ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► It took this long for something to break on the Land Rover.

00:00:05 ◼   ► - Oh, hooray, it's finally happened.

00:00:09 ◼   ► - This car, I mean, I know you bought it used,

00:00:11 ◼   ► but it was like how many miles

00:00:12 ◼   ► and how many years old was it when you got it?

00:00:14 ◼   ► - It was like a year and a half old

00:00:16 ◼   ► and something like 15,000 or 20,000 miles,

00:00:19 ◼   ► something like that, 15.

00:00:19 ◼   ► - It seems like things shouldn't be breaking yet,

00:00:21 ◼   ► but anyway, go on.

00:00:22 ◼   ► - It's the sunroof.

00:00:23 ◼   ► - Oh, you know how much I love sunroofs.

00:00:25 ◼   ► - No, don't tell, don't, can you not,

00:00:28 ◼   ► I will give you infinite money to not talk about this anymore, because the last thing

00:00:33 ◼   ► I need is more of the anti-sunroof mafia to have ammunition to be against sunroofs.

00:00:40 ◼   ► I love a sunroof.

00:00:42 ◼   ► One of the only problems I have with my car is that it does not have a sunroof.

00:00:47 ◼   ► I am in a group chat that I'm sure I've brought up many times on this show with a couple of

00:00:51 ◼   ► friends of mine who are car nuts, not you two, different friends of mine that are car

00:00:54 ◼   ► and the two of them are parts of the anti-sunroof propaganda machine and I

00:00:58 ◼   ► hate it so I don't even want to know I don't want to know let's move on I mean

00:01:02 ◼   ► look and look the problem is really stupid it just doesn't like yesterday we

00:01:08 ◼   ► we drove off the island yesterday and on the way there I could open the sunroof

00:01:11 ◼   ► just fine on the way home try to open it nothing happens that's kind of better

00:01:16 ◼   ► than the alternative where it's open and you can't close it right I thought I

00:01:19 ◼   ► told him I'm like you know it's good thing it's stuck closed and not stuck

00:01:22 ◼   ► open but yeah so I gotta you know I'm sure I've got it looked at it maybe

00:01:27 ◼   ► maybe it's gonna be a simple you know reboot something or fix a fuse maybe

00:01:31 ◼   ► it's probably gonna be a pain and and this is a minor thing in the grand

00:01:34 ◼   ► scheme of things but you know and I know there's that YouTube channel is it TFL

00:01:41 ◼   ► it's like the off-roaders on YouTube they do pretty good videos and they got

00:01:44 ◼   ► a defender and their son roof died really fast on it so it's something like

00:01:50 ◼   ► I'm sure it's a thing.

00:01:51 ◼   ► But yeah, I love a sunroof.

00:01:54 ◼   ► And this is one of the great regrets I have

00:01:57 ◼   ► is that whatever car I get next

00:02:00 ◼   ► almost certainly won't have one

00:02:02 ◼   ► because I really wanna go back to electric

00:02:03 ◼   ► as soon as I can.

00:02:05 ◼   ► And all of the good electric options

00:02:07 ◼   ► of either off-road capable things,

00:02:10 ◼   ► which is basically just Rivian at this point,

00:02:12 ◼   ► or things that are at least

00:02:14 ◼   ► like a little bit higher seating position

00:02:15 ◼   ► so I can fix my leg sciatic things and keep them fixed,

00:02:18 ◼   ► they all are like, oh, we're gonna have this big,

00:02:21 ◼   ► expansive glass fixed ceiling panel.

00:02:23 ◼   ► - Boo, you can thank Tesla for that.

00:02:26 ◼   ► - Yep, I have had a sunroof on almost every car I've owned

00:02:30 ◼   ► and I love a sunroof.

00:02:32 ◼   ► I use it all the time in the winter.

00:02:33 ◼   ► I don't use it at all in the summer

00:02:34 ◼   ► because I don't have enough hair

00:02:35 ◼   ► and so I mostly just keep it closed

00:02:38 ◼   ► or if I do open it, I have to wear a hat and that sucks.

00:02:41 ◼   ► So in the summer, I don't use it at all.

00:02:44 ◼   ► In the winter, I use it all the time

00:02:46 ◼   ► because it's nice enough out that I wanna get

00:02:49 ◼   ► some fresh air blowing in,

00:02:50 ◼   ► but if I opened up the side windows,

00:02:52 ◼   ► it would be too harsh,

00:02:53 ◼   ► and it would be too cold on my face or whatever.

00:02:56 ◼   ► So I know that the days of me having a sunroof

00:03:01 ◼   ► are probably limited,

00:03:02 ◼   ► and I want to enjoy them while I have them.

00:03:04 ◼   ► But anyway, there goes that.

00:03:07 ◼   ► - I don't think they're that limited,

00:03:08 ◼   ► because it's like next to impossible,

00:03:10 ◼   ► this is why Casey's Friends I'm sure is playing,

00:03:11 ◼   ► it's next to impossible to find a car

00:03:13 ◼   ► that doesn't require you to have a sunroof,

00:03:15 ◼   ► except for EVs that do the stupid glass roof thing,

00:03:19 ◼   ► but I don't think they're going anywhere.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Like if anything, the ability to find a car without them

00:03:24 ◼   ► is disappearing faster.

00:03:26 ◼   ► It's just that in the weird corner of the market

00:03:28 ◼   ► that is EVs trying to copy Tesla,

00:03:30 ◼   ► they all want to do the stupid panoramic glass thing,

00:03:32 ◼   ► which I've never had a car with that,

00:03:34 ◼   ► but like it always seems to me that,

00:03:36 ◼   ► I mean, maybe it's cheaper or something.

00:03:37 ◼   ► I don't quite understand the motivation.

00:03:39 ◼   ► I know it seems cool and everything,

00:03:40 ◼   ► but all of them have to do something pretty drastic

00:03:43 ◼   ► to prevent the car from becoming a giant boiling fishbowl.

00:03:46 ◼   ► So they're either like super duper tinted.

00:03:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, they're heavily tinted usually.

00:03:51 ◼   ► So like it's more like you're watching a screen of the sky.

00:03:55 ◼   ► You know, it's not, you're not really feeling

00:03:56 ◼   ► like you're out in the open.

00:03:57 ◼   ► Like now there is one area where it helps a little bit.

00:04:01 ◼   ► Well, there's two areas where it helps.

00:04:02 ◼   ► One that doesn't matter to me, which is headroom.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Which is never something I need.

00:04:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean that, and to be clear,

00:04:09 ◼   ► that is one of the reasons I dislike sunroofs,

00:04:10 ◼   ► because once you put one on a car,

00:04:12 ◼   ► I can no longer fit in it without my hair

00:04:13 ◼   ► hitting the headliner.

00:04:14 ◼   ► - Right, 'cause you have very tall hair.

00:04:16 ◼   ► - I wish, not anymore so much.

00:04:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:19 ◼   ► - It happens, man.

00:04:21 ◼   ► But yeah, and the other thing is,

00:04:23 ◼   ► I do like when you have more visibility

00:04:26 ◼   ► if the windshield goes higher up,

00:04:29 ◼   ► and then if you're stopped,

00:04:31 ◼   ► if you're the very first car at a traffic light,

00:04:33 ◼   ► sometimes you can't see the traffic light

00:04:35 ◼   ► 'cause your own--

00:04:36 ◼   ► - Try being tall, it makes it so much worse.

00:04:38 ◼   ► - Right, and so the sunroofless designs

00:04:41 ◼   ► use more glass, oftentimes improve that.

00:04:44 ◼   ► But they put so much dark tinting though.

00:04:46 ◼   ► The ones that have glass, like the Model X where the windshield basically continues all

00:04:49 ◼   ► the way up to the roof, it's so dark tinted, it might as well be a metal beam across there.

00:04:54 ◼   ► I don't think you could see a traffic light through the amount of dark they tinted that.

00:04:57 ◼   ► The other thing they do in the fancy ones is they have the LCD type liquid crystal thing

00:05:01 ◼   ► that you can darken it electronically.

00:05:05 ◼   ► The bottom line is you can't just have it clear glass open all the time because you'll

00:05:08 ◼   ► boil in the car and no one wants sun in their face.

00:05:10 ◼   ► So there has to be some way to either darken it electronically or it has to be pretty darn

00:05:15 ◼   ► dark all the time.

00:05:16 ◼   ► And at that point, why bother?

00:05:17 ◼   ► It almost makes the 80s version of, I don't know what the correct words for this are,

00:05:21 ◼   ► but it would have a clear glass pane that slides in and out.

00:05:25 ◼   ► Then it would also sometimes have a tilted thing that you could slide underneath the

00:05:29 ◼   ► clear glass pane to darken it.

00:05:31 ◼   ► And then it would have a carpeted thing that you would slide over it that makes it just

00:05:34 ◼   ► roof, right?

00:05:35 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:05:36 ◼   ► Inside the car.

00:05:37 ◼   ► You know completely open to the outside clear glass to the outside tinted glass to the outside

00:05:42 ◼   ► No visibility to the outside and that is very passé

00:05:45 ◼   ► They don't make ones like that anymore because it's just I know 280s and also the other thing like with your you know

00:05:50 ◼   ► Oh, it doesn't open sometimes and other real and more people had problems. This is like the

00:05:54 ◼   ► The adolescent acne of sunroofs the real element that you'll get of course is they will start leaking water into your car eventually

00:06:02 ◼   ► And that's that's the real joy of the sunroof

00:06:04 ◼   ► as your car gets older, if you still own it,

00:06:07 ◼   ► eventually the sunroof does not keep the weather out.

00:06:10 ◼   ► - It's like I'm in that group chat all over again.

00:06:13 ◼   ► I'm so happy.

00:06:14 ◼   ► - But I love the sunroof.

00:06:16 ◼   ► And usually, with this one exception,

00:06:18 ◼   ► I've never had a problem with any of them before.

00:06:20 ◼   ► I've never had one fail, I've never had one leak.

00:06:23 ◼   ► - You don't keep a car long enough for them to leak.

00:06:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I mean, the Model S is, at this point,

00:06:29 ◼   ► almost six years old, five years old, something like that.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And I know it's not like super old,

00:06:34 ◼   ► but it's younger than your Mac Pro.

00:06:36 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:38 ◼   ► But still, I don't know.

00:06:40 ◼   ► I'm gonna miss, when I inevitably get

00:06:43 ◼   ► whatever electric thing I go with next,

00:06:45 ◼   ► I am going to miss the sunroof.

00:06:47 ◼   ► But if it causes me to have to be in repair constantly,

00:06:49 ◼   ► maybe I'll miss it less, I don't know.

00:06:51 ◼   ► - So in summary, a British car has electrical problems,

00:06:56 ◼   ► you don't say?

00:06:57 ◼   ► - I love everything else about it.

00:06:59 ◼   ► I'm not super loving the gas-osity of it, but--

00:07:02 ◼   ► - And great mileage driving around a giant rectangle.

00:07:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:07:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:07:07 ◼   ► - I'm a little surprised you're not driving to Jersey

00:07:09 ◼   ► so they can pump it for you.

00:07:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause I forgot how.

00:07:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:07:12 ◼   ► Jersey's so weird.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Anyway, no, I'm sad to hear that your sunroof is broken

00:07:19 ◼   ► and I hope that the repair, whatever it may be,

00:07:21 ◼   ► is gentle, easy, and under warranty.

00:07:24 ◼   ► And it probably will be a warranty,

00:07:26 ◼   ► but may not be gentle or easy, so we'll see what happens.

00:07:30 ◼   ► - And still, you know, I have to like go do it.

00:07:31 ◼   ► That's the biggest pain in the butt.

00:07:33 ◼   ► Even when you have warranty, that's nice and all,

00:07:35 ◼   ► but you still have to schedule the thing.

00:07:37 ◼   ► Take a day to go get it done.

00:07:40 ◼   ► It's all the pain in the butt part of it.

00:07:42 ◼   ► It doesn't just happen for free.

00:07:44 ◼   ► It's like whenever there's some flaw with an Apple product

00:07:47 ◼   ► and they eventually, very reluctantly, very slowly,

00:07:51 ◼   ► after way too long, do some kind of repair program.

00:07:53 ◼   ► Everyone's like, oh, problem solved.

00:07:54 ◼   ► It's like, well, no, it's not.

00:07:55 ◼   ► I still have to send it in and go without it for a while

00:07:59 ◼   ► and arranged things around my life to make that happen.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Just because a company has a way to service a problem

00:08:07 ◼   ► doesn't mean the problem is gone.

00:08:09 ◼   ► It just means that it might cost you less

00:08:13 ◼   ► than it otherwise would if you had to either replace

00:08:16 ◼   ► the whole thing or pay for the repair yourself.

00:08:17 ◼   ► But it's still an annoying problem that's going to cost

00:08:20 ◼   ► you time out of your life.

00:08:22 ◼   ► I remember the recent episodes of your Daily Lex,

00:08:25 ◼   ► Lex Friedman's podcast.

00:08:26 ◼   ► No, not that one, the good one.

00:08:30 ◼   ► He was complaining that he had something like a repair

00:08:33 ◼   ► under warranty on his car, needed a new part or whatever.

00:08:35 ◼   ► And he had to drive it there.

00:08:37 ◼   ► He drove it to the dealer three times.

00:08:40 ◼   ► And three times he got there and said,

00:08:41 ◼   ► oh, we don't have the part.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Because after the first time, of course,

00:08:44 ◼   ► after the first time, he would confirm, OK,

00:08:46 ◼   ► so you have the part now, right?

00:08:47 ◼   ► Because last time I took my car there, and I came,

00:08:49 ◼   ► and you said you didn't have the part.

00:08:50 ◼   ► You have the part?

00:08:50 ◼   ► No, we totally have the part.

00:08:51 ◼   ► Come on in.

00:08:52 ◼   ► He comes in, they go, we don't have the part.

00:08:53 ◼   ► That happened three times.

00:08:55 ◼   ► - And it's a Tesla dealer.

00:08:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, surprise, yes.

00:08:58 ◼   ► - Oh. - It is a Tesla dealer.

00:08:59 ◼   ► - Tesla with some kind of logistical thing

00:09:01 ◼   ► where the dealers don't know what they're doing

00:09:02 ◼   ► or don't have parts?

00:09:04 ◼   ► - 'Cause like you never know who you're talking to

00:09:05 ◼   ► on the phone or who you're texting to.

00:09:07 ◼   ► Like, oh yeah, no, we totally have the part, come right in.

00:09:09 ◼   ► But that's not the person who's at the dealer

00:09:11 ◼   ► staring at the part.

00:09:12 ◼   ► Who knows where that person is or what, you know,

00:09:14 ◼   ► it's all-- - Oh, man.

00:09:15 ◼   ► - It's all electronic, yeah, not fun.

00:09:17 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:09:19 ◼   ► - Let's talk about how wrong you are

00:09:21 ◼   ► about audio stuff, Marco.

00:09:22 ◼   ► That's fun for me. (laughing)

00:09:23 ◼   ► Samuel Polay writes, "Atmos and 7.1 channel sound is often the priority mix for sound

00:09:29 ◼   ► mixers today.

00:09:30 ◼   ► For a brand new movie, the audio team is taking multichannel and spatial audio into account

00:09:34 ◼   ► first, and then downmixing to everything else.

00:09:37 ◼   ► Even a 5.1 system can suffer from loss of detail in downmixing depending what movie

00:09:42 ◼   ► you're watching.

00:09:43 ◼   ► Since Marco insists on a 2.1 setup, he's losing detail more when he watches a new movie or

00:09:48 ◼   ► show than basically anyone."

00:09:50 ◼   ► - It's a good thing that never happens,

00:09:51 ◼   ► that Marco watches a new movie or show.

00:09:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:09:55 ◼   ► - Well done.

00:09:56 ◼   ► - And we got a lot of feedback on this,

00:09:58 ◼   ► and this has basically,

00:09:58 ◼   ► this has been John's argument for a long time,

00:10:00 ◼   ► that because, especially in particular,

00:10:02 ◼   ► because the center channel is so important

00:10:04 ◼   ► for things like dialogue,

00:10:06 ◼   ► that I'm apparently missing everything out,

00:10:07 ◼   ► but first of all, my speakers are not the only situation

00:10:12 ◼   ► in which a movie consumer might need a stereo mix.

00:10:16 ◼   ► It turns out, a lot of people watch movies

00:10:18 ◼   ► on tablets, phones, headphones.

00:10:22 ◼   ► It turns out many people use stereo mixes.

00:10:24 ◼   ► Well, but spatial audio covers those.

00:10:27 ◼   ► Because if they have spatial audio on their headphones,

00:10:29 ◼   ► which you do if you have an Apple device,

00:10:31 ◼   ► then I know it's only two things in your ears.

