The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Big week. Yeah, well I assume you're referring to the fact that you managed to stay alive

00:00:04 ◼   ► for one more World Series Game, I assume that's the relevant... Ohh... by, by the time this

00:00:09 ◼   ► episode's out that'll, that'll either be... It'll be dramatic, or... Well it'll be funny

00:00:15 ◼   ► one way or the other. Yeah that's right, well. I got, I know a little something about coming

00:00:18 ◼   ► back from a four game def... or, a three game deficit, so, uh, hey. Can be done. It can

00:00:23 ◼   ► be done. I, I will say this, as we record, it is after game four, before game five, which

00:00:30 ◼   ► will be tonight, the Yankees were down three games to none against the Dodgers, they won

00:00:34 ◼   ► last night. The most amazing stat, and I would have thought I'd know this by now, but, as

00:00:39 ◼   ► a lifelong baseball fan, but they said there have been 24 World Series that a team jumped

00:00:45 ◼   ► out three to nothing, and in 20... Oh wow, that's a lot more on the plot. In 21 of them,

00:00:50 ◼   ► the team that was up three nothing went on to sweep. And in the other three, they were

00:00:56 ◼   ► all over in game five. Okay, so it's never been come back from more than that, yeah.

00:01:02 ◼   ► That's, that's a tough one. So not only, not only has no team down three games to none

00:01:07 ◼   ► come back to win, which has only happened once in the, you know, the Champions Series

00:01:12 ◼   ► in National American League, as you friggin' know, 2004, the Red Sox versus the Yankees.

00:01:19 ◼   ► So it's never happened in the World Series that a team down three games to none has come

00:01:22 ◼   ► back to win. But they've not only also never forced a game seven, also never forced a game

00:01:29 ◼   ► six, and also only three out of 24 times even forced the game five that we're seeing tonight.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Which is, that's kind of amazing. That's tough. It's tough to come back for that.

00:01:39 ◼   ► Well, I think it just speaks to how streaky baseball is, that if one team goes up three

00:01:44 ◼   ► nothing that they tend to have momentum or something. And it's just weird. It's very

00:01:49 ◼   ► strange. Yeah. Anyway, enough baseball talk. Fingers crossed. Now we're talking about

00:01:56 ◼   ► Apple's week of Mac announcements. A new format? Definitely unprecedented, right?

00:02:03 ◼   ► I think this is kind of fascinating. I mean, last year they did that Halloween event, right?

00:02:08 ◼   ► Where it was at night. And I kind of wonder, pardon me, if they think that there's just

00:02:12 ◼   ► an opportunity here. WWC is so set at this point. And so is, I think, the iPhone event,

00:02:18 ◼   ► right? In terms of how they're presented. And I think Apple is definitely still trying

00:02:22 ◼   ► to experiment a little bit and see, are there other things we can be doing? Are there other

00:02:26 ◼   ► ways we could be doing this? And is that better? And the Mac especially, no offense, you and

00:02:31 ◼   ► I both love the Mac. We're longtime Mac users, but it's low stakes, right? The people who

00:02:35 ◼   ► know or are they're interested are going to show up one way or the other. You don't need

00:02:40 ◼   ► to have an event. You don't need to bring people out necessarily. Yeah. And perhaps

00:02:43 ◼   ► a better way to put it is that it's low stakes, greater mass market media wise, right? Like,

00:02:50 ◼   ► I think, right. I think if anything, I mean, and it's a total, I mean, this could totally

00:02:56 ◼   ► make the podcast go sideways. I don't try not to. But I think, I mean, obviously, the

00:03:01 ◼   ► iPhone is the most important product Apple makes. Nobody, whether you're me and Dan Morin,

00:03:07 ◼   ► we're professional Apple media writers, or you write for the business page, you know,

00:03:13 ◼   ► at a Wall Street Journal or something, you know, and you're looking at Apple stock, it's

00:03:17 ◼   ► an iPhone. I think internally, Apple cares more about the Mac than the iPad. Oh, yeah.

00:03:25 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not sure that's untrue externally either. I mean, the iPad feels like sometimes

00:03:30 ◼   ► the forgotten middle sibling right there squished in between the iPhone and the Mac. And it

00:03:36 ◼   ► does fine. Their businesses are about the same size. Yeah, I've had in the Mac businesses

00:03:39 ◼   ► there for a long time. Right. Yeah. But I think you're right that there is maybe more

00:03:43 ◼   ► of a passion for the Mac, especially because so many of those people are obviously Mac

00:03:48 ◼   ► users who go back decades, right? I got Jaws in there and people who seem to care about

00:03:55 ◼   ► the Mac. Well, I honestly at this point, I would say Apple's almost their entire leadership

00:04:04 ◼   ► with the exceptions being like CFO or even Tim Cook, who, you know, didn't come to the

00:04:10 ◼   ► company as a Mac user. He came as an executive from Compaq. But, you know, the Jaws, the

00:04:19 ◼   ► Tournases, the Federiges, they all work at Apple because of the Mac, right? That their

00:04:25 ◼   ► formative years using computers and what do they want to do with their life was I want

00:04:29 ◼   ► to go work at the company that makes the Macintosh. So I think there's nostalgia, but also it

00:04:34 ◼   ► is the fact that it's not the middle child, right? That it is the platform that makes

00:04:41 ◼   ► the platforms. Right. You still need it, right? It's still, like you said, it's the one,

00:04:46 ◼   ► if you're developing for iOS or iPad or whatever, you're still using a Mac these days. So,

00:04:50 ◼   ► right. It's the iPad that's sort of lost in the middle conceptually, you know, that

00:04:55 ◼   ► it's sort of like, well, you know, you can do stuff like, you know, use it as a laptop

00:04:59 ◼   ► and do all your work on it and it has a bigger screen. But, you know, it's debatable. We

00:05:05 ◼   ► could, but I think, but I also think though, I think that the people who love the iPad

00:05:11 ◼   ► the most, the Federigos of the world, would be the ones who would argue the most strenuously

00:05:16 ◼   ► that yes, Apple doesn't pay enough attention to the iPad and iPad OS, right? Like, I don't

00:05:20 ◼   ► think I'd get pushback. And I feel like if there's any pushback, it would be from

00:05:26 ◼   ► my fellow, my favorite Apple platform is the Mac people like me. And I think a lot of them

00:05:33 ◼   ► who are listening to us right now are screaming at their podcast player. Apple doesn't pay

00:05:37 ◼   ► enough attention to the Mac. When's the last time they did X, Y, Z? Yeah, I don't

00:05:43 ◼   ► know. But I mean, it was, like you said, it was a big week. They did a lot of stuff. And

00:05:47 ◼   ► even if it wasn't all surprising, it does feel like maybe in some ways the attempt to

00:05:52 ◼   ► do stuff day by day is a greater show of affection. Like we're going to give you the whole week,

00:05:59 ◼   ► right? And we're going to not, so many of these things might've been buried in a press

00:06:03 ◼   ► release. If they just put out like two or three press releases, one of these things

00:06:06 ◼   ► would be a footnote, the iMacs maybe, right? Like not that much change, like enough, but

00:06:11 ◼   ► we've seen them do that before. We've seen them make announcements and then, oh, by the

00:06:15 ◼   ► way, we also updated the Mac mini, but you can, you'll have to go to the website and

00:06:17 ◼   ► read about that. So nothing got real short shrift. I feel like that's kind of a testament

00:06:24 ◼   ► to their love of this platform. So yeah. And, you know, and it's like I said, if the, and

00:06:29 ◼   ► just, you know, not even arguing about iPad versus Mac, what do they care about more?

00:06:33 ◼   ► That there is the, you know, iPads cost less per unit and appeal to more people because

00:06:40 ◼   ► they're more mass market. And so, you know, just looking at the numbers, it is, you know,

00:06:45 ◼   ► the businesses are about the same size, but they sell way more iPads per unit than by

00:06:52 ◼   ► unit count than they sell Macs. It's more, the Mac is more of a niche, right? And so

00:06:58 ◼   ► I think it's a truck. Yeah. But I think, like you said, it gives them a little more

00:07:02 ◼   ► latitude to play with how they present it, you know, like do the goofy Halloween thing,

00:07:06 ◼   ► like last year or do this, you know, Hey, what if we instead of do one 40, I guess if

00:07:13 ◼   ► you added them all up, it would be like a 40, 45 minute little mini keynote. Less than

00:07:18 ◼   ► that. Think about it because how much of each was Apple intelligence, the same presentation

00:07:23 ◼   ► all three times, they get to hit that nail three times too, which is not nothing. Right.

00:07:28 ◼   ► What was her name? Allegra Tepper. Allegra having to do that three times in three different

00:07:33 ◼   ► outfits surely on like back to back to back. I would be very sick of everything at that

00:07:38 ◼   ► point. Yeah. Speaking of outfits, I saw Turnus. He had different t-shirts for each of the

00:07:44 ◼   ► three days. I forget. He had like a light blue than a maroon yesterday. And then today

00:07:48 ◼   ► is which I read into the Kremlinology. Let's break it down. What do they signify? Yeah.

00:07:54 ◼   ► Today was the great, the dark gray t-shirt, which I think is space, please space gray,

00:07:58 ◼   ► right? Which is more of his standard keynote attire. So I feel like it suggests that he

00:08:04 ◼   ► cares the most about the, the Mac books. It's the most pro shirt he has. Yeah. It's the

00:08:09 ◼   ► most pro shirt that he has. Somebody pointed out, did you see this? That of course they

00:08:14 ◼   ► were all wearing Apple watches, but there's a couple of shots of Turnus where you could

00:08:17 ◼   ► see here that he had the black Apple watch ultra ultra. Yeah. I saw his ultra with a

00:08:22 ◼   ► digital face and it was always at 10 oh nine. So that, and I guess I, I think it was on

00:08:31 ◼   ► Mastodon where somebody pointed this out and I said, maybe, you know, Apple thinks about

00:08:36 ◼   ► stuff like that. So maybe ever since, you know, for years now in this new modern prerecorded

00:08:42 ◼   ► keynote thing that they've always had the presenters use some sort of internal build,

00:08:50 ◼   ► you know, here's your watch and it's running some sort of internal build where it's always

00:08:53 ◼   ► 10 oh nine or it's wild, but it is, it is so Apple like to think they don't even want

00:08:58 ◼   ► you to know what time that they recorded this. Right. Right. Like they want the illusion

00:09:02 ◼   ► that it just is a moment fixed in time, right outside of time or something. I, I, it's wild

00:09:07 ◼   ► or anything like they deal with the screenshots all the time. Right. The, the iPhone's always,

00:09:11 ◼   ► was it like nine 40 nine or two? Yeah. It's wrong. Like very early on there was one. I

00:09:16 ◼   ► remember that's a one minute different for some reason. Yeah. Yeah. It's nine 41 and

00:09:20 ◼   ► I forget the backstory on that. It's when the, it's when in the presentation I think

00:09:24 ◼   ► it got shown. Right. Or it was like very Steve moment. Right. Right. Their estimate from

00:09:30 ◼   ► the rehearsals was like, we, we, our estimate is it'll probably be around nine, nine 41.

00:09:35 ◼   ► Yeah. Right. And I think that's because Mac world expos started at nine AM, which is an

00:09:41 ◼   ► interesting, you know, apples usually start at 10 AM when they, you know, it's so funny

00:09:47 ◼   ► to think that they announced it at somebody else's conference, but, but it's interesting

00:09:53 ◼   ► too because his was a, I forget which face it is, but it's a digital face. So you see

00:09:58 ◼   ► the numbers and 10 oh nine is considered. If you ever look at watch ads and magazines

00:10:04 ◼   ► or whatever for an analog watch hand, it's considered the most, at this point, it's just

00:10:11 ◼   ► sort of like everybody just sets the watch to 10 oh nine to take the picture, the promotion.

00:10:16 ◼   ► It's a nice angle. It's a nice, yeah. Looks good. Yeah, sure. And it doesn't obscure if

00:10:21 ◼   ► you've got a date complication at three o'clock, it won't cover it. It, it looks in theory,

00:10:30 ◼   ► you know, like the, the hands are, would be at the same angle as something separation,

00:10:36 ◼   ► something equivalent to like seven 21 or seven 19 or something. But if you did seven 20 instead

00:10:43 ◼   ► of four 10, you get more of a upside down, like a frown than a smile. So it looks a little

00:10:50 ◼   ► more depressing. I guess. Yeah. Right. It's like if you, for those who don't pay attention

00:10:55 ◼   ► to watches at all, once you know this and you start, you ever see, you know, like as

00:10:58 ◼   ► we head into the holidays, you're paging through whatever magazines you read. If there's ads

00:11:02 ◼   ► for watches, they're almost all set to 10 oh nine, but that's analog digital. I don't

00:11:07 ◼   ► really think that applies. We like the way the numbers look. I don't know. It's weird,

00:11:13 ◼   ► but maybe, you know, maybe the way it works with this is secret internal build for presenter

00:11:17 ◼   ► mode for Apple watch that it's not that it's like a screenshot that shows up as the watch

00:11:23 ◼   ► face, but that it's a build of watchOS that doesn't move the set. The time keeps the time.

