The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► We're in luck though, Dan.

00:00:01 ◼   ► I mean, it's, we've been, we've both been in this wreck a long time.

00:00:04 ◼   ► And, uh, in the years since Mac world rest in peace, pour one out for old Mac

00:00:09 ◼   ► world January announcements have been few and far between it's usually sort of a

00:00:15 ◼   ► dead zone before spring, which I think honestly is one of the reasons, one of

00:00:20 ◼   ► the Apple was not going to stick with macro expo for long anyway, they want to

00:00:24 ◼   ► They were shifting from a, we're one of many companies in this industry and we do things

00:00:34 ◼   ► that normal companies in this industry do to we're Apple.

00:00:42 ◼   ► My favorite story about the year we were at Macworld Expo when Apple had pulled out, I

00:00:46 ◼   ► was actually doing a talk on the show floor with our pals, Paul Kvassus, John Moltz, and

00:00:52 ◼   ► a guy stopped us after our little talk on the floor,

00:00:55 ◼   ► and he was from Germany,

00:00:57 ◼   ► and he asked us where the Apple booth was.

00:00:59 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:01:00 ◼   ► And we're like, "Sorry, bad news."

00:01:02 ◼   ► And in the year since, I think Paul ad-libbed this,

00:01:04 ◼   ► but he had the, "But I have flown all the way from Germany

00:01:07 ◼   ► to see the Apple booth."

00:01:08 ◼   ► He just looked very forlorn.

00:01:11 ◼   ► We were like, "Sorry to break it to you,

00:01:13 ◼   ► but there's an Apple store, you can walk there,

00:01:15 ◼   ► it's pretty much the same thing."

00:01:17 ◼   ► - It was very sad, sad but funny at the same time.

00:01:22 ◼   ► Apple, you know, who knows we might still get some springtime announcements in recent years

00:01:27 ◼   ► There's often been something in the march april time frame, you know, and and because they don't have these

00:01:34 ◼   ► uh set in stone

00:01:37 ◼   ► conferences like macworld to worry about they you know,

00:01:40 ◼   ► They just announce them when they're ready and if it's you know

00:01:43 ◼   ► The last week of march or it's the second week of april. It doesn't matter

00:01:46 ◼   ► there's no tradition really the only two things that seem to be on a dead set annual schedule are

00:01:53 ◼   ► WWDC somewhere in like with a starting date on a Monday with single digits in June right might be

00:02:02 ◼   ► the first Monday might be the second Monday but it probably starts with a single digit and an iPhone

00:02:09 ◼   ► event in like the first Tuesday after Labor Day in September roughly you know

00:02:15 ◼   ► one of those first Tuesdays in September and everything else has some float

00:02:21 ◼   ► that's based on their schedule but I can't help but think that when they did

00:02:26 ◼   ► pull the pull on pull the plug on Mac world or their participation in Mac

00:02:30 ◼   ► world January is just never a good month for Apple it just it's just not you know

00:02:35 ◼   ► Why in the world would you come out with new stuff in January on the whole right? Because you want to get it out for the holidays

00:02:41 ◼   ► Else you don't want to spend your holidays preparing getting something out. But here we are was right. Yeah

00:02:48 ◼   ► Well, it was weird too because I mean also in the past like, you know Mac world and CES always collided like and that was kind

00:02:55 ◼   ► Of weird and it felt like maybe yeah, you want to be it like be in the CES timeframe

00:03:00 ◼   ► but they weren't usually at CES or even if they were,

00:03:03 ◼   ► they weren't doing anything official there.

00:03:05 ◼   ► And as you said, you don't wanna do stuff

00:03:08 ◼   ► after the holiday quarter.

00:03:10 ◼   ► This one is a little weird too,

00:03:11 ◼   ► because the supposition around it seems to be

00:03:13 ◼   ► that they wanted to do it in the fall.

00:03:16 ◼   ► Like, it just wasn't ready to go,

00:03:18 ◼   ► so they pushed it off to the next best time, I guess,

00:03:22 ◼   ► whenever they're ready to ship in the quantities

00:03:24 ◼   ► they need to, which was January.

00:03:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I pointed out, I think I might have been first,

00:03:29 ◼   ► I'm never first for anything anymore, but that the URL for the event video had like two 2022s in it.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Somebody else once... somebody else would have noticed that anyway, but once the internet was

00:03:46 ◼   ► off to the races on that, some people looked at those AR widgets. I don't know what we call...

00:03:53 ◼   ► what do we call those things? Whenever they come out with a new product and there's like,

00:03:57 ◼   ► Hey, you know, you can pretend you have, is there a word? Yeah, I don't know. But it's like they

00:04:03 ◼   ► make little, when they make new, you know, it's like a tradition they've been doing for

00:04:07 ◼   ► several years now. It's not just like, oh, it's because the headset's imminent, but for several

00:04:11 ◼   ► years they have a new product. They'll put these, they'll make these AR models of the thing,

00:04:16 ◼   ► whatever it is. And then you can use your phone and project it onto a tabletop in front of you.

00:04:21 ◼   ► And anyway, somebody poked around those AR models and or scenes, maybe you'd call them AR scenes,

00:04:28 ◼   ► but it's really more... But it's not really a scene. It's like putting a virtual object in

00:04:32 ◼   ► front of you. Yeah, anyway, they were compiled, if that's the right verb, in October 11th. And

00:04:39 ◼   ► people who look at such things snooping for details claim that almost inevitably

00:04:47 ◼   ► those AR models final compilation date is within like the final week of the event or when they come

00:04:54 ◼   ► out which leads you know you know and and it is interesting anyway that the the products we're

00:05:01 ◼   ► talking about are the new uh m2 macbook pros the real macbook pros 14 and 16 inch with the m2

00:05:11 ◼   ► Pro and M2 Macs chips and the M2 Mac Minis which aren't quite limited to the Pro and

00:05:21 ◼   ► Macs because there's also the just plain M2 Mac Mini.

00:05:25 ◼   ► It's all, it's not confusing when you lay it out.

00:05:28 ◼   ► It's a little confusing to talk about.

00:05:30 ◼   ► And yeah, yeah, well, and HomePod second generation, which will...

00:05:36 ◼   ► And HomePods, yeah.

00:05:38 ◼   ► Right.

00:05:39 ◼   ► Everybody knew that the MacBook Pros were going to move to the M2.

00:05:46 ◼   ► That was money in the bank.

00:05:47 ◼   ► I think that the first 14 and 16-inch M1 Pro and MacBook Pros were so well received and

00:05:54 ◼   ► were a hardware refresh, it's unsurprising that they are true speed bumps in the classical

00:06:01 ◼   ► sense where it's almost impossible to tell them apart other than by booting them up and

00:06:07 ◼   ► going to About This Mac to see what the hell Chip is inside. The Mac Mini was more a little

00:06:15 ◼   ► bit more of a question mark, right? Because, you know, the Intel one was hanging around

00:06:23 ◼   ► there for a little while. I mean, they had that M1 and so it seemed logical, obviously,

00:06:27 ◼   ► that you get an M2, but then the question was, why is there an Intel still? What are

00:06:32 ◼   ► you doing with that? Right. And it's, you know, this is why it's fun to have a podcast

00:06:36 ◼   ► in this space because it gave us plenty to talk about. But the basic thinking is, okay,

00:06:40 ◼   ► the old way, and there's a very clear division between old and new, which is going from Intel

00:06:46 ◼   ► to Apple Silicon, the old Intel way. At the very end, it was only for like maybe the last

00:06:52 ◼   ► three years, two years of the product life, but they effectively had two versions of the

00:06:58 ◼   ► Mac Mini, which I would describe, they didn't call it the Mac Mini Pro, but I'll say with

00:07:05 ◼   ► a lowercase P not as a product name, but just as an adjective. There was the pro version

00:07:10 ◼   ► with four USB ports or Thunderbolt ports, whatever the hell they are, and the lower

00:07:16 ◼   ► end version with only two ports. And at the end of the Intel era, they were all they were

00:07:21 ◼   ► easily discerned because the higher end ones with four ports were space gray and lower

00:07:27 ◼   ► end ones were silver, aluminum, same footprint, but more ports and a cooler space. In my opinion,

00:07:34 ◼   ► space gray color and if you're man and at lots and lots of you know there's

00:07:40 ◼   ► lots of people who just buy a Mac Mini as a consumer and hook it up to a

00:07:44 ◼   ► display and it's there that's their desktop Mac and then you know as Apple

00:07:49 ◼   ► is now very happy to point out there's lots of professional uses of the Mac

00:07:55 ◼   ► Mini audio and video production and the Mac Mini colocation with companies like

00:08:03 ◼   ► Mac Stadium who are not sponsoring this episode but have sponsored my show for years and years,

00:08:08 ◼   ► great company, where you might have lots and lots of Mac Minis together. I can't help but think the

00:08:13 ◼   ► color coding was a nice something, you know, a nice little way of knowing what you're looking

00:08:18 ◼   ► at if you're looking at like three or four of them or a dozen of them all together.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, well, I think it hits the nail on the head, which is that essentially it was two

00:08:29 ◼   ► products. And I think that's the through line has continued, you know, now to the M2 and

00:08:35 ◼   ► M2 Pro variants, that it's essentially like your low cost intro level computer, which

00:08:39 ◼   ► is what the Mac mini was originally introduced as when they, you know, came out with it almost

00:08:43 ◼   ► 20 years ago, was like, hey, we need to convert PC users. Here's a cheap, which was at the

00:08:49 ◼   ► time kind of, I think, unprecedented for Apple, like let's make a cheap entry level computer

00:08:56 ◼   ► And then not say it's cheap in terms of the way it's put together, but like it's at a

00:08:59 ◼   ► low cost, which is not a market that Apple traditionally played in.

00:09:03 ◼   ► They were not competing with a $500 Dell that you bought.

00:09:07 ◼   ► They were playing in the $1,000 plus space.

00:09:09 ◼   ► And so they cut their costs by not having it, doesn't have a display, doesn't come with

00:09:13 ◼   ► a keyboard, doesn't come with a pointy device of any kind.

00:09:15 ◼   ► And so that was always sort of like, "Hey, you claim Macs are too expensive.

00:09:19 ◼   ► Well, here's one for 500 bucks that you can get."

00:09:22 ◼   ► it use it with whatever keyboard you have laying around or exactly buy a cheap third-party keyboard

00:09:27 ◼   ► if you want or whatever um yeah i guess you know we now know the answer so we're working backwards

00:09:35 ◼   ► but it was an open question with the existence of the mac studio from last year whether they ever

00:09:42 ◼   ► would do the more pro tier mac mini again because the m1 version had no pro variant it only had a two

00:09:51 ◼   ► port version it came you know this specs ranged a little bit within the m1 range

00:09:56 ◼   ► but you know only up to where wherever the m1 went without being the m1 pro or

00:10:03 ◼   ► or whatever and I guess the question was does the max studio start right above

00:10:10 ◼   ► that and that's why or were they going to do this well they you know obviously

00:10:17 ◼   ► wanted to. Why they didn't have a four port version in the M1 generation is one of those

00:10:23 ◼   ► things we'll never get an answer to. But yeah, I feel like they fell prey to timing a little

00:10:30 ◼   ► bit on that one just because the M1 Mini came out at the same time when the M1 debuted, right?

00:10:35 ◼   ► It was the first one with the Air to make the transition. So they obviously didn't have the

00:10:39 ◼   ► M1 Pro ready to go at that point. That didn't happen for another nine months. Right. And I

00:10:45 ◼   ► Yeah mid-stream is weird to to change it too

00:10:48 ◼   ► And I I wonder you know and again

00:10:51 ◼   ► This is one of those things apple never makes excuses about everything that happened during covid or even the continuing to this day

00:10:58 ◼   ► supply chain

00:11:00 ◼   ► repercussions of that whole stretch

00:11:02 ◼   ► Was that if covid hadn't happened might there have been?

00:11:06 ◼   ► a

00:11:08 ◼   ► m1 pro mac mini when

00:11:12 ◼   ► the 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pros were first introduced a year after the M1 Mac Mini,

00:11:19 ◼   ► maybe, you know, I just wonder if their prioritization of we're only going to make so

00:11:26 ◼   ► many of these M2 Pro chips, we've got to allocate them all to the MacBook Pros, the MacBook Pro is,

00:11:32 ◼   ► you know, Apple loves the Mac Mini more than they've ever loved it in its entire existence,

00:11:38 ◼   ► but clearly, but let's face it, the MacBook Pro.

00:11:41 ◼   ► - It's not the MacBook Pro, it's not the MacBook Pro.

00:11:43 ◼   ► That's like the flagship, right?

00:11:45 ◼   ► - Right, the flagship Macs are the MacBook Pros,

00:11:47 ◼   ► the real ones, the 14 and 16 inch,

00:11:49 ◼   ► and the tried and true single most important Mac

00:11:54 ◼   ► in the world is the MacBook Air.

00:11:56 ◼   ► Everything after that is second fiddle at best,

00:12:00 ◼   ► even if it's getting love.

00:12:01 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:12:02 ◼   ► The other thing Apple definitely has always done

00:12:06 ◼   ► is they they hold spots in the lineup when they want to come back to them even it when it gets

00:12:12 ◼   ► awkward so i thought that continuing to sell the intel four port mac mini up until these machines

00:12:21 ◼   ► came out yeah i thought it was more of a sign that they were going to eventually fill that spot in

00:12:28 ◼   ► with a mac mini with apple silicon which is what they've done and not about we need something we

00:12:36 ◼   ► We need to keep selling something Intel-based

00:12:39 ◼   ► that's not crazy expensive like the Mac Pro.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Something in that price range for our pro people

00:12:48 ◼   ► who have, for whatever reason, they need Intel.

00:12:53 ◼   ► That it's scientific computing

00:12:55 ◼   ► and they're using Intel compilers

00:12:58 ◼   ► or just they need to plug and play with an Intel workflow

00:13:05 ◼   ► they've already got, who knows? I think it was a nice side effect. I think it's primarily just that

00:13:10 ◼   ► they wanted to hold the spot and they always wanted to fill it with Apple Silicon.