00:10:33 ◼   ► But my understanding is that what you're getting there

00:10:35 ◼   ► is not a down-mixed process thing,

00:10:37 ◼   ► but the spatial audio track for that thing

00:10:40 ◼   ► plays in spatial audio.

00:10:41 ◼   ► Maybe I'm wrong.

00:10:42 ◼   ► Maybe there is a separate processing step.

00:10:44 ◼   ► But anyway, Apple advertises spatial audio

00:10:46 ◼   ► which I hate by the way, I don't like special honeycomb movies. Yeah, but you know, yeah down mixing is a fact of life

00:10:53 ◼   ► But we're saying that if you have a you know

00:10:54 ◼   ► A setup where you're sitting in front of your big TV to watch a fancy movie, which again Marco doesn't do that often

00:10:59 ◼   ► You know you are something in the system is trying to down mix and make sense out of it

00:11:04 ◼   ► It's kind of the opposite of the way

00:11:06 ◼   ► It used to be when when quote unquote surround sound first came out all the movies were mastered in stereo and you had all these weird

00:11:14 ◼   ► standards and techniques to take a stereo mix and try to turn it into surround sound and they're all so bad because I mean

00:11:21 ◼   ► What are they gonna do? They have to figure out this sound this portion of this sound?

00:11:25 ◼   ► We should make sound like it's more behind you and it's just all guesswork, right?

00:11:29 ◼   ► Whereas now and we say when we say they're mixed for five point one if people think of like a big stew where they're throwing

00:11:35 ◼   ► ingredients together and mixing it

00:11:36 ◼   ► No, what we mean is they have soundtracks for every individual speaker

00:11:41 ◼   ► They say this is the sound that plays on the speaker and then this sound plays on the speaker and like

00:11:44 ◼   ► Individual sounds that play on individual speakers, obviously, they all come together to make the sound of the soundtrack

00:11:50 ◼   ► But it's not like there's something doling out the sound in little pieces

00:11:53 ◼   ► It's multiple tracks

00:11:55 ◼   ► And so when you have the number of tracks equal to the number of speakers

00:11:59 ◼   ► Like if there's a 5.1 mix on your blu-ray and you have 5.1 speakers

00:12:02 ◼   ► It says okay

00:12:04 ◼   ► The speaker gets this track the speaker gets this track and just doles out straight sound directly to those speakers and it there's

00:12:10 ◼   ► much less guesswork than, you know,

00:12:13 ◼   ► here's a stereo mix, try to put it out on seven speakers.

00:12:15 ◼   ► Good luck.

00:12:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, but also, like, and I know, like, you know,

00:12:20 ◼   ► more modern systems like Atmos are even more complicated

00:12:22 ◼   ► and actually, you know, are kind of more abstracted

00:12:24 ◼   ► in certain ways, but, you know, ultimately,

00:12:27 ◼   ► a 2.1 setup, if the only way, if the main way

00:12:30 ◼   ► it's gonna fail, look, I don't care if it doesn't sound

00:12:32 ◼   ► like it's coming from behind me, I don't care,

00:12:34 ◼   ► but if the main way it fails is in center channel mixing,

00:12:37 ◼   ► well, that to me doesn't hold a ton of water

00:12:40 ◼   ► because it's really easy to down mix

00:12:43 ◼   ► a center channel into stereo.

00:12:46 ◼   ► You just send it equally to both channels.

00:12:48 ◼   ► It's fine, it's super easy.

00:12:51 ◼   ► That's why, like most podcasts are generally issued in mono.

00:12:55 ◼   ► Does that mean that you have to have a speaker

00:12:57 ◼   ► on your forehead to hear most podcasts?

00:12:59 ◼   ► No, you hear them in your ears

00:13:01 ◼   ► because we just send the same data to both channels

00:13:03 ◼   ► and it's fine.

00:13:04 ◼   ► - So the lack of center channel,

00:13:06 ◼   ► the complaint that we got in email

00:13:07 ◼   ► is that if you have stereo speakers

00:13:08 ◼   ► and you get the virtual center from the stereo speakers,

00:13:10 ◼   ► it sounds great as long as you are sitting

00:13:12 ◼   ► in the sweet spot between the speakers.

00:13:13 ◼   ► But if you have a bunch of couches

00:13:15 ◼   ► and somebody's way on the left or way on the right,

00:13:17 ◼   ► the center channel doesn't work for them anymore

00:13:18 ◼   ► because they're way closer to the left speaker

00:13:20 ◼   ► than the right speaker.

00:13:21 ◼   ► Whereas if there was an actual center channel,

00:13:23 ◼   ► no matter where they sit, it would sound like

00:13:25 ◼   ► the dialer that's coming out of the television,

00:13:26 ◼   ► you know, where the people's pictures are,

00:13:28 ◼   ► but the mouth's moving, right?

00:13:29 ◼   ► It will, you know, if you're way to the left

00:13:31 ◼   ► and the TV is to your right, you'll, you know,

00:13:33 ◼   ► like the sound, basically the sound always sounds

00:13:34 ◼   ► like it's coming from the TV.

00:13:35 ◼   ► Whereas if they're trying to do virtual surround

00:13:37 ◼   ► and you're sitting way to the left,

00:13:38 ◼   ► it doesn't sound like the sound

00:13:39 ◼   ► is coming out of the TV anymore.

00:13:41 ◼   ► It sounds like it's coming from the left speaker more,

00:13:43 ◼   ► because it is.

00:13:43 ◼   ► - I would say if that is a problem for you,

00:13:45 ◼   ► you're either sitting way too far off to the side,

00:13:48 ◼   ► or your speakers have too little spread in their coverage.

00:13:52 ◼   ► That's not a fault of it being a 2.1 setup.

00:13:57 ◼   ► That's just a bad situation in the room, or a bad speaker.

00:14:02 ◼   ► - No, it is a fault of it being a 2.1,

00:14:03 ◼   ► because the sound is not coming from the TV,

00:14:05 ◼   ► and the only way to make it sound like

00:14:07 ◼   ► that's coming from the TV is for you to be equally distant

00:14:09 ◼   ► from the two side speakers, right?

00:14:12 ◼   ► I mean, it's not the end of the world.

00:14:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's a lot of squish in that argument.

00:14:18 ◼   ► You could be like, if there's two people sitting on a couch,

00:14:20 ◼   ► well, they can't both be perfectly centered,

00:14:23 ◼   ► but you're gonna be close enough

00:14:25 ◼   ► for most distances from a TV, you'll be fine.

00:14:27 ◼   ► And if you're sitting all the way off to one side,

00:14:30 ◼   ► if there's a couch in the middle,

00:14:32 ◼   ► and then a side chair off to one side,

00:14:34 ◼   ► a lot of living room setups,

00:14:35 ◼   ► Well, if you're sitting in that side chair,

00:14:37 ◼   ► nothing's gonna be positioned correctly for you anyway.

00:14:38 ◼   ► You can barely even see the TV.

00:14:40 ◼   ► - No, but if you have a center channel,

00:14:41 ◼   ► if you're in that side chair,

00:14:42 ◼   ► the sound of people talking will still sound like

00:14:45 ◼   ► it's coming from the pictures of their faces,

00:14:46 ◼   ► because the center channel speaker

00:14:48 ◼   ► is directly under or over the TV.

00:14:51 ◼   ► - Anyway, if I haven't lost anybody, everybody yet,

00:14:56 ◼   ► I might lose you with this,

00:14:57 ◼   ► that this might all be somewhat moot,

00:14:59 ◼   ► because I listen to processed versions of movie sound anyway,

00:15:02 ◼   ► because I keep my Apple TV setting on

00:15:05 ◼   ► where it has the basically dynamic range compression setting

00:15:08 ◼   ► that's called something like reduce loud sounds.

00:15:11 ◼   ► I keep that on all the time on my Apple TV.

00:15:12 ◼   ► I watch everything with that setting on

00:15:14 ◼   ► because I find the dynamic range of most things

00:15:17 ◼   ► to be far too much for my home,

00:15:20 ◼   ► where I'm like we have oftentimes a sleeping child

00:15:24 ◼   ► downstairs while we're trying to watch something

00:15:26 ◼   ► or I just don't want, I want the volume on the dialogue

00:15:30 ◼   ► to be as loud as everything else

00:15:31 ◼   ► because that is what I'm trying to hear,

00:15:33 ◼   ► and it's not because I'm missing a stereo mix,

00:15:35 ◼   ► it's because I don't want the soundtrack to be

00:15:38 ◼   ► bumpin' up and aya, this big loud thing,

00:15:40 ◼   ► and then people are whispering in the middle of it,

00:15:42 ◼   ► hey, what, did you hear about this thing that we did?

00:15:44 ◼   ► And it's like, oh my god, what, what are you saying?

00:15:46 ◼   ► And that's not the fault of the mix,

00:15:48 ◼   ► that's the fault of, or rather,

00:15:49 ◼   ► that's not the fault of me not having a center channel,

00:15:51 ◼   ► that's just the fault of the way

00:15:52 ◼   ► things are mastered these days.

00:15:53 ◼   ► - Well, if you had a center channel,

00:15:54 ◼   ► you could just crank up the center channel,

00:15:55 ◼   ► but anyway, all receivers have that same mode

00:15:57 ◼   ► of dynamic range compression and stuff like that,

00:16:00 ◼   ► that's not an Apple TV exclusive feature.

00:16:02 ◼   ► So your stereo speakers aren't the thing

00:16:04 ◼   ► that's giving you that.

00:16:05 ◼   ► It's just having basic AV equipment.

00:16:07 ◼   ► - All right, I was talking to somebody,

00:16:09 ◼   ► I don't remember who it was now, that was saying,

00:16:12 ◼   ► this person was saying, "I am in full support

00:16:15 ◼   ► "of the principle of Jon saying, 'Oh, get a receiver

00:16:18 ◼   ► "'and get a bunch of speakers,' and so on and so forth.

00:16:19 ◼   ► "But I just don't have space in my life for a receiver

00:16:23 ◼   ► "and wiring everything," and so on and so forth.

00:16:25 ◼   ► And I, now Casey, I feel the same way.

00:16:28 ◼   ► I just, I don't argue that John's setup

00:16:31 ◼   ► surely sounds better than--

00:16:33 ◼   ► - You have plenty of room, Casey, that's not why.

00:16:35 ◼   ► - No, no, it's not the lack of room.

00:16:37 ◼   ► I just don't wanna deal with it.

00:16:38 ◼   ► I don't wanna wire it, I don't wanna deal with it.

00:16:40 ◼   ► - I would argue that dealing with your Sonos stuff

00:16:41 ◼   ► is pretty close, but--

00:16:43 ◼   ► - How so?

00:16:44 ◼   ► All I have to do is plug it into the wall.

00:16:45 ◼   ► - 'Cause they're little computers,

00:16:46 ◼   ► they're pretty complicated.

00:16:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I never have to think about it.

00:16:48 ◼   ► You know, here's the thing.

00:16:50 ◼   ► There are companies that make things just work.

00:16:52 ◼   ► We used to know of one, and then they stopped doing that.

00:16:55 ◼   ► I can't remember the name of it,

00:16:56 ◼   ► it was like Banana or something, but anyways.

00:16:58 ◼   ► But Sonos stuff really does just work,

00:17:01 ◼   ► or at least it has so far in the three or four months

00:17:04 ◼   ► that I've had it.

00:17:05 ◼   ► So I take your point, Jon, but it really was plug it in

00:17:08 ◼   ► and then never think about it again.

00:17:10 ◼   ► - So speaking of that,

00:17:11 ◼   ► this next item here is about this.

00:17:13 ◼   ► So this is something that I didn't bring up

00:17:15 ◼   ► in the last show.

00:17:16 ◼   ► And there's a reason which we'll get to pretty soon

00:17:19 ◼   ► of why I didn't go this route,

00:17:20 ◼   ► but this would actually be an ideal setup for my scenario.

00:17:24 ◼   ► So my scenario is I have a room

00:17:27 ◼   ► that is not arranged in any sane way

00:17:29 ◼   ► that any person would arrange it.

00:17:30 ◼   ► So my speakers and my television position

00:17:32 ◼   ► and my seating positions are just messed up.

00:17:34 ◼   ► They are nothing is aligned the way you would want it to be

00:17:36 ◼   ► in one of those home theater setup situations.

00:17:38 ◼   ► It's challenging, right?

00:17:39 ◼   ► And so my sound and everything about it,

00:17:42 ◼   ► ergonomically sound wise, it's never going to be right.

00:17:45 ◼   ► There's nothing I can do about it

00:17:47 ◼   ► because it's just the way my house is, whatever.

00:17:49 ◼   ► So this system I'm gonna describe

00:17:51 ◼   ► as a Sony HT-A9 home theater system solves that problem

00:17:55 ◼   ► in a way that I kind of wish HomePods did.

00:17:57 ◼   ► So HomePods, we all like, we talked about it last time,

00:17:59 ◼   ► they're radially symmetrical,

00:18:01 ◼   ► you just plop it wherever the hell you want in the room.

00:18:03 ◼   ► It doesn't matter where you are relative to the HomePod

00:18:05 ◼   ► because it has speakers facing in all directions, right?

00:18:09 ◼   ► And the subwoofer faces either up or down,

00:18:10 ◼   ► I still don't know.

00:18:12 ◼   ► So, and then it has microphones and it adjusts itself

00:18:16 ◼   ► based on where you've placed it when it has accelerometers

00:18:19 ◼   ► to know, okay, if they put me in a new position,

00:18:20 ◼   ► it will adjust its sound as best it can

00:18:23 ◼   ► to make the best of wherever the heck you put it.

00:18:25 ◼   ► That's exactly what I need in my weird cattywampus room

00:18:28 ◼   ► where everything's on angles, my TV's in the corner

00:18:31 ◼   ► and the couch is on the other wall on an angle from it

00:18:34 ◼   ► and there's no way to get things in the right position.

00:18:37 ◼   ► So I would love, let's say, four HomePods plus a subwoofer

00:18:41 ◼   ► without audio delay to plop these little things

00:18:44 ◼   ► in the places where I can fit them in my room

00:18:47 ◼   ► because I can't fit them in any same position.

00:18:48 ◼   ► It's like, well, this is the only place I have

00:18:50 ◼   ► for this speaker and HomePods are good for that.

00:18:51 ◼   ► They're small.

00:18:52 ◼   ► I mean, my problem is I don't have power

00:18:54 ◼   ► to a lot of the places, which as I said,

00:18:55 ◼   ► is why I kind of appreciate being able

00:18:57 ◼   ► to just run speaker wire to my backs

00:18:58 ◼   ► because I don't have a place to plug in a HomePod,

00:19:01 ◼   ► but set that aside.

00:19:02 ◼   ► Put a smallish thing wherever you can fit them

00:19:04 ◼   ► and just say, computers, you figure it out, right?

00:19:08 ◼   ► That's another reason that I use the Dirac Live thing

00:19:12 ◼   ► on my receiver.

00:19:13 ◼   ► I put the little microphone where my head is on my couch

00:19:15 ◼   ► and I say, I know the speaker's in the wrong place, Dirac,

00:19:18 ◼   ► but do your best to make it reasonable.

00:19:20 ◼   ► and then you put the microphone in 20 other places,

00:19:23 ◼   ► and it's not great, right?

00:19:25 ◼   ► The Sony HT-9 system does that thing.

00:19:29 ◼   ► You buy this, you get a bunch of these Sony speakers,

00:19:31 ◼   ► which look kinda like tall, bigger home pods

00:19:33 ◼   ► that are less fuzzy.

00:19:34 ◼   ► You put them wherever the hell you feel like in your room,

00:19:36 ◼   ► you get four of them, which sounds like a weird number.

00:19:39 ◼   ► I was like, "I get four for a home theater setup?

00:19:42 ◼   ► Okay."

00:19:42 ◼   ► And you just put the four,

00:19:44 ◼   ► kind of one in each kind of corner of the room,

00:19:48 ◼   ► and then you have to get a subwoofer for this

00:19:50 ◼   ► if you want decent sound because these small speakers have no bass because they're smallish,

00:19:54 ◼   ► right?

00:19:55 ◼   ► And then what they come with, kind of like the Sonos, is you come up with these four

00:19:59 ◼   ► speakers and a little black box that looks like an Apple TV but bigger, right?

00:20:03 ◼   ► And you plug HDMI into that and Ethernet into that, so you don't need a receiver, it's just

00:20:07 ◼   ► these four speakers, this Apple TV type box, and then the subwoofer, right?

00:20:12 ◼   ► And it just figures it out.

00:20:13 ◼   ► It runs a bunch of sound tests, it bounces sound around, all the speakers have microphones

00:20:17 ◼   ► in them, and it just figures out how to make surround.

00:20:20 ◼   ► And this is the type of thing you would think, "Oh, that's great for people who are in a

00:20:23 ◼   ► compromised situation, but this is always going to sound like garbage."

