40   and if you run a lot of formal battery tests you've just lost half of your time

00:51:44   with a product so I can't do that. Couldn't do that in Macworld, can't do it

00:51:49   now, it's just, it's not worth it. If you're really going to do it right, it takes way

00:51:54   too much time, it's not worth doing when you're initially reviewing something. So, you know,

00:51:59   I think that for a lot of people, running it without it plugged in and occasionally

00:52:06   plugging in an external USB device, which I don't think a lot of people are doing anyway,

00:52:10   I just don't think it's a big deal. And it's going to take care of itself in the next six

00:52:14   months or in the next year. It's already starting to take care of itself. You buy an adapter,

00:52:18   buy a cable, you move on. So I don't think any of those are really roadblocks.

00:52:23   The screen is great. I actually ended up running it on the biggest, or I

00:52:30   guess littlest scaled mode, so I got a little more screen real estate and

00:52:33   everything's just a little bit smaller. Looks great. All the space of like a 13

00:52:38   inch laptop on a 12 inch laptop. You know, there are a lot of things to commend it.

00:52:44   I think for me I am just hung up on the keyboard and that's just that's that's my

00:52:49   that's my cross to bear and if you're somebody who cares about keyboards then

00:52:52   you may care about it too but I think probably most people won't care.

00:52:56   I want to try it out I want to see if I can feel it. I don't think I'll be able to.

00:53:01   Like at least I'll maybe feel a difference but I don't think it will

00:53:05   wother me as it bothers you so I'm interested I'm interested. That's my

00:53:08   hypothesis so whenever it is I go into the Apple store to try on an

00:53:13   Apple Watch. I'll also play around with with the MacBook and I'll let you know

00:53:17   what I think about the keyboard because I'm just not... I'm just... obviously I type

00:53:22   like everybody does but I don't type nowhere near as much as you do and I

00:53:27   think that maybe that I might may be less sensitive to it than you but we'll

00:53:30   see we'll see. Yeah. Thank you Mr. Jason Snell thank you for doing this today

00:53:36   it's been an interesting experiment into getting a little bit more director's

00:53:42   commentary out of this little bonus upgrade time. But we'll be back

00:53:48   at our usual time next week for our usual upgrade. Yeah our regularly scheduled

00:53:55   programming will continue on Monday. I just couldn't be away from the show for any

00:54:00   longer I just couldn't allow it. Yeah I approve I appreciate it. After our two

00:54:04   you know you couldn't stay away after our two podcasts in person you just

00:54:09   couldn't you couldn't let it go. If you want to find the show notes for this

00:54:12   week's episode of course you can check in your app of choice you'll find links

00:54:16   to Jason's review I put Jim Darrowpool's review in there as well because you

00:54:19   mentioned that I'll put you on a stands in too because you mentioned those so

00:54:21   you can get some differing opinions if you would like to so you can grab those

00:54:27   or you can go to relay.fm/upgrade/31 and you'll see that lovely link

00:54:33   list there for you so you can check all those out if you want to find us on

00:54:37   social media as a couple of days you can do that you can go to @JSNEL

00:54:40   J S N E double O you can find Jason on Twitter there I am @imike I M Y K E and

00:54:45   of course Jason is the editor-in-chief of the fantastic sixcolors.com where

00:54:50   you'll find all of Jason's great work oh don't forget the incomparable too

00:54:54   because you just should never forget the incomparable because it's the best.

00:54:58   Award-winning. Award-winning. Award-winning the incomparable. You win the award of my heart too

00:55:04   Jason, for the work that you do there. So thank you for doing all of that. And thank

00:55:09   you so much for listening to this very special episode and we'll be back next week. Bye-bye.

00:55:14   Goodbye.

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