00:11:29 ◼   ► You could change to any watch face you want and it's 10 oh nine. I assume so otherwise,

00:11:34 ◼   ► like it wouldn't, nothing else would animate or work. So yeah. Oh, the other thing you

00:11:38 ◼   ► can see is on, I think this started last year when they really rejiggered watchOS when watchOS

00:11:45 ◼   ► 10. So this year's watchOS 11, but when you switch watch faces, so you long press on your

00:11:52 ◼   ► current watch face and go into the mode where you can go sideways between all the faces

00:11:56 ◼   ► you've configured, all of the watch faces go to 10 oh nine, 30 seconds. Oh yeah. I was

00:12:03 ◼   ► looking at you on my metropolitan. Yep. Well, you get that nice. It's almost like it's an

00:12:07 ◼   ► equilateral triangle. Pretty much. I actually think it's sort of, I think they did it deliberately

00:12:12 ◼   ► so that as you're swapping, they show you an ideal time, but prior to watchOS 10, it

00:12:18 ◼   ► would show them in the current time. Right. This was a deliberate choice Apple made that

00:12:23 ◼   ► when you switch, but it, you know, they do the nice thing where the hands actually animate

00:12:28 ◼   ► to get there as you go back and forth. They don't just snap, they animate. So my guess

00:12:33 ◼   ► is that they have an internal build of watchOS where the time is stuck at 10 oh nine, 30,

00:12:38 ◼   ► and then whichever watch face you use, it's stuck there. And then you can, you know, and

00:12:42 ◼   ► then you remove the continuity errors because God knows, you know, right. Nobody would pay

00:12:47 ◼   ► attention to the actual announcement if they're, there's a pruder in John Turney's watch to

00:12:52 ◼   ► find out, well, that was shot out of order. All right. But I do, I do think, I think the

00:12:59 ◼   ► other option would be, and I think this is, you know, I I'm guessing last year's Halloween

00:13:04 ◼   ► scary fast, I think was the name of the thing was probably like 40 minutes. And it's like

00:13:08 ◼   ► here's all of our announcements at once. I think this is better. I like this. I agree.

00:13:13 ◼   ► Yeah. Well, I mean, it gives each announcement a day to itself, right? Yeah. If we announced

00:13:19 ◼   ► them all at once, I think you'd have a lot of people talking about the mini, but you

00:13:22 ◼   ► probably wouldn't have as much discussion about either the pro or the iMac, despite

00:13:26 ◼   ► the fact that the MacBook pro is a more important product to them. Probably it's a more minor

00:13:32 ◼   ► update. So people aren't going to talk about that. People are excited by the mini form

00:13:35 ◼   ► factor. So this way they get, they get the whole news cycle, right? And tomorrow they're,

00:13:38 ◼   ► as we record this, they're going to do their earnings. So they'll get a full week out

00:13:42 ◼   ► of all of this in like full days out of all the discourse, which I think is great. I also

00:13:47 ◼   ► think I suspect that there was zero debate internally about what order to announce the

00:13:53 ◼   ► products because it was like most consumery iMac, then Mac mini, which has more pro use

00:14:01 ◼   ► cases is there, is there a, this is, you'd think I'd know this from my notes. Is there

00:14:06 ◼   ► an iMac with the M4 pro or is there, there's never been a pro version, I believe it's

00:14:10 ◼   ► always just the base chip, right? So it escalates performance wise too, right? Yeah. So they

00:14:15 ◼   ► can do M4 pro and then talk about the Mac. Right. Yeah. So I, I, I can't imagine that

00:14:20 ◼   ► anybody inside Apple suggested putting them in any other order than the one that they

00:14:26 ◼   ► did. And if they had done it all in one 40 minute prerecorded event, they still would

00:14:32 ◼   ► have announced them in the same order. Right. Yeah. It would have been interesting too,

00:14:35 ◼   ► because today I noticed in the press release they put out, they were like, oh, we're introducing

00:14:38 ◼   ► the M4 pro and the M4 max and you're, everyone's like, you talked about the pro yesterday.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Yeah. To me, right? Like the downside of this, in addition to poor Allegra who had, had to

00:14:50 ◼   ► do this pretty much the same thing three times in three outfits and three locations, they

00:14:55 ◼   ► had to repeat some of the technical information too. So that's why I'm kind of squishy about

00:15:00 ◼   ► how long doing it as a single thing would have taken. It maybe would have been more

00:15:04 ◼   ► like 30 minutes instead of 40. But I, I like it. I think it's, you know, and I think that

00:15:09 ◼   ► part of it too is that they know that there are some people who are only interested in

00:15:16 ◼   ► one of them, especially the Mac mini and or the Mac book pro. Right. And so if you really

00:15:23 ◼   ► know, you're thinking I might get a new Mac book pro this year, you didn't, maybe didn't

00:15:28 ◼   ► pay attention Monday and Tuesday and you only tuned in today. And so you needed to learn

00:15:32 ◼   ► all about the Mac, the M4 pro chip because you didn't watch yesterday. Right. Not everybody's

00:15:37 ◼   ► us watching every single video. Right. Going, come on, come on. I saw this yesterday. Get

00:15:43 ◼   ► to it, get to it. Yeah. What else? Well, I guess we could go in order. Maybe I should

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00:17:31 ◼   ► take them in order. I mean, sure. I don't know. Can't can't say that. Good enough for

00:17:35 ◼   ► Apple is good enough for us. Uh, the I'm act. So I guess the weird question is, why

00:17:44 ◼   ► did the IMAX skip the M two like M three was a weird year, right? And everybody was talking

00:17:50 ◼   ► about how TSM sees three nanometer process for process expensive. And there was the weird

00:17:55 ◼   ► thing where of all the products, the iPhone 16, not pro didn't get a new chip because

00:18:00 ◼   ► of this thing with the process. But yet the IMAX skip the M two, which seemed like a normal

00:18:06 ◼   ► year, but got the M three and now gets the M four again. Yeah, I mean, I think there

00:18:11 ◼   ► was a time where they figured people are not upgrading the IMAX very often. It doesn't

00:18:15 ◼   ► change very often. And maybe there's not a lot to change in the M two year and maybe I

00:18:22 ◼   ► don't know if there's a matter of chip production or whatever. They just didn't have enough

00:18:25 ◼   ► and decided they're not going to do a whole IMAX update. But yeah, in retrospect, it is

00:18:30 ◼   ► strange. It's weird offset timing because I think going into Apple silicon, especially

00:18:35 ◼   ► they didn't really know are we going to rev every product every year? Are we taking an

00:18:40 ◼   ► iPhone schedule where we do them every time and we do the entire product line and it seems

00:18:46 ◼   ► like they've ended up with not quite being sure. I mean, there was also no, am I wrong

00:18:52 ◼   ► in remembering there was no M three ultra, right? It was just the pro and max, right?

00:18:56 ◼   ► Just so there was no studio update last year, no Mac pro update, no pro, right. So they've

00:19:02 ◼   ► never hit one where they've revved since the M one line. They have not revved the entire

00:19:07 ◼   ► product line and maybe this is the time three years in and, but even the M one didn't have

00:19:11 ◼   ► a Mac pro. Right. Yeah, that's true. Right. So there's still the, the M four could be

00:19:17 ◼   ► the first of the four first year or first cycle. You know, I, it seems like they're

00:19:22 ◼   ► very clearly annual, let's say year first year where they do the whole lineup, they

00:19:27 ◼   ► do the whole line up and they're ready maybe after four years of having sort of figured

00:19:31 ◼   ► out what everything looks like and how they can stagger them. Cause that's the other challenge,

00:19:34 ◼   ► right? Like they don't turn them all over at the same time. Right. We saw three, three

00:19:39 ◼   ► products get turned over now, but no air because the Mac book air was revved to M three, not

00:19:44 ◼   ► that long ago, which itself came not that long after the M two air. So I think it's,

00:19:50 ◼   ► some of it is them getting their production lines kind of to a point where they are ready

00:19:56 ◼   ► to just hit those targets every year and get into that groove. Because I mean, as with

00:20:00 ◼   ► the M one, like it took them a while to ramp up. It took them a while. This is which products

00:20:04 ◼   ► we can put this in. It took them a while to decide if they're redoing products, right?

00:20:07 ◼   ► The, the iMac was the only one that got really substantially redone at that point. Cause

00:20:13 ◼   ► I have an M one air still, and it looks exactly like the Intel air that came before it setting

00:20:18 ◼   ► aside the studio, which was an entirely new line, but mostly the M one stuff was pretty

00:20:22 ◼   ► much let's just swap the chips in and leave everything the same with the exception of

00:20:27 ◼   ► the iMac. So the iMac is at a weird staggered sort of schedule. Yeah. And I, yeah, I, I

00:20:34 ◼   ► think it's basically, you know, again, this is the sort of thing that you don't even hear

00:20:38 ◼   ► from people at Apple off the record much. I mean, maybe, you know, and again, without

00:20:43 ◼   ► any kind of in-person component, like there's as far as I know, no brief, I just definitely

00:20:49 ◼   ► no briefings in New York, you know, cause I'm here at home talking to you today. Not,

00:20:53 ◼   ► not new. I haven't been to New York and I don't think there's any in California. I think

00:20:57 ◼   ► that's, you know, it's all, you know, over the internet, but I, Apple doesn't explain

00:21:03 ◼   ► such things, but I kind of think that what you just said is exactly it, that they kind

00:21:08 ◼   ► of just needed, you know, okay, we're going to switch this whole platform to our own Silicon

00:21:13 ◼   ► and we're going to have this whole roadmap of regular M number, then the pro, then a

00:21:18 ◼   ► max, then an ultra, who knows, maybe, you know, even something after the ultra, probably

00:21:24 ◼   ► not, but you know, hopefully, hopefully instead the ultra will just scale even further than

00:21:28 ◼   ► it used to. But you know, in theory, there could be an M4 extreme at inside the Mac pros,

00:21:35 ◼   ► but that it just takes a while to sort of get their sea legs under them and like, okay,

00:21:41 ◼   ► now it's, it's like the iPhone annual every single year. Here we come. And that, you know,

00:21:47 ◼   ► in those first few years, there were just, we don't have time to do the iMac M2. We don't,

00:21:54 ◼   ► we don't have, you know, we don't have the ability with the M2 ultra to match the RAM

00:22:04 ◼   ► that incredibly, it was like, what was it like 1.5 terabytes of RAM where the Intel

00:22:08 ◼   ► wants maxed out? Yeah, we were, we're not going to get there, but we, we should ship

00:22:12 ◼   ► this anyway because you know, we want to let everybody know we're doing Apple Silicon on

00:22:17 ◼   ► the Mac pro and the Mac pro is not dead even though this doesn't scale up as far as, as

00:22:22 ◼   ► it used to. And I just ended, you know, there's some of the products came out at weird times

00:22:28 ◼   ► in hindsight, but it seems like they're aiming for an annual schedule. Yeah. I mean, I think

00:22:33 ◼   ► part of it, I wrote actually an article in Mac world this week that was kind of about

00:22:37 ◼   ► this. Like when you think about why Apple is doing things the way it is, you cannot,

00:22:43 ◼   ► I think the fundamental thing you can never ignore is scale because they are so huge.

00:22:48 ◼   ► There is so many moving parts and there are so many like just units that have to be made,

00:22:54 ◼   ► especially when you're talking about phones. But even so with the Mac, I mean, you're talking

00:22:57 ◼   ► about so many chips they have to turn out and so many products lines they have to turn

00:23:02 ◼   ► over that as big as they are and as much money and resources as they have, they are not in

00:23:08 ◼   ► a position to simply be like, let's just, let's put out six new models of computer right

00:23:13 ◼   ► now, all with new chips, all using the same like Ram, the same SSDs, right? There is limit.

00:23:20 ◼   ► There are limits at that scale to how much and how fast you can do it. I mean, it's the

00:23:24 ◼   ► old turning a battleship metaphor, right? Like they just cannot react agilely enough

00:23:28 ◼   ► because they are not the Apple of 25 years ago. They are the Apple today that sells millions

00:23:32 ◼   ► upon millions of devices.

00:23:33 ◼   ► Right. And it's, you know, and I guess some stuff is still odd, you know, like, you know,

00:23:39 ◼   ► the M4 debuted last spring in the iPad just months after, you know, not even close, like

00:23:46 ◼   ► only like six months after the M3 chips appeared. So who knows? Maybe it'll never quite be regular,

00:23:54 ◼   ► but it does. And again, just to go back to it, you know, if Apple cares more about the

00:23:59 ◼   ► Mac than the iPad, it does seem like the Mac, I think, I feel like the ideal schedule is

00:24:04 ◼   ► annual that they're just sort of be like, you can now count on the MacBook Pro lineup

00:24:11 ◼   ► getting updated around Halloween. I mean, it's not even just like the month. It's almost

00:24:15 ◼   ► as right on the day, two years in a row. It's as regular as second Monday or Tuesday of

00:24:22 ◼   ► September for the iPhone. I think that's great for planning, you know, and it seems like

00:24:27 ◼   ► for MacBooks, I think, which are things that feel like they will, no matter what, it feels

00:24:32 ◼   ► like the Air, the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro will change every time. I'm not sure that

00:24:37 ◼   ► it's true with the desktops. I mean, we see, like you said, we've seen this go a couple

00:24:41 ◼   ► different ways. And if the Mac is a, you know, a niche product within Apple, and even if

00:24:47 ◼   ► they care about, but it sells way fewer units, desktops are a way smaller portion of that.

00:24:53 ◼   ► I mean, most Macs are laptops, and we're talking about the fact that they sell four

00:24:59 ◼   ► desktop computers, which is a lot. That is a lot for a fraction of a fraction of your

00:25:04 ◼   ► product line.

00:25:06 ◼   ► Well, it's a lot from us who observe Apple. And then if you looked at Dell and said, "You're

00:25:13 ◼   ► gonna sell four desktop computers," they would be like, "What? What are we going out

00:25:17 ◼   ► of business?"

00:25:18 ◼   ► That's all we do.

00:25:19 ◼   ► Right. You know, all we do is confuse our customers with 20 different products to choose

00:25:24 ◼   ► from. I guess, I don't know. But I just think, like, you know, and going, doing an

00:25:29 ◼   ► M3 last year and now an M4 for the iMac, I just kind of get the sense that what they

00:25:34 ◼   ► would like to do is keep the chips on an annual 12-month cycle and update, you know, speed

00:25:40 ◼   ► bump the, you know, classic speed bump updates without major, you know, do major industrial

00:25:47 ◼   ► design changes every four years or so, but in between do regular, predictable speed bump

00:25:55 ◼   ► updates. They've never done that. I mean, in the 40-year history of the Mac, it's never

00:26:01 ◼   ► been predictable.

00:26:02 ◼   ► Annual, yeah, right, yeah.