00:20:26 ◼   ► And I mostly dismiss these things for two reasons.

00:20:28 ◼   ► One, it sounds kind of janky, and it's like, "That can't possibly be good."

00:20:31 ◼   ► And two, the cost of the system I just described to you is $2,700.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Not saving any money.

00:20:38 ◼   ► It's like, "What?

00:20:39 ◼   ► I'm just going to buy a real receiver and individual speakers once I'm spending that

00:20:43 ◼   ► much money."

00:20:45 ◼   ► But I have to say that I watched one of my preferred audio review channels on YouTube,

00:20:51 ◼   ► Andrew Robinson's channel, am I getting his name right?

00:20:53 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes.

00:20:55 ◼   ► And he listens to all sorts of the fancy high-end systems that nobody can afford or whatever.

00:21:00 ◼   ► And he was mightily impressed by the system.

00:21:02 ◼   ► I watched a bunch of other reviews too.

00:21:05 ◼   ► This Sony setup, yes, it cost $2,700, but according to this review, it sounds almost

00:21:10 ◼   ► as good as systems that would cost you like $4,000 if you bought them with individual

00:21:14 ◼   ► components and it doesn't make you have to have a receiver which Casey doesn't want in

00:21:18 ◼   ► his life.

00:21:19 ◼   ► I already have a receiver so it's not great for me.

00:21:23 ◼   ► But they say that the, you know, again with four things, no center, right?

00:21:26 ◼   ► But with four channels, how does it do it?

00:21:28 ◼   ► It's all, it's like computational photography for audio.

00:21:30 ◼   ► It's all doing what the home pod is going to do and he was just absolutely amazed that

00:21:34 ◼   ► it can make the sound sound like they're coming from all directions including the center and

00:21:38 ◼   ► the sides and height things and you know each one of these speaker things has, I don't know

00:21:42 ◼   ► I don't know if it has speaker cones facing in all directions, but it's got speakers facing

00:21:46 ◼   ► in a bunch of different directions and apparently is incredibly convincing.

00:21:49 ◼   ► The other reason I wouldn't find this appealing for me, aside from the price, which is a lot,

00:21:54 ◼   ► is that it does what they call in the video the "smile curve" where it super boosts the

00:21:59 ◼   ► bass and also boosts the treble, which sounds exciting and dramatic for movies, but even

00:22:06 ◼   ► for movies, that's not what I prefer.

00:22:08 ◼   ► I prefer something flatter than that.

00:22:10 ◼   ► It sounds impressive in showrooms and it's kind of what people like and I bet it's what

00:22:14 ◼   ► a lot of movie theaters do, you know, because you know, boomy bass and real high treble,

00:22:18 ◼   ► but it cuts out the middle of, you know, it makes everything in the middle kind of sound

00:22:21 ◼   ► murky.

00:22:24 ◼   ► If people like that curve, get this system because if you have, it's cheaper, you can't

00:22:29 ◼   ► get it as something that sounds better for less money if what you're interested in is

00:22:33 ◼   ► watching movies.

00:22:34 ◼   ► But if you want to play music, you really don't want your music going through an EQ

00:22:37 ◼   ► like that, I would imagine.

00:22:38 ◼   ► Even though some people find that "exciting", I think it just sounds wrong.

00:22:42 ◼   ► It can be fun, but it's, yeah.

00:22:45 ◼   ► Typically, if you're boosting the bass and treble that much in processing, usually you're

00:22:50 ◼   ► doing it because the speaker's natural responses in those areas are not very good.

00:22:56 ◼   ► If you have a really nicely engineered speaker, if it produces enough bass, if it's big enough

00:23:01 ◼   ► to produce enough bass, if the tweeter is refined and well designed enough to not have

00:23:05 ◼   ► a whole bunch of weird distortion and be able to reproduce really good high frequencies.

00:23:10 ◼   ► You don't need those tricks, or you can greatly reduce them. But that's not how most people

00:23:14 ◼   ► design things.

00:23:16 ◼   ► I think these speakers are reasonable quality, but for movies in particular, what people

00:23:22 ◼   ► consider to be exciting movie experience is the bass is very boomy and the highs are very

00:23:28 ◼   ► sparkly. And especially with this system, the whole trick of this system is it will

00:23:32 ◼   ► really make it sound like the sound is coming from all around you like they you know immersive

00:23:37 ◼   ► or whatever you want to call it but just we'll get to it in a second the sonus product that

00:23:40 ◼   ► has that right in the name that's what you feel in a movie theater where they have 17

00:23:44 ◼   ► speakers and you know the sound is really coming from all around you and you can watch

00:23:48 ◼   ► the review the person who's reviewing was saying even with their expensive multi many

00:23:52 ◼   ► many thousand dollar setups they were hearing things they never heard before in the mixes

00:23:55 ◼   ► of movies that they were watching probably because they're being cranked up artificially

00:23:59 ◼   ► by the curve that this thing puts out.

00:24:00 ◼   ► The other thing that's bad about the Sony HD9 is that you can't really mess with the

00:24:05 ◼   ► audio too much.

00:24:06 ◼   ► If you don't like what the Sony thing is doing with it, you have minor control over how much

00:24:10 ◼   ► bass you want, so you can turn down the bass, but you can't really say, "Can you give me

00:24:15 ◼   ► a more flat response curve and not overboost the treble that much?"

00:24:20 ◼   ► You basically have a bass up and down thing and a couple of different modes, and only

00:24:24 ◼   ► one of the modes is any good anyway.

00:24:26 ◼   ► But I was impressed at this audio reviewer that I've been watching for a long time was

00:24:31 ◼   ► impressed with this Sony thing that seems like it should be garbage but is actually

00:24:34 ◼   ► kind of ideal.

00:24:36 ◼   ► If you don't want to deal with a receiver and have a room that is weird and you can't

00:24:41 ◼   ► put the speakers in the right places, this thing will figure it out.

00:24:43 ◼   ► It makes me wish I could just get that at my house and try it because I think watching

00:24:46 ◼   ► a movie with it would be kind of fun.

00:24:49 ◼   ► But I don't know if I'd want to watch a TV show of people talking with that type of setup,

00:24:53 ◼   ► that type of curve because that's just too weird.

00:24:56 ◼   ► I think I need something more neutral.

00:24:59 ◼   ► The reason I'm watching this is I've been shopping around for speakers to see if I can

00:25:01 ◼   ► upgrade my cruddy speakers to be slightly less cruddy, but as always my constraint is

00:25:06 ◼   ► like how much space do I have to put these and I don't want to spend tons and tons of

00:25:11 ◼   ► money on it because they're not going to be in the right place anyway.

00:25:13 ◼   ► And that's kind of limiting me because I look at the speaker and I'm like "oh, this speaker

00:25:16 ◼   ► gets good reviews" but that's for a room where the speaker is facing the right direction

00:25:19 ◼   ► at the right height and I can't do that.

00:25:21 ◼   ► So I don't know, maybe I'll end up coming back to the Sony thing.

00:25:24 ◼   ► If I did, it would basically have to bypass my receiver, which would be a giant waste

00:25:27 ◼   ► of money.

00:25:28 ◼   ► But I'm still thinking about it.

00:25:30 ◼   ► Anyway, the Sonos Premium Immersive is the link that Casey put in here, which is a similar

00:25:34 ◼   ► type thing where you buy this thing from Sonos and it gives you all the things you need for

00:25:38 ◼   ► home theater.

00:25:39 ◼   ► It gives you a soundbar for the front instead of having a center, rear, and right.

00:25:41 ◼   ► And it has the back channels and it has the Sonos Arc subwoofer, which is pretty good.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Now the Sonos Sub Gen 3, the Arc is the soundbar.

00:25:48 ◼   ► Oh, that's right.

00:25:49 ◼   ► Now what is, what is, yeah, it's just called Sonos Sub.

00:25:51 ◼   ► the big one looks like a big cheerio.

00:25:53 ◼   ► Which is a very good subwoofer in my opinion.

00:25:56 ◼   ► It's force cancelling and there are almost no home theatre force cancelling subwoofers

00:26:01 ◼   ► that exist on the market.

00:26:04 ◼   ► As far as I know it's by far the cheapest one.

00:26:06 ◼   ► Yeah, and this setup I would imagine, I've seen reviews of this setup not on this exact

00:26:11 ◼   ► channel but other things.

00:26:12 ◼   ► The Sony one, obviously it's like $800 more than this so it better sound better, but I

00:26:17 ◼   ► I think it does just because the speakers themselves, certainly the speakers are all

00:26:23 ◼   ► the same size in the Sony, but all of them are bigger than the bar or the back surrounds

00:26:28 ◼   ► in this thing.

00:26:29 ◼   ► So they have bigger cones in them, more speaker drivers in them, and obviously you can get

00:26:33 ◼   ► better separation when you can put those four things in the corners of your room instead

00:26:36 ◼   ► of having a soundbar right under the TV.

00:26:39 ◼   ► So I feel like the Sony thing is the better choice if what you want is movies, but if

00:26:43 ◼   ► you want to listen to music, probably the Sonos is better.

00:26:46 ◼   ► Well, and that's the thing is for us, it was more than just a home theater.

00:26:51 ◼   ► And then I think now I'm starting to come back into home pod territory.

00:26:55 ◼   ► But to finish my thought, you know, we do use the home theater, the Sonos premium immersive

00:27:01 ◼   ► set, or whatever it's called.

00:27:02 ◼   ► We do use that to watch TV and to watch movies, but it is probably just as often, if not more

00:27:08 ◼   ► often, that it's just playing music ambiently in the house.

00:27:11 ◼   ► where Sonos does extremely well is being able to

00:27:15 ◼   ► consistently, and here's a word you don't hear from Apple recently,

00:27:19 ◼   ► reliably move sound between speakers and have it playing in different places and so on and so forth.

00:27:26 ◼   ► And if I wanted to I could do this using AirPlay 2, which all the Sonos stuff supports,

00:27:30 ◼   ► but I find it's just as easy and in most cases I prefer

00:27:35 ◼   ► to use the Sonos app to look up whatever it is I want to play and then have it take over.

00:27:41 ◼   ► So my phone is none the wiser as to what's going on. It's not serving in any capacity,

00:27:47 ◼   ► you know, the playlist that I'm listening to. My phone is completely ignorant of it

00:27:52 ◼   ► and the Sonos is just taking care of everything on its own. And again, adding or removing speakers,

00:27:56 ◼   ► these are all things that can be done with HomePods and can be done with AirPlay.

00:27:59 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's unique to Sonos, but it works a hundred percent of the time,

00:28:04 ◼   ► every time which in my experience with Airplay is not the case. I don't have home pods,

00:28:09 ◼   ► I've never had a home pod. So... -Oh, they don't work 100% of the time, don't worry. -Okay, never mind.

00:28:13 ◼   ► -You are not over speaking here, trust me. -Okay, well, I was willing to give the home pod the benefit of the doubt.

00:28:19 ◼   ► -Nope. -There you go. So, again, I'm not saying the Sonos stuff is for everyone. All I'm saying is for my needs,

00:28:26 ◼   ► I didn't want to have a receiver. I wanted to not have to string wires across the room.

00:28:31 ◼   ► I wanted it to be able to play nicely with other speakers because you know we effectively have three zones

00:28:37 ◼   ► We have the main living room. We have the porch, and then we also have little portable little it's the Sonos

00:28:44 ◼   ► Rome the littler of their portable speakers a little Toblerone bar

00:28:48 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, exactly which by the way sounds phenomenal for a speaker of that size like you know

00:28:54 ◼   ► I'm grading on a tremendous curve here

00:28:56 ◼   ► but given how small it is, it sounds very good.

00:28:59 ◼   ► Now in the grand scheme of things,

00:29:00 ◼   ► is it a particularly great speaker?

00:29:01 ◼   ► Well, not really, but given how small it is,

00:29:04 ◼   ► I've been quite surprised how good it sounds to my ears,

00:29:07 ◼   ► but that's neither here nor there.

00:29:08 ◼   ► The point I'm driving at is for my setup,

00:29:10 ◼   ► the Sonos stuff was really, really nice,

00:29:12 ◼   ► but that being said, if I cared more about TV

00:29:16 ◼   ► and almost none about music,

00:29:17 ◼   ► which is what Jon was saying a moment ago,

00:29:19 ◼   ► I watched that video that we'll link in the show notes

00:29:21 ◼   ► by that Andrew, whatever his name is,

00:29:23 ◼   ► And if this fella seemed like he knew what he was talking about, I was not familiar with his work at all.

00:29:28 ◼   ► Seemed like he knew what he was talking about, and again, to reiterate what Jon said,

00:29:32 ◼   ► seemed really impressed by the Sony setup.

00:29:35 ◼   ► So if I was in a position that I didn't really care that much about music,

00:29:38 ◼   ► which I think is, of the three of us, probably more Jon than anyone,

00:29:42 ◼   ► and forgive me if I'm unfairly putting words in your mouth,

00:29:45 ◼   ► then I think the Sony setup, again, you know, not worrying about

00:29:49 ◼   ► where you're getting power for those rear speakers and whatnot,

00:29:51 ◼   ► It does sound damn compelling.

00:29:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, the video is even more compelling

00:29:56 ◼   ► if you know this guy, because he does,

00:29:58 ◼   ► he's not like a high-end audiophile

00:30:00 ◼   ► like Magic Gold Cables kind of person,

00:30:02 ◼   ► but he does test speakers that cost

00:30:04 ◼   ► like as much as a car and everything.

00:30:05 ◼   ► So like he's heard it all.

00:30:06 ◼   ► He's not coming from like,

00:30:07 ◼   ► "Oh, I just test consumer electronics

00:30:09 ◼   ► "and these things sound pretty good to me."

00:30:10 ◼   ► Like he's heard all the good fancy speakers

00:30:13 ◼   ► and he has particular tastes,

00:30:14 ◼   ► and his wife is also in the videos

00:30:16 ◼   ► with her opinion of these things.

00:30:18 ◼   ► And the fact that he was impressed by these things

00:30:20 ◼   ► at the price, which is not a low price, you know, $27 is not a low price, uh, really shocked

00:30:25 ◼   ► me because most of the time when he reviews stuff like this, he's like, buy real speakers.

00:30:29 ◼   ► Like this is not it. Right. Um, so, you know, I, I came away with a newfound respect for

00:30:34 ◼   ► a system that I had previously dismissed. And honestly at $2,700, I think I would, because

00:30:39 ◼   ► my setup does not cost that much. Right. I wouldn't, I don't think I'd be able to choke

00:30:43 ◼   ► down that price unless I was pretty sure I was going to like it. And like I said, I would

00:30:47 ◼   ► not buy this. I don't really listen to music, but I don't like that smile type curve, even

00:30:51 ◼   ► for movies, and especially not for TV shows that are not movies. Like, I'm sure it makes

00:30:56 ◼   ► for an impressive demo, and if you only watch action movies, this is the setup to get for

00:31:00 ◼   ► $2700, because you can't beat it. But I watch things other than action movies, I watch television

00:31:05 ◼   ► shows, and I don't want boosted bass and boosted treble in an unadjustable fashion on all the

00:31:11 ◼   ► stuff that I watch. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I should just get this and try

00:31:13 ◼   ► it in my house. I don't know, if Sony wants to send me a review unit I will gladly test

00:31:17 ◼   ► it out. But Sony's not listening, that's never going to happen.

00:31:23 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Mercury Weather, a really great weather app for iOS. I've personally

00:31:28 ◼   ► been using this for a while now and it's, I love it, I'll tell you why in a little bit.

00:31:32 ◼   ► But of course, it's a weather app. You want your weather app to have all the weather features

00:31:36 ◼   ► and they have it. All the information, the weather details you'd expect from a weather

00:31:39 ◼   ► app, they have it. They even actually use two different data sources, Apple Weather

00:31:43 ◼   ► and open weather.

00:31:44 ◼   ► And since different data providers are more accurate

00:31:47 ◼   ► or have more details in different regions,

00:31:49 ◼   ► the app can switch depending on the forecast location

00:31:51 ◼   ► so that you are always getting the best for your region.

00:31:53 ◼   ► To get things like minute by minute forecasts

00:31:55 ◼   ► and other useful details

00:31:56 ◼   ► throughout different parts of the world.

00:31:58 ◼   ► And of course if you prefer one or the other,

00:31:59 ◼   ► you can just manually say always use this one

00:32:01 ◼   ► or always use that one.

00:32:02 ◼   ► But really what makes Mercury Weather the best

00:32:04 ◼   ► in my opinion is the delightful design.

00:32:06 ◼   ► This is super carefully crafted, high touch design

00:32:10 ◼   ► so the colors and interface are adaptive

00:32:12 ◼   ► based on the current weather outside,

00:32:14 ◼   ► and it has a really nice chart layout

00:32:16 ◼   ► to present the hourly and daily forecast information

00:32:18 ◼   ► in an intuitive way.

