The Vergecast - Apple announces new iPhone SE, Mac Studio, M1 Ultra, and more

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and Dan Seifert discuss all the announcements from Apple's Peek Performance event this week. Further reading: The 7 biggest announcements from Apple’s Peek Performance event Apple iPhone SE gains 5G, A15 processor, and a higher $429 price tag The 5G iPhone SE will be for carriers, not customers 5G’s false start is over and the iPhone SE proves it The iPhone 13 and 13 Pro each get green finishes The iPhone SE’s $30 price bump looks like a pure 5G tax Give me a bigger iPhone SE Apple announces updated iPad Air with M1 processor and 5G How the M1-powered iPad Air compares to other iPad models Apple announces new flagship M1 Ultra desktop processor for its most powerful computers Apple’s new M1 Ultra aims to beat Nvidia’s RTX 3090 The redesigned MacBook Air might have an M1, not an M2 Apple’s Mac Studio is a new desktop for creative professionals Apple explains why the M1 Ultra-equipped Mac Studio is two pounds heavier A fully specced-out Mac Studio will cost $8,000 Apple’s new strategy is to give — not tell — users what they want Screw it, the rectangles are back The Mac Studio’s ports are a step back in all the right ways The 27-inch iMac has been discontinued Apple announces 27-inch 5K Studio Display for $1,599 Apple’s Studio Display actually comes with a stand Here’s why Apple put a powerful iPhone chip in its new Studio Display Apple’s Studio Display should work with Windows — including the webcam The future of makeup is lipstick you can print  The Steam Deck now runs Windows Hands-on with Alienware’s new, curved QD-OLED gaming monitor  Nothing can’t stop smartphone leaks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, Alex Trans, Dan Sefert, joined the show. We go over Apple's peak performance event, the new iPhone SE, the new iPad Air, and the Mac Studio with M1 Ultra and studio display. Then do a little lightning round. That's coming up on the Vergecast now. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in.

Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for sure.

nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of 5G shenanigans. That's our new. It's like one of the worst bars and grills you can go to. The shenanis.

5G shenanigans. Anyway, I'm Neil. I'm your friend. Dan Seaford is here. Hello, I am here. Alex Kranz is here. I'm really excited about the shenanis. Yeah, it's going to be great.

There's a lot of shenanigans to talk about on the show this week. I will note that our friend Dieter Bone is not here. And I went to a bunch of Apple briefings and they're like, where's Deeter. And I was like, you know where he is. He's your rival. Like, Dieter went to work for Google. So at some point we're not, I don't know if we should disclose it. But there it is.

That's the news. We talked about it a bunch last week. If you missed it, we had a goodbye episode with Walt Mossberg and Dieter. It was very touching and poignant. and now the world moves on. You ready? Enthusiasm. Okay, we got to start.

There's an Apple event this week. Tons of Apple news to talk about new chip, new phone, new display, new Mac, old USBA ports. Very exciting. I will say in addition to that, our team is doing just excellent coverage on the tech aspects of the war in Ukraine. That is obviously happening. It's the biggest news in the world, aside from COVID. Lots of internet companies, content filtering. major backbone providers are shutting off service in Russia.

McKenna had a great scoop about a tech executive that is privately funding a mercenary army of private soldiers in the country. You know, we talk about policy a lot on the show. We're just going to block a bunch of Russian channels from American social media companies. Amazon's going to stop shipping packages in Russia and Prime Video. That stuff, all the themes that we talked about in the policy side are all just coming to a head there. So we're covering it very deeply.

It's the flip side, right, of like, how should we regulate tech? The tech companies here are sort of pulling out of Russia, and then Russia is running its own tech-based misinformation campaigns, shutting down speech across the country. It's all on the site. I know you don't come to us for Ukraine news on this podcast. I just want to point out because our team is working really hard on it. And there's actually really interesting, deep coverage of how it's playing out. So that is that. Okay, now a hard segue to the Apple event.

Good morning. and welcome back to Apple Park. So a big Apple event, medium Apple event? Small Apple event. What do you think? Medium. Medium. Yeah. Medium.