00:13:13 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. I mean, if they had been moving to something else, like the Mac Studio or something,

00:13:19 ◼   ► I think they would have had no qualms about just discontinuing that Intel Mac Mini. I think they

00:13:23 ◼   ► just would have been like, "See, here's the Mac Mini. It's an M1. That's it." And people would

00:13:27 ◼   ► have been like, "I guess that's the writings on the wall for that higher-end Mac Mini." And I don't

00:13:31 ◼   ► think they have so much nostalgia. Nostalgia is not quite the right term, but I don't think Apple

00:13:37 ◼   ► cares enough about Intel to want to leave one around just for that safety's sake or what have

00:13:43 ◼   ► you. I don't think they really care. I think they want it to be an all-in on Apple Silicon,

00:13:47 ◼   ► obviously. And that's what we're seeing now with the exception, the asterisk of Mac Pro.

00:13:52 ◼   ► So having that there, I think you're totally right, was a placeholder for, "This is coming.

00:13:57 ◼   ► it's just not ready yet. But it was weird too, because it left this weird gap in the lineup when

00:14:03 ◼   ► the Mac Studio did come out, right? Because you could buy an M1 and it would be, I think it went

00:14:09 ◼   ► up in the, what, close to 1,000 if you maxed out your M1 Mac Mini or whatever, maybe slightly over.

00:14:15 ◼   ► And then it was like, you got to go all the way to the Mac Studio, which is two grand for a base

00:14:20 ◼   ► level configuration. And everyone's like, "Well, if I want something better than an M1, but I don't

00:14:25 ◼   ► want to drop two thousand dollars on a m1 max max studio there's nothing there's nothing in that

00:14:31 ◼   ► area at all in apple silicon which always felt weird and i felt like another compelling reason

00:14:35 ◼   ► that there would be a higher end mac mini is just to bridge that slightly yeah i thought so too um

00:14:42 ◼   ► so you wrote for six colors the uh you handled the mac mini jason snell handled the macbook pro

00:14:49 ◼   ► how would you summarize your review of the Mac Mini?

00:14:52 ◼   ► I think what the most important thing about the Mac Mini is,

00:14:56 ◼   ► kind of like you described the MacBook Pros as speed bump, this is exactly what we kind of expected,

00:15:01 ◼   ► right? Like we said, the Mac Mini is two products. It's that lower end Mac, but it's also this pro

00:15:06 ◼   ► level Mac. And of course, the ones they sent out to the reviewers were the M2 Pros, which is on my

00:15:11 ◼   ► desk here. So, you know, it's an attempt to sort of provide a professional level desktop that is

00:15:18 ◼   ► somewhere in between. You need something more than a vanilla M2 and not as much as a Mac Studio.

00:15:25 ◼   ► But unlike the Mac Studio, the Mac Mini has been around so long that Apple's gotten really good.

00:15:30 ◼   ► They know what this device is, they know what this product is, they've made it for over 20 years.

00:15:37 ◼   ► And it's not going to surprise you in terms of what it's offering. The specs are pretty much

00:15:43 ◼   ► exactly what we expected.

00:15:45 ◼   ► But it delivers on all of that.

00:15:47 ◼   ► And I will say the it really impressed me,

00:15:49 ◼   ► the performance of the M2 Pro.

00:15:51 ◼   ► I have an M1 Air.

00:15:54 ◼   ► That's what I was using as sort of my daily driver before this.

00:15:57 ◼   ► And, you know, the M2 Pro kind of knocks its socks off

00:16:00 ◼   ► in a bunch of different directions.

00:16:03 ◼   ► And then I think one of the, you know, it does it

00:16:05 ◼   ► in not only handily, but also super quietly.

00:16:08 ◼   ► That's the thing that really impressed me about this is like

00:16:11 ◼   ► I was running tests where I was like, you know,

00:16:13 ◼   ► getting all the CPUs, all the performance cores,

00:16:16 ◼   ► maxing them out, whatever, running graphics tests.

00:16:18 ◼   ► I swear I never heard the fan on this thing.

00:16:20 ◼   ► It is so quiet.

00:16:22 ◼   ► It's kind of bananas that they,

00:16:24 ◼   ► like I checked at one point and downloaded an app,

00:16:26 ◼   ► I'm like, there is a fan in this, right?

00:16:28 ◼   ► Let me make sure.

00:16:30 ◼   ► - One of my favorite reviews was iJustine's on YouTube,

00:16:35 ◼   ► and she, I don't have it handy,

00:16:39 ◼   ► but she invited a friend of hers

00:16:41 ◼   ► who is a out in Los Angeles, a professional colorist,

00:16:45 ◼   ► color grading expert for video.

00:16:47 ◼   ► And they were grading

00:16:50 ◼   ► 4K or 8K footage, I don't know,

00:16:53 ◼   ► but it might have been 8K footage.

00:16:55 ◼   ► And very, very just a stressful, stressful test.

00:17:00 ◼   ► And watching some of the video pros like her and MKBHD

00:17:06 ◼   ► is for me a great way of getting practical feedback

00:17:09 ◼   ► from people who really push machines in ways that typically would engage fans

00:17:16 ◼   ► without artificial benchmarks and it was the funniest part of the video was her

00:17:20 ◼   ► and her friend after they'd went through it and they were impressed by the

00:17:24 ◼   ► performance they weren't waiting for anything and then they were like trying

00:17:27 ◼   ► to figure out if the fans were on this yeah right yeah and no and the guy was

00:17:32 ◼   ► like I think it is and she's like no that's the key light and he like listen

00:17:37 ◼   ► like, "Oh, you're right, you know, they had like a light in front of their studio," and he's like,

00:17:40 ◼   ► "Yeah, it's up there. That's the light," and he's like, "Yeah, I don't think it's up."

00:17:43 ◼   ► It's like, "You don't know," and it's like, "You think? Well, it's, I don't know, it's gotta be.

00:17:46 ◼   ► We were just, we were just crushing this thing."

00:17:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I like put my, I put my Apple Watch, like, the decibel meter up to the back of it to see if

00:17:55 ◼   ► it would make a difference. Couldn't tell it, and I had the same thing where I'm listening like,

00:17:57 ◼   ► "Okay, I hear something." It's like, "No, that's my Synology in the corner. Like, it's not even,

00:18:02 ◼   ► it's not even coming from this area." It's, it's good. I do think

00:18:07 ◼   ► think you know I think that your m1 air is probably I would define as the baseline that

00:18:12 ◼   ► would be like the 1.0 or the squared is a zero on you know the the rating scale for apple silicon

00:18:23 ◼   ► that's the baseline for apple silicon it's a great machine and we're you know to me it's impressive

00:18:28 ◼   ► that as much as we raved about the just plain non-pro M1 Macs from 2020 and to 2020 and

00:18:37 ◼   ► how what a breakthrough they were in performance and the ways that you really can see you could

00:18:47 ◼   ► feel and measure the benefits of unified memory architecture and that having this memory that

00:18:55 ◼   ► is shared is not, it's an advantage as opposed to being the cheaping out in the back Intel days

00:19:03 ◼   ► with integrated graphics. When you're doing these things that are video intensive, being able to

00:19:09 ◼   ► share the same memory is just, you're just, the computer isn't doing the shuffling between cache

00:19:17 ◼   ► and this memory and that memory that had to be done before. It's just there, it's all on a fast

00:19:23 ◼   ► bus, everything that you'd want to be fast in production, not just artificial benchmarks,

00:19:28 ◼   ► but in actual production, doing real things that you really do, man, you just not waiting for it.

00:19:34 ◼   ► And now here we are. And we're already like, I could see how slow those were.

00:19:38 ◼   ► Well, it's funny to the RAM thing, particularly, I think for a long time, you know, computer users,

00:19:45 ◼   ► Mac users, like you and me, like, are the conventional wisdom for so long was like,

00:19:49 ◼   ► like, you know, you buy as much RAM as you can afford.

00:19:51 ◼   ► And I feel like this has thrown me for a bit of a loop

00:19:54 ◼   ► in the modern era when I'm actually speccing out machines

00:19:56 ◼   ► like, do I really need 32 gigs?

00:19:58 ◼   ► I mean, the 16 gigs are pretty good.

00:20:01 ◼   ► And with the unified memory architecture,

00:20:03 ◼   ► it really doesn't feel like I'm running out of memory

00:20:05 ◼   ► all the time or running into that as the ceiling.

00:20:08 ◼   ► And I struggle with it because it is still expensive, right?

00:20:11 ◼   ► You're spending a few hundred bucks to go up in RAM costs

00:20:14 ◼   ► and you're like, oh, is it worth it?

00:20:15 ◼   ► I just, it has kind of thrown for a loop

00:20:18 ◼   ► this, you know, my conventional wisdom for buying Macs.

00:20:22 ◼   ► And, you know, I guess we shouldn't be surprised

00:20:25 ◼   ► to see the year over year improvements.

00:20:26 ◼   ► We've seen them, you know, with the iPad and the iPhone

00:20:29 ◼   ► for the last decade plus, like, you know,

00:20:32 ◼   ► Apple just continually every year comes out with a chip

00:20:34 ◼   ► that's just a little bit faster.

00:20:36 ◼   ► And, you know, it seems like the Mac is kind of

00:20:38 ◼   ► on the same trajectory, like, yep, that M1, you know,

00:20:41 ◼   ► the M1 from Intel is a huge jump, right?

00:20:43 ◼   ► That's night and day.

00:20:46 ◼   ► But, you know, little incremental improvements

00:20:48 ◼   ► year over year and all the other stuff they've added in,

00:20:51 ◼   ► right, the improved memory bandwidth,

00:20:54 ◼   ► the neural engine, graphics cores out the Wazoo, basically,

00:20:58 ◼   ► like all that stuff has added up.

00:21:01 ◼   ► And so, yeah, I mean, it is kind of wild that, you know,

00:21:05 ◼   ► a couple years later, it was in like, yeah,

00:21:07 ◼   ► that M1's old hat, it's time for the M2.

00:21:11 ◼   ► - I think, you know, it's very safe to say,

00:21:13 ◼   ► and I know some people, I'm not gonna name names,

00:21:16 ◼   ► but there are reviewers and commentators out there

00:21:20 ◼   ► who always poo poo speed bumps

00:21:24 ◼   ► because they're not exciting, right?

00:21:25 ◼   ► There's some people whose brains are wired up

00:21:29 ◼   ► to only get excited with the dopamine hit

00:21:32 ◼   ► that comes from an altogether new design.

00:21:36 ◼   ► But I think speed, I've always thought

00:21:39 ◼   ► that speed bumps are great because they're,

00:21:43 ◼   ► or at least they are when you're,

00:21:45 ◼   ► you've got a hardware foundation that you're happy with.

00:21:48 ◼   ► And I think, you know, for what it is,

00:21:51 ◼   ► the Mac Mini is pretty simple hardware to describe.

00:21:55 ◼   ► It's, you know, small footprint, small height,

00:21:57 ◼   ► and, you know, fewer or more ports,

00:22:00 ◼   ► depending on how much you pay.

00:22:02 ◼   ► I think the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros are fantastic.

00:22:05 ◼   ► I bought last year, or the very end of the year before,

00:22:10 ◼   ► whenever, the 14-inch M1

00:22:12 ◼   ► uh m1 macbook pro and i i'd same as you i i did

00:22:19 ◼   ► my pet thing is yes buy as much ram as i need

00:22:23 ◼   ► and my main ram need is my terrible terrible safari tab hoarding

00:22:29 ◼   ► problem where i literally have and i know this

00:22:33 ◼   ► bothers some people who are habitual tab tidiers

00:22:36 ◼   ► um literally hundreds of open safari tabs at a time and safari deals with

00:22:42 ◼   ► that far better in my experience than any Chrome-based browser, not to get into a Safari

00:22:48 ◼   ► versus Chrome argument, but Safari does a very good job of keeping background tabs from running

00:22:55 ◼   ► a muck CPU-wise, but the RAM adds up. And I do hunt for those tabs. I keep them open for a reason,

00:23:03 ◼   ► and it's like with the old days when I was swapping because I'd run out of real memory

00:23:09 ◼   ► because of all my tabs and I'd go to a tab that had been swapped out, then you'd get the beach

00:23:14 ◼   ► ball for a second or you know or even if the beach ball didn't appear it just took a while for that

00:23:19 ◼   ► tab to come forward whereas now it's just instantaneous. I did buy mine with the full

00:23:24 ◼   ► last year's maximum 64 gigs of ren. I have checked every so often. I was going to say have they made

00:23:30 ◼   ► enough ram for no safari they have and I and I've also noticed and I will say this as a you know as

00:23:39 ◼   ► compliment as somebody who's known you know and openly criticizes the

00:23:46 ◼   ► reliability of Apple software on a regular basis that with Mac OS the later

00:23:56 ◼   ► versions of Mac OS 12 and all of I switched to Ventura on my my real Mac

00:24:01 ◼   ► the one I work on when 13.1 came out I kind of think I could have gone with

00:24:06 ◼   ► 13.0 and I wouldn't have been unhappy.

00:24:08 ◼   ► It's just that I'm a little conservative

00:24:11 ◼   ► just because you can't go backwards easily.

00:24:14 ◼   ► And I just, it literally depend on it.

00:24:17 ◼   ► But just a couple, I don't know, a week or two ago,

00:24:20 ◼   ► or probably about a week ago, I checked

00:24:23 ◼   ► and my uptime was like 29 days.

00:24:26 ◼   ► I hadn't restarted my Mac in 29 days.

00:24:28 ◼   ► Didn't notice, went to Activity Monitor

00:24:32 ◼   ► and still swap, was it zero?

00:24:34 ◼   ► it still hadn't swapped any memory at all with hundreds of tabs open for 29 days. So 64 is

00:24:41 ◼   ► obvious. That's pretty impressive. Well, and the other thing that's really nice about that

00:24:45 ◼   ► is it's the, you know, out of RAM, CPU, and GPU, RAM's the one where I know that I can use it.

00:24:53 ◼   ► So now that this year's new models go up to 96, I have no temptation because I couldn't,

00:24:58 ◼   ► I if I couldn't swap at all in a month with 64 I guess 64 is enough for me so yeah no that's good

00:25:07 ◼   ► logic I don't think I guess the other thing that I always I try to concentrate on reviews I know you

00:25:14 ◼   ► do too is knowing that most almost every product that Apple makes is not really intended for the

00:25:23 ◼   ► owners of the previous generation one to immediately upgrade to it and that's

00:25:30 ◼   ► part of the thing where their products are not super low price there you know

00:25:33 ◼   ► widely regarded as premium price but when you buy a $400 Apple watch you're

00:25:40 ◼   ► supposed to get several years of life out of it it's a $400 watch most people

00:25:45 ◼   ► most Apple watch users have never bought a watch probably even half the price of

00:25:50 ◼   ► of their Apple Watch. It's expensive for a watch by most peaceable standards.