00:26:04 ◼   ► There have been times where it's been close to annual. And then, you know, especially

00:26:12 ◼   ► in the 2010s, it got really irregular for certain products. I mean, and most conspicuously,

00:26:21 ◼   ► the MacBook Air, pre-Retina, the pre-Retina MacBook Air, it was, A, their most popular

00:26:31 ◼   ► Mac. It still is the most popular Mac. Probably always will be for the foreseeable future,

00:26:36 ◼   ► and yet was completely stagnated hardware-wise, which is bananas. But, you know, and that's

00:26:42 ◼   ► something off the record, I've been told is just all about their contentious relationship

00:26:48 ◼   ► with Intel. Not that they don't get along, but that Intel had a roadmap that did not

00:26:54 ◼   ► align with what Apple was interested in doing to improve the MacBook Air at all. And what

00:27:01 ◼   ► are we going to do?

00:27:02 ◼   ► Yeah, they're beholden, right? They had no choice. And I think it's, I'm sure, a major

00:27:05 ◼   ► factor in the decision to move the Mac to Apple Silicon in the long term was, it's Apple.

00:27:11 ◼   ► Apple likes to control everything that's important to it, and that comes out of its history.

00:27:15 ◼   ► But yeah, you can't, something as central as your processors, if you don't have control

00:27:19 ◼   ► over that, then you will never have the ability to say, "Let's turn over the product line,"

00:27:24 ◼   ► or "Let's do this improvement." Apple Intelligence, right? Like, not only from a standpoint of

00:27:29 ◼   ► the technology needed to deliver that, but in terms of logistically being able to get

00:27:34 ◼   ► your products in a line to the point where they all support it, think about them trying

00:27:39 ◼   ► to do that on Intel. It would have been years between some of these, right? That would have

00:27:43 ◼   ► been wild.

00:27:44 ◼   ► Yeah, especially, you know, if they had found out that the equivalent of a neural engine

00:27:48 ◼   ► on x86 architecture was just not what they needed or, you know, that there were whatever,

00:27:54 ◼   ► whatever hardware.

00:27:55 ◼   ► They would have had to make nice with Nvidia, right? I mean, I don't see that happening.

00:28:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't. So it's, but I do think that this regular schedule, I really, they've never,

00:28:07 ◼   ► never been there with the Mac before. And again, just to go back to that, do they care

00:28:11 ◼   ► more about the Mac than the iPad? The iPad could have been on an annual schedule and

00:28:15 ◼   ► still never has been, right?

00:28:16 ◼   ► It's, it's, it's always a little odd. You never know if you're going to, it's a fall

00:28:19 ◼   ► or a spring thing, and sometimes it's both, and sometimes it's neither.

00:28:23 ◼   ► Right, and you end up with these products like the Mac Mini or iPad Mini, which just

00:28:27 ◼   ► did get updated, but is, if anything, it's almost predictable that it's going to be,

00:28:33 ◼   ► you know, like three years, I don't know, maybe if you're lucky, otherwise four, you

00:28:37 ◼   ► know, and that you just get these long gaps. And even the obscure, you know, Mac Pro is

00:28:44 ◼   ► different because I think they, but I think once they get their shit together on the M

00:28:49 ◼   ► Series chips, the Mac Pro is going to see annual updates too, you know, that they're

00:28:53 ◼   ► just for you.

00:28:54 ◼   ► The Mac Pro fascinates me as a, as a product, and, and it's just because I just, I have

00:29:00 ◼   ► no con, conception of how big the market for that really is, because I see people who previously

00:29:06 ◼   ► might have been desktop tower users going to sometimes Mac Pro Pros, sometimes Mac Studios,

00:29:12 ◼   ► sometimes even Mac Minis, and it's hard to argue that there is a markedly better experience

00:29:17 ◼   ► in the Mac Pro unless you really need that internal storage. And I mean, really, right?

00:29:23 ◼   ► The premium you're paying is huge. And there's honestly not that much stuff that the internal

00:29:28 ◼   ► storage is really used for these days. You have to be doing very specialized work to

00:29:32 ◼   ► be able to get some components that work with that. So I think they like it there as a flagship,

00:29:38 ◼   ► as a, as a like line in the sand of we can do a pro tower, right? Like we can scale all

00:29:45 ◼   ► the way from that MacBook Air up to a pro tower. But I just don't, I wonder if it is

00:29:51 ◼   ► something that we'll see updates regularly, or whether it will continue to be the, well,

00:29:55 ◼   ► we'll get to it when we get to it. And maybe every, every few years, you see a new one.

00:29:59 ◼   ► I just think they'll get to a point where there's, you know, very, very seldom industrial

00:30:04 ◼   ► design changes, and just the silicon team wants to push ahead. And there are benefits,

00:30:09 ◼   ► even internal, just internal to Apple to having the ultra chips for their own work that, that

00:30:15 ◼   ► they'll keep making it. I'll say, just as an aside, them changing the Mac Mini, which

00:30:21 ◼   ► we'll get to, I guess, shortly, but then changing them. The mini form factor, obviously,

00:30:28 ◼   ► in response to what Apple silicon provides thermally versus Intel's architecture, I

00:30:35 ◼   ► kind of makes me think that when we do see that I probably I don't know that they're

00:30:39 ◼   ► going to do a Mac Pro this spring, but I'd be very surprised if they don't, if they're

00:30:43 ◼   ► going to update the hardware to a different size, which I think could be a lot smaller,

00:30:48 ◼   ► I think this will be the year. I think that that M2 Mac Pro was a real stopgap just to

00:30:56 ◼   ► say, we, you know, we can either ship this and have a Apple silicon Mac Pro, or we're

00:31:04 ◼   ► going to have to wait until the spring of 2025. They knew the roadmap then, right. And

00:31:09 ◼   ► in between there, people are going to think we gave up on it. And people who insist on

00:31:13 ◼   ► having a quote unquote Mac Pro on their desk are going to be stuck on Intel.

00:31:17 ◼   ► Right. Well, and it's very analogous to the first generation of most of the Apple silicon

00:31:22 ◼   ► Macs too, again, where they just swapped out the internals and the existing design, right?

00:31:26 ◼   ► Yeah. There's an element of expediency to it, as you say, like, and the Mac Pro is still

00:31:30 ◼   ► there. Yeah, exactly. It's still there. Yeah. What else about the iMac? So they tweak the

00:31:36 ◼   ► colors. I like the new colors, honestly. Like I thought the first round were great. The

00:31:39 ◼   ► M1 iMacs, I love that there is still a computer with color. And I thought this time, even

00:31:44 ◼   ► though the tweaks are kind of subtle, I love that green, honestly.

00:31:47 ◼   ► Yeah, the old green was weird. Yeah, it was bluey, like teal. I didn't like

00:31:53 ◼   ► it, but this one is no question. It is green. The pink one too. The first one looks more,

00:31:57 ◼   ► the M1's pink is called pink. I was surprised to look at that and see it was pink because

00:32:01 ◼   ► it looks red. Yeah. It's just, it's much more saturated and they're like, Oh, I guess we'll

00:32:05 ◼   ► do pink this time. That's what my son texted me and said, you

00:32:09 ◼   ► know, Oh man, they drink. Cause he likes red. He doesn't even want an iMac, but he just,

00:32:14 ◼   ► red's his favorite color. He's like, Oh man, they got rid of red for pink. And I'm like,

00:32:17 ◼   ► the old one was called pink. And he's like, what? But if you look at the back of it, it

00:32:21 ◼   ► is hard. It's very red. Yeah. Yeah. But the way they're, they're, you know, and they're

00:32:29 ◼   ► still doing the same thing where there's still a white bezel around every display and the

00:32:33 ◼   ► chin on each one is a very, very pale version of whatever the color is. And they're, they're

00:32:39 ◼   ► saying that is to avoid visual distraction. And I guess it's the reason they don't make

00:32:45 ◼   ► colorful Mac books, you know? Yeah, I guess. I mean, I suppose they could if they felt

00:32:52 ◼   ► like people, like they would sell a lot of them, but I guess they decided they, yeah,

00:32:56 ◼   ► I don't know. But I also think, I also think though that let's just say they made a, like

00:33:01 ◼   ► a PR I guess they've dropped the whole product red thing, but let's just say they made red

00:33:05 ◼   ► would be the boldest color, right? Like a true product style red MacBook. It would just

00:33:11 ◼   ► be the base that you see because the display is bezel only. Right. So yeah, I'm, I don't

00:33:18 ◼   ► know. I really feel, I feel like they're leaving money on the table because I feel like there's

00:33:22 ◼   ► so many people who love colors and would want like a very pink or very green Mac book like

00:33:30 ◼   ► these, like the backs of these IMAX. Just use the same goddamn, just don't even pick

00:33:37 ◼   ► new and new. Apple's relationship with color these days is very weird and very contentious.

00:33:41 ◼   ► I was one of those people who thought about going to just a straight iPhone 16 just because

00:33:46 ◼   ► they looked so nice, but ultimately could not give up on the pro. And I hate the fact

00:33:50 ◼   ► that the pro colors are all so boring. So yeah, you've been in those groups. We've been

00:33:56 ◼   ► together in group media briefings, either both on, you know, online and in person. But

00:34:03 ◼   ► I remember, I guess it was WWDC where they first unveiled the current, yeah, it was definitely

00:34:09 ◼   ► WWDC where they unveiled like the M2 MacBook Airs with midnight. Oh yeah. Has a bit of

00:34:16 ◼   ► color and I was there in person and with, you know, they break us up into groups of

00:34:22 ◼   ► seven or eight years often. And so, you know, somebody asked like, why not make these in

00:34:27 ◼   ► color and Apple's product marketing people who do these briefings are almost always prepared

00:34:36 ◼   ► for any possible question, whether it's a question they want to answer and then they

00:34:40 ◼   ► give you a good answer or questions they don't want to answer, they have a prepared non-answer.

00:34:46 ◼   ► And the prepared, it was a prepared non-answer, but it was one of the worst I've ever heard

00:34:50 ◼   ► them give. And there was a look on the person's face that was like, I don't know. Like,

00:35:00 ◼   ► I just reading from a cue card. This is all I've been told to say. Yeah. But it's like,

00:35:07 ◼   ► you can even just see it in the commercials. You know, like when they first made an array

00:35:10 ◼   ► of colored IMAX back in 1999, when they expanded from the Bondi blue Bondi Bondi. I never pronounced

00:35:18 ◼   ► it right Bondi, whatever original blue IMAX to the array of colors. And it was just like

00:35:26 ◼   ► such a fun commercial and they paid for the Rolling Stone. She comes in colors and you

00:35:31 ◼   ► could just see the commercials make themselves and somehow they won't do it. And they're

00:35:35 ◼   ► doing fun color, iPad or iPhones. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Just it's very limited. I mean, yeah,

00:35:42 ◼   ► the thing that does this point is that again, the colors are on the back. So like I, my,

00:35:47 ◼   ► the back of my behind my studio display here is a wall. So even if I got a nice IMAX with

00:35:53 ◼   ► great colors, I would never see it. Right. Somebody could tell me, you know, that, ah,

00:36:00 ◼   ► when I was visiting your house months ago, I stuck a Red Sox sticker on the back of your

00:36:04 ◼   ► studio display. I wouldn't know, you know, like I tried to curse the Yankees by putting

00:36:08 ◼   ► a sticker on your, on the back. That's the place to put it. That's where I write all

00:36:13 ◼   ► my passwords posted on right on the back of the model. No, no, no. Yeah. I don't have

00:36:18 ◼   ► much else to say about the IMAX. A couple, a couple of nice things like the, the, the

00:36:23 ◼   ► increase in the Thunderbolt ports. So there's four, all the ports are Thunderbolt now. They

00:36:27 ◼   ► were not, it was previously two Thunderbolt ports and two USB C ports. So that's great.

00:36:32 ◼   ► Although they're Thunderbolt four, not five. I think that's, and then the, the M4 chips.

00:36:36 ◼   ► Yeah. I think that's about it. Oh no. We can talk about that. So I don't, you're, you're

00:36:41 ◼   ► a mouse user regularly? I am a mouse user at my desk. But I also have a track pad. I'm

00:36:47 ◼   ► a magic track pad guy. So that's that for me. But I have a magic track pad too. So I

00:36:51 ◼   ► have a mouse and I am right-handed, but in 1994 or five halfway through college, my right,

00:36:59 ◼   ► it wasn't my wrist even, although my wrists hurt from typing and not knowing the ergon,

00:37:04 ◼   ► you know, a good ergonomic height for typing, but my wrists hurt from typing, but my right

00:37:09 ◼   ► shoulder hurt terribly from mousing. And I've always been a little more ambidextrous than

00:37:18 ◼   ► the average person. Like I don't really do anything left-handed, but I can shoot a basketball

00:37:23 ◼   ► better left-handed than most right-handed people can. And, and I switched to mousing

00:37:29 ◼   ► left-handed in 1994 or five and never looked back. If I had like one awful week, one awful

00:37:36 ◼   ► week.

00:37:37 ◼   ► I'm funny. I very similar because I used to do video editing in college and I had a similar

00:37:40 ◼   ► thing with sort of a wrist arm problem. And I also switched to left hand, but I like after

00:37:45 ◼   ► a few months I went back and I just, yeah, I never, I never really, really stuck with

00:37:49 ◼   ► it, I guess.

00:37:50 ◼   ► Yeah. My friend Chris Parrish, who you probably know, he did the same thing where RSI decades

00:37:56 ◼   ► ago switched to using a mouse with his left hand. I don't use a track pad with my left

00:38:01 ◼   ► hand. I use a track pad with my right hand, but I've, I've used a mouse with my left hand

00:38:04 ◼   ► now for 30 years.

00:38:07 ◼   ► Like our pal Guy English also has a mouse on one side and a track pad on the other or

00:38:11 ◼   ► something.