00:32:19 ◼   ► And all of this, what got me into Mercury Weather personally

00:32:22 ◼   ► is their amazing widgets.

00:32:24 ◼   ► They have beautiful, customizable home screen widgets

00:32:27 ◼   ► that you keep track of the weather

00:32:28 ◼   ► at your current and favorite locations.

00:32:30 ◼   ► This is intuitive hour by hour

00:32:32 ◼   ► and day by day forecast charts.

00:32:33 ◼   ► And of course, all of this is available

00:32:35 ◼   ► home screen widgets, lock screen widgets,

00:32:37 ◼   ► and Apple Watch complications.

00:32:38 ◼   ► And I think they have the best widgets

00:32:41 ◼   ► in the weather business, honestly.

00:32:42 ◼   ► I have not found nicer, more useful widgets

00:32:44 ◼   ► for weather apps on iOS than theirs.

00:32:46 ◼   ► Mercury Weather's gorgeous interface

00:32:47 ◼   ► makes it a delight to check the weather every day,

00:32:49 ◼   ► even on gray and rainy days.

00:32:51 ◼   ► The app's business model is super simple.

00:32:53 ◼   ► No ads, no selling of used data.

00:32:55 ◼   ► You download it, you can use the standard features for free,

00:32:58 ◼   ► and then you can upgrade to Mercury Premium

00:32:59 ◼   ► to unlock all features,

00:33:01 ◼   ► things like the home screen and lock screen widgets.

00:33:02 ◼   ► Trust me, very much worth it.

00:33:04 ◼   ► Weather averages and much, much more.

00:33:05 ◼   ► So go check it out.

00:33:06 ◼   ► If you get Mercury Premium this month,

00:33:09 ◼   ► you can still lock in their special launch price.

00:33:11 ◼   ► So check it out right now, Mercury Weather.

00:33:14 ◼   ► Go to mercuryweather.app/atp.

00:33:17 ◼   ► Once again, that's mercuryweather.app/atp.

00:33:20 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Mercury Weather

00:33:22 ◼   ► for sponsoring our show.

00:33:23 ◼   ► - All right, so Andy Galletly writes,

00:33:29 ◼   ► "Your HomePod reviews got me thinking about the age

00:33:31 ◼   ► "of the chip in our Apple TV 4th Gen from 2017.

00:33:35 ◼   ► "Would I notice a difference if I upgrade

00:33:36 ◼   ► "to a new 4K Apple TV?

00:33:39 ◼   ► "We don't have a 4K TV,

00:33:40 ◼   ► and I don't really mind the old remote,

00:33:42 ◼   ► maybe we're missing out on a decent speed bump.

00:33:45 ◼   ► Maybe, I don't know.

00:33:46 ◼   ► I don't feel like for me and the things

00:33:48 ◼   ► that I have done with the Apple TV,

00:33:50 ◼   ► I don't feel like I've ever longed for processing power,

00:33:53 ◼   ► but am I missing the boat?

00:33:54 ◼   ► What's the right answer here?

00:33:56 ◼   ► - When going from the HD family to the 4K family,

00:34:00 ◼   ► I did notice a pretty significant upgrade

00:34:04 ◼   ► in just general menu performance, stuff like that,

00:34:08 ◼   ► just like going in and out of stuff, opening apps,

00:34:10 ◼   ► going between menus, I did notice a faster performance there.

00:34:14 ◼   ► I have noticed less and less of those gains

00:34:17 ◼   ► as we've progressed past the initial 4K version.

00:34:20 ◼   ► So I think they are still to be had,

00:34:22 ◼   ► but you might notice them less.

00:34:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, so the thing about these TV boxes,

00:34:26 ◼   ► we've said for years that the Apple TV is just overpowered

00:34:30 ◼   ► for a thing that watches streaming stuff,

00:34:33 ◼   ► because streaming apps are built into your TVs,

00:34:35 ◼   ► and the processors in their TVs are garbage

00:34:37 ◼   ► compared to what's been in even like the last five years

00:34:40 ◼   ► of Apple TVs, 'cause they don't have to be,

00:34:42 ◼   ► particularly fancy and Apple chips are really good.

00:34:44 ◼   ► But the reality of any television connected boxes,

00:34:49 ◼   ► you spend most of your time watching video

00:34:52 ◼   ► and not interacting with the Apple,

00:34:53 ◼   ► like you have to go through a bunch of things,

00:34:55 ◼   ► navigate, navigate, navigate,

00:34:56 ◼   ► find anything you wanna watch, then you hit play.

00:34:58 ◼   ► And then you're just watching it for 30 minutes,

00:35:01 ◼   ► an hour, two hours, like however long.

00:35:03 ◼   ► Most of your time is spent,

00:35:04 ◼   ► like the performance of that stuff that happened

00:35:07 ◼   ► in the hopefully one minute to two and a half minutes,

00:35:11 ◼   ► doesn't really factor in that much.

00:35:13 ◼   ► So that's why it always seems like it's overpowered.

00:35:16 ◼   ► Do I need a amazing low power processor

00:35:19 ◼   ► to get me to the point where I press one button

00:35:21 ◼   ► and then watch something for an hour?

00:35:23 ◼   ► No, it's kind of silly, right?

00:35:25 ◼   ► That said, there's two things to say.

00:35:27 ◼   ► Menus being faster is a thing,

00:35:29 ◼   ► and I think you will notice it if you upgrade

00:35:31 ◼   ► from a HD one to the U.S. Apple TV 4K,

00:35:34 ◼   ► you'll be like, oh, look, the menus are a little bit faster

00:35:36 ◼   ► and apps launch faster, maybe you'll notice that, right?

00:35:39 ◼   ► But here's the thing that really kills me with the,

00:35:41 ◼   ► 'cause I always get the newest Apple TV,

00:35:43 ◼   ► I have the newest one on my TV.

00:35:44 ◼   ► Even though that's faster, depending on the app,

00:35:49 ◼   ► this is not Apple's fault, it is the fault mostly

00:35:51 ◼   ► of the people who make these apps,

00:35:52 ◼   ► but depending on the app, they are often so terrible

00:35:56 ◼   ► that basic functionality simply does not work

00:36:00 ◼   ► and is maddening.

00:36:01 ◼   ► Let's give some examples.

00:36:02 ◼   ► I want to watch something on a streaming app.

00:36:04 ◼   ► You launch a streaming app,

00:36:05 ◼   ► Setting aside all the stuff I've complained about where you can't even find the thing

00:36:08 ◼   ► you were watching before because that's just like, you know, intentional design to make

00:36:11 ◼   ► you see new stuff.

00:36:12 ◼   ► You know, see past episodes where we talked about it, go to hypercritical.co, read about

00:36:16 ◼   ► it, whatever.

00:36:17 ◼   ► Right?

00:36:18 ◼   ► Setting that aside, you find the thing you want to watch, you hit play, okay?

00:36:21 ◼   ► So first of all, very often in major streaming services, there'll be some kind of bug where

00:36:27 ◼   ► you hit play and it will just spin for a while and not play anything and you'll have to like

00:36:31 ◼   ► force quit the app and come back and play.

00:36:33 ◼   ► Right?

00:36:34 ◼   ► and I don't mean like one out of 10 times or whatever,

00:36:36 ◼   ► but if that ever happens to someone who grew up

00:36:38 ◼   ► with television that always worked,

00:36:39 ◼   ► it is incredibly frustrating.

00:36:41 ◼   ► You know, Prime Video, I hit play on a show,

00:36:44 ◼   ► you're showing me a spinner, is it ever gonna play?

00:36:47 ◼   ► Double tap the thing, flick up, force quit the app,

00:36:50 ◼   ► the Amazon Prime Video app, relaunch it, hit play,

00:36:52 ◼   ► oh, now it's working.

00:36:53 ◼   ► That should never happen, and it does.

00:36:55 ◼   ► I fancy your Apple Hee Hee, doesn't stop that from happening.

00:36:57 ◼   ► Next one, oh, a little button comes up, it says skip intro.

00:37:00 ◼   ► Oh, I've seen this intro a many times,

00:37:02 ◼   ► I want to hit skip and skip intro.

00:37:04 ◼   ► All right, what do I do?

00:37:04 ◼   ► Like the button that comes in lower right part

00:37:06 ◼   ► of the screen, it's a skip intro.

00:37:07 ◼   ► It's a big white button, right?

00:37:09 ◼   ► You would think, and this makes me hit the Apple TV remote.

00:37:13 ◼   ► All I have to do is press the action button

00:37:16 ◼   ► on the Apple TV remote, which on the current one

00:37:18 ◼   ► is like the little touch patty thing

00:37:20 ◼   ► that's inside the thing.

00:37:21 ◼   ► Every time I do this, it makes me think,

00:37:23 ◼   ► should I go into settings and turn off the touch pad

00:37:25 ◼   ► entirely because I just want to press that button.

00:37:27 ◼   ► I want to press that button so I can do skip intro.

00:37:30 ◼   ► But if you press that button and your thumb moves a little bit when you press it because you're not perfectly up and down,

00:37:34 ◼   ► it's like, "Oh, I think you're swiping."

00:37:36 ◼   ► It does some crazy thing that you didn't want it to do.

00:37:39 ◼   ► But say I'm successful. I have it on a flat level surface, I come in from above like a robot and go,

00:37:44 ◼   ► "Okay, I'm gonna press the center button. This is not a swipe, I swear, I'm just trying to press."

00:37:47 ◼   ► And I press it, the skip intro button.

00:37:50 ◼   ► What I want it to do is start playing the show after the intro.

00:37:52 ◼   ► But sometimes it'll freak out and start playing the show in the middle, or stop playing the show entirely and show a spinner.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Again, that should never happen, but it happens enough for me to get angry about it.

00:38:02 ◼   ► Does skip intro not work anymore?

00:38:04 ◼   ► All right, frequently, my whole family now, when I go to do skip intro on certain streaming

00:38:09 ◼   ► apps, they say, "No, don't do it.

00:38:10 ◼   ► We know it won't work.

00:38:11 ◼   ► Just try to skip past it."

00:38:13 ◼   ► Don't use skip intro, but skip past it with 30-second skip.

00:38:16 ◼   ► How do you do that on the Apple TV remote?

00:38:18 ◼   ► Oh, you hit the right side of the circular pad.

00:38:20 ◼   ► Click, click, be careful you don't swipe because that's the jog dial, and be careful you don't

00:38:23 ◼   ► touch the touch dial in the middle.

00:38:25 ◼   ► Click, click, click, 30-second skip.

00:38:27 ◼   ► "Oh, spinner blacked out, now it's not showing anything anymore, force quit the app."

00:38:32 ◼   ► The faster Apple TV doesn't help at all with any of this.

00:38:36 ◼   ► It is not a performance problem.

00:38:38 ◼   ► They're just plain buggy and crappy and don't work.

00:38:43 ◼   ► Sometimes it's the Hulu app, sometimes it's the Amazon Prime app.

00:38:47 ◼   ► I forgot what the other one that I was having a play about.

00:38:50 ◼   ► I don't even notice half the time which apps I'm watching things on, especially if you

00:38:52 ◼   ► go through the up next thing, which is the Apple Player, which is a little bit different.

00:38:56 ◼   ► But anyway, those problems will happen to you on your old Apple TV and on your new one,

00:39:02 ◼   ► and no matter how good Apple makes this hardware, it will keep happening until these app makers

00:39:07 ◼   ► fix their stupid applications and make them perform the basic functionality correctly.

00:39:12 ◼   ► It shouldn't be acceptable that my entire family yells at me not to ever hit skip intro

00:39:15 ◼   ► because they know from bitter experience that what that means is another 15 minutes of watching

00:39:19 ◼   ► me futz around with the thing to get it to play again.

00:39:21 ◼   ► Like literally, you have to force quit the app, come back in, go back to your profile,

00:39:25 ◼   ► the program again, find the episode number, never freaking remember what episode was on

00:39:28 ◼   ► of course, and find the correct episode, hit play on it again, don't touch skip intro,

00:39:32 ◼   ► we'll just sit through the intro because they're so sick of me trying it twice thinking skip

00:39:36 ◼   ► intro should work right?

00:39:37 ◼   ► It's not a complicated feature but ugh, it's maddening.

00:39:40 ◼   ► Anyway, this is all to say if you're comfortable with your fourth gen 2017 Apple TV, there's

00:39:48 ◼   ► not much reason for you to upgrade unless you're playing games on your TV.

00:39:51 ◼   ► It will be faster, it will be better,

00:39:52 ◼   ► eventually you should probably upgrade,

00:39:54 ◼   ► but most of the frustrations about this product

00:39:56 ◼   ► had nothing to do with the performance of the hardware

00:39:58 ◼   ► and everything to do with the quality of the software.

00:40:01 ◼   ► - Yep, no argument here.

00:40:03 ◼   ► And then tell me, Jon, about the differences

00:40:04 ◼   ► between the previous generation Apple TV 4K

00:40:07 ◼   ► and the current one, please.

00:40:08 ◼   ► - Speaking of hardware, now that I've said

00:40:10 ◼   ► that it doesn't matter, it is interesting

00:40:12 ◼   ► from an academic perspective to consider

00:40:14 ◼   ► what's inside these little Apple TV puck thingies.

00:40:17 ◼   ► We've talked in the past about how the Apple TV

00:40:20 ◼   ► was kind of expensive and yes it was higher performance than everything else but geez

00:40:24 ◼   ► it's so much money and these things come built into your television and you can get like

00:40:27 ◼   ► one of those little you know streaming sticks for so much less from a tons of other companies

00:40:31 ◼   ► why would anybody ever want an Apple TV it's not a great buy the new ones as we said came

00:40:36 ◼   ► out and they are cheaper they made an even cheaper one without Ethernet and without a

00:40:39 ◼   ► thread radio which is probably not the right one to buy but still even the other one is

00:40:43 ◼   ► cheaper and doesn't have a fan so you know thumbs up Apple you're getting closer to a

00:40:47 ◼   ► reasonable price.

00:40:49 ◼   ► But this YouTube video that we'll put in the show notes shows what it looks like on the

00:40:52 ◼   ► insides of these things.

00:40:54 ◼   ► It's comparing the second generation Apple TV 4K, which I think is the one that just

00:40:58 ◼   ► got replaced, and then the current generation, the third generation Apple TV 4K.

00:41:03 ◼   ► What do they look like on the inside?

00:41:04 ◼   ► And when you look in the previous one, the previous Apple TV 4K, you can see how over-engineered

00:41:12 ◼   ► it is inside there.

00:41:14 ◼   ► It was more expensive and you can see the money inside it.

00:41:18 ◼   ► It wasn't just like, "Oh, they just charge you, it has higher margins."

00:41:21 ◼   ► This thing has giant solid metal plates sandwiching all the innards and they have the little raised

00:41:28 ◼   ► metal things around the sets of chips so they're RF sealed into these little metal cages because

00:41:34 ◼   ► the solid metal sandwich plates, machined metal sandwich plates, clamp the motherboard

00:41:40 ◼   ► and press down on the little metal things surrounding each thing so every set of chips

00:41:45 ◼   ► and analog electronics is isolated from the connectors, isolated from the HDMI and everything.

00:41:50 ◼   ► It is so over engineered, and by the way this one has the fan underneath it, it is so incredibly

00:41:54 ◼   ► over engineered.

00:41:55 ◼   ► It's like, not if you gave someone an unlimited budget, but if you basically said, "You have

00:42:00 ◼   ► way more money than you need to do this.

00:42:02 ◼   ► What can you do with it?"

00:42:03 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, I'm gonna machine some metal plates.

00:42:06 ◼   ► I'm gonna radio isolate these things like nobody's seeing it.

00:42:08 ◼   ► I know you'd do this cheaper, but I'm not.

00:42:09 ◼   ► I'm gonna do it the most expensive way possible.

00:42:11 ◼   ► Incredibly over engineered

00:42:13 ◼   ► and actually really cool and fascinating.

00:42:15 ◼   ► Then if you look at the current one,

00:42:17 ◼   ► it is like a piece of electronics.

00:42:18 ◼   ► It's got a motherboard, it's hanging out in there,

00:42:20 ◼   ► it's got a little RF shielding made with like a little,

00:42:22 ◼   ► you know, metal foil thing that covers stuff up

00:42:25 ◼   ► like a sticker with a plastic thing.

00:42:26 ◼   ► It looks like every other piece of electronics you've seen.

00:42:29 ◼   ► You can see where the money came from.

00:42:31 ◼   ► How did they save money on this?

00:42:32 ◼   ► It is obvious, like this is way cheaper to make,

00:42:34 ◼   ► there are no more machine metal plates.