00:25:55 ◼   ► So it should last years and years. You're not supposed to compare the Series 7 to the Series 8

00:26:00 ◼   ► other than just showing what is, you know, it's interesting to see what the year-over-year

00:26:05 ◼   ► improvements are, but that's not really the buying guide part. The buying guide is more

00:26:09 ◼   ► for people who own like a Series 4 or Series 5, right? MacBook Pro, if you bought a $5,000,

00:26:16 ◼   ► four or five thousand dollar m1 MacBook Pro with lots of RAM and maybe the extra SSD and whatever

00:26:23 ◼   ► else you're supposed to get more than a year or 18 months out of it for sure like I love getting

00:26:29 ◼   ► a Mac setup just the way I like it and then using it for years and not having to worry about

00:26:33 ◼   ► upgrading this or that is so you know our m1 MacBook Pro users going to want to upgrade to

00:26:41 ◼   ► this almost certainly not unless you know you do unless you know that a 30% difference in GPU

00:26:49 ◼   ► is going to save you noticeable time because you're doing 8k video exports on a regular basis

00:26:56 ◼   ► that peg all of the GPUs or as best that the software you're using can and a 30% improvement

00:27:02 ◼   ► would be noticeable. Yeah, I mean, and I think I was in some ways really well situated for dealing

00:27:10 ◼   ► with the Mini in particular, because I had a 5K iMac, an Intel 2017 model that basically

00:27:18 ◼   ► went belly up over last summer. So I was left with just my air, which is the reason it was

00:27:23 ◼   ► sort of my only computer for a while there. So I'd been in the market already. I was like,

00:27:27 ◼   ► "Well, I know I've got my Intel iMac. I'm going to replace this with Apple Silicon,

00:27:31 ◼   ► obviously, because it's only a matter of time." And I found myself thinking, "Well, all the

00:27:36 ◼   ► Apple authors in the iMac department is an M1, and they're not seemingly making a larger

00:27:42 ◼   ► version any time soon. So it seems like the Mac Mini or Mac Studio is something that I

00:27:47 ◼   ► am really well situated to review, because that's probably what I'm going to end up replacing

00:27:54 ◼   ► with. And so comparing the M2 Pro Mac Mini with stuff that I was doing on my iMac, like

00:28:00 ◼   ► you said, you get that multi-year benefit. Not only is it like five, six years newer,

00:28:05 ◼   ► But it's also got the transition from Intel to Apple Silicon.

00:28:09 ◼   ► If you're coming from an Intel computer to the Apple Silicon, it is just bananas.

00:28:14 ◼   ► The biggest test that kind of blew me away on the M2 Pro Mini was I did some video streaming

00:28:19 ◼   ► stuff.

00:28:20 ◼   ► Not a lot, but I used OBS and I've used Ecamm Live to do some video streaming for our actual

00:28:25 ◼   ► Play D&D podcast over at The Incomparable.

00:28:28 ◼   ► And I handle a lot of the streaming on that.

00:28:30 ◼   ► And running that on my Intel iMac was painful.

00:28:33 ◼   ► OBS was not well, you know,

00:28:36 ◼   ► it wasn't really taking advantage of all the Apple frameworks

00:28:41 ◼   ► that were available. I don't think the hardware,

00:28:44 ◼   ► like encoding a video or anything ever really worked.

00:28:47 ◼   ► They were actually using the wrong framework for display capture stuff.

00:28:52 ◼   ► Apple had to check in a code fix for them,

00:28:54 ◼   ► which is my favorite.

00:28:56 ◼   ► They went like, "Yeah, guys, you're not supposed to be using this.

00:28:59 ◼   ► That's why your frame rates suck."

00:29:01 ◼   ► So I finally, I'd switched to Ecamm Live because, you know,

00:29:05 ◼   ► those guys, they know what they're doing.

00:29:07 ◼   ► They're Mac guys, right?

00:29:07 ◼   ► Like everything is optimized,

00:29:09 ◼   ► ran on Apple, Silicon, Native, all that.

00:29:11 ◼   ► And I was pretty happy with that.

00:29:12 ◼   ► But for this test, I downloaded OBS to do some light

00:29:15 ◼   ► streaming just to test it out.

00:29:17 ◼   ► And I went through and like set it all up.

00:29:20 ◼   ► And I'm, you know, running, streaming like a,

00:29:23 ◼   ► playing like a game for my PS5 via the app on my Mac.

00:29:26 ◼   ► And I'm streaming that and I'm streaming continuity camera

00:29:28 ◼   ► from my iPhone and the CPU meter down at the bottom

00:29:32 ◼   ► is at 5% and I'm like, what the hell?

00:29:37 ◼   ► This would heal my iMac.

00:29:40 ◼   ► It would just leave it chugging along

00:29:42 ◼   ► and I would have terrible performance

00:29:43 ◼   ► and this was incredibly smooth

00:29:46 ◼   ► and you got the feeling that Apple really spent some time,

00:29:48 ◼   ► like, you know, game streaming is kind of a niche audience

00:29:51 ◼   ► but it's something that shows off performance well

00:29:53 ◼   ► and I think Apple spent the time to try

00:29:55 ◼   ► and make sure that something like OBS,

00:29:56 ◼   ► which is one of the sort of standards in the industry,

00:29:59 ◼   ► works well on Apple Silicon, and it does.

00:30:02 ◼   ► I mean, it still looks kind of crappy

00:30:04 ◼   ► 'cause it's an open source app that's cross-platform,

00:30:07 ◼   ► but it performs really nicely on a M2 Pro.

00:30:11 ◼   ► So that to me was kind of the moment that I was like,

00:30:14 ◼   ► all right, this can handle pretty much anything

00:30:16 ◼   ► I can throw at it.

00:30:17 ◼   ► - You pointed out in your review what I alluded to earlier,

00:30:22 ◼   ► that they still have not brought back Space Gray.

00:30:25 ◼   ► You can get, as you said, you can get your Mac Mini in a wide range of specs,

00:30:30 ◼   ► but you can get it in and any color you want, so long as the color is silver.

00:30:34 ◼   ► I find that a little disappointing, especially since

00:30:38 ◼   ► they have so few colors in the Mac lineup already,

00:30:43 ◼   ► you know, and everybody, you know, midnight was exciting.

00:30:46 ◼   ► Midnight is the the midnight MacBook Air's

00:30:49 ◼   ► is the most exciting new Mac color in a long time.

00:30:52 ◼   ► And that's not saying much because that's a pretty close to dark gray blue, the midnight.

00:30:59 ◼   ► But the iMac, why the iMac has great colors?

00:31:03 ◼   ► The iMac has great colors, right. I'll just say that's great colors and there's a lot of people

00:31:09 ◼   ► who would like to see that spread throughout more Macs. You know, is the Mac Mini going to get iMac

00:31:17 ◼   ► style colors? Why not? I don't know. But at the very least though, going, it not only

00:31:23 ◼   ► didn't get any fun colors like, you know, red, yellow, green type pink colors, it actually

00:31:30 ◼   ► lost space gray, like which is really pretty sad.

00:31:35 ◼   ► I don't know. Yeah, I mean that is one of my few dings I think on them. The other one

00:31:40 ◼   ► being the Mac studio showed that Apple was willing to sort of mar the design of their

00:31:47 ◼   ► beautiful hardware by putting ports on the front, which I think everybody was a big fan of. And it

00:31:52 ◼   ► disappoints me that the Mac Mini did not follow in that I could have used just one, you know,

00:31:57 ◼   ► Thunderbolt or even a USB C port on the front. Like, I was testing out that feature they rolled

00:32:01 ◼   ► out where the security keys hardware security keys for your Apple ID. And I'm like, I've got one of

00:32:07 ◼   ► these Yubico keys. And I'm like, I gotta go behind the computer to like plug this in. This is super

00:32:13 ◼   ► annoying like i i don't understand why you aren't willing to put even on just

00:32:16 ◼   ► the m2 pro version like stick a port on the front there it kind

00:32:20 ◼   ► of that that drives me a little nuts yeah

00:32:23 ◼   ► especially since like you said the studio

00:32:27 ◼   ► you don't have to even be a mac user let alone a sort of mac pundit reviewer

00:32:35 ◼   ► to look at the two and say oh that's like the big

00:32:38 ◼   ► brother and that's the little brother you know that's this is the big version

00:32:42 ◼   ► big tall version of the mini, they're obviously from the same company, you know instantaneous,

00:32:50 ◼   ► you know they're siblings. And so that sort of, yeah okay for years we've avoided putting ports

00:32:57 ◼   ► on the front, you know and the argument against ports on the front is, I can't see how it's

00:33:02 ◼   ► anything other than aesthetic. The people who buy a Mac Mini, it's not really a showcase device

00:33:09 ◼   ► and it's so practical to have easy access to the front case, you know, for plugging in.

00:33:15 ◼   ► And then, you know, that's the whole point of it's the whole point of thunderbolt in these ports is

00:33:21 ◼   ► that you can you can have a literally mini form factor and expand it and you can have additional

00:33:31 ◼   ► SSD storage or if you want to go even bigger, you know, some kind of still use the spinning hard

00:33:37 ◼   ► disk to get it you know enormous capacity cameras right plugging in a camera or plugging a card

00:33:46 ◼   ► reader in so you can read photos from a camera and it's like there's a lot of people who shoot

00:33:52 ◼   ► photos with cameras that use cards and they need to connect it and it's not like oh one time i got

00:33:59 ◼   ► a new keyboard after three years i need to reach around the back and plug it in it's something they

00:34:03 ◼   ► do every day. So I... Yeah right and the aesthetics thing doesn't even hold up then because like if

00:34:09 ◼   ► you're sticking a card reader on it it's like I've already marred your perfect setup by having

00:34:13 ◼   ► a card reader hanging off of it so you might as well at least let me do it easily. I don't know,

00:34:19 ◼   ► it strikes me as strange. I understand like they've got the whole you know machine tooling

00:34:23 ◼   ► process down and they don't you know stick in a couple more holes in the case or wiring those

00:34:28 ◼   ► ports at the front, I'm sure it's an added cost. But if you're going to at least offer ones that

00:34:34 ◼   ► have four Thunderbolt ports instead of just two or whatever, it feels like it wouldn't be a huge

00:34:40 ◼   ► stretch to at least offer something that's a little more accessible. But I guess they are

00:34:45 ◼   ► committed to that being a pro-level luxury. If you want parts in the front, that's $2,000.

00:34:52 ◼   ► Yeah, whether you need that performance or not or whether it's in your budget or not

00:34:56 ◼   ► It's you know, and so there's a lot of people who if if the mini really suits their needs they'll just put up with

00:35:01 ◼   ► Reaching around the back every single time they need to be on the card or whatever

00:35:05 ◼   ► I

00:35:08 ◼   ► Do think from Apple's?

00:35:10 ◼   ► Messaging and this is where we get into the Kremlin ology part of it

00:35:18 ◼   ► Seems to me, you know one of going from the old Intel era to this era

00:35:23 ◼   ► Obviously, we're still waiting to hear the Mac Pro story, right?

00:35:27 ◼   ► And you know, we know it's coming because they went out of their way and in a very unusual edit

00:35:31 ◼   ► Yeah, John Ternus finished the studio announcement last year with we've got one more to go

00:35:36 ◼   ► Something I think obviously went wrong from their original

00:35:42 ◼   ► Plan because they did say it would the whole transition would only take two years and it's obviously going to take three years

00:35:49 ◼   ► And I guess and you know without delving into rumors of what the Mac Pro

00:35:56 ◼   ► Is going to be too much. It's you know, I think more or less it just skipped the m1 generation

00:36:03 ◼   ► It would be shocking if it came out with an m1 ultra or m1 extreme then that's the Mac Pro at this point

00:36:09 ◼   ► You know almost you know it just skip the m1. I guess it's gonna come out with an m2

00:36:14 ◼   ► Something I don't know what they're gonna call the chip

00:36:17 ◼   ► but the other

00:36:20 ◼   ► computer from the Intel era that

00:36:23 ◼   ► People so people who love it love it is the 27 inch I'm and

00:36:29 ◼   ► Didn't make it they you know they call the 24 inch m1. I max just the I max

00:36:38 ◼   ► There's no other name to them. I mean obviously they could come they could come out with a 27 inch model

00:36:43 ◼   ► And it would be like the MacBook Pros to get the iMac in two sizes 24 or 27

00:36:47 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if they do that. I mean it wouldn't be shocking. I know it would make some people happy

00:36:52 ◼   ► but reading between the lines of Apple's marketing material and the

00:36:58 ◼   ► Briefings that we were offered is as as reviewers. You know which are off the record. I can't quote them

00:37:07 ◼   ► But reading between the lines of what they said, it seems like they're

00:37:12 ◼   ► steering people to think of a Mac Mini connected to a Mac Studio display as the

00:37:18 ◼   ► new lot, you know, larger than the iMac 24 inches 5k display. That's the answer. And

00:37:29 ◼   ► honestly, I know there are people who love those iMacs. I owned and used the

00:37:34 ◼   ► heck out of a 2014 5k iMac and it was um I loved it it was just one that you know

00:37:40 ◼   ► probably my favorite into definitely my favorite Intel error desktop but I

00:37:44 ◼   ► actually like this better because I still feel bad about the fact that I

00:37:50 ◼   ► I've got my my 2014 iMac is just sitting in a box now because the display is

00:37:59 ◼   ► still fantastic it is absolutely you know right I don't I don't want to use a

00:38:03 ◼   ► 2014 Intel computer at all but the display is fantastic I'd still have bought the Mac

00:38:10 ◼   ► Studio last year display because I wanted the nano texture and I but it's a real weird shame

00:38:18 ◼   ► that I wasn't able to use my 5k gorgeous display just as a display I'm looking I'm looking at my

00:38:26 ◼   ► 27 inch from 2017 it's on the floor in my office because I haven't figured out what to do with it

00:38:31 ◼   ► But I have the same feeling because it's like for a while there.

00:38:33 ◼   ► We had that the target display mode where you could use an iMac

00:38:37 ◼   ► as a display. It was a very small window.

00:38:39 ◼   ► Yeah, let you do that.

00:38:40 ◼   ► And it does feel like a shame because I'm sitting here thinking like,

00:38:44 ◼   ► I mean, the panel is basically the same in the studio display is in this iMac.

00:38:48 ◼   ► Like I went out and spent a lot of money and, you know, had to buy

00:38:51 ◼   ► another thing to duplicate that where it would have been nice

00:38:54 ◼   ► if I could have just plug this Mac mini into that iMac and been done with it.