00:38:12 ◼   ► So I have a mouse on the left side that I use for almost all of my mousing. I have keyboard

00:38:16 ◼   ► in the middle and on the right hand side of my keyboard, I keep a magic track pad, which

00:38:22 ◼   ► I use for like, well, I have one, so why not hook it up? And my mouse, I use a mouse with

00:38:30 ◼   ► a mouse wheel, which I much prefer for scrolling, but there are cases now in Mac OS where you

00:38:38 ◼   ► kind of want to pan and you know, there's carousels and things where you kind of want

00:38:42 ◼   ► to swipe side to side and a mouse wheel that only goes up and down doesn't let you do that.

00:38:47 ◼   ► So I have the magic track pad for that and you know, why not? You can keep two things

00:38:52 ◼   ► connected, but yeah, I use, I'm a mouse person, but I use a third party mouse.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Which is okay.

00:38:57 ◼   ► And I know where you're going.

00:38:59 ◼   ► I have a mouse. I do have one of the mice, but I think it's the old one that had the

00:39:03 ◼   ► double A or triple A batteries in it. So before they made it.

00:39:07 ◼   ► Yeah, it is really old. I almost never used, it was like connected to the Mac mini I used

00:39:10 ◼   ► to have hooked up to my TV, but yeah, so they unsurprisingly, they changed literally nothing

00:39:16 ◼   ► about the peripherals except for switching them from lightning to USB-C, which I think

00:39:21 ◼   ► is what everybody in like the sort of pessimistic betting pool was like, that's probably what's

00:39:27 ◼   ► going to happen, but we just didn't want to admit it.

00:39:30 ◼   ► And I, I did read your impassioned defense of the charging the magic mouse on the bottom,

00:39:37 ◼   ► which it's a take, I'll give it to you. I see where you're coming from and I even, I

00:39:42 ◼   ► even buy it a bit. I think part of what I come back to is also that, that still that

00:39:46 ◼   ► same thought about scale, which is it's just work. It's work they don't have to do. And

00:39:51 ◼   ► there's no point to doing it if it's not going to change, if they're not suddenly going to

00:39:55 ◼   ► pick up like a ton of magic mouse sales, right from the switching the charging port. So why

00:40:01 ◼   ► bother?

00:40:02 ◼   ► Right. So some of that is true that there is a sort of scale and it is expensive. You

00:40:08 ◼   ► know, Apple in theory could afford to do whatever they want, but I mean, that's the way you

00:40:12 ◼   ► stay the richest company in the world is you stay focused on not, well, sure. We're the

00:40:17 ◼   ► richest company in the world. We can change everything. Yeah. We could just spend a trillion

00:40:21 ◼   ► dollars trying to make a car, you know, and you know, you don't do many of those and you

00:40:26 ◼   ► don't, you know, you don't get to waste however many billions they did on a car project that

00:40:30 ◼   ► they wound up abandoning if you make a lot of mice that you throw away. But I know that

00:40:35 ◼   ► one of the spitball theories on the laziness of the charging port on the bottom of the

00:40:42 ◼   ► mouse is that they're just that it literally dates back to the version of the magic mouse

00:40:49 ◼   ► that had replaceable. I don't know if it was two batteries or one battery. Yeah. Yeah.

00:40:54 ◼   ► But my, it's weird because maybe, I don't know, but my Lenovo that I use is wireless

00:41:00 ◼   ► and takes one, one double a battery and they promise one year of battery life. But I looked

00:41:05 ◼   ► it up and I went from December, I got it in December, 2020 and it didn't replace the battery

00:41:10 ◼   ► till May, 2023 and I use it all the time. So I got a lot out of, I don't know, maybe

00:41:15 ◼   ► I got lucky, but one battery went a long time. But anyway, this look and feel and shape magic

00:41:23 ◼   ► mouse dates back to replaceable batteries. And there's a theory that, you know, that

00:41:28 ◼   ► Apple's so lazy about these peripherals that they, that's why the charging port's still

00:41:32 ◼   ► on the bottom. But that doesn't really hold water because they dramatically changed the

00:41:38 ◼   ► keyboard and track pad after switching from batteries to lightning because they don't

00:41:45 ◼   ► need, you know, they could make a much low, much lower profile because the batteries were

00:41:49 ◼   ► big. So I mean, and that, that goes back a long time. The lightning magic mouse, the

00:41:55 ◼   ► lightning one is nine years old and I don't even know how much old, I didn't even bother

00:41:59 ◼   ► looking up how much older the other shape is. The truth is they just like this shape

00:42:03 ◼   ► mouse. They really, obviously the internal designers and I'm sure their customer satisfaction

00:42:09 ◼   ► numbers show, because they do measure customer satisfaction on everything famously. I think

00:42:16 ◼   ► they really like the shape and this shape mouse has no good spot for an exposed port.

00:42:23 ◼   ► Like you could, I know, right, definitely not. And so the argument from the people who

00:42:29 ◼   ► hate this design is that, well then therefore they should change the shape. And I know one

00:42:34 ◼   ► thing I do know for a fact is that they, I definitely know that Apple designers have

00:42:39 ◼   ► looked at and considered ways to put a port on the front, you know, where every, you know,

00:42:44 ◼   ► where you could like keep it connected and use it. And basically do they even want people

00:42:50 ◼   ► to use the mouse while it's connected? That I don't know the answer. I'm speculating,

00:42:55 ◼   ► but I know from talking to people at Apple, I don't know anybody who knows the answer,

00:42:59 ◼   ► but the funny part is Apple is so compartmentalized that even people who work at Apple for decades

00:43:06 ◼   ► don't know the answer as to why the mouse charges on the bottom.

00:43:09 ◼   ► One person in that design team is like, I just did it. Nobody stopped me.

00:43:15 ◼   ► Some group of people knows definitively why the mouse charges on the bottom and all of

00:43:20 ◼   ► the reasons and all the trade-offs that actually were considered, but most people don't.

00:43:25 ◼   ► But the idea that they don't want people to use it tethered is widely speculated within

00:43:32 ◼   ► the company. And I think it's true too. But they just like the shape. And also one

00:43:37 ◼   ► thing I know for sure is that when they considered ways to put it at the top, they thought it

00:43:42 ◼   ► looked ugly. And it, you know, and it just would be...

00:43:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I get it. I mean, I feel like your hand is on it most of the time. You're not even

00:43:49 ◼   ► going to see it, but maybe I know they care about these things. All right. So, but that's

00:43:52 ◼   ► not my bugaboo with the peripherals. My bugaboo with the peripherals, the thing that made

00:43:57 ◼   ► me angry because I was ready to go out and buy a Magic Keyboard, even though I knew this

00:44:00 ◼   ► was not going to happen, is the inverted T arrow keys are still not on there. And it

00:44:06 ◼   ► makes me angry because I miss them. I mean, I have an older Magic Keyboard. That doesn't

00:44:11 ◼   ► have it either. That has the stupid full height side keys, but they changed it on all the

00:44:14 ◼   ► laptops. All the laptops went back to the inverted T and they just decided, "Eh, we're

00:44:20 ◼   ► just not going to bother with the Magic Keyboards." And maybe they think it looks better. I don't

00:44:25 ◼   ► know. But it annoys me.

00:44:28 ◼   ► They had a, what's the Godfather line? "Today's the day we settle all family business."

00:44:33 ◼   ► And they had the day of settling all family business with the MacBook keyboards, right?

00:44:40 ◼   ► Where it's, they spent five years trying to get this, the butterfly thing to work and

00:44:48 ◼   ► threw in the towel, said, "Okay, we're giving up on this. We're going, we've

00:44:53 ◼   ► got a new Switch design." And lo and behold, here we are, I think about five years into

00:44:58 ◼   ► that, nobody, I haven't seen a single report from a single person anywhere in the world

00:45:02 ◼   ► who said, "I got some crumbs under a keyboard and my D key stopped working." Right? It

00:45:08 ◼   ► hasn't happened to a single person since.

00:45:09 ◼   ► You nailed it.

00:45:11 ◼   ► I think they feel better. And again, that's subjective. And I totally concede that there

00:45:16 ◼   ► are people who loved the feel of a properly working butterfly, like the MacBook One port

00:45:22 ◼   ► keyboard. But I didn't. I like a little bit more click and travel. But part of that,

00:45:28 ◼   ► it wasn't just the Switch. I mean, the butterfly to not butterfly, I don't even know what

00:45:32 ◼   ► they call this, if this is your scissor, switch, whatever they are. But that was part of it.

00:45:37 ◼   ► But they definitely, part of that was they went back to the upside down T arrangement

00:45:42 ◼   ► for the arrow keys, which I didn't feel super strongly about, but I felt pretty strongly

00:45:48 ◼   ► about because I really, it makes a difference. You can just feel it, right? The gap, it doesn't

00:45:55 ◼   ► look as good. I will admit that it doesn't look as good with the gaps, but I don't

00:46:00 ◼   ► think it looks bad because the overall symmetry of the rectangle is still there. The gap is

00:46:05 ◼   ► within the rectangle, not outside the rectangle. It's always one of those things that bugs

00:46:09 ◼   ► me with the way they have it now because it feels like those up and down keys just get,

00:46:14 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, you don't need those. Those can be half height." And it's like, "Oh, they're,

00:46:17 ◼   ► I don't know, it's harder to use too?" I mean, you know. Do you wish that the laptop

00:46:21 ◼   ► had full height up and down? No, no, no, no. I want that, I'm saying like I use my magic

00:46:26 ◼   ► keyboard on the Mac Mini and it has the full size left and right ones. It's like, well,

00:46:31 ◼   ► either make the other ones bigger or make them all small. It's weird that they are halfway.

00:46:37 ◼   ► Like I find that irritating and I, again, I think probably some of the same factors

00:46:44 ◼   ► that go into the magic mouse decisions go into the magic keyboard decisions, which is

00:46:48 ◼   ► whether it's scale because it's just, "Hey, that's a change we have to make and we just,

00:46:52 ◼   ► it's not worth the expense because it's not impacting the bottom line of how many people

00:46:56 ◼   ► are buying our keyboards." I mean, how many people with any of the peripherals actually

00:47:00 ◼   ► buy them as opposed to getting them with a Mac or something like that that they've already

00:47:03 ◼   ► bought? I don't know. But, and then some combination of maybe they really don't think it looks

00:47:08 ◼   ► better, but I guess if you felt like it didn't look better, it would be the same everywhere.

00:47:12 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I would rather, I don't use a magic keyboard, so I can't,

00:47:20 ◼   ► I can't speak from experience, but if I did, I would definitely much prefer the exact laptop

00:47:25 ◼   ► layout with the upside down T and make the left, right half height. They are otherwise

00:47:30 ◼   ► pretty close. Yeah. I mean, I don't even think this looks good though. You know what

00:47:34 ◼   ► I mean? I'm looking at it right now. I agree. The gap doesn't, arrow keys are just inherently

00:47:40 ◼   ► weird, right? Because I don't know. It's a very, arrow keys are a very terminal command

00:47:47 ◼   ► line feeling kind of thing. So, and we spoke about Apple's reluctance to make a zillion

00:47:53 ◼   ► skews of anything, but I also think it's weird, like when you get into keyboards and

00:47:58 ◼   ► I'm trying not to buy any keyboards because I spend money on, you know, not to take time

00:48:04 ◼   ► away from Jason Snell's next appearance here where we go off on keyboards if it's

00:48:08 ◼   ► not baseball season, but I've successfully, I don't think I've spent money on a mechanical

00:48:14 ◼   ► keyboard in two years. I don't know. It's been a while because I just buy them, use

00:48:20 ◼   ► them for a while and then go back to my 40 year old Apple extended keyboard too. I have

00:48:25 ◼   ► so, well, I mean, I bought, I bought one and thinking everybody's so into mechanical keyboard

00:48:29 ◼   ► things and I used them when I was younger and everything and, and after using it for

00:48:32 ◼   ► a few weeks, I just decided I didn't, it was just too much for me and I went back to

00:48:36 ◼   ► my, my magic keyboard, which I'm generally pretty happy with. Again, because I was a

00:48:39 ◼   ► laptop only user for a long time and it's close enough to their, all their laptops that

00:48:44 ◼   ► it feels seamless to me. It doesn't matter if I'm sitting in a desktop or on my MacBook

00:48:49 ◼   ► Air, but it's basically the same keyboard and I like that consistency. I'm going to

00:48:52 ◼   ► forget the lingo. There's so many different, but the thing is, is when you get into the

00:48:56 ◼   ► actual mechanical keyboard world, there are so many different sizes and so many people

00:49:03 ◼   ► want like ones that are way smaller than even a magic keyboard. They don't want any function

00:49:08 ◼   ► keys at all. I think they call them. Yeah. There's ones that don't even have arrow keys.

00:49:14 ◼   ► I don't know how those people work. You know, it's like people who know the control key

00:49:18 ◼   ► combination. How do I select text without that? That would just drive me bananas. I would

00:49:23 ◼   ► lose it. Well, I guess if you spend your whole life in Emacs, you don't need it. I don't

00:49:28 ◼   ► know. But I mean, I salute the, the, the almost asceticism, right? It's so minimal not even

00:49:36 ◼   ► to have arrow keys, but, but there's also just in broad terms though, there's the small

00:49:42 ◼   ► layout which is like a laptop where it ends at the return key and the arrow keys have

00:49:46 ◼   ► to be below. And then there's the full size with the numeric keypad, you know, like a,

00:49:52 ◼   ► like a phone over on the far right with a middle area for the arrow keys to live and

00:49:58 ◼   ► breathe in a true full height, full, full height upside down T with the page up, page

00:50:05 ◼   ► down home and, and what else is in there? Insert and delete. I think he's that, Oh yeah,

00:50:11 ◼   ► forward, ever use. Well, I use forward delete the key shift delete thing if I need to. Yeah,

00:50:18 ◼   ► yeah. But, but I don't use it much. You know, if, if I had like a count on how many times

00:50:22 ◼   ► I've hit it, but I do use the page up and page down. Sure. Yeah. But the arrow key,

00:50:27 ◼   ► but, but there's also layouts that just, just omit the numeric. That's what I want. Yeah.