It was the first one. You know, they try to fake everyone out with this like peak performance thing in like the AR thing. Is it going to be the glasses? I promise you. And I talk to a lot of people. Everyone is ready to go back to in-person Apple events, I think including Apple. I don't think they can ever do the glasses about in-person event.

They can't. You're going to have to bring all of the competitors with you to that first. in-person Apple event. You can have a little purse full of them. Like, don't pay attention to my purse of, my bag of, of AR headsets. It's going to be great. And I brought my little HTC vibe, like room scale cameras. Hold on.

I'm going to set these up. Tim, come over here. Come over here. We're going to do this together. Eddie Q. Did you bring a ladder because I need one? Okay. So this one is like, they still did it in the format we were used to.

Tim Cook on the stage at the Apple, the Steve Jobs theater, zooming out to other parts of the campus. very infomercial lightning fast very fast especially the first half they just raced through this thing um the theme of it was like we make our own chips our chips are great look we put our chips and everything we did it okay so let's just start with it they did a new iphone sce they did a new iPad then they announced what they are saying is the last of the m1 family of chips the m1 ultra they're putting that in a computer called the max studio which there's a long history of people wanting a computer just like this from apple and they

and that's a new display. Let's take them in turn. Let's start with the iPhone. And today, we're bringing our extraordinary A-15 bionic chip to another iPhone. The new iPhone SE. I think the story of this iPhone is 5G shenanigans, but Dan, tell us about the new iPhone SC. So there are some 5G shenanigans in that this supports 5G, but it doesn't support

millimeter wave, which we can get into, so it supports what we commonly refer to as sub-6-5G, or the 5-G that you can actually. actually use, which you might actually experience. Otherwise, it is the same SE that they released in 2020 with a new processor and a slightly bigger battery. That's it. Yeah, same 4.7 inch screen, same bezel, same touch ID. Yeah.

Same camera, but they got the new processor, so the camera should be better. That's what they're saying. They're saying, like, you know, the processor can unlock some things with the camera, but I would not get your hopes up super high for dramatic camera improvements. It is the same hardware. It's the same single lens. It's got deep fusion, dude. It's sweater mode.

I mean, their sweater pictures. Look, this phone's for grandparents. Grandparents get cold. They need sweaters. Grandparents are cold. They're often wearing sweaters. So it has sweater mode and it has the single camera portrait mode. But I don't believe it does the night mode.

That is like the thing that is like not available on this one. At least my understanding. It could be wrong. But anyways, so it's a single camera unit. It's got the same front facing camera, which I believe is 7 megapixels. It's like you said, the 4.7 inch screen,

LCD. It's got the button, right? It's got a button. It's got a home button. It's very small. Yeah, no, no night mode. Yeah. That's okay.

I don't understand that. Like, you would think that the processor would be powering that, right? And like, it's got the A-15 chip, which is the best A-series chip that you can get right now. So that's how they get you.

That's how they bracket you right up. They're like, iPhone-S-E customers are never in the dark. It never happens to it. They carry a flashlight wherever they go. They get so sleepy. They get so sleepy. They're in bed by 6 p.m.

Curled up in their little sweaters going to bed. It's a cozy phone. It's a cozy phone. It's also $30 more expensive, which you can almost certainly attribute to the fact that it supports 5G. Our high on our team has looked many times into the cost of 5G in phones. I believe there's some reports about the iPhone 12's 5G modem. is like its most expensive component. So it's very likely that the price bump here is related to the fact that it supports 5G,

even though it doesn't support a millimeter wave. Does it support the mid one that the FCC got up or the FAA got upset about? Yes. Yes. That's the C band, which AT&T and Verizon are very excited about because it's their only real 5G that you can get. And they are rolling it out. And this is fully compatible with it as far as I understand.

It's also compatible with all of T-Mobile's 5G. Is the millimeter wave thing? Is that a great loss? I feel like it's not a great loss because everybody talks about how terrible it is. It was a lie. And now we can all admit that it's a lie. And before I talk about that, I'm just going to point out that you can get it in green and you can get the pro in an ice green. Great.