00:38:57 ◼   ► But yeah, it's not.

00:38:59 ◼   ► I guess that's just too expensive to do as a piece of technology. I don't know. It struck me

00:39:07 ◼   ► as strange as well. You could see even in the press releases when they talked about the M2 Pro

00:39:12 ◼   ► Mac Mini and the announcement press release they put out, they compared it to a 27-inch Intel iMac

00:39:18 ◼   ► as a performance thing. Clearly, yeah, this is how we're positioning this. So I can't argue with it.

00:39:25 ◼   ► And I agree, I like the idea that at least when I,

00:39:28 ◼   ► you know, if I buy an M2 Pro Mac Mini

00:39:30 ◼   ► and I use it for a few years,

00:39:31 ◼   ► I can swap it out and keep the display.

00:39:33 ◼   ► That's assuming they haven't made, you know,

00:39:35 ◼   ► another fancy new display,

00:39:36 ◼   ► but I'm sure this one will keep working for the interim.

00:39:39 ◼   ► So I'm invested now, and it does raise the price too, right?

00:39:42 ◼   ► Like buying a Mac Mini and an Apple Studio display.

00:39:45 ◼   ► If you're buying an M2 Pro and a Mac Mini,

00:39:47 ◼   ► so you're talking a couple thousand dollars, $2,500,

00:39:50 ◼   ► which is, I guess, around the price you paid

00:39:51 ◼   ► for a 2070-inch iMac, but it, you know,

00:39:53 ◼   ► Hopefully the investment pays out a little bit longer

00:39:56 ◼   ► and you can keep these hardware sort of rotating through.

00:39:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think it's any exaggeration.

00:40:01 ◼   ► I know in our racket it's pretty hard to say

00:40:03 ◼   ► blank is gonna still be useful in 10 years,

00:40:05 ◼   ► but I think a MacStudio display you buy now

00:40:08 ◼   ► is very likely to be a very good,

00:40:09 ◼   ► credible display 10 years from now.

00:40:13 ◼   ► And so who knows how many Mac Minis you might upgrade

00:40:16 ◼   ► between now and then, and you're saving

00:40:19 ◼   ► tremendous amount of money by just plugging it back

00:40:22 ◼   ► into the MacStudio display you already own.

00:40:24 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:40:25 ◼   ► - And it's not just, it is environmentally sound, right?

00:40:29 ◼   ► Not to be making all these displays that you, you know,

00:40:33 ◼   ► just put in your basement like mine

00:40:35 ◼   ► or put on your office floor like yours.

00:40:37 ◼   ► But it's just more cost effective to think of the display

00:40:42 ◼   ► as a modular part of your desktop.

00:40:44 ◼   ► And I know, you know, people who really, really love

00:40:49 ◼   ► the all-in-one don't wanna hear it,

00:40:50 ◼   ► But to me, that's a better solution.

00:40:53 ◼   ► I don't think they're ever gonna come back

00:40:55 ◼   ► with a bigger iMac again.

00:40:57 ◼   ► I wonder, I guess rumors say there's going to be M2 iMacs.

00:41:02 ◼   ► I wonder, I don't know, I guess I've seen some rumors

00:41:05 ◼   ► that say the iMac might wait 'til the M3.

00:41:07 ◼   ► I wonder about the iMac period,

00:41:09 ◼   ► whether or not it has a future.

00:41:12 ◼   ► Is all-in-one, does it really make sense

00:41:15 ◼   ► for a desktop anymore?

00:41:16 ◼   ► I'm not sure that it does.

00:41:19 ◼   ► I think there's still a niche there, right? Because, I mean, and this is evidenced by

00:41:23 ◼   ► the fact that the iMac, like the Mac mini, was an M1 only machine, right? There's never

00:41:27 ◼   ► an M1 Pro variant. And it doesn't, we don't know whether there will be one in the future,

00:41:32 ◼   ► but that really firmly put it in the consumer level camp, right? This is not,

00:41:36 ◼   ► you can't even spec up an M1 iMac to be like, "Hey, I just want an M1 iMac with some more juice."

00:41:40 ◼   ► Like, nope, that's what you got. So I think that kind of will tell us to a certain degree,

00:41:46 ◼   ► if Apple decides whenever it does the next reversion of the iMac to say, "Okay, we also

00:41:52 ◼   ► offer an M1 pro," or, "No, it's still a pro-level chip," or whatever generation we're on, or

00:41:57 ◼   ► it's still just the vanilla base-level chip, I think that's a pretty good indication of

00:42:01 ◼   ► where the future of that product might be.

00:42:04 ◼   ► The other reading between the lines thing that I detected that I'm very intrigued by

00:42:09 ◼   ► is to me, and again, this is all gut feeling. I can't prove it. I don't, my notes from,

00:42:17 ◼   ► I have all my notes from 15 years of briefings with Apple people, but my notes aren't proof of

00:42:24 ◼   ► it. But it feels to me like Apple themselves represent, you know, product marketing folks

00:42:30 ◼   ► in the Mac division are talking about games on the Mac more than ever, ever in my career.

00:42:36 ◼   ► you'd have to pre-date my writing during fireball and having press access to apple

00:42:41 ◼   ► may i don't but maybe even going back forever that maybe they're talking about games and

00:42:48 ◼   ► these are good for games since at least steve jobs came on stage to talk about halo back yeah

00:42:53 ◼   ► macworld expo yeah thousand or whatever uh you know the gaming thing you know i i played a lot

00:43:01 ◼   ► of games on the Mac and other various platforms. I've built gaming PCs. I have a, I think I have

00:43:07 ◼   ► every major console currently. So I, you know, I've played a lot of games and the gaming on the

00:43:14 ◼   ► Mac problem has always been this, this tough, weird nut to crack. I think the fundamental issue

00:43:19 ◼   ► for me is that Apple does not, as much as they talk up gaming, they don't really get it. When

00:43:24 ◼   ► Steve Jobs would talk about the iPod and he would talk about music, you could tell that Steve felt

00:43:30 ◼   ► personally passionate about music, right? He was into music. That was a product that, like,

00:43:36 ◼   ► I think really resonated with something in the soul of Apple and of the way that he saw the

00:43:41 ◼   ► business going. Then you could tell, like, when he would talk about, like, buying TV shows or renting

00:43:45 ◼   ► movies, he's like, "Yeah, it's fine." He doesn't really care. It's like a box to check. And I think

00:43:49 ◼   ► gaming is a thing that, despite the fact that, you know, there are so many gamers out there and

00:43:54 ◼   ► everybody of a certain age now, including, I assume, majority of people who work in Apple

00:43:59 ◼   ► in many of the roles, at least below the C-level, are gamers or have played games in their lifetime.

00:44:05 ◼   ► But you never got the sense from a cultural standpoint that they really got it. Like,

00:44:11 ◼   ► I think there's always a little degree of snobbery around it, like, "Oh, games, that's fine if you

00:44:16 ◼   ► want to." And it's not because these machines are not very capable gaming machines. If the developers

00:44:23 ◼   ► spend the time working with the tools that Apple provides, and they showed off a few games during

00:44:28 ◼   ► during their keynote, little keynote video.

00:44:31 ◼   ► They run really well.

00:44:33 ◼   ► I ran the Resident Evil Village,

00:44:35 ◼   ► which has been really optimized to work with Metal

00:44:37 ◼   ► and all that.

00:44:38 ◼   ► And it looks great, honestly.

00:44:40 ◼   ► Like, yeah, I put it up against a console, no problem.

00:44:43 ◼   ► But the issue is that there aren't that many,

00:44:45 ◼   ► like that's one title among hundreds, right?

00:44:49 ◼   ► If not more.

00:44:50 ◼   ► And it's just that most game developers

00:44:53 ◼   ► are not spending the time investing in the tools

00:44:56 ◼   ► that Apple is offering.

00:44:57 ◼   ► They want to build stuff that works on the PCs

00:45:00 ◼   ► and works on consoles.

00:45:01 ◼   ► And if you were a gamer, even if you were a diehard

00:45:05 ◼   ► Mac user and a gamer for the last 20 years,

00:45:08 ◼   ► at a certain point you probably gave up, right?

00:45:10 ◼   ► It was just like, ah, it's just too much trouble.

00:45:12 ◼   ► Like there's not enough stuff and I can't get it.

00:45:14 ◼   ► You probably went to a console or maybe built a gaming PC.

00:45:17 ◼   ► And I think then you end up with this chicken

00:45:18 ◼   ► and egg problem, which is like, there's not enough games

00:45:21 ◼   ► because there's not enough demand,

00:45:22 ◼   ► but there's not enough demand

00:45:23 ◼   ► because everybody left the platform.

00:45:24 ◼   ► So it's tough and I think Apple wants to get out of it,

00:45:27 ◼   ► but it's a really hard nut to crack.

00:45:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, it really is a chicken and egg problem.

00:45:30 ◼   ► Let's see, there's the Resident Evil,

00:45:32 ◼   ► what's it called, Resident Evil blank village.

00:45:35 ◼   ► And the other one there--

00:45:37 ◼   ► - Which was written by Antony Johnston,

00:45:39 ◼   ► who you may know, who's a frequent in-com,

00:45:41 ◼   ► in-com poll panelist, he did the,

00:45:42 ◼   ► wrote the script for that one.

00:45:44 ◼   ► - Huh, I did not know that.

00:45:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah, he won some awards for it too, I think.

00:45:49 ◼   ► So I started playing it, I only got through,

00:45:52 ◼   ► I don't do horror games, really,

00:45:53 ◼   ► I only got through like--

00:45:54 ◼   ► - Oh, I hate that.

00:45:56 ◼   ► made me go into it like I do like a creepy cabin. I didn't

00:45:59 ◼   ► even see a zombie john I went to a creepy cabin I was like I'm

00:46:02 ◼   ► done I used to play a lot more games never liked horror games

00:46:06 ◼   ► for that reason I do watch horror movies I've said this

00:46:08 ◼   ► before my family and I we my wife and son like them much more

00:46:12 ◼   ► than I do I'm I'm I'm not embarrassed to admit I get I get

00:46:16 ◼   ► really creeped out and I I could I don't like watching them by

00:46:20 ◼   ► myself for sure I wouldn't do it and but that's what playing a

00:46:22 ◼   ► god video game is like right you don't play a video game with

00:46:25 ◼   ► your family. It's immersive, too. But it's like, I need my son and my wife next to me

00:46:29 ◼   ► on the couch so I can grab them. I need somebody to squeeze a hand or something. I really do.

00:46:36 ◼   ► Play it in daylight, too, let me tell you. Otherwise...

00:46:38 ◼   ► What's the other one that they're talking about? I think it's No Man's Sky.

00:46:41 ◼   ► It's talking about No Man's Sky, but here's the thing with No Man's Sky, and I've played

00:46:44 ◼   ► that game on my Xbox. It's not new. It's several years old at this point, and it's a game that

00:46:52 ◼   ► iterated like they've come out with updates to it and stuff like that.

00:46:55 ◼   ► And it's still a very demanding game, but it's also, I want to say it's like 2016.

00:47:00 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe, maybe a little later, but it's not new.

00:47:03 ◼   ► Right. It's demanding.

00:47:04 ◼   ► It's open world. I mean, literally open worlds, right?

00:47:07 ◼   ► The whole idea is it's like a galaxy full of planets and each planet is different.

00:47:12 ◼   ► And the demos I saw of it,

00:47:16 ◼   ► it looks visually impressive on the Apple Silicon.

00:47:20 ◼   ► But No Man's Sky is all my understanding, this is very much informed by my son,

00:47:24 ◼   ► who's, you know, very much a real gamer, that No Man's Sky is a very odd game. It's just sort of

00:47:30 ◼   ► on its own in the industry. It's not like a typical AAA title. It's sort of, they've been

00:47:36 ◼   ► marching to the beat of their own drummer forever. Had sort of a rocky launch, you know, it's like

00:47:43 ◼   ► many games took longer to launch than they wanted to. Launched in a sort of incomplete shape and

00:47:49 ◼   ► and maybe left a poor first impression because of that,

00:47:53 ◼   ► but have spent nonstop for those five or six years

00:47:58 ◼   ► iterating and improving on it.

00:48:01 ◼   ► But they're out on their own,

00:48:02 ◼   ► and so it's not surprising to me

00:48:04 ◼   ► that because they're different

00:48:06 ◼   ► than the typical PC and console AAA titles,

00:48:11 ◼   ► that they've also got a source code base

00:48:14 ◼   ► and backend engine that is amenable to this,

00:48:19 ◼   ► Whereas the problem with so many AAA titles,

00:48:23 ◼   ► the chicken and egg problem, is that these,

00:48:26 ◼   ► like Unity and what's the other one, the big game engine,

00:48:31 ◼   ► Unreal, the Epic one, are just,

00:48:34 ◼   ► and yes, they have a story, there's a path,

00:48:38 ◼   ► because you can make these games and they run on iPhones,

00:48:42 ◼   ► because the iPhone is this huge market, so there's a path.

00:48:46 ◼   ► But when it comes to desktop-type hardware,

00:48:49 ◼   ► the tooling is all based on the Intel world,

00:48:53 ◼   ► including if not even more important than,

00:48:56 ◼   ► certainly more important than CPU.

00:48:57 ◼   ► I shouldn't even speculate.

00:48:59 ◼   ► The GPU world of--

00:49:01 ◼   ► - GPU, yeah.

00:49:02 ◼   ► - You know, NVIDIA video cards,

00:49:04 ◼   ► which is a different world.

00:49:07 ◼   ► And also, unfortunately for Apple,

00:49:10 ◼   ► Apple Silicon has a much stronger lead

00:49:14 ◼   ► just objectively, by any measure, over the Intel and the whole x86 world CPU-wise than

00:49:28 ◼   ► the Apple Silicon GPUs do versus the state of the art from Nvidia, where, okay, Apple's,

00:49:35 ◼   ► I think, clearly leads on performance per watt, but Nvidia clearly leads on performance

00:49:42 ◼   ► period, who cares how hot it is,

00:49:45 ◼   ► get a liquid cooling system and, you know,

00:49:47 ◼   ► make your neighbors' lights blink

00:49:50 ◼   ► when you're pegging all the GPU cores.

00:49:53 ◼   ► Apple doesn't have an answer for that yet,

00:49:56 ◼   ► and therefore, you know, and one of the things

00:49:59 ◼   ► that pegs video cards are games, right?