00:50:33 ◼   ► Right. And it just, they just have the room to the right of the alphabetic keys for the

00:50:38 ◼   ► arrow keys to live and the page up, page down home and end and the forward delete and whatever

00:50:45 ◼   ► the key is. Nobody uses above insert, insert, which I don't, I don't know what it does.

00:50:51 ◼   ► I don't remember. There was a, again, command line and we'd like DOS era stuff where there

00:50:55 ◼   ► was a point to that, but yeah. Yeah. I guess, you know, I don't know. I guess I should figure

00:51:00 ◼   ► out something to do with that key and assign a keyboard maestro macro to it or something.

00:51:05 ◼   ► I've got this beautiful key, but I don't know why Apple doesn't make another, you know,

00:51:10 ◼   ► a keyboard in the middle, you know, that's what I want. The other weird thing that, you

00:51:15 ◼   ► know, again, it's so many years now, they're just obviously not going to change, but like

00:51:19 ◼   ► if you break your green magic keyboard, you can't just go into the store and buy one.

00:51:25 ◼   ► They only sell the keyboards in black and white and the colored ones that match your

00:51:29 ◼   ► iMac are only available with the iMac. I guess if it's under warranty, you know, you can

00:51:33 ◼   ► go in and replace it. Under warranty, they'll get you one, but you can't buy one. So if

00:51:38 ◼   ► you just want a pink magic keyboard, you can't get one unless you can find someone who buys

00:51:45 ◼   ► a pink iMac who doesn't want the keyboard. Yeah. I know it bums me up, but again, I kind

00:51:50 ◼   ► of understand from like a SKU management is a pain. It's a pain. I think they just don't

00:51:57 ◼   ► want to have to deal with having six different keyboards or whatever, six different magic,

00:52:02 ◼   ► my six different track pads as cool as those would be. And as much I would, I would consider

00:52:07 ◼   ► buying a green one or something like that, but I just, I can understand why they're like,

00:52:11 ◼   ► yeah, we're just going to make it easy. I don't know. We're not in the keyboard business.

00:52:16 ◼   ► That's not, that's not our main thrust of things. I, you know, and somebody else was

00:52:22 ◼   ► saying I was, somebody else was telling me that they wished that I had written this magic

00:52:27 ◼   ► mouse. The port is fine where it is overall piece years ago. And I was like, it's been

00:52:34 ◼   ► in my back of my head for years, but I've always been reluctant to write it because

00:52:38 ◼   ► I don't use the magic mouse. And so it's, there's sort of a, well, if I don't use it,

00:52:43 ◼   ► I don't know if I should spout off about it, but I guess the thing that drove me nuts though.

00:52:48 ◼   ► And, and, and I thought one of the most interesting times where it came up was when Marques Brownlee

00:52:53 ◼   ► had Tim Cook on his YouTube show after WWDC and did a like clearly not, you know, hadn't

00:53:02 ◼   ► prepped Tim Cook for it, a stacked rank list of, I'm going to toss out some Apple products

00:53:08 ◼   ► and you tell me which one's better than the other and tossed out the magic mouse. And

00:53:13 ◼   ► in MKBHD's world, his audience is like ground zero for the, hey, the magic mouse charging

00:53:20 ◼   ► port is absolutely absurd and ridiculous contingent, you know, with the memes like, oh, here's

00:53:26 ◼   ► how Apple's car would have charged. And there's a picture of a car that's upside down and

00:53:31 ◼   ► you have to plug it in on the belly. But it was, it wasn't awkward because Tim Cook is

00:53:36 ◼   ► so fast. His mind is so fast. He did fine, but it was incongruous because it was sort

00:53:41 ◼   ► of meant as a funny ha, wasn't like trying to make a shit out of Tim Cook at all, but

00:53:46 ◼   ► it was supposed to be funny. But Tim Cook's answer was so clearly not cognizant of that

00:53:53 ◼   ► portion of the world that thinks it's absurd. Like it, obviously he didn't know that because

00:53:58 ◼   ► I, you know, the one thing I'm sure he's tuned into is the customer sat numbers and

00:54:03 ◼   ► as in his parlance, and I'm sure he knows that the customer sat on a magic mouse is

00:54:08 ◼   ► high. And so he just, it just seemed to him like, wow, what a weird question, right? And

00:54:14 ◼   ► just spoke about it as a popular mouse.

00:54:17 ◼   ► How do you expect me to choose among my children? Yes.

00:54:19 ◼   ► Right. But I, but the, the, the people who think it's absurd seem to also base a lot

00:54:25 ◼   ► of them, not, not Marquez, I'm sure he's smart, but there are people who seem to think

00:54:30 ◼   ► that people at Apple don't even know that this is seen as absurd by some people.

00:54:35 ◼   ► Yeah. I think there's

00:54:36 ◼   ► Clearly Apple knows. They know.

00:54:39 ◼   ► There's often like a perception that if something is wrong or you disagree with the

00:54:44 ◼   ► way Apple has done something that they must not be aware of it. Like they must not be

00:54:48 ◼   ► using their own product or something. And I think clearly untrue in the vast majority

00:54:52 ◼   ► of cases, they have other rationales. And I think that is the, the, the, the part of

00:54:58 ◼   ► your story that I think I appreciate, which is there's always another story here. Like

00:55:01 ◼   ► this is a company that makes not only good products, but also makes a ton of money selling

00:55:06 ◼   ► these products and therefore is doing research is doing looking into design and all of these

00:55:11 ◼   ► things and has considered alternatives. And if they chose this, they chose it for a reason.

00:55:15 ◼   ► You may not agree with that reason, but they did it for a reason, not because they're

00:55:18 ◼   ► total morons.

00:55:20 ◼   ► Right. And if you would rather have a mouse that has a charging port on the front, just

00:55:25 ◼   ► go buy one, right? Like the idea that Apple should have to make it for you is ridiculous.

00:55:30 ◼   ► And these are people, the people who are complaining about this are the sort of people who fully

00:55:35 ◼   ► know. They're not like my dad. My dad might think that only an Apple mouse works with

00:55:40 ◼   ► his iMac. He might, you know, I don't know if any company were going to do that, it would

00:55:45 ◼   ► be Apple. That's good to say. We don't support third party mice at all. You know, the people

00:55:51 ◼   ► who are laughing at the charging port on the belly of the magic mouse are the exact sort

00:55:55 ◼   ► of people who know very well. And often, in my opinion, probably are like me and don't

00:55:59 ◼   ► even use a goddamn magic mouse. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, I would, if only it had a good

00:56:04 ◼   ► charging port, they say. Yeah, that's right. I will say as, as a side note is one thing

00:56:10 ◼   ► I will agree with is I don't think Apple does a good job with the warnings on these peripherals

00:56:15 ◼   ► when they're low on battery. They do warn you. So part of the, the roll my eye at the

00:56:21 ◼   ► people who are like, and then my mouse was completely dead and I was in the middle of

00:56:25 ◼   ► something where I was on deadline and I had to wait, even if I only had to wait five minutes

00:56:29 ◼   ► to get a charge that would last me, you know, the rest of the day, I still had to wait,

00:56:34 ◼   ► couldn't use it. And if I, if they would just let me use it while it's plugged in, I could

00:56:38 ◼   ► have used it. You had to ignore warnings to get there, but I will say the way they do

00:56:42 ◼   ► the warnings, it's like, it's easy. Once you dismiss it, it goes away. Right. It'd be

00:56:46 ◼   ► better if it gave you a notification that you could leave in the corner. Like, Ooh,

00:56:51 ◼   ► let me leave that notification in the corner to remind myself when I do take a break to

00:56:55 ◼   ► plug this thing in. Yeah. I have to go find my like Bluetooth menu or whatever so I can

00:57:01 ◼   ► see what my, what my charging rate is. But yeah, it is, it is, it just gets stuck in

00:57:06 ◼   ► notification center with everything else basically.

00:57:08 ◼   ► Yeah. Let me take a break here and thank our next sponsor, it's our good friends at Memberful.

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00:58:01 ◼   ► Of course they integrate with WordPress, the most popular CMS in the world, but they've

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00:58:59 ◼   ► confident that you're not going to want to, that's why they make it easy. You're not locked

00:59:03 ◼   ► in for the future once you start with Memberful, but you know, all the other integrations you

00:59:08 ◼   ► could want, things like MailChimp, Discord for community buildings that you can have

00:59:12 ◼   ► a Discord that is gated by membership, stuff like that. Everything like that, that you

00:59:17 ◼   ► could possibly want plus an API for stuff that maybe isn't built in or out of the box,

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00:59:38 ◼   ► My thanks to Memberful. All right, peripheral talk wound up. Let's move on Mac mini, which

00:59:44 ◼   ► is now micro.

00:59:46 ◼   ► Even minier. Mac nano? I'm a mini user, so, and I got, I have an M2 Pro mini, which I

00:59:53 ◼   ► like quite a bit, but it is that classic design, which always is pretty funny. I mean, you

00:59:58 ◼   ► look at the teardowns for these things and it's like empty space, right? It's like a

01:00:02 ◼   ► cereal box or a bag of chips or something. And I'm glad that they finally got around

01:00:07 ◼   ► to the point of like, why don't we just make it smaller? Like we can save on materials.

01:00:12 ◼   ► We can basically do all this because the Apple Silicon power efficiency and cooling is so

01:00:17 ◼   ► good. We don't need all the space that we used to need for these Intel chips. And we

01:00:22 ◼   ► can, they trim down the ports, right? Goodbye, USB-A ports, which they're nice to have. I

01:00:27 ◼   ► like having them on this one because I have a couple older peripherals that use USB-A.

01:00:32 ◼   ► They're great for power. I have stuff that uses them for power, but you know, it's clear

01:00:36 ◼   ► where the writing on the wall is. And for me, the real win is the putting the ports

01:00:41 ◼   ► on the front, like from the Mac studio. And this is also fascinating to me because it

01:00:44 ◼   ► is a place which directly feels like it sort of goes back to our magic mouse conversation,

01:00:49 ◼   ► which is this is very clearly a function over form thing, right? It is convenient to have

01:00:54 ◼   ► ports on the front. It doesn't look as good as just a, oh, the unbroken slab of aluminum,

01:00:59 ◼   ► but it's undeniable. If you want to plug in like a thumb drive or something, I don't want

01:01:03 ◼   ► to be going behind my computer trying to figure out, especially in the USB-A days where it's

01:01:07 ◼   ► like, oh, I got it wrong. I got to flip it over and try again. And somehow it's still

01:01:11 ◼   ► wrong. I think putting those on the front is great. I'm excited about that. The one

01:01:15 ◼   ► that gives me a little bit of pause is putting the headphone jack on the front, which I get

01:01:20 ◼   ► it. If you use headphones and you're plugging stuff in and out all the time, it's good.

01:01:24 ◼   ► It really is. But I have speakers connected and it's going to be like, oh God, am I going

01:01:28 ◼   ► to run a speaker cable to the front of my Mac Mini? That's insane.

01:01:31 ◼   ► It's so cute and it looks better than ever. And now I've got a permanent, you know, and

01:01:36 ◼   ► a speaker cable is going to be permanent, right? I mean, it's like you hook up your

01:01:39 ◼   ► desk and it's heavy and it's going to be sneaking over the desk. And I, I feel like so close.

01:01:44 ◼   ► So I mentioned that on Mastodon and people were like, oh, just get a USB-C adapter. It's

01:01:48 ◼   ► like, I'm going to use up a Thunderbolt five port to drive my speakers, my analog desktop

01:01:53 ◼   ► speakers. Yeah. And what else are they going to do though? Put in a second headphone jack.

01:01:58 ◼   ► Like we've taken all these arrows in our back collectively. A headphone jack and a line

01:02:03 ◼   ► out jack. That was, those were the days. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, in some sense I can see

01:02:09 ◼   ► it but that, that line of thinking taken to its extreme takes you to, you know, PCs that

01:02:15 ◼   ► still ship with VGA adapters. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's like, well, more ports is better

01:02:21 ◼   ► in a way. Sort of. Yeah. But yeah, like four plugging in headphones on the front is better.

01:02:27 ◼   ► Four plugging in speakers on the front is ugly. Yeah. And honestly, if I did switch,

01:02:32 ◼   ► I think it made me conclude that I would probably just end up using the studio display speakers

01:02:38 ◼   ► because for the stuff that I do play audio for, they're fine. I don't play a lot of music

01:02:44 ◼   ► on my, on my Mac. I'm usually doing a podcast edit or I'm listening to audio from a video

01:02:48 ◼   ► of some kind. And honestly, I have these desktop monitors I bought when my old speakers died

01:02:53 ◼   ► because I figured, oh, I should, I should get some nicer speakers. They're kind of big

01:02:56 ◼   ► and bulky and it's, they're, they're good. They're good speakers, but I, again, I don't

01:03:01 ◼   ► need them for what I do. So I guess I can see that's Apple's, oh, just use the studio

01:03:04 ◼   ► display that you undoubtedly bought with your Mac mini for the speakers and you're all set.

01:03:08 ◼   ► Yeah. I think on the USB-A port thing, nobody, even Apple, Apple famously, I mean, famously

01:03:16 ◼   ► and infamously is aggressive about moving from like what it deems as legacy ports to

01:03:22 ◼   ► new ports and even Apple can miscalculate, right? Like they obviously in hindsight thought

01:03:31 ◼   ► the USB-C industry transition was going to happen sooner than it did. And, you know,

01:03:37 ◼   ► and I think, you know, like the, the one port MacBook was bananas in my opinion, because

01:03:44 ◼   ► you needed it for charging too. Because you know, even one USB-C port on that machine

01:03:49 ◼   ► with MagSafe would have at least been understandable. But the idea that if you're using it while

01:03:54 ◼   ► charged charging, you can't plug anything in was so strange. I mean, it really, it really

01:04:01 ◼   ► was Johnny Ive minimalism taken to the extreme. And I think that's the thinking. The thinking

01:04:07 ◼   ► was this is a machine that you're not supposed to, you know, it's more like a phone or an

01:04:11 ◼   ► iPad and you're not supposed to use it while it's charging. Yeah. Even though my wife uses

01:04:16 ◼   ► her iPad on the couch while charging all the time. Do you think that when the studio gets

01:04:22 ◼   ► revamped, it will also drop the USB ports? Do you think we're on that trend? Yeah, I

01:04:26 ◼   ► believe the laptops have hadn't haven't had them in years. Yeah, I think so. I don't think

01:04:30 ◼   ► we'll, I don't think Apple's ever going to make a new machine with USB ports again. And

01:04:34 ◼   ► if you need USB-A, it is no big deal to get very convenient or just a little adapter.