00:42:36 ◼   ► The RF shielding is the minimum needed

00:42:38 ◼   ► to pass FCC, whatever things.

00:42:42 ◼   ► The person who was measuring it says,

00:42:43 ◼   ► "Hey, on the new one, you can see the signal

00:42:45 ◼   ► "from the various chips and power supply

00:42:47 ◼   ► "showing up on the HDMI output."

00:42:49 ◼   ► It doesn't mean that it's bad or broken or wrong

00:42:52 ◼   ► or incorrect or it's not going to work.

00:42:54 ◼   ► It is within spec of what is required to send an HDMI signal

00:42:59 ◼   ► and to pass all the RF shielding stuff.

00:43:02 ◼   ► It's fine, but it is not over-engineered

00:43:05 ◼   ► like the other one used to be.

00:43:06 ◼   ► So you wanted an Apple TV that costs less money,

00:43:08 ◼   ► you got one that is cheaper in both senses of the word.

00:43:12 ◼   ► - And then Christopher Sardegna brings to our attention

00:43:17 ◼   ► by writing, "In episode 520, you discussed

00:43:20 ◼   ► "an iCloud Photos backup solution.

00:43:21 ◼   ► "It worked great.

00:43:22 ◼   ► "On that topic, I built an open source tool

00:43:24 ◼   ► "to do something similar for iMessage.

00:43:26 ◼   ► "Now this came across my transom at some point

00:43:29 ◼   ► "in the last few weeks, and I haven't had a chance

00:43:30 ◼   ► "to play with it myself, but this looks really,

00:43:33 ◼   ► "really slick at a glance.

00:43:34 ◼   ► Have either of you had a chance to play with this?

00:43:36 ◼   ► - I was trying to think of why I would want

00:43:38 ◼   ► to export my messages, aside from like not trusting Apple

00:43:41 ◼   ► to keep them safe and someday they get corrupted

00:43:42 ◼   ► and I wanted to save them 'cause it's like

00:43:44 ◼   ► an archive of fun stuff.

00:43:45 ◼   ► And this is an area where, another area involving online

00:43:49 ◼   ► stuff for Google, Stomp Solve or Apple,

00:43:51 ◼   ► because Google makes it so easy to get any of your data

00:43:55 ◼   ► out of Google in a reasonable-ish format

00:43:58 ◼   ► whenever you want.

00:43:59 ◼   ► They even make it so you can schedule it

00:44:00 ◼   ► to come to do exports on a regular interval.

00:44:03 ◼   ► If you go to takeout.google.com, Google Takeout is the branded name for it.

00:44:09 ◼   ► You can get everything you want out of Google.

00:44:10 ◼   ► We've talked about it in the past.

00:44:11 ◼   ► I export my Gmail on a regular basis just in case my Google account ever dies or I lose

00:44:17 ◼   ► everything, I will have all my email messages.

00:44:20 ◼   ► And the stuff that's in Gmail, half of that is stuff that I imported into Gmail when I

00:44:23 ◼   ► signed up for it.

00:44:24 ◼   ► So I've got email and Gmail going back to the 90s.

00:44:28 ◼   ► But Apple is not so great in that.

00:44:30 ◼   ► The notes application, I would love to export that to backup.

00:44:33 ◼   ► There's a bunch of apps we've talked about on the show of like, here's how you can export

00:44:36 ◼   ► your notes.

00:44:37 ◼   ► Why is that not built in Apple?

00:44:38 ◼   ► Like why is there not a way for every Apple repository of data for me to export it somewhere

00:44:44 ◼   ► else offline to have my own copy of it?

00:44:47 ◼   ► The Apple way is you should never have to worry about that.

00:44:49 ◼   ► That's a techie concern.

00:44:51 ◼   ► Don't worry your little head about it.

00:44:52 ◼   ► We'll take care of your data.

00:44:54 ◼   ► Exporting stuff like that is a techie thing that we think people should not have to worry

00:44:57 ◼   ► about.

00:44:58 ◼   ► Some of us from bitter experience, it is a thing you kind of have to worry about.

00:45:01 ◼   ► So if you're paranoid and you really, really want to preserve all those messages, Apple

00:45:05 ◼   ► doesn't help you there.

00:45:06 ◼   ► You've got your iCloud backup where in theory everything is stored, but if something goes

00:45:09 ◼   ► wrong it gets corrupted or you lose your Apple ID.

00:45:12 ◼   ► There's so many things that can go wrong where the Apple copy of your data is inaccessible.

00:45:18 ◼   ► So if you really want those messages, you need some way to export it and Apple is not

00:45:21 ◼   ► forthcoming with the way.

00:45:22 ◼   ► So all these people make these things that just use the official API to get your data

00:45:25 ◼   ► out and put it in some format.

00:45:27 ◼   ► I haven't used it because I don't consider my messages

00:45:30 ◼   ► to be particularly precious.

00:45:32 ◼   ► I don't do that much tech messaging.

00:45:33 ◼   ► They're kind of ephemeral to me.

00:45:35 ◼   ► But if you feel differently, you can try this out.

00:45:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, I haven't tried it either,

00:45:38 ◼   ► but if I had a need for this kind of thing,

00:45:41 ◼   ► I absolutely would.

00:45:42 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm mostly with Jon.

00:45:44 ◼   ► I wish these formats were easily exportable

00:45:48 ◼   ► and importable back into their apps.

00:45:51 ◼   ► I wish there were some better, more usable

00:45:55 ◼   ► file system representation of them,

00:45:57 ◼   ► so that they could take part easily

00:45:59 ◼   ► in other backup formats and other file management schemes

00:46:02 ◼   ► that we might need some time or wanna use.

00:46:04 ◼   ► But that's not the world we live in right now,

00:46:06 ◼   ► unfortunately, with these things.

00:46:08 ◼   ► - I'm vaguely, do you remember,

00:46:09 ◼   ► didn't ADM have like an HTML-based format

00:46:11 ◼   ► where you could like export your conversations

00:46:13 ◼   ► and it would show like little,

00:46:15 ◼   ► I think maybe it used HTML tables or something

00:46:16 ◼   ► or maybe it was CSS,

00:46:17 ◼   ► but it would show like little speech bubbles,

00:46:19 ◼   ► but that was all HTML, like the speech bubbles were HTML.

00:46:21 ◼   ► It was so overwrought and silly,

00:46:24 ◼   ► but you could open these HTML files

00:46:25 ◼   ► and be like, oh, this is just like a big, long scrolling

00:46:28 ◼   ► thing that looks just like my conversation did in ADM.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Those days are long gone.

00:46:33 ◼   ► Yeah, and that was even--

00:46:34 ◼   ► I mean, I think even iChat might have done that.

00:46:37 ◼   ► And it wasn't something you had to choose to do.

00:46:39 ◼   ► You could just find those files on disk.

00:46:41 ◼   ► They were just in a folder somewhere under Library,

00:46:43 ◼   ► and you could just find them and copy them and read them

00:46:45 ◼   ► and do whatever you wanted with them.

00:46:47 ◼   ► And now everything is more complicated,

00:46:48 ◼   ► and it's based on databases, and it's

00:46:50 ◼   ► based on cloud syncing stuff.

00:46:52 ◼   ► And it's encrypted and all the--

00:46:54 ◼   ► - It's a vast improvement over having all your messages

00:46:56 ◼   ► in plain text in like a library application support folder

00:47:00 ◼   ► on your Mac.

00:47:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:02 ◼   ► - We had some breaking news a week ago or so,

00:47:06 ◼   ► so I guess it's not really breaking anymore, is it?

00:47:08 ◼   ► Anyway. - Broken news.

00:47:09 ◼   ► - Broken news, some broken news.

00:47:11 ◼   ► The plate was broken.

00:47:12 ◼   ► Apple, this is on MacRumors,

00:47:15 ◼   ► Apple dropping product design chief role team to report

00:47:18 ◼   ► to chief operating officer Jeff Williams.

00:47:21 ◼   ► Reading from the article,

00:47:22 ◼   ► Apple does not plan to name a replacement

00:47:24 ◼   ► for Vice President of Industrial Design, Evans Hanke,

00:47:26 ◼   ► when she departs the company in the coming months,

00:47:28 ◼   ► according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

00:47:30 ◼   ► Instead, the report claims that Apple's product design chief,

00:47:32 ◼   ► excuse me, product design team, will report directly

00:47:36 ◼   ► to the company's operations chief, Jeff Williams.

00:47:39 ◼   ► So there is no longer a king or queen of the design group.

00:47:44 ◼   ► They are all mere serfs to Jeff Williams, or something.

00:47:49 ◼   ► - You know, it's always very difficult to try

00:47:51 ◼   ► to analyze Apple executive and higher up staff shake ups like this because we don't really

00:47:59 ◼   ► have a good idea from the outside of the details of what everybody does.

00:48:04 ◼   ► We have kind of this, the public version of this which is incomplete, often times wrong,

00:48:10 ◼   ► but at least very incomplete.

00:48:12 ◼   ► And so we don't really know what's going on here.

00:48:19 ◼   ► The big things that we don't know really are,

00:48:22 ◼   ► first of all, I think I'm upset about this

00:48:26 ◼   ► because since Evan Tanki took over,

00:48:29 ◼   ► I've been very satisfied with the better balance

00:48:33 ◼   ► of functionality versus good design

00:48:35 ◼   ► that Apple's products have had.

00:48:37 ◼   ► - HomePod accepted.

00:48:38 ◼   ► - And that goes right to, I'm sure,

00:48:41 ◼   ► at least part of Evan Tanki's work.

00:48:43 ◼   ► So I am kind of upset to lose her.

00:48:47 ◼   ► But when we look at what they're doing here,

00:48:48 ◼   ► there's two big unknowns to me, which is,

00:48:51 ◼   ► how good was everyone else who was directly under her,

00:48:53 ◼   ► who is now just gonna have one less level

00:48:55 ◼   ► of management between them?

00:48:56 ◼   ► 'Cause I think she reported to Jeff Williams before,

00:49:00 ◼   ► I think, so this is just gonna take away

00:49:02 ◼   ► one level of that management.

00:49:04 ◼   ► So big unknown number one is,

00:49:06 ◼   ► what do all those next level people,

00:49:08 ◼   ► like how good are they, and how much of the work

00:49:10 ◼   ► was theirs versus hers, et cetera?

00:49:12 ◼   ► And then the second question, which I think

00:49:14 ◼   ► is one of the biggest unknowns, to the outside world at least

00:49:17 ◼   ► is what the heck is Jeff Williams about?

00:49:20 ◼   ► What is he good at?

00:49:22 ◼   ► What is his personality?

00:49:23 ◼   ► What kind of product sensibility does he have?

00:49:25 ◼   ► I don't think any of us really know from the outside.

00:49:28 ◼   ► He shows himself like a brick wall of drab boringness

00:49:32 ◼   ► to the rest of the world.

00:49:33 ◼   ► So we can't really tell, does he have good product sense?

00:49:38 ◼   ► I mean, first of all, I hope so,

00:49:39 ◼   ► because Tim Cook keeps giving him

00:49:40 ◼   ► more product responsibilities,

00:49:42 ◼   ► and he's clearly, as we've mentioned before,

00:49:44 ◼   ► the Tim Cook hot spare.

00:49:46 ◼   ► So he's clearly the next CEO in line

00:49:51 ◼   ► unless something major changes.

00:49:53 ◼   ► So I wish I knew more about Jeff Williams.

00:49:56 ◼   ► I wish I had a better idea of the kind of things

00:49:58 ◼   ► he's good at, the kind of things he's not good at.

00:50:00 ◼   ► We have some of that visibility with Tim Cook.

00:50:04 ◼   ► But Jeff Williams has been placed in a lot of,

00:50:08 ◼   ► in quite a significant role in leading product development.

00:50:14 ◼   ► And I just, I don't think we know enough

00:50:17 ◼   ► about whether that's a good thing or not.

00:50:19 ◼   ► - Evan's Henke was the replacement for Johnny Ive, right?

00:50:22 ◼   ► - Pretty much, yeah.

00:50:23 ◼   ► Like not quite in title, but I think in role, I think yes.

00:50:26 ◼   ► - But on the hardware only, right?

00:50:28 ◼   ► Because-- - Yes.

00:50:29 ◼   ► Yeah, software is still our wonderful friend, Alan Dye.

00:50:31 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:50:32 ◼   ► So here's the thing with this change, right?

00:50:35 ◼   ► And I don't know the details of this as well,

00:50:37 ◼   ► but a couple things.

00:50:38 ◼   ► With people high up in a company like this,

00:50:42 ◼   ► It's very easy to fall into the trap of having figureheads for things, right, from the outside.

00:50:50 ◼   ► You have to do it.

00:50:51 ◼   ► It's basically from a PR perspective, you can't—you need a human face that represents

00:50:56 ◼   ► a larger whole.

00:50:57 ◼   ► So very often people like Johnny Ive or the head of any department or a big vice president,

00:51:00 ◼   ► they become the face of whatever it is.

00:51:02 ◼   ► And people will—the backlash against them will be like, "Well, that person doesn't

00:51:07 ◼   ► do everything.

00:51:08 ◼   ► They're just the public face of it.

00:51:09 ◼   ► They're just the figurehead."

00:51:12 ◼   ► And in many respects, of course, that's true.

00:51:14 ◼   ► Once you reach that level, you're no longer actually doing

00:51:17 ◼   ► the work really anymore.

00:51:18 ◼   ► You have people under you who are doing the work.

00:51:19 ◼   ► And sometimes you have people under you

00:51:20 ◼   ► and people under them who are doing the actual work.

00:51:22 ◼   ► That's hierarchy.

00:51:23 ◼   ► But you need someone to be the face of that department.

00:51:26 ◼   ► And in many respects, Johnny Ive was the face of that,

00:51:28 ◼   ► the whole industrial design group,

00:51:31 ◼   ► and eventually all of user interface at Apple,

00:51:33 ◼   ► long after he had stopped individually designing

00:51:36 ◼   ► any particular thing himself, right?

00:51:38 ◼   ► But the flip side of that is,

00:51:40 ◼   ► Even if you never literally design anything,

00:51:43 ◼   ► like if you never come up with an idea,

00:51:45 ◼   ► you never make, you know, you don't design anything,

00:51:48 ◼   ► you as the head of Apple's hardware design

00:51:51 ◼   ► can have, and almost inevitably will have,

00:51:54 ◼   ► a tremendous influence over what happens beneath you

00:51:57 ◼   ► simply because in any company,

00:51:59 ◼   ► you're always trying to sort of please the boss

00:52:01 ◼   ► to get a good promotion, to do well on your job.

00:52:03 ◼   ► It's one of the ways you measure your progress.

00:52:05 ◼   ► And if you know your boss has a particular taste,

00:52:07 ◼   ► like Johnny Ive doesn't like a lot of ports or buttons and like simplicity, you know,

00:52:12 ◼   ► don't come up with a design that your boss isn't going to like.

00:52:17 ◼   ► And even if the boss never does anything, once you show it to them, you present it to

00:52:22 ◼   ► the wider group or you have a review with them or whatever, they're going to have opinions

00:52:26 ◼   ► on it.

00:52:27 ◼   ► They're going to say, even if it's just I like that, I don't like that, thumbs up, thumbs

00:52:29 ◼   ► down, it's going to influence what everybody does underneath them because it's impossible,

00:52:34 ◼   ► especially in a field of opinionated design,

00:52:36 ◼   ► not to know what does Evans Hankey like

00:52:38 ◼   ► and what does Evans Hankey not like.

00:52:39 ◼   ► What does Johnny like and what does Johnny not like?

00:52:42 ◼   ► And without lifting a pen,

00:52:43 ◼   ► without designing a single thing,

00:52:45 ◼   ► without drawing a single curve,

00:52:46 ◼   ► without even coming up with any ideas

00:52:47 ◼   ► of like I think the next iPhone

00:52:49 ◼   ► should look like an Oreo cookie,

00:52:50 ◼   ► without even that level of high level stuff

00:52:51 ◼   ► where you just say that and leave for two months

00:52:53 ◼   ► and come back and expect the iPhone 4 to be there, right?

00:52:56 ◼   ► And not that I'm saying that's what Johnny Ive did

00:52:57 ◼   ► at that point, I think he was much more involved then.

00:52:58 ◼   ► But what I'm saying is even though you don't do any work,

00:53:01 ◼   ► Who's in charge has a tremendous influence.

00:53:04 ◼   ► That's why I think this change,

00:53:06 ◼   ► and I don't know anything about Evan Tanki

00:53:08 ◼   ► and whether I liked what she's done or not or whatever,

00:53:11 ◼   ► but I think changes like this can potentially

00:53:15 ◼   ► be a good kick in the pants

00:53:18 ◼   ► because no longer having a single person

00:53:23 ◼   ► as the head of all of this,

00:53:26 ◼   ► frees up all the people who used to report to Evan Tanki

00:53:30 ◼   ► to come up with designs that Evan Tanki might not have liked,

00:53:35 ◼   ► but there are still good.