00:50:02 ◼   ► So if you're writing a game to squeeze out

00:50:05 ◼   ► the best possible graphics at the highest

00:50:08 ◼   ► possible frame rates, there's a reason

00:50:12 ◼   ► that your tooling was optimized for that world.

00:50:15 ◼   ► And it doesn't, there is no way to just,

00:50:17 ◼   ► oh, just flip a switch and spit out a version

00:50:19 ◼   ► for Apple Silicon.

00:50:20 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, yeah, that's always been the challenge,

00:50:23 ◼   ► right, back in the days of DirectX and stuff

00:50:25 ◼   ► when Microsoft had really sort of invested in,

00:50:28 ◼   ► like, let's sort of build this out, this architecture,

00:50:30 ◼   ► and make it interesting for gaming.

00:50:32 ◼   ► I mean, I think you're also, the point about, like,

00:50:34 ◼   ► games being something that really challenges the GPU.

00:50:37 ◼   ► I'd argue they're the thing that, you know,

00:50:40 ◼   ► most people is going to encounter, right?

00:50:42 ◼   ► Like, there are other uses that will peg a GPU,

00:50:45 ◼   ► but for the average Mac user slash computer user,

00:50:50 ◼   ► the amount of GPUs that's in any Apple Silicon chip

00:50:54 ◼   ► is overkill.

00:50:55 ◼   ► - Zillions more people are playing video games

00:50:57 ◼   ► that press their desktop PC GPU

00:51:02 ◼   ► compared to how many people whose video export needs

00:51:06 ◼   ► are doing the same.

00:51:07 ◼   ► It's orders, several if not many,

00:51:11 ◼   ► orders of magnitude difference.

00:51:13 ◼   ► But it's interesting to me that Apple seems to care,

00:51:15 ◼   ► and I don't think it's a passing fad.

00:51:18 ◼   ► I've just, over the last couple years,

00:51:20 ◼   ► I've just heard, just here and there,

00:51:25 ◼   ► and just sort of offhand, off the record remarks

00:51:28 ◼   ► of people at Apple who've heard me talking on my podcast

00:51:32 ◼   ► that I have had, or still have a teenager,

00:51:34 ◼   ► I guess he still is a teenager, he's 19,

00:51:36 ◼   ► teenage son in my family who still wanted a gaming PC and you know and people at Apple who found that

00:51:44 ◼   ► curious and wanted to know more about it but I think that also speaks to what you said about

00:51:49 ◼   ► that there's a lot of people at Apple who just are that whole world is so foreign to them whereas

00:51:53 ◼   ► there's a lot of other people I'm sure there's thousands and thousands of people listening to

00:51:58 ◼   ► this episode of the show who are gaming enthusiasts who know they don't need me to explain why my

00:52:04 ◼   ► teenage son wanted a gaming PC. They're like, "Of course he did!"

00:52:07 ◼   ► Right, I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, you look at the, you know, Apple executive bio page,

00:52:13 ◼   ► and you try to figure out, okay, which one of these people is a gamer? It's not Tim Cook,

00:52:17 ◼   ► it's not Jeff Williams, right? Like, the feeling, I don't know, maybe Schiller played some games in

00:52:22 ◼   ► his day, probably, but I think probably not recently. You know, Schiller might be the one,

00:52:26 ◼   ► because Schiller, wasn't there a story? Like racing games? Yeah, no, and that he, somehow,

00:52:30 ◼   ► it can't forget how this came out it wasn't like a but he's got like uh some kind of like uh

00:52:37 ◼   ► like a formula one simulator like a dedicated setup like with a like a like a car seat and a

00:52:44 ◼   ► car steering wheel and like a wraparound display you know which is almost certainly got a

00:52:49 ◼   ► pc under the hood somewhere um right right yeah so maybe he's the answer yeah all right yeah i guess

00:52:56 ◼   ► i guess no i like you need that's what you need you need somebody in there who is going to take

00:52:59 ◼   ► like is the evangelist for gaming. I'd love to see it because the Mac is great.

00:53:02 ◼   ► Well, and the other thing too is I think, you know, Apple's been so successful in so many ways,

00:53:07 ◼   ► but they're at their best like anybody when they're the upstart and they've got something

00:53:11 ◼   ► to prove and there's somebody who's clearly ahead of them, right? So, you know, an Apple that's

00:53:18 ◼   ► focused on trying to make the Mac relevant to desktop gaming is an Apple I like, not just,

00:53:24 ◼   ► not because I personally foresee myself therefore getting back into desktop gaming,

00:53:28 ◼   ► but I just think it's good for Apple to see where it's behind and to try to attack it.

00:53:33 ◼   ► One last thing on these M2 Macs from this month is the

00:53:39 ◼   ► sad trombone, sad news, is this thing about the slower SSDs compared to the preceding

00:53:48 ◼   ► model at the same storage or price. I forget which ones. It's like at the lowest.

00:53:55 ◼   ► maybe correct me with details if you know them off the top of your head, but basically it's like if

00:53:59 ◼   ► you get like the 512 gigabyte one, it used to be two 256 gigabyte SSDs on the board. You don't know,

00:54:10 ◼   ► you know, you wouldn't know that you never look at it, right? But that's how it's implemented.

00:54:13 ◼   ► And now it's just one 512 SSD. And you get performance advantages from having two of them

00:54:24 ◼   ► that can work in parallel and you could be reading from one while writing to the other and

00:54:29 ◼   ► basically there are first disc intensive tests the new ones might be at the lower end slower than the

00:54:38 ◼   ► old ones and some people i take this as a well that sucks that's unfortunate but i'm sure that

00:54:45 ◼   ► apple knew that and i'm sure there's good reasons for the total cost of goods for the device and

00:54:51 ◼   ► It's only true for these lower end storage models.

00:54:54 ◼   ► And it sucks if you're on a budget and you want the disk speed, but your budget is capped.

00:54:59 ◼   ► And now you've got to choose between like finding an old M1 one that's still available to sit to buy

00:55:06 ◼   ► somewhere to get slightly better SSD performance or having to take a downgrade in SSD performance

00:55:14 ◼   ► compared to the first generation of these Mac minis. But it doesn't affect the people who are

00:55:19 ◼   ► buying like the one terabyte and over ones, which I think are more typical for people who care at all

00:55:25 ◼   ► about their SSD. Right. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's the kind of the nut of this. I mean,

00:55:30 ◼   ► there's a couple things happening here, one of which is, you know, I was listening to Jason

00:55:35 ◼   ► Snell and Mike Hurley talking about this and, you know, saying that if Apple had just said,

00:55:42 ◼   ► "This is fast SSD and this is a faster SSD," no, there would be no issue, right? Like, they know,

00:55:47 ◼   ► And, and, you know, it was going to come out because people are going to benchmark this.

00:55:51 ◼   ► Didn't come out immediately because as we mentioned earlier, the reviewers got the M2 pros.

00:55:55 ◼   ► But I don't think anybody got the M2 pro with the base level,

00:55:58 ◼   ► right? Wrong. No, I don't think so. I think most of us got ones were kicked up a bit.

00:56:03 ◼   ► And so, you know, obviously it's not going to show up until like people start getting them.

00:56:07 ◼   ► Two, is it that big a deal? Like you said, it's really for disc intensive tests. I think the best

00:56:13 ◼   ► analogy you could come up with is if you bought a car and the advertiser said, "This car will go

00:56:17 ◼   ► 150 miles an hour," or top out on 150 miles an hour, and you got it, it's like, "It only goes

00:56:21 ◼   ► to 120," which is a difference, right? You paid for it thinking it would go to that higher speed,

00:56:27 ◼   ► but you're also not going to be driving even 120 miles per hour, much less 150 miles per hour,

00:56:32 ◼   ► unless you're doing some serious specialized racing or something like that. So, both is

00:56:38 ◼   ► something they should have disclosed and a real-world performance. It's probably not

00:56:42 ◼   ► it's not gonna matter for most people.

00:56:44 ◼   ► But that is frustrating,

00:56:45 ◼   ► 'cause it feels like an unforced error.

00:56:47 ◼   ► Like Apple, you mentioned this thing's got,

00:56:49 ◼   ► you know, 200 megabits per second,

00:56:51 ◼   ► I don't remember, give it memory bandwidth, right?

00:56:53 ◼   ► You're giving the feature and saying,

00:56:53 ◼   ► "The Pro's got twice as much as the vanilla M2."

00:56:57 ◼   ► You could've just added a line in specs,

00:56:58 ◼   ► and then nobody would've cared.

00:57:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think that's the thing

00:57:02 ◼   ► that gets lost in the criticism.

00:57:04 ◼   ► It sucks, it's a minor, like I said,

00:57:06 ◼   ► a little sad trombone, wah-wah, sorry.

00:57:10 ◼   ► I'm sure Apple wishes it weren't so,

00:57:11 ◼   ► But we're still talking about overall fast SSD performance

00:57:16 ◼   ► anyway, that the slowest SSD Apple sells in any of these

00:57:18 ◼   ► Apple Silicon Macs, Alfred is a very good IO

00:57:22 ◼   ► for reading and writing, and at those price points,

00:57:25 ◼   ► it's almost, it's gonna be extraordinarily rare

00:57:29 ◼   ► that anybody who owns one is going to notice, I think.

00:57:32 ◼   ► So I don't think it's a big deal.

00:57:33 ◼   ► But worth mentioning.

00:57:35 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break here

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01:00:00 ◼   ► Home pods, Home Pod 2.

01:00:03 ◼   ► I got I got review units last week the reviews dropped

01:00:07 ◼   ► I believe as we list as this show will air this morning. The reviews are supposed to drop on

01:00:13 ◼   ► Tuesday the 31st

01:00:16 ◼   ► More interest I have more to say about the weird two-year gap

01:00:23 ◼   ► Between the old one being discontinued and no longer being for sale than the new ones. The new ones are

01:00:30 ◼   ► The home pods back, you know, I don't know what else to say about it other than I'm delighted as a as a

01:00:36 ◼   ► home pod fan and

01:00:39 ◼   ► Someone who's was terribly upset that they just continued them

01:00:42 ◼   ► To my ears they sound as good or better

01:00:47 ◼   ► I know that some people looked at the tech specs and I think the old ones had seven tweeters and the new ones only had

01:00:54 ◼   ► Five and the old ones had more microphones and the new ones have fewer

01:00:59 ◼   ► To me, it's the sound quality is as good or better. I think counting tweeters as a measure of

01:01:06 ◼   ► Yeah, audio quality is a fool's errand

01:01:09 ◼   ► Really? I just ridiculous

01:01:12 ◼   ► I

01:01:14 ◼   ► Think it's like it's like counting megapixels is your yes exactly, you know, yeah, and maybe even worse though, right?

01:01:20 ◼   ► It's like at least with megapixels. There's some technical argument

01:01:24 ◼   ► There's a translation.

01:01:25 ◼   ► - Right, if you really are shooting a photo

01:01:27 ◼   ► that you wanna blow up to billboard size,

01:01:29 ◼   ► the megapixels might matter in some way.

01:01:31 ◼   ► But yeah, I would say with the tweeter count,

01:01:35 ◼   ► I think it's possible that someone

01:01:38 ◼   ► with audio file style hearing,

01:01:40 ◼   ► which I don't have or taste, might decide,

01:01:43 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised when I read these reviews

01:01:46 ◼   ► that some people say, I mean, who knows?

01:01:48 ◼   ► Maybe they're gonna say it doesn't sound as good.

01:01:50 ◼   ► To me, they sound as good,

01:01:51 ◼   ► and I have got several pairs of OG HomePods here

01:01:54 ◼   ► that I've played mine against,

01:01:57 ◼   ► seems to sound the same to me at the volumes

01:01:59 ◼   ► that any reasonable volume I would use in my house.

01:02:03 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if people say they sound better,

01:02:07 ◼   ► you know, that Apple's audio wizards,

01:02:09 ◼   ► their hardware speaker team has made it sound better.

01:02:12 ◼   ► It seems to me this is something that is impossible

01:02:17 ◼   ► to put your finger on, could easily be the placebo effect.

01:02:20 ◼   ► It seems to me that Siri responsiveness is in fact better than on the OG home pods that

01:02:27 ◼   ► it's, you know, some combination of upgrading to the S7 chip.

01:02:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure it could be worse. I say as somebody with a stereo pair of original

01:02:39 ◼   ► home pods in my office and I've got a home pod mini downstairs and I, Oh man, the number

01:02:43 ◼   ► of times I've asked these home pods to do something and they just completely misinterpret

01:02:47 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think any, nobody has ever, I think, really thrown shade on Apple for

01:02:51 ◼   ► the sound quality of the HomePod, right? Like, that was not the problem with Gen 1. They

01:02:54 ◼   ► always sounded great. It was everything else.

01:02:57 ◼   ► >> Right. I think there's, you know, a couple little details are nicer. Did you get it?

01:03:05 ◼   ► Did you have them yet or no? I don't even know.

01:03:07 ◼   ► >> No, I do not know.

01:03:08 ◼   ► >> I will answer what was one of my top questions is what does Midnight look like? The pair

01:03:14 ◼   ► that I got from Apple. One was white, one is midnight, so I can see both, which I'm

01:03:19 ◼   ► glad. I'd certainly never buy them this way to pair them, but uh...

01:03:23 ◼   ► Mix match, yeah, sure.

01:03:24 ◼   ► It is... oh boy, it is... it does not look blue to me at all, unless, depending on the

01:03:34 ◼   ► exact... if it's in the exact right nice neutral light, I can pick up a slight amount of blue,

01:03:41 ◼   ► but the ever so slight, I mean it is a very dark gray. Side by side with the old one in space gray

01:03:49 ◼   ► to me in most of the lighting, and I carried it around my house like an idiot, one in each hand,

01:03:55 ◼   ► you know, like I'm carrying two pineapples around or something. In most of the rooms of my house,

01:04:03 ◼   ► under most lighting, it just looks darker than the old space gray from the first generation. Just

01:04:08 ◼   ► looks like even closer to black which is great for me I don't want one there with

01:04:13 ◼   ► a bluish tint I think I think you want something like a speaker to be neutral

01:04:17 ◼   ► to me it's very neutral the compare and contrast with apples use of you know

01:04:23 ◼   ► they love midnight right now midnight's having its moment right yeah the the

01:04:29 ◼   ► MacBook Air to me is as a noticeable blue tint on the other hand some of the

01:04:37 ◼   ► The Apple Watch straps that they call Midnight are very...

01:04:41 ◼   ► Boy, you really gotta look to see the blue in 'em.

01:04:45 ◼   ► They're just sort of the new black.