That's all the news or the iPhone. No, no, no. You can get the 13 in green and you can get the pro in alpine green. But the SE is in Midnight, Starlight, and Product Red. That's it. That's it. That's like, okay. Sorry, if you want to curl up by fire and go to bed early.

Can't have a green phone. Can't have a green phone. Okay. Millimeter wave was a lie. Let's just come back to this. I feel very strongly about this. I'm the only person in America who feels very strongly about this, but I'm going to transmit my energy to you through this microphone.

You're already transmitting more energy than millimeter wave did. Do you remember when the iPhone 12 came out? Yes. In Hans Westberg from Verizon, stood on stage with Apple and he was like, 5G is finally here. Yes. It was great. It was a great moment. he's got a great accent, a very handsome man.

He is like, I did it. All this other 5G has been lies. But now that Verizon has millimeter wave on this iPhone. And then Dieter and I in our reviews, we had to like go find street corners. Like I literally was like walking the streets of Manhattan being like, that looks like millimeter wave and like standing under the thing. I'm pretty sure Verizon put one by her on purpose. And we would test it.

And then Joanna like did her video at Giant Stadium and was like, it works great here. And it's nowhere else. And that was 5G on Verizon. and Verizon was insane about this and they demanded that every phone on its network have millimeter wave because it defined 5G ultra wideband is a millimeter wave. Yes. It's like ultra fast, extremely low range, high power. You need a special antenna.

The iPhones had special antennas on them, custom phones, all this stuff. Yes. Because millimeter wave was the 5G that Verizon had. and AT&T was like we honestly are mostly what we have is lies but we're along for this ride too right we have a label we're going to put on the top of the phone we've got 5GE so we're good and underneath that was a bunch of crazy stuff like a technology called dynamic spectrum sharing where they would reuse the LTE spectrum but give you a 5G logo and that was 5G and it was slow and I'd get on the you know we would get on review calls with various fund manufacturers big 5G slow is a DSS and they'd be like

like, well, the carriers. Like, it was horrible. When you use it in the UK, get some real 5G in here. Yeah, meanwhile, like, you know, I would get tweets from people in, like, South Korea being like, I don't know what are you talking about? Are you complaining about 5G? We get six gigs down. This is why we're great at League of Legends.

Like, our internet's better than yours. It's true, by the way. Latency is a big thing in esports. It's like a real fact. Look, if America wants to dominate the international e-sports scene, we have to upgrade our networks. This is the reason we need an infrastructure bill to be. improve our internet in this country. Legal Legends, we're getting crushed, guys.

How are we supposed to, like, beat them at any Twitch games? Like, what do you do in Biden? Come on, fix it. So then this past few months, you know, there's a spectrum auction. They bought the C-band. The disaster with the FAA and the FCC happened. They finally slowly started launching their mid-band networks. Verizon redefines 5G ultra-wide band.

They're like, well, we made this up. So now this doesn't mean millimeter wave. This means both millimeter wave and this mid-band spectrum. And they just sort of like announced it. Sort of announced it. I don't know how much announcing they did. Well, they announced it such that Allison was able to write a piece explaining what all the terms meant.

But it was like very under the table. Yes. Like under the table that I had to go on the way back machine and look at Verizon's website and be like sometime in January they changed it. Right. There was no press release that said 5G ultra wide band. means C-band. Yeah, which for two years, they've been saying it means millimeter wave.

And they've been demanding every phone on their network that supports 5G, I'm making extremely sarcastic air quotes here, that has 5G was a millimeter wave. Yeah, and phones were frequently compromised for that. Like the great example is the pixel 4A 5G. When the unlocked version came out did not support millimeter wave and it was $400, I think. And then Verizon insisted on the millimeter wave in it. And now the price was $500 for that version. Or the, I think it was the Galaxy S20.