00:53:37 ◼   ► The wild card here is what Marker was saying,

00:53:39 ◼   ► okay, but is Jeff Williams the type of person

00:53:41 ◼   ► who's gonna swoop in and be like,

00:53:43 ◼   ► I'm the new Evan Tanki,

00:53:44 ◼   ► and I'm gonna give thumbs up and thumbs down.

00:53:45 ◼   ► Or what I think probably more likely

00:53:48 ◼   ► is Jeff Williams kind of like Tim Cook

00:53:50 ◼   ► and kind of knows this is not my strength.

00:53:52 ◼   ► I'm not an industrial designer,

00:53:54 ◼   ► so I should mostly take a hands-off attitude

00:53:56 ◼   ► and more or less trust the people who report to me

00:53:59 ◼   ► in the design department that they know what they're doing.

00:54:02 ◼   ► So when they come and present to Jeff Williams,

00:54:04 ◼   ► if they ever even do that,

00:54:05 ◼   ► here's the design of the new Apple whatever,

00:54:08 ◼   ► as long as he doesn't visually hate it,

00:54:10 ◼   ► as long as they make a convincing argument,

00:54:12 ◼   ► he doesn't have as many, not preconceived notions,

00:54:15 ◼   ► but he doesn't have like the taste that a designer

00:54:18 ◼   ► like Evans Hanke would have to say,

00:54:20 ◼   ► "I would prefer it be like this."

00:54:21 ◼   ► And I'm not saying the boss always imposes their taste

00:54:23 ◼   ► on all their subordinates

00:54:24 ◼   ► and just makes everything a monoculture,

00:54:26 ◼   ► like that no good boss does that,

00:54:27 ◼   ► But inevitably, that is a factor.

00:54:29 ◼   ► So my feeling is that Jeff Williams is gonna be,

00:54:32 ◼   ► gonna have way less strong design opinions

00:54:34 ◼   ► than Evan Tangy because he's literally not a designer,

00:54:37 ◼   ► no matter what product opinions he has,

00:54:39 ◼   ► hoping that he will realize these are not his strengths

00:54:41 ◼   ► and be more hands-off.

00:54:42 ◼   ► And what that will not allow to happen is

00:54:45 ◼   ► people with good ideas who previously could,

00:54:47 ◼   ► people with good ideas that couldn't get past Johnny

00:54:49 ◼   ► and maybe still couldn't get past Evan's,

00:54:51 ◼   ► if they can just make a convincing case to Jeff Williams

00:54:54 ◼   ► that it's a good idea, then that will give us new products

00:54:57 ◼   ► we previously couldn't get. Now, that's not sustainable long term. It is good to have

00:55:01 ◼   ► someone who's in charge of the whole department and have that person sort of be an actual

00:55:04 ◼   ► designer who, you know, and not Jeff Williams, not the COO, right? This is not, I'm not in

00:55:09 ◼   ► favor of the org chart where your industrial design group has five people who report to

00:55:13 ◼   ► the COO. That's not great. But this little break here, until they, until they can, until

00:55:18 ◼   ► someone rises from the ranks to become the new Evans Hangier, until they hire someone

00:55:21 ◼   ► from the outside or whatever, I think this is an opportunity for us to get designs that

00:55:27 ◼   ► wouldn't otherwise see because I still feel like there are designers inside Apple who

00:55:33 ◼   ► would like to make products that are better in the ways that we can play about in all

00:55:36 ◼   ► these shows.

00:55:37 ◼   ► An example of like, "Hey, if you put ports on your laptops, people will like them."

00:55:39 ◼   ► We had to scream that for like eight years before personnel changes essentially allowed

00:55:43 ◼   ► that to happen, right?

00:55:45 ◼   ► Maybe that's also true of the HomePod or, you know, we were just talking about that

00:55:49 ◼   ► Sony setup with all the different speakers.

00:55:51 ◼   ► HomePod could be that product if the people designing it wanted it to go in that direction

00:55:57 ◼   ► and weren't obsessed with it, "Oh, it just has to have one power cord and it can't be

00:56:00 ◼   ► a piece of AV equipment and it has to be standalone software-powered Siri, whatever, blah, blah,

00:56:06 ◼   ► blah."

00:56:07 ◼   ► Some of that is product design and what product are we making, not how is that product designed,

00:56:12 ◼   ► but that is all kind of combined together to some degree.

00:56:15 ◼   ► So what I'm hoping is that we will see, in what I hope is a not too long break, maybe

00:56:21 ◼   ► a few years here, we will see some new and more interesting designs be able to come out

00:56:25 ◼   ► of the second tier of designers.

00:56:28 ◼   ► Because I know there's got to be good ideas in there that we're definitely not getting

00:56:31 ◼   ► past Johnny and maybe not even getting past Evans.

00:56:34 ◼   ► So I am mostly not upset about this.

00:56:38 ◼   ► Of course the caveat there is, but I don't have any idea what's going on in the company.

00:56:41 ◼   ► Maybe Evans Hanke was the best designer they had and now all they have are a bunch of people

00:56:44 ◼   ► who are not as confident in their abilities, and the next time they're asked to do something

00:56:49 ◼   ► big, they're going to be put in a situation where they're over their heads and they would

00:56:54 ◼   ► benefit from having someone more experienced like Evans Hankey to sort of guide the ship.

00:56:58 ◼   ► That can definitely happen too, but I literally couldn't name a single person other than Johnny

00:57:02 ◼   ► Ivan and Evan Hankey in the industrial design group, so I have no idea what the second level,

00:57:06 ◼   ► third level, or fourth level of that staff looks like. I just hope it's a bunch of good

00:57:10 ◼   ► people.

00:57:11 ◼   ► I think the other thing that gives me pause about this is what are the political implications of it?

00:57:19 ◼   ► You know, because like you were saying a minute ago, if I'm one of 20 or whatever designers

00:57:25 ◼   ► and I want to be the new king, I'm going to do maybe not, you know,

00:57:30 ◼   ► maybe I'm not gonna stab people in the back because I'm not a jerk, but I'm gonna do whatever I can to be

00:57:34 ◼   ► the star to Jeff and look like, oh, I'm the one that's indispensable. I'm the one with all the clever ideas.

00:57:41 ◼   ► And that can create-- that can be used for good or evil, right?

00:57:45 ◼   ► Like, it can be used to really try to get some incredible work

00:57:50 ◼   ► out of this group of 20, let's say.

00:57:52 ◼   ► But it can also be kind of a poison pill,

00:57:55 ◼   ► and it can really sour, you know, these relationships that,

00:57:58 ◼   ► from everything we've read,

00:58:00 ◼   ► at least when Johnny was still around,

00:58:01 ◼   ► allegedly these designers were all super-duper tight with each other.

00:58:05 ◼   ► And I don't know, I worry a little bit that it's gonna get

00:58:08 ◼   ► a little bit figuratively violent as the situation tries to figure out who's going to be the new king or queen.

00:58:15 ◼   ► And, I don't know, like Marco I think had said originally, it's hard for us to know from the outside

00:58:21 ◼   ► what the political sphere and what really day-to-day looks like on the inside, especially with industrial design,

00:58:29 ◼   ► which seems to be one of the most tight-lipped groups within Apple as it is.

00:58:34 ◼   ► So it's tough for me to say, I don't think I love this.

00:58:37 ◼   ► I think maybe I'm too traditional,

00:58:39 ◼   ► and I like having one directly responsible individual,

00:58:44 ◼   ► to use an Apple as a one DRI, in charge of everything.

00:58:48 ◼   ► And I don't love the idea of Jeff Williams

00:58:50 ◼   ► having to split his time.

00:58:51 ◼   ► I mean, just look at, I mean, John,

00:58:53 ◼   ► you're the only one who's been a people manager

00:58:54 ◼   ► amongst the three of us,

00:58:55 ◼   ► but having 10 or 20 direct reports,

00:58:59 ◼   ► when you're anyone, is not easy, from what I understand.

00:59:02 ◼   ► and when you're already as busy

00:59:04 ◼   ► as the chief operating officer

00:59:06 ◼   ► of one of the biggest, most profitable companies

00:59:08 ◼   ► in the world, I can't imagine he has an overabundance

00:59:10 ◼   ► of free time to be doing day-to-day

00:59:12 ◼   ► people management sort of things.

00:59:13 ◼   ► So I don't know, I don't love this,

00:59:16 ◼   ► but I don't think it's necessarily a problem right now.

00:59:20 ◼   ► I just, I think it would give me a lot of worry

00:59:22 ◼   ► if it remained this way in a year or two.

00:59:24 ◼   ► But we'll see what happens.

00:59:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's why I have to think

00:59:26 ◼   ► that CEO is just a placeholder,

00:59:28 ◼   ► 'cause this happens a lot in org charts.

00:59:29 ◼   ► If someone important leaves and they're having trouble

00:59:31 ◼   ► replacing them, there's a placeholder person who for a while has too many direct reports

00:59:35 ◼   ► and that's why I have to imagine that Jeff Williams is going to be necessarily more hands-off

00:59:39 ◼   ► because he just doesn't have, forget about the expertise, he doesn't have the time to

00:59:42 ◼   ► be dealing with.

00:59:43 ◼   ► I don't know how many new reports he's getting but his fan-out is probably not appropriately

00:59:47 ◼   ► balanced at this point and so they're probably going to rebalance it.

00:59:50 ◼   ► They could rebalance it by putting two or three lieutenants in charge and maybe for

00:59:53 ◼   ► all we know, again we don't know what the org chart, for all we know he only has two

00:59:56 ◼   ► or three lieutenants and it's not even that bad, right?

00:59:58 ◼   ► But if he has an extra 10 people reporting to him, it's too many.

01:00:02 ◼   ► And so they're going to want the fan out to be one or two or three.

01:00:06 ◼   ► In terms of the infighting thing, I have to feel like the Evans Hanke and Johnny Ive job

01:00:11 ◼   ► is exactly the type of job that no designers want.

01:00:14 ◼   ► Like when you reach that level, especially in a company like Apple, it takes a certain

01:00:18 ◼   ► kind of person to actually want that job.

01:00:20 ◼   ► More often it's like, I'd rather just be a designer.

01:00:24 ◼   ► I mean, part of it comes to the glory of like, and now you're the figurehead.

01:00:26 ◼   ► And now when the new Apple car comes out and everybody loves it, you can say, "That was

01:00:30 ◼   ► my thing.

01:00:31 ◼   ► I'm the head of design and let me talk about the design in the video."

01:00:36 ◼   ► There is some glory that comes with that, but boy, it's so difficult to operate at that

01:00:42 ◼   ► level of a company.

01:00:43 ◼   ► So much politics is involved, so much complexity in terms of how do I tell whether I'm doing

01:00:49 ◼   ► a good job or not.

01:00:51 ◼   ► If there are products that succeed or fail in the market, how much of that is attributable

01:00:54 ◼   ► to design?

01:00:56 ◼   ► In many ways, Johnny Ive was protected by his accomplishments.

01:01:00 ◼   ► I'm the iPod iMac, you know, like you may have heard of my work.

01:01:04 ◼   ► I'm kind of well known.

01:01:05 ◼   ► I did a pretty good job.

01:01:06 ◼   ► These products are pretty successful.

01:01:08 ◼   ► And that protected him for a long time, probably too long, from taking his fair share of the

01:01:16 ◼   ► blame for products that didn't succeed as well in the market because he's Johnny freaking

01:01:19 ◼   ► Ive.

01:01:20 ◼   ► Evans Hanke did not have that much protection, but I think made better products towards the

01:01:24 ◼   ► end there than Johnny, which is great, but a new person, like who wants to raise their

01:01:29 ◼   ► hand and say, "I'll be the person who takes all the blame, even though I have very little

01:01:33 ◼   ► to do with the products that come out just because I'm the head of the design and they

01:01:35 ◼   ► come out with this Thinker product."

01:01:38 ◼   ► Even like the HomePod, which I was just saying, that's an example of older thinking.

01:01:42 ◼   ► Maybe Evans-Hange had nothing to do with that and that design was already in the can before

01:01:48 ◼   ► she took over, right?

01:01:50 ◼   ► That happens, you know, products come out later than you expect or whatever, but if

01:01:53 ◼   ► If everyone hated the new HomePod or something, we'd blame her because she's the head, or

01:01:58 ◼   ► she would be the face of that product.

01:02:00 ◼   ► The same way we would be like, "Oh, the Johnny Ive designed," despite the fact, again, that

01:02:03 ◼   ► it's not him designing it.

01:02:04 ◼   ► He was probably coming in for a meeting once a month towards the end there.

01:02:07 ◼   ► But he was the face, and he was the name.

01:02:09 ◼   ► When we complained about something about an Apple product, and it had to do with hardware

01:02:14 ◼   ► design, his name would be in our mouths.

01:02:16 ◼   ► Who wants that?

01:02:17 ◼   ► That's a tough gig.

01:02:21 ◼   ► In my experience in big companies, I've seen more times than I can count, not just myself,

01:02:26 ◼   ► but other people, where there's a position like, "Oh, who wants to go up to the next

01:02:31 ◼   ► level to be whatever, the senior senior or whatever?

01:02:34 ◼   ► Who wants to go to the VP level?"

01:02:37 ◼   ► You would see all the best people, the people who were the best at the jobs that they had,

01:02:41 ◼   ► they did not want to become a vice president of whatever they're doing because they wanted

01:02:44 ◼   ► to continue to do their job.

01:02:47 ◼   ► Sometimes they get frustrated and be like, "Oh, this vice president's a jerk.

01:02:50 ◼   ► I need to be in charge so I can stop people from being a jerk and sometimes they would

01:02:52 ◼   ► get that job and say, I hate being a vice president.

01:02:55 ◼   ► It is so different, so different to be that high in such a big company than it is to do

01:03:01 ◼   ► the actual work.

01:03:02 ◼   ► Even just one level below, still you can kind of define your own job and do the work.

01:03:08 ◼   ► But once you're at the Johnny Ive level, you can't be there like machining stuff and sketching

01:03:13 ◼   ► things.

01:03:14 ◼   ► If you are, your boss is going to tell you you're not using your time appropriately.

01:03:17 ◼   ► That's not what we're paying you for anymore.

01:03:19 ◼   ► It's a different set of skills.

01:03:21 ◼   ► You need to lead this entire organization.

01:03:24 ◼   ► And leading them doesn't just mean looking at what they do and giving thumbs up and thumbs

01:03:27 ◼   ► down.

01:03:28 ◼   ► That's not leadership, right?

01:03:29 ◼   ► You need to lead them and it's like, "How do I do that?

01:03:30 ◼   ► I'm a designer."

01:03:31 ◼   ► That's why people don't want that job.

01:03:33 ◼   ► And why is Evan Tanky leaving?

01:03:35 ◼   ► Maybe because she's got enough money and wants to do different things or whatever.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:03:38 ◼   ► That's always, at the top level of a company like Apple, that's always the thing I'm thinking

01:03:41 ◼   ► is, "Oh, someone left who was a senior executive of Apple for a while?

01:03:45 ◼   ► They probably don't have to work anymore."

01:03:47 ◼   ► I mean, not that I'm counting other people's money, but if you're a long tenured Apple

01:03:51 ◼   ► employee or even if you're not long tenured, these jobs pay a lot of money.

01:03:55 ◼   ► Setting aside RSUs or whatever people are getting, they make a lot of money when you

01:04:00 ◼   ► work for Apple and you report to somebody who reports to Tim Cook.

01:04:04 ◼   ► That's a good salary, setting aside all the other benefits you get.

01:04:07 ◼   ► So when someone's leaving, good for them.

01:04:09 ◼   ► Who says you have to be ... From all the things we've heard, working inside Apple is a tough

01:04:13 ◼   ► gig.

01:04:14 ◼   ► It's a high-pressure situation.

01:04:15 ◼   ► A lot of eyes are on you.

01:04:17 ◼   ► work hard, they work long hours, if someone wants to take a job that is less stressful

01:04:22 ◼   ► or just not work anymore after putting in many years at Apple, I say good for them.

01:04:26 ◼   ► And I don't read anything into it like they've lost faith in Apple or are leaving or they

01:04:30 ◼   ► got kicked out of the company or whatever, even though that happens occasionally.

01:04:33 ◼   ► But in this case, like I said, I'm looking forward to when the cat's away, the mice will

01:04:39 ◼   ► play for a little while until they can fix their org chart and somehow get things back

01:04:44 ◼   ► into a normal shape.

01:04:45 ◼   ► All right, do you need me for this next part, or should I just take a nap?