01:04:47 ◼   ► The HomePod is like that.

01:04:48 ◼   ► It is close to black.

01:04:50 ◼   ► The plug, the power plug, now comes out of the back.

01:04:55 ◼   ► - Oh, thank you.

01:04:56 ◼   ► - I don't know why I care, but I do care.

01:04:58 ◼   ► I don't know why it--

01:05:00 ◼   ► - It was just, it was annoying to think

01:05:02 ◼   ► your cable would die or like it frayed or something,

01:05:06 ◼   ► be like I got my own you open otherwise it's a home pod and it's back and so

01:05:12 ◼   ► does it I I'm just going by you did share picture I'm just going by the the

01:05:17 ◼   ► so the screen is like it's it's it's mini style where it's slightly some yeah

01:05:21 ◼   ► I think compared well the old one was like yeah whatever you want to call that

01:05:25 ◼   ► thing on top the touch panel because it's not a screen is is generate it's it

01:05:30 ◼   ► is no more of a screen than the other one it just shows the same sort of fuzzy

01:05:34 ◼   ► animation it is sunken now for some reason I don't know I don't know why you

01:05:40 ◼   ► know it I don't think it really makes sense to try I don't think you can

01:05:44 ◼   ► either pair an eight an old one old time pod with a new one yeah no in fact now

01:05:50 ◼   ► that I think about it Apple told us that in a press briefing yeah so to make a

01:05:55 ◼   ► stereo pair it has to be two of the same models I had the sunken thing is

01:06:01 ◼   ► slightly different. The other thing they do now is the plus and minus indicators

01:06:07 ◼   ► for volume are screen printed on the touch panel. Yeah, the same as the mini

01:06:13 ◼   ► and which is nice because it was always hard to find it on the original ones.

01:06:17 ◼   ► They would go away and you... Yeah, or like when there's people in your house like

01:06:21 ◼   ► guests who don't know how they work and they actually, you know, we keep ours near

01:06:25 ◼   ► the paper towels, one of them in the kitchen, and people would touch it with

01:06:29 ◼   ► palm and it would start playing music and they wouldn't know what to do. I'm not quite sure that

01:06:33 ◼   ► just starting it, you know, this will help that much, but at least the plus and minus, the permanent

01:06:37 ◼   ► plus and minus will help people figure that part out, right? So even if you're panicked and you've

01:06:43 ◼   ► instantly started playing music you didn't want to, you can at least tap tap tap on minus to make

01:06:47 ◼   ► it quiet before you figure out what else to do. The bottom is different. If you turn an old

01:06:56 ◼   ► original HomePod upside down, there's a concavity on the bottom. The new one's just flat. Who cares?

01:07:04 ◼   ► I guess you never really look at the bottom, but it just shows me that it's a complete redesign.

01:07:09 ◼   ► As similar as they look, it's truly a new acoustical device.

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01:07:15 ◼   ► - Such a fascinating choice to redesign it

01:07:19 ◼   ► and yet leave it so close to the original.

01:07:22 ◼   ► - Right, that they must like the way it looks.

01:07:24 ◼   ► - I don't quite understand.

01:07:25 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:07:26 ◼   ► - I guess so, but like, yeah, I mean,

01:07:28 ◼   ► I feel like, you know, having had the HomePods for a while,

01:07:31 ◼   ► like, if you gave me an option, like, all right,

01:07:34 ◼   ► give me your top five things that we should fix on the HomePod.

01:07:37 ◼   ► I don't think any of them have been addressed in this,

01:07:40 ◼   ► and it's not that I think they're bad,

01:07:41 ◼   ► it's just like the things that I looked for in like,

01:07:44 ◼   ► oh, this is great, and if you were building on this,

01:07:47 ◼   ► I would like the screen to be a little more functional,

01:07:50 ◼   ► and it may be bringing the price a little bit down,

01:07:53 ◼   ► which they did do, but I think that was the price

01:07:54 ◼   ► when they discontinued it, it was already down to $2.99.

01:07:57 ◼   ► And it's like, lots of little things,

01:08:00 ◼   ► but they also are like, all right, we've heard you,

01:08:02 ◼   ► we've revised the HomePod, here it is,

01:08:03 ◼   ► and you're like, is this the same thing?

01:08:06 ◼   ► You just pass off your homework

01:08:07 ◼   ► and write the same essay again?

01:08:09 ◼   ► But yeah, I don't know, I guess they liked it.

01:08:12 ◼   ► - I wonder how it's going to do.

01:08:14 ◼   ► I don't know, I think in hindsight,

01:08:16 ◼   ► and I wrote about this on "Daring Fireball,"

01:08:21 ◼   ► even I got, when they discontinued it,

01:08:23 ◼   ► I got caught up in the conventional wisdom

01:08:26 ◼   ► that the damn thing was just too expensive

01:08:29 ◼   ► and with all these competing smart speakers

01:08:32 ◼   ► from Amazon and Google and whoever else

01:08:34 ◼   ► that are, you know, 100 bucks or less,

01:08:37 ◼   ► people just didn't wanna spend $300 for it.

01:08:41 ◼   ► And I don't think that was the problem with it.

01:08:44 ◼   ► I know it didn't sell in great quantities apparently,

01:08:47 ◼   ► and presumably if it had, they wouldn't have had

01:08:50 ◼   ► this two-year gap in between.

01:08:52 ◼   ► But I do think though, like why didn't they Mac Pro it?

01:08:58 ◼   ► Remember with the Trashcan Mac Pro

01:09:00 ◼   ► where it just stayed in the lineup forever,

01:09:03 ◼   ► and they even had that weird, well, unusual briefing

01:09:06 ◼   ► with me and Panzarino and a couple of other writers

01:09:10 ◼   ► for the Mac round table.

01:09:11 ◼   ► - Serious about the Mac, yeah.

01:09:13 ◼   ► - And said, look, we painted ourselves

01:09:16 ◼   ► in the thermal corner with this.

01:09:17 ◼   ► We didn't anticipate the rise of swappable GPUs

01:09:21 ◼   ► and we're gonna address this.

01:09:24 ◼   ► We wanna be in the pro market.

01:09:26 ◼   ► We're going to be in the pro market,

01:09:27 ◼   ► but for now, this is it.

01:09:29 ◼   ► But they still kept selling the Mac Pro.

01:09:31 ◼   ► And like we were talking about with the Mac Mini before,

01:09:34 ◼   ► Apple keeps products in the lineup

01:09:37 ◼   ► and they don't lower the price

01:09:39 ◼   ► because they want to hold that spot, right?

01:09:42 ◼   ► And the Mac Pro is a $5,000 computer.

01:09:47 ◼   ► So even when the 2013 trash can was years out of date,

01:09:53 ◼   ► in terms of the latest and greatest from Intel,

01:09:55 ◼   ► the price never went down

01:09:58 ◼   ► because they wanted to hold that price

01:09:59 ◼   ► so that when they did introduce the new Mac Pro,

01:10:03 ◼   ► it could start at that price and go up

01:10:05 ◼   ► without seeming like a massive price increase

01:10:09 ◼   ► from a thing that had been discounted.

01:10:11 ◼   ► Compare and contrast with Dell,

01:10:13 ◼   ► who like you'd spec out a Dell XPS laptop today,

01:10:18 ◼   ► sleep on it, go back tomorrow, it might be $27 cheaper,

01:10:23 ◼   ► it might be $17 more expensive,

01:10:25 ◼   ► based on component prices,

01:10:27 ◼   ► they'll just change the price tomorrow,

01:10:29 ◼   ► change it again the next day.

01:10:31 ◼   ► Apple does the opposite, they hold a price.

01:10:32 ◼   ► Why not hold, just keep selling the HomePod

01:10:35 ◼   ► until this new one was ready?

01:10:37 ◼   ► I can't help but feel that there was a fundamental flaw

01:10:42 ◼   ► that led those original HomePods to fail at a rate

01:10:46 ◼   ► that was unacceptable to Apple.

01:10:48 ◼   ► - Well, except it's a little weird

01:10:50 ◼   ► because for a long time afterwards,

01:10:53 ◼   ► you could get them at retailers for cheap, right?

01:10:57 ◼   ► Like they clearly, and people were doing the thing

01:10:59 ◼   ► where you would look at the specs or whatever,

01:11:01 ◼   ► whatever you could pull up,

01:11:02 ◼   ► and the manufacturer dates on them were like,

01:11:04 ◼   ► the lot numbers were like, it's like the same lot.

01:11:06 ◼   ► And I think two things, here's my theory.

01:11:09 ◼   ► Like one, I mean, obviously,

01:11:11 ◼   ► and I think you mentioned this as well as some other people,

01:11:13 ◼   ► the fact that the HomePod Mini always stuck around

01:11:15 ◼   ► kind of implied the existence of a non-mini HomePod.

01:11:19 ◼   ► And so the fact they were selling that

01:11:21 ◼   ► while there was no larger HomePod,

01:11:22 ◼   ► everyone was kind of like,

01:11:24 ◼   ► oh, it seems like there's still room.

01:11:25 ◼   ► And I think honestly,

01:11:27 ◼   ► the HomePod Mini is the best argument for the HomePod

01:11:30 ◼   ► because people would buy, oh, $99.

01:11:34 ◼   ► I'll take a flyer on that and give it a try.

01:11:36 ◼   ► And they're like, oh man, this is great,

01:11:37 ◼   ► but you know, I'd like something where the sound

01:11:39 ◼   ► was just a little bit better.

01:11:40 ◼   ► Like in some ways it was a good way of getting people

01:11:43 ◼   ► into the idea of using a smart speaker

01:11:46 ◼   ► or having a wireless speaker in their house.

01:11:48 ◼   ► And then you could sort of turn around and be like,

01:11:51 ◼   ► well, here's one with better, even better sound quality.

01:11:53 ◼   ► You're like, you use it now, right?

01:11:54 ◼   ► Like you've gotten used to it.

01:11:55 ◼   ► You've made it part of your life.

01:11:56 ◼   ► And now wouldn't you like a version

01:11:58 ◼   ► that sounds even better?

01:11:59 ◼   ► So I think it will do better

01:12:01 ◼   ► because of the existence of the Mini,

01:12:03 ◼   ► which feels counterintuitive.

01:12:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:12:06 ◼   ► - But I think there's something there to it.

01:12:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I think you're right,

01:12:10 ◼   ► that you kinda needed, they,

01:12:12 ◼   ► maybe they didn't know it when they started,

01:12:13 ◼   ► but they kinda needed a friendly,

01:12:16 ◼   ► ah, what the hell, I'll buy one,

01:12:17 ◼   ► and then you find out how much you like it,

01:12:19 ◼   ► and now you're like, yeah, I want one with the big bass,

01:12:21 ◼   ► and I want a stereo pair, and et cetera and so forth.

01:12:24 ◼   ► It's a great product.

01:12:25 ◼   ► I still think the other problem that they face

01:12:28 ◼   ► is that to me, the true HomePod experience

01:12:30 ◼   ► is $600 with a pair.

01:12:33 ◼   ► - Yeah. - And it's great

01:12:34 ◼   ► that if you really only need one for a smaller room

01:12:38 ◼   ► or whatever the purpose, that you can just buy half

01:12:42 ◼   ► of a pair, but that's what I think.

01:12:45 ◼   ► When you just buy one, you should be thinking,

01:12:47 ◼   ► I'm only buying half of a true HomePod,

01:12:49 ◼   ► and maybe that's what you need.

01:12:51 ◼   ► But fundamentally, the real experience of the product

01:12:54 ◼   ► is a $600 pair of two of them,

01:12:56 ◼   ► whether it's in your TV or filling up a room.

01:12:59 ◼   ► - Yeah. - It is--

01:13:00 ◼   ► - I feel like there is a, you kind of,

01:13:04 ◼   ► this is not how Apple operates and never say never,

01:13:06 ◼   ► but if they were like, oh, or buy two for 500,

01:13:10 ◼   ► I think you'd get a ton of takers.

01:13:11 ◼   ► I gotta be honest. - Yeah, and get 'em

01:13:13 ◼   ► in a box where they're paired together already.

01:13:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly. - And then--

01:13:17 ◼   ► - I mean, people, I have a Sonos Arc hooked up to my TV,

01:13:20 ◼   ► and that is a not cheap soundbar,

01:13:23 ◼   ► and I feel like people will drop 600 bucks

01:13:26 ◼   ► on some nice home theater speakers or what have you.

01:13:29 ◼   ► I don't think that's out of the question at all.

01:13:32 ◼   ► I think it just, and that was the other thing,

01:13:34 ◼   ► was like I think the sort of,

01:13:35 ◼   ► the proof of concept for the home theater angle

01:13:37 ◼   ► came later, I wanna say, like,

01:13:39 ◼   ► and I think maybe you needed,

01:13:41 ◼   ► still need like a newer Apple TV

01:13:43 ◼   ► to get like the full effect out of it, I don't remember.

01:13:45 ◼   ► But I think that's also a selling point as well,

01:13:48 ◼   ► is the home theater angle,

01:13:49 ◼   ► and it did not start out of the gate

01:13:51 ◼   ► that they pushed that.

01:13:52 ◼   ► - I also think they're up against it,

01:13:54 ◼   ► because I don't think the typical person out there,

01:13:56 ◼   ► even if they're a fan of Apple

01:13:57 ◼   ► and you buy lots of Apple stuff,

01:13:59 ◼   ► I don't think people really believe how good a stereo pair

01:14:03 ◼   ► of HomePod sounds, and that I've seen people and readers

01:14:06 ◼   ► who write to me and they'll be like, you know,

01:14:09 ◼   ► I'd do it if it were better than my $500, $800 Soundbar,

01:14:14 ◼   ► but I'm sure it's not, and it's like,

01:14:15 ◼   ► I actually, I think it probably is, I really do.

01:14:18 ◼   ► And I think it's sort of the thing,

01:14:19 ◼   ► that the solution to that chicken and the egg problem

01:14:23 ◼   ► is to get it started and get, you know,

01:14:26 ◼   ► people come, go to somebody's house like mine

01:14:28 ◼   ► where you can watch a movie with a HomePod pair

01:14:30 ◼   ► to a nice TV and be like, wow,

01:14:34 ◼   ► I can't believe that sound is coming from two HomePods.

01:14:36 ◼   ► That's amazing.

01:14:37 ◼   ► And it does sound a bit like surround sound.

01:14:40 ◼   ► It does sound like stuff is coming from behind

01:14:43 ◼   ► and from way further to the side

01:14:45 ◼   ► than the HomePods actually are.