01:04:40 ◼   ► Yeah, right. Just get one. And you can get really good ones that support USB three speeds

01:04:45 ◼   ► on Amazon for, I don't know, like seven bucks. And just if you need a USB-A port, then you

01:04:51 ◼   ► put a little adapter on one of yours and that's on you. Yeah. Or if it's one particular device,

01:05:00 ◼   ► just put it on the cable for that device and leave the adapter on that cable. Yeah. I mean,

01:05:05 ◼   ► I have like two of those in my laptop bag and it's fine. Yeah. So I think adapters really

01:05:11 ◼   ► solve that problem. It just, it's taken a while, but I think the world's gone to USB-C.

01:05:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. And if you really need USB-A, the adapters, they cost like seven

01:05:20 ◼   ► bucks. I mean, and there's so many of them on Amazon, it's the sort of thing that depending

01:05:24 ◼   ► on where you live, it may not even be next day, you might be able to get it by the end

01:05:27 ◼   ► of the day. Right. And you get it, sometimes you can even get the cables that's like, all

01:05:31 ◼   ► right, whatever you need on that device and then a USB-C on the other end, especially

01:05:34 ◼   ► if it's just for power, it doesn't really matter. Vaguely disappointing to me, not that

01:05:40 ◼   ► I care too much, but you know, and again, you know, I'm minimalizing this case. A little

01:05:45 ◼   ► disappointing that you can only get it in silver and you can't get it in space black.

01:05:49 ◼   ► Well that space black one was kind of a one-off, right? I never did it again. Well, but I also

01:05:54 ◼   ► think it's a good way, I feel like if I were pitching Jeff Williams internally, you know,

01:06:00 ◼   ► on the, I feel like they could, whatever it would cost them to have a separate production

01:06:08 ◼   ► line to make black ones, space black ones in addition to silver, they could make up

01:06:13 ◼   ► with that by only making space black for the M4 Pro variants and there'd be some number

01:06:20 ◼   ► of people who would be just fine with the M4, but they want the black ones so they'd

01:06:25 ◼   ► pay the extra to get it. That's the black MacBook, the converted MacBook all over again,

01:06:30 ◼   ► pay an extra couple hundred bucks and you can get it in black. Yeah, it was like 200

01:06:33 ◼   ► bucks to get a black MacBook instead of a white one, but you know, not that big a deal.

01:06:38 ◼   ► I guess not surprising. I think the other thing that's raised a lot of eyebrows, and

01:06:41 ◼   ► I'm kind of curious when this actually people get their hands on it, is the power button

01:06:44 ◼   ► on the bottom. Yeah, yeah. I thought, I don't know. It's one of those things where I've,

01:06:51 ◼   ► I had to edit the post and just took it out. Like at first I thought by looking at the

01:06:55 ◼   ► pictures you'd still be able to slip a finger under there, but then I realized by comparing

01:07:00 ◼   ► it, it was like the picture on my screen was so much bigger than an actual Mac Mini. Like

01:07:07 ◼   ► the Mac Mini, the new Mac Mini is so small that the picture I was looking at on my studio

01:07:10 ◼   ► display was bigger than real life, and I was comparing it to the height of the front USB-C

01:07:16 ◼   ► ports, which I can compare to physically. I was like, oh, there's no way your finger's

01:07:20 ◼   ► going to fit under there. You literally are going to have to tilt it up to get the power

01:07:25 ◼   ► button. And I guess the rationale is, well, how often are you using the power button?

01:07:29 ◼   ► And the answer is honestly, I don't use it that much on my Mac Mini. I'm either restarting,

01:07:34 ◼   ► which I'm doing in software or on rare occasions if I get a lockup or have to shut down for

01:07:41 ◼   ► some reason. But honestly I could count on one hand the number of times I probably use

01:07:44 ◼   ► the power button on my Mac Mini. And it's not like it's super convenient on the back

01:07:47 ◼   ► either, but this is, I have to assume some of it is just a materials engineering thing.

01:07:53 ◼   ► There's not a lot of space on the back. It would have had to have been curved probably.

01:07:59 ◼   ► And that might've been trickier in aluminum because it's plastic on the current back.

01:08:03 ◼   ► I don't know. That's just kind of my thinking. But I guess the other thing is that given

01:08:08 ◼   ► how small the footprint is, that doesn't make any sense that you're going to stack anything

01:08:12 ◼   ► on top of it. Right. Yeah. So I mean, and the worst, I mean, maybe you'll, people will

01:08:17 ◼   ► stack like an SSD and it's not like it's heavy. It's just, yeah, that's not going to prevent

01:08:24 ◼   ► you from tilting it up to get to the power. And it's not like if it was a hard drive and

01:08:27 ◼   ► the old, it was like, should I be tilting this? Cause it's got moving spinning disks

01:08:30 ◼   ► in it or whatever. Right. And you know, so I think, I think it's fine. But again, I've,

01:08:35 ◼   ► I think this, the magic mouse charging port location is fine. So maybe that's a good thing.

01:08:41 ◼   ► They didn't put the power adapter on the bottom here. That would have been a real fact. Somebody,

01:08:46 ◼   ► somebody had a Photoshop job where it showed the power adapter being on the bottom, which

01:08:50 ◼   ► is pretty funny. I should see if I can put that in the show notes. Yeah, but it's good.

01:08:54 ◼   ► I mean, I'm glad they kept the internal power supply. I'm glad they kept the ethernet port.

01:08:58 ◼   ► And again, they, they actually, it's even a smaller difference this time around between

01:09:03 ◼   ► the M4 and M4 Pro models because they both have the same number of ports. It's just that

01:09:09 ◼   ► the Pro models are Thunderbolt 5 as opposed to Thunderbolt 4. In the back. Right. Yes.

01:09:14 ◼   ► All of the ports in the back, I got this wrong in my first writeup, that all the ports on

01:09:18 ◼   ► the all Mac minis are Thunderbolt on the back. M4 is Thunderbolt 4. M4 Pro, they're all Thunderbolt

01:09:26 ◼   ► 5. But on all Mac minis, the two ports on the front are just USB-C. Yeah. Right. And

01:09:31 ◼   ► I think that's good to have the consistency between those because it was a little weird.

01:09:34 ◼   ► The last generation, it was like, I think there were just fewer Thunderbolt slash USB-C

01:09:38 ◼   ► ports on the back overall. And that seemed weird. But I think that Apple also, this,

01:09:43 ◼   ► the mini is such an interesting niche device for them. Again, like some of the other ones

01:09:46 ◼   ► we discussed, it doesn't get updated that often, but it's like the most versatile Mac

01:09:50 ◼   ► that there is. And it's used, as they pointed out, in all of these different wild scenarios,

01:09:55 ◼   ► right? People use them. I used to have one on my TV stand for years. People brack mount

01:09:59 ◼   ► them. People put them in cars. It's wild and it's cool. And I think Apple likes having

01:10:04 ◼   ► that sort of Swiss army knife tool that fits all of those possible use cases and having

01:10:10 ◼   ► it be pretty much equally as capable, I think in both. But hey, you just want a little extra

01:10:14 ◼   ► oomph. You pay a little bit more. Yeah. There's a previous, they haven't sponsored in a while,

01:10:19 ◼   ► but I'll say that they've sponsored the show numerous times. Mac Stadium. And prior to

01:10:24 ◼   ► them, I forget if Mac Mini Colo. Yeah. Yeah. I forget if Mac Stadium bought them or if

01:10:29 ◼   ► they just changed the name. But anyway, a whole company just dedicated to putting Mac

01:10:34 ◼   ► Minis in professional server farms and data centers, you know, and a business that's going

01:10:42 ◼   ► strong. And you know, if anything might be more popular than ever, seems bananas. The

01:10:48 ◼   ► range of why people use Mac Minis and what they buy them for goes from the least professional

01:10:54 ◼   ► to most professional use cases imaginable. Yeah. That base, honestly, like I like having

01:10:59 ◼   ► the M4 Pro, but that base model at 600 bucks, that's a pretty good, it's a pretty good piece

01:11:05 ◼   ► of hardware, honestly. I think there's nothing to sneeze at there. Yeah. I don't think there's

01:11:09 ◼   ► any other product Apple makes that has such a, runs the gamut of reasons why people buy

01:11:16 ◼   ► it. I mean, certainly for example, with MacBook Pros, there are people who buy expensive MacBook

01:11:22 ◼   ► Pros to use in a context where they are not pressing the technical limits at all, but

01:11:29 ◼   ► they're not, the difference is nobody's buying it because it's cheap. Right. Right. Whereas

01:11:34 ◼   ► people are literally buying the Mac Mini because it is the cheapest way to get a brand new

01:11:38 ◼   ► Mac. And you know, and supports third party displays, which you can get for, you know,

01:11:43 ◼   ► 60 bucks on Amazon if you want, plug it in the HDMI port, right? I mean, if you really

01:11:47 ◼   ► want to get a Mac up and running for 700 bucks total, you could do it with a Mac Mini. Yeah.

01:11:52 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely. The one weirdness I noticed was that that Pro one is also, so it starts

01:11:57 ◼   ► with 24 gigs of memory. You can go to 48 or 64. There's no 32. Yeah. Which I thought was

01:12:04 ◼   ► odd. I mean, you, I heard people talking about memory channels, but yeah. I've made a link

01:12:10 ◼   ► in the note. I've got to put this in. You wrote a good column in six colors where you're

01:12:14 ◼   ► talking yourself out of upgrading your personal Mac Mini because you wanted it. And that was

01:12:20 ◼   ► one of them. Right. One of the ways I have to pay more. Yeah. You've already got 32 and

01:12:27 ◼   ► it seems weird to buy a new machine and go down to 24, but you don't need 48. And it's

01:12:34 ◼   ► $400 or something like it's ridiculously expensive to do that. Their RAM and SSD updates upgrades

01:12:42 ◼   ► and remain very high price. I think that's how they're, they're using that to subsidize

01:12:47 ◼   ► raising the minimum to 16 gig across the board is everybody gets 16 gigs of memory, but we're

01:12:53 ◼   ► going to take it out of the people who want to buy more RAM. While we're on that, it is

01:12:58 ◼   ► definitely worth an aside to just mention the RAM across the board for everything is

01:13:03 ◼   ► up. So all of these M4 Macs, every single one starts at 16 gigabytes of RAM. There are

01:13:10 ◼   ► no eight gig configurations for anything with the M4. Other than, I guess the iPad, what's

01:13:15 ◼   ► the iPad Pro have? Don't think it's got to have at least eight because of Apple intelligence.

01:13:23 ◼   ► But I'm not sure if they, the amount of RAM in there, I assume it's, I assume it's eight.

01:13:28 ◼   ► But the other big news it's, it is, you know, like a footnote, but it's very highly unusual

01:13:34 ◼   ► is that Apple has upgraded the base RAM without raising the price of the existing Mac book

01:13:41 ◼   ► heirs to 16 gigabytes, which for the M3 models doesn't really surprise me even though it's

01:13:48 ◼   ► off cycle, but it really surprises me that even for the 999 M2 model, they've, as of

01:13:55 ◼   ► today for 999, you get a 16 gigabyte M2 MacBook Pro.

01:14:01 ◼   ► And it's Apple intelligence, right? It has to be right. Yeah. That they just know that

01:14:06 ◼   ► this uses so much RAM that it's actually, it actually makes eight gigabytes too tight.

01:14:12 ◼   ► Right at least for Mac stuff. On the iOS side, we know that eight gigs is kind of the minimum,

01:14:17 ◼   ► but I guess the memory management is handled so differently than on the Mac side. Yeah.

01:14:22 ◼   ► Right because you could have Final Cut Pro open and Safari, or let's say you use Chrome

01:14:28 ◼   ► or Safari and Chrome with a bunch of tabs open. They don't get the memory model on Mac

01:14:34 ◼   ► OS doesn't flush them or freeze them or whatever you want to, whoever you want to describe

01:14:38 ◼   ► it in layperson's terms, they're all running. And so Apple intelligence suddenly gives,

01:14:45 ◼   ► makes eight gigabytes too little even on an Apple, Apple silicon. And they don't want

01:14:49 ◼   ► people buying that intro level thousand dollar MacBook Air and saying, wait, it doesn't do

01:14:55 ◼   ► all those Apple intelligence features you've been talking about. I think they're, they're

01:14:58 ◼   ► cognizant of the fact that that would get people upset. Yeah. Let's see. Apple's tech

01:15:04 ◼   ► specs for the iPad Pro do still don't mention RAM. Yeah, I think the suggestion is it's

01:15:11 ◼   ► says eight gigabytes. Here's a, here's a answer from IGN. Eight gigabytes if you opt for 256

01:15:19 ◼   ► or 512 storage and 16 gigabytes for one terabyte or two terabytes. So they do make an eight

01:15:27 ◼   ► gigabyte M4 chip that's in the iPad Pro, but none of the Macs have it. But the MacBook

01:15:35 ◼   ► Air is going to 16 as a baseline is great. That's finally updated my Air when I bought

01:15:40 ◼   ► it to 16 because it was not enough for me and I feel like, no, actually that's fine.