That base model did not support millimeter wave, but the Verizon version did. And therefore it was more expensive. So, yeah, we've been dealing with that for a while. And now the iPhone SE doesn't support millimeter wave. So they announced his phone. And like, literally Dan was like, I wonder if it'll be on Verizon. Because this is a millimeter wave. Analysts are like, huh, I wonder if it'll be on Verizon.

Or if Apple will have a second secret, more expensive millimeter wave version. Because I'm like, we like ask and Verizon's like, no, we're going to carry it. And all it is is because it supports C band, they can claim it's 5G ultra wideband and they can just stop pretending to give a shit about millimeter wave. Do you think there was like a conversation between Apple and Verizon about this where Apple was like, we're not going to put your stupid thing in here and mark up this phone because of your stupid technology deal with it? And Apple and Verizon was just like, okay, sure, we'll deal with it. Thanks. I'm sure there was conversations. I just wonder how much the conversations were like, Verizon's like, okay, we're closing on the C-band.

We almost have it. Apple, can you wait, like, four months before you announce this so that we can actually roll out this C-Band? And then the FAA was like, wait a minute, what are you doing? And then that threw out a factor. I guarantee you this thing would not have launched if C-Ban hadn't rolled out. Yeah. They would have just held it, right? Although I have Funnesty was doing fine.

They have, you know, whatever phones to support the millimeter wave deception that they need to have. But if you hadn't rolled out CBN, I assume the Verizon would have either insisted on a more expensive phone with millimeter wave or Apple would have just held it. I bet Apple would have just held it. They don't care.

It's like, I'm just saying we have spent two years listening to these companies, at least two years. At least, yeah. Listening to Verizon and AT&T, ramble on about millimeter wave and ramble on about 5G. It's been at least 10 years of, 5G bullshit. In fact, I would say it's been at least four years of millimeter wave lies because

Sean Hollister wrote about this whole situation that we're talking about now. And in his article, he cited in 2018, he was at Qualcomm's event in Maui and like 5G was supposed to be like the ultra wide band millimeter wave demo there that didn't work. And it was just all lies. And that was in 2018. So it's been at least four years of this. And I will say people have told us we've seen the tweets. Some people can get millimeter wave. I could actually get it. They have a, my old house, my old apartment had the Verizon transmission thing on top of it. I had to deal with like months of construction as they built their little like air conditioning. They got air conditioning and I didn't. And I'm still upset about it. Verizon got air conditioning and I didn't. And it's all there. And I can look at

it even now and get just incredible speeds. Really? Do you like hold your phone out the window and like, Yeah, just hold my phone out and just kind of hope. But yeah. You're like, all right, BitTorrent, here we go. Let's do it. But just me. Nobody else can get it. Just you.

Yeah, because you're probably the only one with a millimeter away phone. This industry has, for four years now, at least four, five, ten years, told us 5G will be transformative. Right. If you remember their early hype, like, I would go to dinners with the cell carriers. They would tell me that they were going to compete with AWS. 5G robots were going to save lives. Yeah.

The amount of talent. Telemedicine and tele-surgery that would happen. Like the, like, robot surgery on demand was, like, going to definitely happen because of 5G. Like, we were shown pictures of just, like, rural towns in America that had no access to health care. And the self-driving robot on 5G was going to show up and just do surgery at everyone and peace out, right? All that stuff has really not happened.

They told me that they were going to, they were going to disintermediate AWS because to control these networks, they needed to put the data centers. closer to the edge, which would allow for the extremely low latency applications that we have been promised this whole time. None of that stuff has happened, but they have increased the prices of the phones, and they have absolutely increased the prices of the plans for no appreciable benefit. And it is a scandal that I would say no one is talking about, except we constantly talking about it all the time. And this phone is great. And I'm happy it's a cheap iPhone, and I know people will be excited about it. But this phone is just like proof that all of this fake out was

just a lie. And it achieved nothing. There was actually a Wall Street Journal story last week that's like, it was a journal of Brulberg. It's like they've made these huge investments in these network. And they've created no new revenue for themselves and created no new applications that anyone is using. Whereas if you think about LTE, the amount of revenue they created because everyone rushed to get faster phones because they could feel the speed increase over 3G. And then the applications that were delivered on top of it were all like video applications. It was fast enough to support streaming video, which is why they all went and tried to put video providers. It kind of reminds me of like TVs and the 4K, like when they went from 1080p to 4K and now they're doing like 4K to 8K.