01:14:47 ◼   ► And then you're like, then it puts it in your head

01:14:50 ◼   ► that this really is a credible,

01:14:53 ◼   ► this is a bargain for $600.

01:14:55 ◼   ► I really do think it is.

01:14:57 ◼   ► - One of the things that kills me on this is,

01:15:00 ◼   ► if all I did on my TV was watch stuff via my Apple TV,

01:15:05 ◼   ► I probably would use a HomePod stereo pair there.

01:15:07 ◼   ► But if you have anything else connected to your TV,

01:15:10 ◼   ► like a gaming console, it's a non-starter.

01:15:13 ◼   ► And it's just that to me is the bummer part is like,

01:15:15 ◼   ► it's great that it has the wireless connectivity

01:15:18 ◼   ► with the Apple TV and it does use the eARC standard,

01:15:21 ◼   ► but I don't think there's any way.

01:15:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think as time goes on,

01:15:26 ◼   ► I think this eARC is going to, it'll eventually work,

01:15:31 ◼   ► but I don't think that with existing consoles and TiVos

01:15:35 ◼   ► and other things, anything HDMI that you have hooked up

01:15:39 ◼   ► to your TV, the odds are somewhat good

01:15:42 ◼   ► that you'd still need some other audio solution.

01:15:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I have to ding it slightly too,

01:15:48 ◼   ► and I have it in my office, and I have used it

01:15:51 ◼   ► for output from my Mac, but it,

01:15:54 ◼   ► It's flaky still, and that's my biggest issue.

01:15:59 ◼   ► Why is it not just a great pair of Mac speakers?

01:16:03 ◼   ► And there's also some latency.

01:16:04 ◼   ► So for example, if I'm editing a podcast,

01:16:07 ◼   ► I can't, you can't do it.

01:16:08 ◼   ► It just doesn't, it doesn't work.

01:16:09 ◼   ► It's not, 'cause it's going over wifi, right?

01:16:11 ◼   ► Like there's gonna be some latency

01:16:14 ◼   ► and some traffic issues there, which is a bummer.

01:16:16 ◼   ► - Ah, all right, let me take a break here

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01:18:07 ◼   ► My thanks to Kolide.

01:18:09 ◼   ► You added a note to our little show notes thing here.

01:18:13 ◼   ► I don't know what you're talking about.

01:18:14 ◼   ► A foldable iPad with a kickstand.

01:18:16 ◼   ► What's this?

01:18:18 ◼   ► This was a rumor, so I didn't know how much credence to give it, but I think it was Ming-Chi

01:18:22 ◼   ► Kuo who was saying in 2024, Apple will be putting out a foldable iPad with a kickstand.

01:18:30 ◼   ► And I'm just, I don't even know what's happening here.

01:18:36 ◼   ► This has been in the, I think he posted on Twitter, but it's been showing up on all the

01:18:40 ◼   ► usual suspects and saying basically there may be no new iPad releases in the next nine

01:18:46 ◼   ► to 12 months, which I think there have been a lot of speculation that the iPad is going

01:18:51 ◼   ► to have a quiet year, unless maybe there is a larger or a bigger change to come. I know

01:18:59 ◼   ► we've heard about other stuff taking a bigger change in the next few years, rumors about

01:19:05 ◼   ► touchscreen Macs and all that. I just think the foldable market is such a weird idea and

01:19:13 ◼   ► yet something that does not seem like it's going away. And I have to believe Apple is at least,

01:19:19 ◼   ► you know, experimenting and investigating whether these things are plausible. I just, I'm,

01:19:24 ◼   ► I don't know. There's what, the Surface? What's the Surface one? There's a Surface one that has

01:19:29 ◼   ► two screens. This is weird. I don't know. They're all duo. All of their products are named in a way

01:19:35 ◼   ► that I, they all sound like they could be the other. The names don't get, so the, the, the

01:19:40 ◼   ► surface that folds yes there you go the surface that they should have called it that that's a

01:19:46 ◼   ► great fold i don't know at least yeah at least samsung names their foldable ones the galaxy fold

01:19:51 ◼   ► or something like that so you know what's there you go it is um speaking of anyways i i thought

01:19:57 ◼   ► speaking of speed bumps the ultimate speed bump product in the lineup is got to be the ipad pros

01:20:02 ◼   ► which are pretty much unchanged since 2018 i know that the big 12.91 at now starting last generation

01:20:10 ◼   ► has the micro LED screen so it has a better screen technology but again side

01:20:18 ◼   ► by side a 2018 iPad Pro of either size compared to one that you buy today same

01:20:24 ◼   ► size same weight same more or less thing but on the other hand the chips keep

01:20:29 ◼   ► getting faster for people who use them and it is a good design it is very thin

01:20:34 ◼   ► it's very light I decide so it you know is is it a five-year design that is

01:20:39 ◼   ► is worth five years? Yeah, I think so.

01:20:43 ◼   ► But it... - Yeah, I'm fascinated by it

01:20:45 ◼   ► because it's like the Mac, you know, I think Apple has run into this issue of

01:20:50 ◼   ► their hardware being so good that it feels like, okay, we've come out with a new iPad,

01:20:57 ◼   ► we speed bumped it, and everyone's like, oh, this one, this one, this one. It's like your RAM,

01:21:00 ◼   ► you know, you know, your 64 gigabytes of RAM and not paging out, like, you know, okay, it's great.

01:21:05 ◼   ► Like, I mean, but now that I've hit this point, like, what else, what else do I need, right?

01:21:11 ◼   ► And I think that's an interesting challenge for Apple to be in, is having this, the hardware that

01:21:15 ◼   ► is so good that it feels like, well, you've kind of, you kind of nailed it, right? Like,

01:21:21 ◼   ► there's surely, there's always room for improvement, but I don't know what that is.

01:21:24 ◼   ► I always pull out to, as my example of a purely fictional purpose for foldable devices, the,

01:21:35 ◼   ► the tablets and phones, whatever you want to call them on HBO's Westworld,

01:21:39 ◼   ► which if you've never watched, you can, I'm pretty sure you should be able to YouTube

01:21:44 ◼   ► clips of people using them. Obviously, that takes place in the future and they're super thin. They

01:21:51 ◼   ► don't have any frame. They're just clear pieces of plastic that light up when they turn them on, but

01:21:56 ◼   ► they fold to what we consider phone shape and you could put them in a pocket where you would hold

01:22:03 ◼   ► what we today consider smartphones,

01:22:06 ◼   ► but to unfold them to a very nice tablet size.

01:22:10 ◼   ► And putting aside all technical difficulties,

01:22:15 ◼   ► screen technology, hinges, where do you put batteries?

01:22:23 ◼   ► The ones in Westworld don't seemingly have batteries.

01:22:28 ◼   ► But in theory, the appeal of that is tremendous.

01:22:31 ◼   ► It's like, you know, think back to the old days

01:22:35 ◼   ► when we had paper maps in our car, you know,

01:22:37 ◼   ► and of course it was very difficult

01:22:39 ◼   ► to fold them back up the right way,

01:22:40 ◼   ► but you certainly wouldn't want a road map

01:22:44 ◼   ► of your state or the country or half the country

01:22:47 ◼   ► that was the size that would fit in your dashboard,

01:22:50 ◼   ► but you certainly wouldn't want to keep the map out

01:22:53 ◼   ► if you couldn't fold it up, if it's big.

01:22:56 ◼   ► Folding is great.

01:22:57 ◼   ► There's a reason folding has been around with paper products

01:23:00 ◼   ► as long as there's been paper.

01:23:02 ◼   ► So can't help but think eventually folding

01:23:06 ◼   ► is going to come to the Apple universe

01:23:08 ◼   ► and that they've just been waiting

01:23:10 ◼   ► until they can do it right.

01:23:11 ◼   ► Because in my opinion, all the ones I've seen,

01:23:14 ◼   ► like from Samsung with their phones,

01:23:16 ◼   ► the ones that are actually available for sale,

01:23:19 ◼   ► don't seem, the trade-off doesn't seem worth it.

01:23:22 ◼   ► It's like, you know, they fold up

01:23:23 ◼   ► and they're twice as thick.

01:23:24 ◼   ► Why would I want a phone that's twice as thick?

01:23:26 ◼   ► Why do I want a, you know, now,

01:23:28 ◼   ► and the good screen is now folded up inside

01:23:31 ◼   ► and there's another extra screen on the outside

01:23:33 ◼   ► just so I can look at it without unfolding it?

01:23:36 ◼   ► It all seems convoluted.

01:23:38 ◼   ► I don't know many people who use them.

01:23:41 ◼   ► They must sell well enough that Samsung keeps making them,

01:23:46 ◼   ► but I guess Apple will get there.

01:23:48 ◼   ► - Well, it's the whole thing we always say,

01:23:51 ◼   ► is Apple doesn't do its data tests in public, right?

01:23:54 ◼   ► When they're ready, they're ready

01:23:55 ◼   ► and they're not gonna show off anything

01:23:57 ◼   ► until they feel like it's good enough that they wish.

01:23:59 ◼   ► - But it certainly would be at a basic level

01:24:01 ◼   ► if Apple thinks they have a good solution.

01:24:03 ◼   ► Certainly a big way to take the iPad to new territory

01:24:08 ◼   ► by I guess two ways it could go, right?

01:24:12 ◼   ► You could take iPads with a maximum screen size

01:24:17 ◼   ► like we know now in that 11 to 13 inch range

01:24:21 ◼   ► and have them fold up to be far more portable

01:24:24 ◼   ► than they are now, possibly pocketable,

01:24:27 ◼   ► that would be kind of amazing,

01:24:29 ◼   ► to be able to put an iPad in your pants pocket,

01:24:32 ◼   ► or like a jacket pocket.

01:24:34 ◼   ► Famously, Apple loves to talk about

01:24:37 ◼   ► how their iPads are used in medicine.

01:24:39 ◼   ► It's actually a known fact now

01:24:43 ◼   ► that the doctors wear those white lab coats,

01:24:45 ◼   ► that all the pockets on all lab coats

01:24:47 ◼   ► are now meant to hold iPads,

01:24:49 ◼   ► because iPads are so often used in medical situations.

01:24:54 ◼   ► Most of us don't wear lab coats all the time.

01:24:57 ◼   ► - Awkward for everybody else, that's true, yeah.

01:24:59 ◼   ► - So pocketability would be amazing for an iPad.

01:25:02 ◼   ► It really, really would.

01:25:04 ◼   ► Or I guess the other way they could go

01:25:06 ◼   ► would be to make a much larger maximum size,

01:25:09 ◼   ► but have it fold up to be as portable as the iPads today.

01:25:12 ◼   ► You could have a 16 inch, or I don't know, even bigger,

01:25:15 ◼   ► 20 inch unfolded iPad display.

01:25:17 ◼   ► I'd like to see it.

01:25:18 ◼   ► I'm sure it's coming.

01:25:20 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:25:21 ◼   ► Other than CES demos of products

01:25:23 ◼   ► that are not meant for the market.

01:25:25 ◼   ► I've never seen a foldable phone that I've thought,

01:25:27 ◼   ► oh, I would buy that.

01:25:28 ◼   ► It's still, they're too thick when folded.

01:25:30 ◼   ► The hinges are too obvious.

01:25:32 ◼   ► Doesn't seem reliable.

01:25:33 ◼   ► But CES always, every year, CES has something,

01:25:36 ◼   ► and they work as prototypes,

01:25:39 ◼   ► and there's people touching them,

01:25:40 ◼   ► and they light up, and they work,

01:25:42 ◼   ► and it's like, wow, that would be pretty cool

01:25:43 ◼   ► if it was practical to actually sell

01:25:45 ◼   ► in the mass market this year.

01:25:46 ◼   ► - I remain convinced it's all just,

01:25:50 ◼   ► it's all special effects now.

01:25:51 ◼   ► Todd Vaziri is out there making foldable phones and tricking us all into thinking they're

01:25:55 ◼   ► real. Other than that though, I'm done for the week. Anything else you wanted to talk

01:26:00 ◼   ► about? Are you on the Mastodon? I am on Mastodon. I knew that answer. That was a cheat question.

01:26:10 ◼   ► I follow you there. Are you happy? Yeah, I've dialed way back on Twitter. I still check

01:26:17 ◼   ► in every once in a while just to like keep my finger on what's like going like check

01:26:21 ◼   ► my mentions that kind of thing but I honestly you mentioned at some point that you were

01:26:26 ◼   ► not really even seeing much engagement at all. It's something that's yeah, yeah, me

01:26:30 ◼   ► neither. I've also it's been very quiet over there and I can't tell is like, is it really

01:26:34 ◼   ► just everybody who was actually like not a bot following me is is gone? Or is there something

01:26:41 ◼   ► screwed up with their infrastructure? I don't know. But I, you know, I think the only thing

01:26:45 ◼   ► right now that I'm not as, you know, kind of full-throated on Macedon is I just, I still

01:26:52 ◼   ► need a better Mac client, but I've been using Ivory on my iPhone and my iPad and I love

01:26:56 ◼   ► it. I'm a Tweetbot user, so that is, it just feels like home to me. So I'm very excited

01:27:02 ◼   ► about that Mac app that they're doing. But yeah, it's nice if it feels good.

01:27:10 ◼   ► I can report, I'm allowed to say,

01:27:11 ◼   ► that Mac Iberi is coming along.

01:27:14 ◼   ► I'm lucky enough, I was invited,

01:27:17 ◼   ► as of this weekend, using, I don't even know,

01:27:20 ◼   ► I don't even know what they're describing it as.

01:27:22 ◼   ► They're describing it as not even alpha.

01:27:25 ◼   ► But it is already, everything, you know,

01:27:28 ◼   ► if you used Tweetbot for Mac, it is,

01:27:30 ◼   ► it'll make you feel at home,

01:27:32 ◼   ► even though it's slightly different.

01:27:34 ◼   ► Can't come soon enough for everybody else.

01:27:36 ◼   ► They know it, God bless them,

01:27:37 ◼   ► they're getting some sleep over there. It is super exciting times UI-wise though, and

01:27:44 ◼   ► you know there are other ones coming, some of these other ones all through so far through

01:27:49 ◼   ► Catalyst, but Mammoth, which is still in test flight as we record but might be out by the

01:27:56 ◼   ► time the show comes out, has got a pretty credible Mac thing.

01:27:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I've been using it from the Mac for a while, and it's pretty good.

01:28:04 ◼   ► I mean, there's lots and lots of little things like the keyboard

01:28:07 ◼   ► navigation. Yeah, well, it's still it's still an iPad. It's

01:28:10 ◼   ► fundamentally still an iOS app and like it, but it works.