01:15:45 ◼   ► I would take the base RAM on that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think for a lot of people too, it,

01:15:50 ◼   ► you know, I guess we'll see how Apple intelligence shakes out, especially with the upcoming features

01:15:55 ◼   ► that aren't even out yet, but I suspect that it'll be comfortable for everybody. I think

01:16:02 ◼   ► this is great. And I think it's, you know, even before we knew Apple intelligence was

01:16:06 ◼   ► coming, I feel like, like amongst listeners of our shows and our websites, everybody's

01:16:13 ◼   ► felt a little uncomfortable telling their friends and family, add, you know, the base

01:16:18 ◼   ► model's fine for you. I think most of us have felt like, Hey, what, you know, I'm going

01:16:23 ◼   ► to, I need a new MacBook Air. What should I get? You know, or I need a new MacBook. Which

01:16:26 ◼   ► one should I get? Yeah, you should get the MacBook Air. And if you upgrade anything,

01:16:30 ◼   ► you should upgrade the RAM. Yeah. Right. I mean, we, we both come from eras where it

01:16:34 ◼   ► was always buy as much RAM as you can afford, right? That was all right. Conventional wisdom

01:16:38 ◼   ► and the unified memory architecture has changed that a little bit, but I still think 16 does

01:16:43 ◼   ► feel like a lot more breathing room than eight gigs. And it removes that people were just,

01:16:48 ◼   ► you know, there was a lot of criticism of that again, especially from our audiences

01:16:51 ◼   ► of eight gigs feeling kind of sparse. And I think removing that and especially again,

01:16:56 ◼   ► we just discussed like how much they charge for Ram upgrades, doing it at no cost to basically

01:17:01 ◼   ► customers. I think that's super smart, super smart. No promises because this one I have

01:17:07 ◼   ► to look up, but I seem to recall it on an ATP episode sometime in the last year where

01:17:13 ◼   ► somebody sent into them like a graph of the base Ram. I think we have one, I think six

01:17:20 ◼   ► colors had it too, Jason linked to it. I'll have to see. It's been a long time since the,

01:17:25 ◼   ► I think it's yeah, Dave might have been David Schaub. Pre Tim Cook CEO. And I mean, this

01:17:32 ◼   ► is a graph that went back to like the eighties. Ninety-nine I think is where it goes. Yeah.

01:17:36 ◼   ► And it was, yeah, it was, but it was a fairly steady upward slope and, you know, always

01:17:44 ◼   ► a little frustrating towards the end of the, you know, when it went from four to eight

01:17:48 ◼   ► gig megabytes, megabytes, but it kept going up at a fairly predictable level. And then

01:17:53 ◼   ► Tim Cook became CEO and it really, it's, it's hard not to draw a connection, you know, that

01:18:00 ◼   ► the Tim Cook's mindset led to, and stagnation in the base Ram, honestly, you know, 2017

01:18:10 ◼   ► was the year it went to eight, which is quite a long seven years at eight gigabytes is a

01:18:15 ◼   ► long time. Yeah. So finally good, good for Apple though, better late than never. And

01:18:21 ◼   ► if Apple intelligence forced their hand, it might be the best single best aspect of Apple

01:18:26 ◼   ► intelligence, right? You're not wrong. I would agree. What else about the Mac mini? I say,

01:18:32 ◼   ► there's not a lot other things. I mean, obviously maybe we'll talk a little bit about all the

01:18:36 ◼   ► M4 architecture stuff. I think the displays, I don't remember. I think that changed too.

01:18:41 ◼   ► How many displays it can drive. I'm a single display user, so I don't think about it, but

01:18:45 ◼   ► I know people are very, have strong feelings. I think it drives up, I think they all drive

01:18:48 ◼   ► up to three displays now and they, or maybe it's only the ones with the pro chip that

01:18:55 ◼   ► to have Thunderbolt five can do eight K displays. They can add up to 240 Hertz. Okay. That's

01:19:02 ◼   ► 61 display. Yeah. But I think the pro one can do a six K and an eight K whereas the

01:19:09 ◼   ► other one could do a five K and an eight K. So, but that's not bad. Honestly, all those

01:19:15 ◼   ► are pretty solid. Yeah. If you're, I feel like if you're trying to drive two or three

01:19:19 ◼   ► displays over these things, I think that's pretty reasonable. And that's a bigger issue

01:19:23 ◼   ► for the M4 base ones, which I think were more hampered in the past, especially pre this,

01:19:29 ◼   ► the was the M3 one where it's like you could actually, you know, laptops run lid closed.

01:19:33 ◼   ► You could run two externals or whatever, which was a big point of contention before that.

01:19:38 ◼   ► It led to some speculation when I think the specs came out yesterday that some people

01:19:42 ◼   ► I saw hitting me up like, do you think Apple's going to update the displays this week too?

01:19:47 ◼   ► And they didn't, there are no new displays, but I would have guessed even beforehand that

01:19:52 ◼   ► if there are new displays coming in the next 12 months, they would come alongside the Mac

01:19:59 ◼   ► studio and the Mac pro in the spring. I think that's more reasonable. Yeah. The pro display

01:20:04 ◼   ► XDR, I think goes back to 2019 at least. I know it was when the old Mac pro. Yeah. It

01:20:10 ◼   ► was the old old, the new old Mac pro. Yeah. When they first drilled the holes in the side

01:20:16 ◼   ► with the fancy chamfers and stuff. So that pro display XDR is at this point long in the

01:20:23 ◼   ► tooth, especially for something that's so expensive. Would they go to 8K or would they

01:20:27 ◼   ► offer two models? I don't know, but I would guess springtime if Apple's going to update

01:20:32 ◼   ► that. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let me take a break here and thank our third and final sponsor

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01:22:29 ◼   ► Squarespace can do invoices. I mean, you name it, they've got it. They keep growing. It

01:22:33 ◼   ► is so great. Where do you go to find out more? Go to squarespace.com. You get a free trial,

01:22:38 ◼   ► but start out at squarespace.com/talkshow. And when you do pay after your 30-day free

01:22:44 ◼   ► trial, you get 10% off your first purchase, which can be up to one year. So save 10% on

01:22:51 ◼   ► a whole year just by going to squarespace.com/talkshow. So that brings us to the Mac Pro, MacBook Pro.

01:22:59 ◼   ► I mean, today, not Mac Pro. Probably a long time away from that. I'm guessing spring,

01:23:05 ◼   ► but MacBook Pros, which I think are the ones that have been, I think because they are Apple's

01:23:10 ◼   ► the most important Macs, they're not, you know, the best-selling ones are the MacBook

01:23:15 ◼   ► Airs, but I think the most important are the MacBook Pros. I think the MacBook Air could

01:23:19 ◼   ► skip a year or be a little less regular. You know, they only came out with the six or 15

01:23:25 ◼   ► inch size off cycle. MacBook Pros, they remain one of my favorite, very favorite changes

01:23:32 ◼   ► with regard to Apple Silicon compared to Intel is that the 14 inch models remain technical

01:23:37 ◼   ► peers to the 16 inch. There's no high-end model that you can, "Oh, you only get the

01:23:42 ◼   ► 40-core GPU on 16 inch" or something like that. Nope, you can, whatever you want. If

01:23:46 ◼   ► you want the 14 inch footprint, you get the 14 inch model. And I can't wait to see it

01:23:52 ◼   ► in person because I am such a fan of the nano texture studio display. Now, finally, for

01:23:58 ◼   ► the first time since like, I don't know, 2008, 2009, somewhere around there when they used

01:24:04 ◼   ► to call them matte. They have a nano texture finish and it's only 150 bucks. And it's

01:24:11 ◼   ► 150 bucks. And I saw that this morning and I was like, "Whoa, am I on 14 inch? Okay,

01:24:17 ◼   ► I'll bet it's 200 for 16 inch." Nope, 16 inch is also only 150 bucks. Yeah, it's

01:24:23 ◼   ► pretty good too, especially because, so they had that, they did with the M4 iPad Pro, right?

01:24:28 ◼   ► They did a nano texture, but it's a different process. Yeah. My understanding is this is

01:24:33 ◼   ► the same as the studio display and the Pro Display XDR process. Yeah, and it looks from

01:24:39 ◼   ► their illustration that it goes edge to edge. I think one of the weird things about the

01:24:43 ◼   ► iPad nano texture, iPad Pro, is that the bezel is still glossy. And I don't know why. I don't

01:24:52 ◼   ► know if it's like, "Ah, it feels better this way." It's kind of weird though, because

01:24:57 ◼   ► I had a review unit that had it and, or either that or I just saw it in person somehow, but

01:25:02 ◼   ► it's weird. And I don't think the MacBook Pros do it that way, which would be weird.

01:25:07 ◼   ► Well, it makes sense. I mean, I assume the consideration with the iPads is you're touching

01:25:11 ◼   ► it all the time, which you're not doing obviously with any of your other displays, because Apple

01:25:15 ◼   ► has yet to make a touchscreen Mac. So I think that makes sense. But I'm impressed because

01:25:19 ◼   ► it feels like definitely one of those cases where we've now done this enough and we've

01:25:22 ◼   ► got this process down that it's more affordable than it used to be. And so it isn't as much

01:25:27 ◼   ► of a, "Oh, you're going to pay a lot to get that nano texture finish." But yeah, I haven't

01:25:32 ◼   ► seen them as much in the real world. And I know some people talk about the color, having

01:25:38 ◼   ► some effects on the color, brightness or vividness or whatever.

01:25:42 ◼   ► Yeah, definitely does. I mean, I have lived with and because of the way I often mention

01:25:48 ◼   ► it, but the way the sunlight comes into my office at home, I need it really. Like before

01:25:53 ◼   ► I had this studio display with the nano texture, there are, it's I think November and April,

01:26:02 ◼   ► but there's two times of the year coming up is the one. Six months apart because of

01:26:08 ◼   ► the science. But there's like a two week period in November and a two week period in April

01:26:14 ◼   ► where mid day, which for me is like right when I'm starting my day, like it is just

01:26:19 ◼   ► a beam of sunshine that hits where my desk sits in my office. And before I had a studio

01:26:25 ◼   ► display with nano texture, we moved here in 2017. So I've been working in this office

01:26:33 ◼   ► since 2017. I would just take a disconnect if I had a, or at the time I had an iMac,

01:26:39 ◼   ► I would just switch to a different device and go up to the kitchen for an hour. I had

01:26:42 ◼   ► to go. It was, it's that type of sunlight that I literally could not even read the screen

01:26:47 ◼   ► for about 90 minutes a day in the middle of my workday. And now I don't even notice.

01:26:53 ◼   ► I'm like, is the sun hitting my screen? And I hold my hand up and it's like Indiana

01:26:57 ◼   ► Jones testing the ray of sunshine in Raiders of the Lost Ark. And it's like, oh yeah,

01:27:02 ◼   ► there was a very strong beam of sunshine hitting my display and I wasn't even sure the nano

01:27:08 ◼   ► texture glare reduction is so good. So I don't need that for my Mac book because a Mac book,

01:27:14 ◼   ► I can just move wherever I want and I don't really work outside, but I've always ever

01:27:18 ◼   ► since Apple switch, I just prefer a matte display, even though it does absolutely does

01:27:24 ◼   ► sort of take some of the pop out of color. I don't think it de-saturates, but I just

01:27:31 ◼   ► prefer it anyway. I actually, whatever it does to the color and I know some people don't

01:27:36 ◼   ► like it and so don't buy it and you're lucky you get to save money, but I don't

01:27:41 ◼   ► mind what it does to color and I just prefer it overall. I always have. And I mean, this

01:27:48 ◼   ► goes back to the earliest days of the talk show with Dan Benjamin, you know, talking

01:27:53 ◼   ► about all, I always bought the matte option on a Mac book and or power book going back

01:27:59 ◼   ► that far. So I'm glad to see it come back. I've also saw people's, I don't know

01:28:05 ◼   ► the technical explanation for this, but that Apple's use of quote unquote nano texture

01:28:09 ◼   ► is specific to laser etching of glass and Mac book displays are definitely not glass,

01:28:14 ◼   ► but they're still calling it nano texture. I don't know what they're doing. Interesting.

01:28:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know either. That's, it's a interesting one. I'll be, it will be intriguing

01:28:22 ◼   ► to see when people get their hands on the review units for those, how it shakes out.

01:28:28 ◼   ► I don't think much has changed from the M threes other than, you know, pretty standard.

01:28:32 ◼   ► I mean, you still got that like base level one. That's just the straight M four. You've

01:28:37 ◼   ► got the M four pro 14 inch and they, of course the M the 16 inch, which is just the M four

01:28:42 ◼   ► pro or max. Right. There's a lot of talk. I mean, the chips are kind of the big part

01:28:47 ◼   ► obviously and that's what's driving I think most of the revisions of the macro pro, especially

01:28:50 ◼   ► since it's such a workhorse. They talked a lot about the improvements compared to

01:28:54 ◼   ► both the M three and the M one. That was interesting. They did not talk about the M two, but maybe

01:28:58 ◼   ► that was just for, okay, we only have two, two things we can talk about. We'll talk about

01:29:02 ◼   ► the most recent one. We'll talk about all the people we expect to upgrade from the M

01:29:05 ◼   ► one because if you're coming from an M two, you're probably not going to upgrade. So it's

01:29:10 ◼   ► not as much of a use case. Yeah. I mean, it seems like pretty consistent, right? The generationally

01:29:16 ◼   ► they've, they've gained what, 20, 30% performance year over year in the generation. So nothing

01:29:21 ◼   ► too shocking with any of that. Yeah. I've seen people like before we recorded a friend

01:29:27 ◼   ► already hit me up, like that some of Apple's like on the main MacBook pro webpage, the

01:29:33 ◼   ► comparisons are to the M one, but like in the video that they had today, you know, they,

01:29:38 ◼   ► they had a comparison, both the M three, like you said, M three and M one. So you can compare

01:29:44 ◼   ► year over year. You can also compare it back to the M one. And you know, it's, it's like

01:29:49 ◼   ► I said to my friend, it's sort of like the, a little bit like the adage, the, the lawyer's

01:29:54 ◼   ► advice that if the law's on your side, bang the law, if the facts are on your side, bang

01:29:58 ◼   ► the facts. And if neither is on your side, bang the table. And so if year over year improvement

01:30:04 ◼   ► were dramatic, I'm sure they had to what they'd emphasize, right? Just because, wow,

01:30:09 ◼   ► look at what we've done year over year, but it's not insignificant, but it's not wow.