01:04:49 ◼   ► I think I do need you for it.

01:04:51 ◼   ► There's a report, "Apple is unlikely to launch a new Mac Studio as it instead focuses on

01:04:56 ◼   ► the Mac Pro."

01:04:58 ◼   ► That means that, hypothetically, the Mac Studio might be one and done, just like the iMac

01:05:02 ◼   ► Pro, which makes me sad because I really dig the idea of the Mac Studio, even though I

01:05:07 ◼   ► don't have one.

01:05:08 ◼   ► But anyway, this is reported on 9to5Mac.

01:05:10 ◼   ► They're quoting Mark Gurman, who wrote, "I wouldn't anticipate the introduction of a

01:05:14 ◼   ► Mac Studio in the near future.

01:05:15 ◼   ► The upcoming Mac Pro is very similar in functionality

01:05:17 ◼   ► to the Mac Studio and adds the M2 Ultra chip

01:05:19 ◼   ► rather than the M1 Ultra.

01:05:21 ◼   ► So it wouldn't make sense for Apple to offer

01:05:23 ◼   ► an M2 Ultra Mac Studio and an M2 Ultra Mac Pro

01:05:26 ◼   ► at the same time.

01:05:27 ◼   ► It's more likely that Apple either never updates

01:05:29 ◼   ► the Mac Studio or holds off until the M3 or M4 generation.

01:05:32 ◼   ► At that point, the company may be able

01:05:33 ◼   ► to better differentiate the Mac Studio from the Mac Pro.

01:05:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know what to think about this yet

01:05:39 ◼   ► because it's hard to really say

01:05:43 ◼   ► whether the Mac Studio needs to continue to exist

01:05:45 ◼   ► before we know pretty much anything about the Mac Pro.

01:05:49 ◼   ► It is very possible that this product

01:05:51 ◼   ► was basically just a bridge product

01:05:53 ◼   ► to get to the Mac Pro age, which wasn't ready yet,

01:05:57 ◼   ► but this seems like it fits a pretty good slot

01:05:59 ◼   ► in the lineup.

01:06:00 ◼   ► The only thing that I think would make this report

01:06:05 ◼   ► make more sense is if you also take into account

01:06:08 ◼   ► Germin's previous reporting that basically

01:06:10 ◼   ► the really big processor Mac Pro was canceled

01:06:13 ◼   ► delayed more, and so maybe Apple's original plan was that the Mac Pro would be able to

01:06:22 ◼   ► have a higher ceiling or have more capabilities than what they're gonna end up being able

01:06:27 ◼   ► to ship with it.

01:06:28 ◼   ► And so maybe when they originally were designing this lineup and planning it all out, maybe

01:06:33 ◼   ► the Mac Studio made sense as a permanent member of the lineup because the Mac Pro was gonna

01:06:38 ◼   ► be even higher above it, and then as they were developing the Mac Pro, maybe they realized

01:06:42 ◼   ► or decided it's not worth going that high

01:06:44 ◼   ► or we can't easily go that high

01:06:45 ◼   ► or there's some major downsides or whatever.

01:06:47 ◼   ► And so then once the Mac Pro is released

01:06:49 ◼   ► closer to what the Mac Studio does and capabilities,

01:06:52 ◼   ► then I could see the Mac Studio

01:06:53 ◼   ► not being as necessary anymore.

01:06:56 ◼   ► It's also possible Mark Gurman's info is just wrong.

01:06:58 ◼   ► And that's, you know, like whenever we get rumors like this,

01:07:02 ◼   ► you know, there's definitely some confirmation bias

01:07:04 ◼   ► or whatever it is, like when you remember

01:07:06 ◼   ► all the correct things that the psychic says

01:07:08 ◼   ► and you disregard all the incorrect things.

01:07:11 ◼   ► when you look back in retrospect

01:07:13 ◼   ► at what the rumor mill predicts

01:07:15 ◼   ► versus what actually comes out or what actually happens,

01:07:18 ◼   ► oftentimes there's pretty large mismatches there.

01:07:21 ◼   ► So it's really hard to tell,

01:07:22 ◼   ► but I think if the Mac Pro ends up being

01:07:27 ◼   ► fairly accessible at its low end,

01:07:31 ◼   ► and that's a pretty big if, I think,

01:07:33 ◼   ► but again, we don't know any of those product yet.

01:07:35 ◼   ► So if the Mac Pro basically ends up being a Mac Studio

01:07:39 ◼   ► in a larger case with card slots,

01:07:42 ◼   ► well that's not gonna be that different.

01:07:44 ◼   ► It will be substantially larger probably

01:07:46 ◼   ► and it will be somewhat more expensive,

01:07:49 ◼   ► but the Mac Studio's already pretty expensive.

01:07:52 ◼   ► Without seeing the Mac Pro though,

01:07:54 ◼   ► it's really hard to know whether the Mac Studio

01:07:56 ◼   ► will be necessary anymore once the Pro comes out.

01:08:00 ◼   ► - Kind of reminded of the iPad Pros

01:08:03 ◼   ► that recently got updated but not really updated

01:08:06 ◼   ► and all the gnashing of teeth about that

01:08:08 ◼   ► and the various people from inside Apple, you know,

01:08:11 ◼   ► conveying what it's like,

01:08:13 ◼   ► kind of gave a lot of support to the theory

01:08:17 ◼   ► that it just takes a lot of money

01:08:20 ◼   ► to revise hardware products.

01:08:22 ◼   ► And there wasn't enough time, money, and resources,

01:08:25 ◼   ► not just money, but like time, money, resources, people,

01:08:27 ◼   ► like all the things that would go into making

01:08:29 ◼   ► an all new iPad Pro.

01:08:31 ◼   ► It just wasn't in the cards for it to happen this year,

01:08:34 ◼   ► so soon after they were previously revised.

01:08:37 ◼   ► And that gets into what I think is the kernel of truth

01:08:40 ◼   ► in this rumor, guess, speculation, or whatever,

01:08:43 ◼   ► is that the amount of resources Apple is going to put

01:08:47 ◼   ► into a product line are proportional to how many they sell

01:08:49 ◼   ► and how much money they make.

01:08:51 ◼   ► And once you get into desktop Macs,

01:08:53 ◼   ► as this article that we'll link in the show

01:08:54 ◼   ► and it's from Jason Sell reiterates,

01:08:56 ◼   ► you're a fraction of a fraction of a fraction.

01:08:58 ◼   ► The Mac is like less than Apple gets in services.

01:09:01 ◼   ► It's like if the Mac is like less than the iPad

01:09:02 ◼   ► or maybe it's close to it.

01:09:03 ◼   ► Like you're already in a fraction of the pie.

01:09:05 ◼   ► And then like 75% of those are laptops.

01:09:09 ◼   ► So now you're into a fraction of that fraction.

01:09:10 ◼   ► And then of the desktops,

01:09:12 ◼   ► how many people are getting the Mac studio?

01:09:14 ◼   ► It's so few machines, right?

01:09:17 ◼   ► And it doesn't mean they shouldn't make them.

01:09:18 ◼   ► But what it does mean is when it comes time

01:09:20 ◼   ► to allocate resources,

01:09:21 ◼   ► whether that be people, time or money,

01:09:23 ◼   ► does Apple want to allocate the resources

01:09:26 ◼   ► to update the Mac studio every single year

01:09:29 ◼   ► like they do the MacBook Pros

01:09:30 ◼   ► or like we think they should in the MacBook Pros?

01:09:33 ◼   ► No, it doesn't really,

01:09:35 ◼   ► Like if you have to prioritize, you're going to put that money into the new line of MacBook

01:09:38 ◼   ► Pros, right?

01:09:40 ◼   ► Or the new line of 24-inch iMacs for that matter.

01:09:42 ◼   ► The ones that they sell more of, that are more popular products that fill more people's

01:09:47 ◼   ► needs.

01:09:48 ◼   ► So the idea that the Mac Studio would skip the M2 and come out with the M3 makes perfect

01:09:53 ◼   ► sense to me.

01:09:54 ◼   ► Not because that's what I prefer to happen, or not because Apple couldn't put an M2 in

01:09:58 ◼   ► it, but just because when they're allocating the resources to do that, whether it's manufacturing

01:10:02 ◼   ► resources, design resources, or just plain money to make an all new design, because again,

01:10:08 ◼   ► when you make the all new design, it takes a while for that to become cheaper to manufacture,

01:10:12 ◼   ► it takes a while for you to get all the kinks worked out of it or whatever.

01:10:17 ◼   ► It's more difficult to do that for a narrow interest computer like the Mac Studio.

01:10:21 ◼   ► So yeah, if it skips the M2 and goes to the M3, I think that will be reasonable.

01:10:25 ◼   ► Obviously the most extreme case of that is the Mac Pro, which it seems like, and again

01:10:29 ◼   ► And this is the article from Jason Stellan Mac,

01:10:32 ◼   ► no, it's six colors?

01:10:33 ◼   ► Or is it a Mac World article?

01:10:34 ◼   ► - I thought it was Mac World.

01:10:36 ◼   ► - Anyway, his title is,

01:10:37 ◼   ► "Is Apple Making a Mac Pro Nobody Wants?"

01:10:39 ◼   ► And he sort of goes through the recent history

01:10:40 ◼   ► of the Mac Pro, which is,

01:10:41 ◼   ► "There's a big problem with the Mac Pro,

01:10:43 ◼   ► "but don't worry, Apple's gonna fix it.

01:10:45 ◼   ► "Wait a long time, wait a long time, wait a long time.

01:10:47 ◼   ► "Yay, Apple fixed it.

01:10:49 ◼   ► "There's a big problem with the Mac Pro,

01:10:52 ◼   ► "but don't worry, Apple says they're gonna fix it.

01:10:54 ◼   ► "Wait a long time, wait a..."

01:10:55 ◼   ► Like the gap between the updates to the Mac Pro is huge.

01:10:58 ◼   ► And that gap is proportional to how few people

01:11:04 ◼   ► are buying Mac Pros.

01:11:05 ◼   ► Back in the heyday of the Mac Pro or the Power Mac G5,

01:11:09 ◼   ► way more people were buying that computer,

01:11:11 ◼   ► because the laptops couldn't touch it in performance.

01:11:13 ◼   ► All the quote unquote "pros," anyone

01:11:15 ◼   ► who uses Xcode all day, anybody who

01:11:17 ◼   ► does anything remotely strenuous with their computer back

01:11:19 ◼   ► in the day, you had to get a desktop

01:11:22 ◼   ► if you wanted decent performance.

01:11:23 ◼   ► Because the laptops could not come close to the performance

01:11:26 ◼   ► of the desktops.

01:11:27 ◼   ► And so if you looked at that, what does the Mac sales

01:11:30 ◼   ► pie wedge look like back at the time of the Power Mac G5?

01:11:34 ◼   ► It was still mostly laptops probably

01:11:36 ◼   ► or becoming mostly laptops, but it's nothing like it is today.

01:11:39 ◼   ► And there was a perceivable difference.

01:11:40 ◼   ► All the people who wanted desk forms got desktops.

01:11:42 ◼   ► That's not true anymore.

01:11:44 ◼   ► And so the number of people who need the biggest computer

01:11:46 ◼   ► that Apple makes has got to be so small.

01:11:49 ◼   ► And then to top it off, Apple tends

01:11:51 ◼   ► to invest huge amounts of money in the Mac Pro, even

01:11:56 ◼   ► the trash can.

01:11:57 ◼   ► No other computer they made look like that.

01:11:59 ◼   ► It was totally different from manufacturing technique

01:12:01 ◼   ► to construction to shape, like everything about it was like,

01:12:05 ◼   ► this is not a warmed over existing desktop Mac,

01:12:08 ◼   ► it is a totally new thing, right?

01:12:10 ◼   ► And that turned out not to be a great design.

01:12:12 ◼   ► But look at the original cheese grater,

01:12:14 ◼   ► the Power Mac G5 was, was it the first one

01:12:16 ◼   ► that came out with that case, I think?

01:12:18 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:12:19 ◼   ► - You know, it looked like a big heat exchanger, right?

01:12:21 ◼   ► They made that case and they put the money

01:12:23 ◼   ► in to manufacture the case and they used that case for years.

01:12:26 ◼   ► it survived a processor transition.

01:12:28 ◼   ► Why?

01:12:29 ◼   ► Because it cost so much money to design

01:12:31 ◼   ► and manufacture that case, and yeah, they changed it

01:12:33 ◼   ► so that like the fans, all the insides were different

01:12:35 ◼   ► and the fan holes in the back were different

01:12:36 ◼   ► and where the ports were were different.

01:12:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was gonna say, like the Mac Pro,

01:12:39 ◼   ► like the Intel version was like radically different inside

01:12:42 ◼   ► than the PowerPC version.

01:12:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, and even within Intel,

01:12:45 ◼   ► if you just look at the back of the machines,

01:12:46 ◼   ► you can identify them like where are the fans?

01:12:48 ◼   ► How big are the fans?

01:12:49 ◼   ► How are they positioned?

01:12:50 ◼   ► The ports in the front, but in general,

01:12:51 ◼   ► they didn't say clean sheet,

01:12:53 ◼   ► we're making a new tower computer.

01:12:54 ◼   ► They're like, we're gonna write,

01:12:55 ◼   ► we put the money into this thing,

01:12:56 ◼   ► we're gonna ride this tower design,

01:12:58 ◼   ► because they gotta, you know,

01:12:59 ◼   ► they had to make their money back.

01:13:00 ◼   ► We're not selling that many of these things,

01:13:01 ◼   ► eventually selling fewer and fewer.

01:13:03 ◼   ► We don't, it's not in,

01:13:05 ◼   ► it's not in, when we're allocating resources,

01:13:07 ◼   ► we can't say, okay, design team,

01:13:09 ◼   ► you get to design an all new Mac Pro,

01:13:11 ◼   ► 'cause it's a new year.

01:13:11 ◼   ► It's like, no, you get to take the existing Mac Pro

01:13:14 ◼   ► and give it a facelift.

01:13:15 ◼   ► And even if all the insides have to change,

01:13:17 ◼   ► we're still not giving you the time of resources

01:13:19 ◼   ► to design an entirely new external case.

01:13:21 ◼   ► This happened again when the 2019 Mac Pro came out.

01:13:24 ◼   ► we talked about when we first saw this machine.

01:13:26 ◼   ► We said, look at this case.

01:13:27 ◼   ► This is a complicated, weird, fancy,

01:13:31 ◼   ► it's the fanciest Mac Pro case I think they've ever made.

01:13:34 ◼   ► In terms of how much does this stupid piece of weird,

01:13:37 ◼   ► machined out aluminum cost to make

01:13:38 ◼   ► versus the tube versus the cheese grater,

01:13:40 ◼   ► this has gotta be the most expensive,

01:13:41 ◼   ► most complicated case they've ever made.

01:13:44 ◼   ► This is not a one-off.

01:13:46 ◼   ► - Well, I think if you include

01:13:48 ◼   ► unnecessary internal complexity,

01:13:51 ◼   ► I think you have a hard sell between the liquid cooled G5

01:13:55 ◼   ► and the trash can.

01:13:58 ◼   ► - That liquid cooling was farmed out

01:14:00 ◼   ► and it was not very good.

01:14:01 ◼   ► I'm saying the case, just like the actual

01:14:04 ◼   ► physical shell case thing.

01:14:06 ◼   ► This case, it has to be the most expensive.

01:14:08 ◼   ► It's certainly the most machining steps.

01:14:09 ◼   ► It's the most complicated.

01:14:11 ◼   ► And like, so they made this computer.

01:14:15 ◼   ► They're not going to make a new full-size tower case,

01:14:18 ◼   ► I don't think.

01:14:19 ◼   ► If they do, I will just fall off my chair

01:14:21 ◼   ► because we said when this thing came out,

01:14:24 ◼   ► this is gonna be the case design

01:14:25 ◼   ► for full-size tower computers from Apple

01:14:27 ◼   ► until they stop making them or until many years pass,

01:14:31 ◼   ► because that's just the way they do things,

01:14:32 ◼   ► especially this is such an expensive case.

01:14:34 ◼   ► So this gets into the MacStudio question.

01:14:37 ◼   ► If it is a tower computer,

01:14:42 ◼   ► this is the case they're gonna use,

01:14:43 ◼   ► 'cause this is the one they have.

01:14:45 ◼   ► Like they can't justify the resources

01:14:48 ◼   ► to redesign the iPad Pro,

01:14:49 ◼   ► which sells way more copies than the Mac Pro,

01:14:52 ◼   ► there is no way a 2019 full-size tower

01:14:55 ◼   ► is going to be followed by a 2024 full-size tower

01:14:59 ◼   ► that is all new.

01:15:00 ◼   ► That's just not gonna happen.

01:15:01 ◼   ► If it's a full-size tower, this is the case.