01:28:14 ◼   ► There's a while there during the beta where every time I tried to

01:28:16 ◼   ► post something, it was like, well, that's, that's a non

01:28:20 ◼   ► starter, but Oh, well, but it was still good for reading. But

01:28:23 ◼   ► it is kind of fun when you're a nerd and you're willing to put

01:28:26 ◼   ► up with stuff like that. It's kind of fun to be in on it such

01:28:29 ◼   ► early days. I

01:28:32 ◼   ► Yeah, it's got a nice bleeding edge feel to it. I mean, I don't know, lots of people have compared

01:28:36 ◼   ► the current Mastodon to feeling like Twitter circa 2007 or 2008. It does bring me back to those

01:28:43 ◼   ► times. I think the best thing I've sort of said about Mastodon is that I think it's a really good

01:28:50 ◼   ► place for interacting with people. Twitter became a place where it was about interacting with,

01:28:55 ◼   ► there are brands and there's news and there's public figures and all of that.

01:29:00 ◼   ► And I feel like that's a niche that's been carved out and I don't know that Mastodon will replicate

01:29:05 ◼   ► that, but for just sort of straight up talking to people that you might be interested in talking to

01:29:09 ◼   ► or hearing from, I think it actually is pretty great. And I told my wife the other night,

01:29:16 ◼   ► because I've been trying to convince her to use it more, the best thing about Mastodon is there

01:29:21 ◼   ► is no way that Donald Trump will ever figure out how to sign up for it.

01:29:24 ◼   ► It's true. I hate to say it sounds elitist, but I don't mean it in an elitist way. I just spoke

01:29:31 ◼   ► about this at length last episode of this show with Craig Hockenberry, so I won't go too deep, but

01:29:35 ◼   ► it sounds elitist, but I don't mean it that way. But I think that the higher barrier to entry

01:29:42 ◼   ► conceptually works in Mastodon's favor for the type of people who, for lack of a better catch-all,

01:29:50 ◼   ► listen to podcasts like the talk show or upgrade or

01:29:53 ◼   ► a slightly nerdy, you know, and you have to make this level of conceptual

01:29:58 ◼   ► leap to a two-level namespace where you're at username at instance server.

01:30:04 ◼   ► Um, and you have to I, you know, I really, I'll repeat myself a little, but it's like,

01:30:13 ◼   ► I think that back when Twitter switched,

01:30:16 ◼   ► it made that big pivot in 2013 or so

01:30:19 ◼   ► to move away from fully embracing

01:30:23 ◼   ► and supporting third-party clients

01:30:25 ◼   ► and moved away from just having a chronological timeline.

01:30:29 ◼   ► That they did it because they knew

01:30:31 ◼   ► to justify their existence financially

01:30:34 ◼   ► and the goals they'd set and the money they'd raised,

01:30:35 ◼   ► they needed hundreds of millions more users

01:30:38 ◼   ► and they weren't gonna get them with Twitter as it was

01:30:41 ◼   ► because most people looked at it

01:30:44 ◼   ► and it just didn't appeal to them.

01:30:46 ◼   ► And an algorithmic timeline that suggests things to them

01:30:51 ◼   ► made hundreds of millions or at least tens of millions

01:30:54 ◼   ► of more people see Twitter as, oh yeah,

01:30:57 ◼   ► this is something I would use on a regular basis.

01:31:00 ◼   ► It just, it worked.

01:31:01 ◼   ► And as frustrated as many of us are

01:31:04 ◼   ► who like what Twitter was before that,

01:31:06 ◼   ► I get it, it wasn't popular to those people.

01:31:10 ◼   ► So forget even the, do I even understand it?

01:31:13 ◼   ► I think people who got on, hundreds of millions of people

01:31:16 ◼   ► who use Twitter and at least find it engaging enough

01:31:19 ◼   ► to keep using, will never like Mastodon,

01:31:21 ◼   ► 'cause Mastodon is never gonna present them

01:31:24 ◼   ► in the algorithmic timeline,

01:31:25 ◼   ► and the non-algorithmic timeline isn't something

01:31:29 ◼   ► that entertains them or engages their brain

01:31:31 ◼   ► or feels entertaining.

01:31:32 ◼   ► And so for those of us who do, Mastodon is it,

01:31:34 ◼   ► and it really is, it's backwards, it's stepping into it,

01:31:39 ◼   ► But in some ways Elon Musk did save Twitter

01:31:43 ◼   ► by ruining Twitter and therefore creating

01:31:46 ◼   ► a critical mass of millions of people

01:31:49 ◼   ► who are like in what I see on Mastodon now

01:31:54 ◼   ► who otherwise were never going to go through the hassle

01:32:00 ◼   ► of closing up shop on Twitter and moving to Mastodon.

01:32:03 ◼   ► It's really exciting times and it's so exciting.

01:32:07 ◼   ► It's been a very long time since something grassroots, open, and nonprofit has experienced

01:32:15 ◼   ► commercial explosive growth as a platform on the internet.

01:32:19 ◼   ► And it sounds it's depressing that it's been so long, because that used to be what the

01:32:24 ◼   ► internet was all about one thing after another some new open thing, and you can anybody can

01:32:28 ◼   ► write a client for it.

01:32:30 ◼   ► And it's a new stuff is happening.

01:32:34 ◼   ► "Oh my god, here's a new client that does things in an altogether different way. Wow,

01:32:38 ◼   ► that's really clever. I don't know, maybe that's for me, maybe it's not, but I'm glad

01:32:41 ◼   ► someone's trying it." And, you know, here we are again, and it's very exciting. So I'm

01:32:47 ◼   ► not going to shut up about it.

01:32:48 ◼   ► If nothing else, it's not static.

01:32:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not going to shut up about it.

01:32:51 ◼   ► No, I like this stuff changing.

01:32:53 ◼   ► I will answer this. It's a frequently asked question at this point, and I'm sorry I'm

01:32:56 ◼   ► not there yet. Will there be an @DaringFireball and @TheTalkShow accounts that auto-post new

01:33:03 ◼   ► episodes and posts on Mastodon, yes, 100%, I guarantee it.

01:33:08 ◼   ► Are they ready yet? No. So, coming soon.

01:33:12 ◼   ► Let me just say this, let me give a shout out to your work.

01:33:18 ◼   ► You're a novelist, god damn it.

01:33:20 ◼   ► It makes me a little jealous.

01:33:22 ◼   ► It's in the back of every writer's mind

01:33:24 ◼   ► that you should someday write a novel.

01:33:27 ◼   ► - It's a lot of time, not always the best return, but--

01:33:33 ◼   ► I heard that it pays great. Well, it does. I mean, it's no podcasting money. Don't get

01:33:41 ◼   ► me wrong. But what are you up to? You're up to three novels? I've written four novels.

01:33:52 ◼   ► The Galactic Cold War series is my current going concern. Most recent one, the NOVA incident,

01:33:56 ◼   ► out last summer. Working on a couple other things right now and I should have something

01:34:03 ◼   ► coming out. I don't exactly know when but I think in the first half of this year there

01:34:08 ◼   ► should be something that is a different thing which I don't know how much I can say about

01:34:13 ◼   ► it at this point other than it's well I'll give a quick overview. It's actually a supernatural

01:34:20 ◼   ► detective novel that's set in Boston and involves spooky goings on at a giant technology company.

01:34:27 ◼   ► So maybe a little more in my wheelhouse and perhaps even in the wheelhouse of some of the

01:34:31 ◼   ► listeners here. So look for that. I'm sure I'll be writing a lot about it when it comes out.

01:34:35 ◼   ► You're saying you have more real world actual experience with technology companies than you do

01:34:40 ◼   ► with intergalactic cold wars? Slightly. Plus, you know, spooky ghosts and stuff too.

01:34:47 ◼   ► let me ask this, here's my question. The three novels so far in the series are titled The Caledonian

01:34:56 ◼   ► Gambit, The Bayern Agenda, and as you said the latest one, The Nova Incident. There's one more

01:35:05 ◼   ► in there as well, there's the Aliph extraction. Oh yes, right, all right, extraction. But so I see the

01:35:09 ◼   ► pattern. One of them was it--everyone says they see the pattern. There's a gambit, there was an agenda,

01:35:17 ◼   ► there was an extraction, there was an incident. How many of those do you have in the can for the

01:35:24 ◼   ► future? You gotta have a couple. I don't want to hear them. I'm not asking. Oh yeah, there are a

01:35:32 ◼   ► couple. There are a couple. There are at least a couple in the can. I will say this. When I wrote

01:35:36 ◼   ► my first book, no title I've ever come up with for my book. No first title has ever survived

01:35:42 ◼   ► to the final publication. They always get changed. And the first time when I was doing my first book,

01:35:49 ◼   ► they didn't like the title I had, and so they asked me to brainstorm some other ones.

01:35:53 ◼   ► And I was coming up with joke titles, and the Caledonian Gambit was my Robert Ludlum,

01:35:58 ◼   ► I literally called it my Robert Ludlum title, like "Born Identity." All his books are the

01:36:03 ◼   ► something something. And then I just got stuck. Once you start a pattern, once you start the way

01:36:11 ◼   ► you're doing something, you just keep going with that same pattern. You kind of fall into that

01:36:15 ◼   ► trap. So yeah, so I have come up with ones for future installments if need be, and yes, they do

01:36:22 ◼   ► all sort of fall in that same the something something. So people can find out more about

01:36:28 ◼   ► your books at your personal website dmorin.com and you've got, as somebody would expect,

01:36:39 ◼   ► all of the links you could possibly want to buy them in any form you want. I would have to think

01:36:43 ◼   ► the queen of that sort of novel titling pattern/conundrum of "Where do you finish?" has got to

01:36:50 ◼   ► be Sue Grafton, right? Oh yeah, and she died before she could finish. So what are the... It's terrible.

01:36:57 ◼   ► She got like within, I think she was on like X or something. It was pretty close to the end. Well,

01:37:01 ◼   ► I'm looking at her website and there's a Y is for yesterday. Okay, so maybe that's the last one she

01:37:07 ◼   ► got. So that's killer. You'd die before you get to that last letter in the alpha. You get 25!

01:37:12 ◼   ► And then you... I mean, and I was in high school when those first started coming out. That's a long

01:37:18 ◼   ► time ago. Yeah, my mom had a bunch of them because she's a mystery. Yeah, and at some point that was

01:37:22 ◼   ► one of those novels where I was like, "Ah, I don't read mysteries, and I don't know." But somehow,

01:37:26 ◼   ► at some point, I was bored and there was one, and I read it, and I was like, "Hey, these are pretty

01:37:29 ◼   ► good!" And then I got all caught up in, of course, everybody, you know, like any series novel, the

01:37:35 ◼   ► the fans cannot wait for the next one.

01:37:38 ◼   ► But of course with hers, there was this whole cottage

01:37:41 ◼   ► industry of people trying to predict what the title

01:37:43 ◼   ► for each letter would be, right?

01:37:45 ◼   ► - Right, yeah.

01:37:48 ◼   ► It was like when Android, they're doing all the candies

01:37:51 ◼   ► or whatever, right?

01:37:52 ◼   ► - Exactly, and people would try to guess,

01:37:54 ◼   ► what's the candy?

01:37:55 ◼   ► J for jelly bean, that seems pretty obvious,

01:37:57 ◼   ► but what the hell do you do with X?

01:37:59 ◼   ► And they gave up on it.

01:38:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, well, they've kind of painted themselves

01:38:06 ◼   ► into a corner.

01:38:07 ◼   ► - Anyway, people can find that there.

01:38:10 ◼   ► Of course, in terms of Mac nerdery,

01:38:14 ◼   ► you are the, what's your official title?

01:38:15 ◼   ► The East Coast--

01:38:17 ◼   ► - Bureau Chief, which is a title I have

01:38:20 ◼   ► because I told Jason, man, Bureau Chief is a title

01:38:23 ◼   ► that doesn't get used enough anymore.

01:38:24 ◼   ► Is you wanna be a Bureau Chief, be a Bureau Chief.

01:38:25 ◼   ► It's like that's what I meant.

01:38:26 ◼   ► - East Coast Bureau Chief at sixcolors.com,

01:38:29 ◼   ► and it's just fantastic ongoing work there,

01:38:34 ◼   ► including your review of the Mac Mini this week.

01:38:36 ◼   ► So keep it up.

01:38:37 ◼   ► And do you do any podcasts?

01:38:39 ◼   ► - I got a couple with some people

01:38:43 ◼   ► that you may be familiar with.

01:38:44 ◼   ► I do a clockwise over on Relay FM with Micah Sargent.

01:38:49 ◼   ► We do two, basically a round table every week

01:38:53 ◼   ► with two guests and we talk about a certain amount

01:38:55 ◼   ► of topics and it's never over 30 minutes.

01:38:57 ◼   ► So it's nice to-

01:38:58 ◼   ► - So you can never have, you'll never have me on.

01:39:01 ◼   ► - You can be, we had Syracuse on.

01:39:03 ◼   ► Keep Syracuse down to half an hour.

01:39:06 ◼   ► You're welcome. You have an open invitation.

01:39:08 ◼   ► Well, we'll just do introductions.

01:39:10 ◼   ► Then there we go, 30 minutes.

01:39:12 ◼   ► Get it and quit it. I do a bunch of stuff over the incomparable with

01:39:17 ◼   ► Jason Snell and a couple of your other frequent collaborators,

01:39:22 ◼   ► John Moltz and Guy English and I do a podcast on superhero stuff called Biff.

01:39:25 ◼   ► Never heard of you.

01:39:26 ◼   ► It's currently biweekly.

01:39:27 ◼   ► Never heard of you.

01:39:28 ◼   ► They're not that important. Then I do one called The Rebound with John Moltz and

01:39:33 ◼   ► Lex Friedman, who I gather is heavily--

01:39:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, that son of a bitch.

01:39:38 ◼   ► But I'm all in on the Eagles at this point.

01:39:41 ◼   ► You gotta root for somebody, so.

01:39:42 ◼   ► - Well, it's a hometown team, too, come on.

01:39:46 ◼   ► - Well, I hate the 49ers.

01:39:49 ◼   ► I hate the 49ers more than just about anybody,

01:39:51 ◼   ► so that was pretty good yesterday.

01:39:54 ◼   ► Well, thank you, Dan.

01:39:55 ◼   ► Have a good time, and talk to you soon.

01:39:58 ◼   ► - Thanks, John, appreciate it, take care.