01:30:15 ◼   ► But I also think comparing to M one isn't unfair. It's not just like, well, let's cherry

01:30:20 ◼   ► pick this, the oldest Apple Silicon to make the 3.4 X instead of whatever, 1.2 X or whatever

01:30:28 ◼   ► the factor difference would be. But I think it's much more reasonable that that's the

01:30:33 ◼   ► target audience of devices people currently own, that they might be starting to get the

01:30:38 ◼   ► itch to upgrade. You know, I still, my main Mac is an M one Mac's MacBook Pro. And I'm,

01:30:48 ◼   ► you know, I'm keyed into this, you know, this is my profession and I still think, my

01:30:52 ◼   ► God, this machine does everything I do instantaneously.

01:30:55 ◼   ► I have an error and I feel much the same, at least there, they changed the design a

01:30:59 ◼   ► bit and that's explained some of my coveting of the new ones, but it's, it's a great

01:31:03 ◼   ► machine. It is impressive how well Apple Silicon has stood up. And I often think to myself,

01:31:07 ◼   ► like, great, it does, it's 3.4, four times faster, whatever. But it's like, what is

01:31:12 ◼   ► that? What does that change in my daily life? Like for me, it's maybe bouncing some logic

01:31:16 ◼   ► project files or something, but other than that, I'm not doing much to tax it. So,

01:31:22 ◼   ► but they keep, they keep chugging forward. So I don't know when the point is where

01:31:25 ◼   ► I'll be like, okay, now's the time to upgrade. I feel like it's probably whenever something

01:31:30 ◼   ► like Apple intelligence or whatever comes along that is a, okay, you can't do it on

01:31:34 ◼   ► an M1, but the so far the M1s, right? As long as you have enough RAM, the M1s are totally

01:31:40 ◼   ► fine.

01:31:41 ◼   ► Yeah. I cannot emphasize enough how much I'm, I'm already take, I'm the one trying

01:31:46 ◼   ► to emphasize it, but I'm already taking for granted that they're on an annual upgrade

01:31:51 ◼   ► cycle and it just, just is not the way Mac book pros used to be. It used to just be like,

01:31:57 ◼   ► surprise, we've got a new one. It's like, oh great, wow. Is it a speed bump or is it

01:32:01 ◼   ► a big design? We don't know. It could be either one.

01:32:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:04 ◼   ► Because sometimes there would just be a speed bump. It would be like, ah, no event, you

01:32:08 ◼   ► know, it's just a press release, but we've, you know, it's gone from so many megahertz,

01:32:13 ◼   ► megahertz, you know, to date myself to slightly faster megahertz or something like that.

01:32:18 ◼   ► I'll take a spec we do not even talk about anymore, which I enjoy.

01:32:21 ◼   ► Right.

01:32:22 ◼   ► The Apple's managed to get away from that entirely. Now it's about, about cores, it's

01:32:26 ◼   ► about memory bandwidth, all that fun stuff.

01:32:29 ◼   ► Yeah. But, you know, and lots of cores in the M4, I don't think more. I just did the

01:32:35 ◼   ► comparison right before we started recording where I think the M3 Macs was the same or

01:32:40 ◼   ► this most of the configs are 14 cores with 10 performance for high efficiency and you

01:32:47 ◼   ► can pay more, not too much more. I think it was only like 300 bucks or something to go

01:32:51 ◼   ► to 16 CPU cores where 12 are high performance and you still keep the four high efficiency.

01:32:58 ◼   ► And it was a big, but the memory bandwidth was a big jump for both the Pro and the Mac.

01:33:03 ◼   ► 75% faster they said?

01:33:05 ◼   ► Something like that. It went from 150 to 273, which was the number on the, on the Pro and

01:33:12 ◼   ► then 400 to 546. I, that is a spec that gets beyond me in terms of just how, where does

01:33:19 ◼   ► that demonstrate, but it does feel like that is a place where they have focused their intentions.

01:33:25 ◼   ► Therefore one thinks it must be significant.

01:33:27 ◼   ► Yeah. I think the other cosmetic tweak is that the, even the lowest end models, they're

01:33:35 ◼   ► space black and silver and not space gray and silver. Last year there was a, just exactly

01:33:40 ◼   ► like I was alluding to, charging more for a black Mac Mini. There was a, you couldn't

01:33:47 ◼   ► get the better, in my opinion, darker. I think, I don't know anybody. I haven't seen, and

01:33:53 ◼   ► you can usually find somebody who likes something. I haven't found anybody who laments the change

01:33:58 ◼   ► from space gray to space black. Like I know people who prefer silver versus darker period.

01:34:04 ◼   ► And so you've always been in luck because they always make silver. But if you're going

01:34:07 ◼   ► to go darker, it should be dark, not like slightly darker.

01:34:11 ◼   ► Yeah. It's weird to have all those shades. You've had, you've had silver, space gray,

01:34:16 ◼   ► space black, plus the midnights over on the airline.

01:34:20 ◼   ► Well, at least the midnight is distinctive. I've already been mixed up like with review

01:34:25 ◼   ► units where I'm like, wait, is this silver space gray? Or like at an Apple hands-on like

01:34:30 ◼   ► after an event, it's like, wait, what am I looking at? Silver or space gray?

01:34:33 ◼   ► And is space gray or black? I mean, let's, let's pick a lane here.

01:34:38 ◼   ► Yeah. So space black is good. And so, but the, the entry model 14 inch MacBook Pro you

01:34:45 ◼   ► can get in space black. So, hooray for that.

01:34:49 ◼   ► What else? There's Thunderbolt 5 on the Pro and the Max ones.

01:34:53 ◼   ► Oh, there's a port on the other side, right? On the base model.

01:34:56 ◼   ► Yeah. I think there always was. Oh, but they added a port on the base, the base model.

01:35:01 ◼   ► Right. Yeah.

01:35:02 ◼   ► Yeah. The base model is, they're making the base model justify the Pro name. Really. I

01:35:07 ◼   ► mean, that's sort of, I think the, the overarching story of what they've done, right. Where

01:35:13 ◼   ► there were these years where the entry model MacBook Pro really was Pro only in the name

01:35:21 ◼   ► that's on the box.

01:35:22 ◼   ► Right. It was more or less an Air, you know, sometimes with slightly more RAM or something,

01:35:28 ◼   ► but it's really basically just the Air in a Pro chassis.

01:35:32 ◼   ► Right. And, and there was even an event before the MacBook Air went retina where Phil Schiller

01:35:40 ◼   ► even pitched the 13-inch MacBook Pro as the replacement for the Air because it had a retina

01:35:46 ◼   ► screen already. You know, he wasn't saying this is the replacement. He's like, if you

01:35:50 ◼   ► have a MacBook Air though, and you're holding out for a retina display, here it is.

01:35:54 ◼   ► And I guess that's still the major difference where you get that XDR display on the Pros,

01:35:59 ◼   ► even on the base model that you do not get on the Air, which I have not spent as much

01:36:04 ◼   ► time with the MacBook Pros. I've generally been an Air user, although I was, I've been

01:36:08 ◼   ► using a 15-inch Air for a while and it is, yeah, I was just looking at specs, comparing

01:36:12 ◼   ► that and thinking, oh, 14-inch, like I've gotten by just fine with a 15-inch Air. It's

01:36:15 ◼   ► actually pretty, pretty light and pretty usable. And the 14 is, is lighter and smaller in some

01:36:21 ◼   ► ways as well. Maybe, maybe I should switch to a 14-inch.

01:36:24 ◼   ► I think that just the, to wrap it up, that the overall movement towards an annual schedule

01:36:30 ◼   ► for all these Macs, or at least trying to get as many of them annual as possible, in

01:36:36 ◼   ► addition to being a benefit as a user to make it predictable, like is this a good time to

01:36:40 ◼   ► buy a blank Mac? I think the A, that's just great. B, it keeps anything from languishing

01:36:48 ◼   ► for years, which is never good. But then the other thing is it does seem like it's helping

01:36:54 ◼   ► Apple clarify the overall product lineup. Like there's more distinction now between

01:36:59 ◼   ► a MacBook Air and a MacBook, even the lowest end MacBook Pro, right?

01:37:04 ◼   ► There's, there's a winnowing too, right? There is, we've had times in the past where

01:37:08 ◼   ► one model or another has felt kind of like an orphan. I mean, like in the Touch Bar years

01:37:13 ◼   ► when you had that one that didn't have a Touch Bar, like, you're like, why are these,

01:37:18 ◼   ► why have they not updated all of these? And I think that's the one, that's the one that

01:37:21 ◼   ► wasn't really pro, right? Even though there were people who wanted it because it didn't

01:37:25 ◼   ► have a Touch Bar. Yeah. And so I think you're right though, that it is, it is helped clarify

01:37:29 ◼   ► a little bit of can we distill, right? Can we distill this down to kind of what are the

01:37:34 ◼   ► niches that we're trying to address and what are the products that fill those? And I think

01:37:38 ◼   ► it's, it is interesting to watch and see, will this really be annual? Especially for

01:37:43 ◼   ► some things, I mean, the Mini is a great example. The Mini went years between updates sometimes.

01:37:49 ◼   ► And this is the second one, third, I guess we had M1, M2 and M4. There was no M3 as I

01:37:55 ◼   ► said. And that's a lot. It's a lot more Minis than we've had previous to that. There

01:38:00 ◼   ► was even, you know, it was sort of like, hey, we're, we're reinvigorated about the Mac

01:38:04 ◼   ► before Apple Silicon, where they, they came out with a Mac Mini update and it was sort

01:38:08 ◼   ► of, it was as close as they're going to come to apologizing where they're like, yeah,

01:38:13 ◼   ► we kind of, we kind of let this Mac Mini slip for a couple of years. But we know that people

01:38:19 ◼   ► who love it, really love it, including serious pro use cases. And I just remember like, I

01:38:25 ◼   ► remember it was Tom Boger, doing it, saying like, there are like some of the biggest concert

01:38:30 ◼   ► names you can, you know, 60,000 seat stadiums for concerts. And all of the audio is going

01:38:36 ◼   ► through Mac Minis, you know, because they're small and they want small and it does everything

01:38:41 ◼   ► they need. And then they got to pack it up and take it to another city tomorrow. So using

01:38:46 ◼   ► the Mac Mini is exactly what these pros want. But yeah, going years without updates. But

01:38:50 ◼   ► the other thing, it's just along those lines, like I feel like shrinking the Mini, making

01:38:55 ◼   ► it more Mini and saying it's the M4 and the M4 Pro gives more conceptual clarity between

01:39:02 ◼   ► the Mac Mini and the Mac Studio. Yeah. Mac Studio starts with M4 Max and, and presumably

01:39:10 ◼   ► ultra. You can, you can even throw the iMac on there too, right? Because the iMac doesn't

01:39:14 ◼   ► have a pro option, it really is positioned much like the Air on the laptop side as, hey,

01:39:20 ◼   ► this is our sort of bog standard. Basically you want to start, you want a computer, does

01:39:24 ◼   ► everything right out of the box, got a screen, all that. Like you just, you're ready to go.

01:39:29 ◼   ► And I think that that makes a lot of sense from a product line standpoint. Of course,

01:39:32 ◼   ► the iMac has been their standard bearer since 97, which it's the kind of iconic Mac. I mean,

01:39:39 ◼   ► it traces all the way back to the original Mac. So I think it does really do a nice job

01:39:43 ◼   ► of bringing the product line together. Yeah. Like the whole, I know that the Mac Studio

01:39:47 ◼   ► and Mac Pro have not been updated for a while, and I keep saying, I expect them to be the

01:39:52 ◼   ► late, you know, first half of next year. And I think if that's true and it happens, we

01:39:57 ◼   ► could definitely say at that point, right now, the Mac lineup overall top to bottom,

01:40:02 ◼   ► every model makes sense, has a role, has never, the whole Mac, you know, in 40 years of Macintosh

01:40:09 ◼   ► has the whole lineup has never made this much sense since 1984 when there was one. And so

01:40:15 ◼   ► there's a lot of people out there. And you either want it or you don't. That's it. Right.

01:40:22 ◼   ► All right. That's about it for this. Thank you, Dan. It's good to have you back on the

01:40:26 ◼   ► show. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. I've mentioned Six Colors multiple times.

01:40:30 ◼   ► People can read you there, but also your own authorial universe is dmoran.net.com. What's

01:40:42 ◼   ► coming up next for you as an author? As an author? Well, I just put out my most recent

01:40:46 ◼   ► book which is called The Armageddon Protocol, which is the end of my Galactic Cold War series.

01:40:51 ◼   ► So that wrapped up. I'm working on a new book, which I'm delivering early next year, and

01:40:55 ◼   ► I don't know when it's out yet, maybe late next year at the earliest, but that's a standalone

01:41:00 ◼   ► science fiction novel that I'm working on. And because it is just around Halloween, I'll

01:41:04 ◼   ► plug my, last year I wrote a supernatural detective thriller called All Souls Lost,

01:41:08 ◼   ► which has a tech angle to it. There's a spooky goings on at a big tech company, and I think

01:41:13 ◼   ► especially many people listen to this show. Myvery didn't think, "That sounds very familiar."

01:41:18 ◼   ► So All Souls Lost. Yes, that is. It's good timing. That's a coincidence, but it's a happy

01:41:23 ◼   ► coincidence. Perfect. And I hope you get at least your game five. I'm not sure I can root

01:41:27 ◼   ► for you to take the whole series, but I hope you hang out a little bit longer and get some

01:41:32 ◼   ► entertainment out of that. Thank you. I appreciate that. That might be the nicest thing that

01:41:38 ◼   ► Hurts coming for me, I want you to know, I dug deep for that.