01:15:04 ◼   ► Although I think it would be cool

01:15:05 ◼   ► if they made it like space gray or black or whatever.

01:15:06 ◼   ► And yeah, you can move the ports

01:15:08 ◼   ► and yeah, you can tweak it or whatever,

01:15:09 ◼   ► but this is the case, right?

01:15:10 ◼   ► But maybe they don't make a full-size tower.

01:15:12 ◼   ► Maybe it's just a bigger Mac studio, right?

01:15:15 ◼   ► And this gets to what Jason was talking about

01:15:17 ◼   ► and what we've talked about many, many times in the past.

01:15:19 ◼   ► If it's just a Mac Studio with slots,

01:15:22 ◼   ► like as they said in the movie "Contact,"

01:15:24 ◼   ► it seems like an awful waste of space.

01:15:27 ◼   ► Can you take the guts of a Mac Studio,

01:15:29 ◼   ► put it inside this massive case,

01:15:31 ◼   ► and it's like hiding in the corner, basically,

01:15:33 ◼   ► and then you have slots, I guess,

01:15:35 ◼   ► on a giant motherboard that you're gonna put what in,

01:15:37 ◼   ► and that's that question about the GPUs,

01:15:39 ◼   ► we don't wanna rehash all that, right?

01:15:40 ◼   ► It's weird and mysterious.

01:15:43 ◼   ► If the high-end one is canceled with the four things,

01:15:45 ◼   ► because you'd need the cooling for that in here,

01:15:47 ◼   ► and it's really just an M2 Ultra,

01:15:49 ◼   ► but with slots, I don't understand,

01:15:51 ◼   ► like the case is too big.

01:15:53 ◼   ► It's like the M1 Mac Mini was,

01:15:55 ◼   ► where it looks like the insides are too small

01:15:57 ◼   ► for the case you're putting them in.

01:15:59 ◼   ► And so if that's the case,

01:16:02 ◼   ► there's still room for the Mac Studio,

01:16:03 ◼   ► because no one is cross-shopping a Mac Studio

01:16:06 ◼   ► and this stupid thing.

01:16:07 ◼   ► It's just physically space alone.

01:16:09 ◼   ► It's not like, well, I could have this little thing

01:16:11 ◼   ► that sits on my desk that looks like a tall Mac Mini,

01:16:14 ◼   ► or I could have something the size of a truck

01:16:16 ◼   ► I don't even know where the hell I'm gonna put it.

01:16:17 ◼   ► They're not cross, it's just too, it's huge.

01:16:20 ◼   ► It's gigantic and what you'd have to be saying,

01:16:23 ◼   ► okay, it's gigantic but in exchange for that gigantic thing,

01:16:25 ◼   ► I get what?

01:16:26 ◼   ► And if it's just like a MacStudio inside there,

01:16:29 ◼   ► I don't, you know, that's a product that nobody wants,

01:16:31 ◼   ► that's what Jason's talking about,

01:16:32 ◼   ► I don't understand it, right?

01:16:33 ◼   ► So if the Mac Pro is in this case,

01:16:37 ◼   ► they have to keep making,

01:16:38 ◼   ► they either have to keep making that MacStudio

01:16:40 ◼   ► or they have to bring back the iMacPro

01:16:41 ◼   ► because there is that hole in the lineup

01:16:43 ◼   ► and the MacStudio now fills it.

01:16:44 ◼   ► The Mac Studio and the Apple Studio display

01:16:46 ◼   ► is the deconstructed iMac, the high-end big screen iMac.

01:16:51 ◼   ► If they don't wanna make that,

01:16:52 ◼   ► they can bring back a big screen iMac,

01:16:54 ◼   ► but they can't go Mac Mini, nothing in the lineup,

01:16:58 ◼   ► thing the size of a truck.

01:17:00 ◼   ► That's too much of a gap, right?

01:17:02 ◼   ► That doesn't mean the Mac Studio's

01:17:03 ◼   ► gonna get updated constantly.

01:17:05 ◼   ► If the Mac Studio skips a couple generations,

01:17:07 ◼   ► that is more appropriate,

01:17:09 ◼   ► because the Mac Pro skips like seven generations.

01:17:11 ◼   ► It's like the whole rest of the Mac line

01:17:12 ◼   ► comes and goes like in one of those time lapses

01:17:14 ◼   ► where you see seasons pass and the Mac Pro's just sitting there unchanged.

01:17:19 ◼   ► And so the Mac Studio will be like that but with fewer seasons passing in the montage.

01:17:23 ◼   ► And I think that is, even though I'm disappointed by it, I think it is not surprising and probably

01:17:29 ◼   ► an appropriate use of Apple's resources.

01:17:32 ◼   ► And this is the kind of thing with Apple.

01:17:33 ◼   ► They're so secretive, they never tell us what's happening, blah, blah, blah.

01:17:35 ◼   ► It was nice that they told us they're fixing the Mac Pro so it would let people hold on

01:17:38 ◼   ► and not spend all those years screaming.

01:17:41 ◼   ► We just spent those years waiting, right?

01:17:42 ◼   ► at least we knew it was happening.

01:17:44 ◼   ► If they had a cadence and told us the cadence,

01:17:46 ◼   ► like, you know, they could spin it however they want,

01:17:49 ◼   ► the Mac Studio, since it's a high-end machine

01:17:52 ◼   ► and blah, blah, blah, will be updated every two years.

01:17:54 ◼   ► Just tell us that ahead of time

01:17:56 ◼   ► so we're not wondering if they're canceling the Mac Studio,

01:17:58 ◼   ► are they gonna make an M3 one, blah, blah, blah.

01:18:00 ◼   ► Just let us know.

01:18:01 ◼   ► Like, if you just tell us the cadence,

01:18:03 ◼   ► you should expect a new Mac Pro every five years.

01:18:05 ◼   ► Just let us know, don't let them make a Mac Pro

01:18:07 ◼   ► and then have a saying,

01:18:08 ◼   ► are they ever gonna make another one?

01:18:09 ◼   ► We don't know, like, 'cause they never wanna tell us.

01:18:11 ◼   ► And they, especially with the high-end desktop Macs,

01:18:14 ◼   ► they haven't had long enough to establish

01:18:16 ◼   ► any kind of pattern because they're too erratic.

01:18:18 ◼   ► It's always, it's perpetually in crisis.

01:18:21 ◼   ► So it's not like they can say,

01:18:22 ◼   ► "Well, we won't tell you the pattern

01:18:23 ◼   ► "'cause we can't promise that far in advance,

01:18:24 ◼   ► "but you can surmise it by looking."

01:18:26 ◼   ► No, we can't, it's chaos.

01:18:27 ◼   ► Like we have no idea what's going on over there.

01:18:29 ◼   ► The Mac Studio came out of nowhere.

01:18:31 ◼   ► Why is there no big iMac?

01:18:32 ◼   ► Where the hell is the Mac Pro?

01:18:33 ◼   ► We don't know, so you have to tell us,

01:18:35 ◼   ► especially for high-end people wanna know,

01:18:37 ◼   ► should we buy, you know, we love the Mac Studio.

01:18:39 ◼   ► It's perfect for our environment,

01:18:41 ◼   ► The Mac Mini is a little bit too slow, we like the extra RAM we can put in the Mac Studio.

01:18:45 ◼   ► We want to buy them, and when the new one comes out we want to refresh our whole studio

01:18:48 ◼   ► with them.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Apple, tell us when you're going to come out with them.

01:18:50 ◼   ► Okay, we're going to come out with them every other year, so it's going to be M1, M3, M5,

01:18:54 ◼   ► you know, like, just tell us!

01:18:56 ◼   ► And that would be fine, but Apple does not and probably cannot make those kind of promises

01:19:01 ◼   ► that far in advance, so we're kind of left wondering, and that's why you get stories

01:19:04 ◼   ► like this one where Germin's like, "You know what?

01:19:06 ◼   ► I think the Mac Studio, just like, they're not going to update it anymore, it's going

01:19:09 ◼   ► to be a really long time.

01:19:11 ◼   ► It makes people afraid for like, "Oh, it's my favorite computer.

01:19:14 ◼   ► I love it in Mac Studio.

01:19:15 ◼   ► I hope they make another one."

01:19:16 ◼   ► It's like the mini iPhone.

01:19:18 ◼   ► They don't tell us and people have various spheres and sometimes those spheres are founded,

01:19:21 ◼   ► but in this case, something from Apple would help.

01:19:26 ◼   ► Either put out the M3 one and then there'll be some relief or tell us that, I mean, I

01:19:32 ◼   ► don't know how they say this, vocalize the idea that high-end computers that don't sell

01:19:36 ◼   ► a lot get updated at less frequency.

01:19:38 ◼   ► We all kind of know that in the abstract, but without any communication it makes everybody

01:19:43 ◼   ► who buys those computers fear that as soon as they buy one, the thing they just bought

01:19:48 ◼   ► is now an evolutionary dead end and there's not going to be any more of them.

01:19:51 ◼   ► That's never a good feeling.

01:19:53 ◼   ► You're just ready to buy a new computer, aren't you?

01:19:55 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:19:56 ◼   ► I mean, if they put an M2 Ultra in a case the size of my thing, I'm going to be like

01:20:01 ◼   ► pfft.

01:20:02 ◼   ► Especially if there's no third-party GPU support, why would I buy that?

01:20:05 ◼   ► I would start looking at studios and minis,

01:20:08 ◼   ► and then I would look back at my computer

01:20:09 ◼   ► and I'd say, I'll just keep you for 10 years.

01:20:10 ◼   ► We'll see how it happens.

01:20:12 ◼   ► Once they stop supporting,

01:20:13 ◼   ► once the latest Mac OS doesn't run on Intel,

01:20:16 ◼   ► it's really gonna put the pressure on me.

01:20:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's gonna be the end of it,

01:20:18 ◼   ► 'cause you won't be able to just hack a driver here or there

01:20:22 ◼   ► and make it work, that's gonna be a pretty hard stop,

01:20:24 ◼   ► I think, so.

01:20:25 ◼   ► - I mean, so what'll actually happen is,

01:20:27 ◼   ► so that'll be a problem for me

01:20:29 ◼   ► because I do have my dinky little apps

01:20:30 ◼   ► and I do need to be able to build them

01:20:32 ◼   ► and run the latest OS, and I'll probably wanna do that,

01:20:35 ◼   ► and then I'll start using other people's computers

01:20:37 ◼   ► in the family, which will all be ARM,

01:20:38 ◼   ► they already all are ARM, I'll be using my wife's

01:20:40 ◼   ► MacStudio, I'll use one of my kids' ARM laptops,

01:20:42 ◼   ► and they'll be like, "Hey, get off my computer,

01:20:43 ◼   ► "you've been using Xcode on my computer,"

01:20:45 ◼   ► and that's what's gonna force me to do it.

01:20:46 ◼   ► Not the fact that I can't run the latest OS

01:20:49 ◼   ► on my Intel one, but the fact that I'm hogging

01:20:51 ◼   ► other people's ARM-based computers and they don't like it.

01:20:54 ◼   ► - And if only there were some other ARM-based Mac

01:20:56 ◼   ► you could get that was not just the absolute

01:20:59 ◼   ► top of the line one. (laughs)

01:21:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, imagine that.

01:21:03 ◼   ► - You know, if they fixed the fans in the MacStudio,

01:21:05 ◼   ► be a lot more attractive to me, I have to say.

01:21:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, and it's funny,

01:21:08 ◼   ► like you know, the fan thing is odd,

01:21:10 ◼   ► and I wonder if, you know, if you think back to like,

01:21:13 ◼   ► you know, what I was saying earlier,

01:21:14 ◼   ► like why the Max Studio existed,

01:21:16 ◼   ► was it always intended to be like a temporary,

01:21:19 ◼   ► like you know, holding spot in the lineup,

01:21:21 ◼   ► waiting for the big Mac Pro,

01:21:22 ◼   ► or was it intended to always be there,

01:21:24 ◼   ► and to have the Mac Pro go, you know,

01:21:25 ◼   ► substantially above it?

01:21:27 ◼   ► I wonder if it was maybe designed in a rush,

01:21:31 ◼   ► like maybe the Mac Pro was not,

01:21:33 ◼   ► was not hitting their schedule that they originally planned,

01:21:36 ◼   ► and so they kind of made this as a rush job,

01:21:38 ◼   ► and maybe that's one of the reasons why it has

01:21:40 ◼   ► such weird engineering in certain ways, like the fans.

01:21:43 ◼   ► - So thinking back to what we talked about before,

01:21:46 ◼   ► about the Apple TV 4K and watching the old versus the new,

01:21:48 ◼   ► if you've seen the inside of the Mac Studio,

01:21:51 ◼   ► that does not look like a rush job.

01:21:53 ◼   ► Like that is so, it is much more towards

01:21:55 ◼   ► the over-engineered, custom, beautiful on the inside design.

01:21:58 ◼   ► That is not a rush, right?

01:22:00 ◼   ► Combined with the fact that the quote-unquote

01:22:03 ◼   ► half-size Mac Pro rumors have been around forever.

01:22:06 ◼   ► Now, was that referring to the Mac Studio?

01:22:08 ◼   ► We don't know, 'cause these rumors are so old.

01:22:10 ◼   ► But remember, even while we were,

01:22:13 ◼   ► I guess as soon as the 2019 one came out

01:22:15 ◼   ► and the ARM transition happened, the rumor was,

01:22:18 ◼   ► "Hey, the next Mac Pro, they're gonna have two Mac Pros.

01:22:20 ◼   ► "One's gonna be a half-size one

01:22:21 ◼   ► "and one's gonna be full-size."

01:22:23 ◼   ► And it has never been clear to me

01:22:25 ◼   ► whether the Mac Studio is the half-size one

01:22:27 ◼   ► or the half-size rumor is totally false

01:22:29 ◼   ► or they really had a half-size one.

01:22:30 ◼   ► But when I look at the Mac Studio,

01:22:33 ◼   ► If it was the half-size one, that rumor is super old,

01:22:36 ◼   ► and that means the product wasn't rushed.

01:22:37 ◼   ► And then I look at the inside of it,

01:22:38 ◼   ► and I'm like, this does not look like a rush job.

01:22:40 ◼   ► This looks like a computer that somebody

01:22:42 ◼   ► sweated over every detail.

01:22:44 ◼   ► Like, it's too good looking on the inside,

01:22:46 ◼   ► and it's too perfect.

01:22:48 ◼   ► And the fact that the cooler has low-diameter fans

01:22:51 ◼   ► that spin too fast and make a weird droning noise

01:22:54 ◼   ► just seems like a design miss.

01:22:56 ◼   ► Like, I think they made the computer they wanted to make,

01:22:59 ◼   ► and they just didn't think about the idea

01:23:00 ◼   ► that all their other computers are so damn silent

01:23:03 ◼   ► that now this is the noisy one.

01:23:04 ◼   ► Again, it's dead silent when it's bolted under my desk,

01:23:06 ◼   ► but it's noisy enough and annoying enough.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Like it's not just the volume,

01:23:11 ◼   ► if you put like a decibel meter by it,

01:23:12 ◼   ► it's the nature of the sound, the frequency of the sound.

01:23:15 ◼   ► It is annoying enough

01:23:17 ◼   ► that people don't want it on their desk.

01:23:18 ◼   ► And so it got banished.

01:23:19 ◼   ► And banished under the desk, it's totally silent and fine,

01:23:22 ◼   ► which is why I would consider getting one.

01:23:24 ◼   ► But I think it's a miss when all your other computers

01:23:26 ◼   ► either have no fan or are dead silent,

01:23:28 ◼   ► including the Mac Mini,

01:23:30 ◼   ► which you think would be

01:23:30 ◼   ► a more thermally challenging situation,

01:23:32 ◼   ► especially when it's got the same processor,

01:23:34 ◼   ► like in the M1 Max Mac Mini, which we now have,

01:23:38 ◼   ► compared to the M1 Max Max Studio.

01:23:40 ◼   ► From all the reviews I've seen,

01:23:42 ◼   ► 'cause I haven't seen an M1 Max Max Mini,

01:23:45 ◼   ► but from all the reviews, the M1 Max Mac Mini is quiet.

01:23:48 ◼   ► It's practically silent.

01:23:49 ◼   ► And the Max Studio, they've got that same drone

01:23:52 ◼   ► that they all have, which is just,

01:23:55 ◼   ► I think it's just a design miss.

01:23:56 ◼   ► So I feel like, you know, that's not,

01:23:59 ◼   ► I mean, maybe the cooler was rushed,

01:24:01 ◼   ► but like everything else about it,

01:24:02 ◼   ► the motherboard, the case, everything about it looks just

01:24:05 ◼   ► not as over engineered as Apple TV,

01:24:06 ◼   ► but pretty close if you've looked at a teardown.

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