And they're like, aren't you excited about 8K and HDR? And everybody's like, no. Like, you know, 1080 to 4K, that was a big leap. And yeah, my eyes bled. It was gorgeous. But most people didn't like, 8K is not. not a significant jump. And 5G for most people, and like the mid-band speeds is not a significant jump to be like, yeah, I need it. I got to go get my new phone. But we've just spent so long,

particularly Verizon, so long hearing about millimeter wave and paying higher prices. Right. That's the killer to me is they found ways to increase the prices of the plans. They found ways to increase the prices of the devices. And they provided nothing. And now with this phone, You can see that at the end of the day, it really, all that was just they needed to be able to market that stuff. Now they've got a real network. Yeah.

Right? They've got the mid-band 5G network. Dan, we've seen it perform. It seems fine. I mean, it's, you know, if the typical 4G experience is anywhere from like 30 megabit down to 125 megabit down, if you're in a good mid-band 5G area,

you might see 500 megabit down or 600 megabit down. That's not unrealistic. What are you doing on your phone that you need 500 megabit down just like hanging out. I mean, never mind. I'm not going to ask. Download.

League of Legends. There you go. I will tell you, there was one instance. I don't get midband where I live. I'm stuck on the still the low end garbage 5G that might as well be 4G where I am. But there was one instance last year when I was in New York City for our 10 year anniversary event. And I could get T-Mobile's mid-band.

and I was sitting in my hotel room and I was like, downloaded movies to watch on the train ride home. And I was like, this is it. This is the future right now. In three years, this is the first time I've appreciated 5G. Yeah. The other thing is that most phones, Android phones, you can

figure out what you've got because there's Android utilities on an iPhone. It's just like whatever carrier letters are at the top of your phone. That's what you get. And it's almost impossible to know if you're getting what you paid for. Like my iPhone right now just says 5G, and I I know it's just DSS.

Sometimes mine says 5G. Sometimes mine says, because I'm on T-Mobile, it'll say 5G UC, not UWUC. Oh, yeah. We've got a glossary on the site. Allison wrote that. What is UC? Is it ultra-cool? I had no idea.

But it's the same as without the UC. So, you know, I'm that nerd who's like driving this car and sees UC pop up on his car play and pulls over and is like, I got to run a speed test and see how much faster this is. And then it's the same speed as with. the UC and without the 5G. So like, I don't know. It's all lies. Yeah.

Anyhow, I'm just saying this has been, look, if people in rural areas can actually get 500 down from their phones wirelessly. I will pay you $100 if they can do that. But that's actually transformative. Yeah, no, no, no. But that is transformative. I agree, but that doesn't exist yet because like that 500, 600 down is still only in the dense urban areas.

I'm in suburbia and I don't get that 500, 600. If you're in rural, you're getting two down. Yeah, yeah. I've got like a friend who's still held on to like a 2G phone because when he'd be out riding horseback checking on cattle, he's a cowboy. He's not just random man checking on cattle. I've got a friend whose hobby is checking on cattle. He just likes to look at him and say, yep, a lot.

But he couldn't get any other connections. So if he like fell off his horse or something or hurt himself, the only way to contact his family was with a super old phone, And like 3G didn't work, 4G didn't work. He's just out there with a flip phone. And he didn't care that 5G is coming because they still haven't really gotten 4G fully in his part of Colorado. So he's like, why? I don't need these speeds because you'll never get them to me because nobody wants to build the infrastructure to the rural spaces where 5G would be transformative.

Never going to harness our League of Legends talent from the rural areas of this country if we don't fix this connectivity. Like, we are losing so many talented League of Legend players right now because we cannot properly build out rural internet. But just do the, like, underlying that. Everyone in area needs 500 down their phones, which is still crazy. We're all going to be wearing the headsets, just like wandering through life in like real-time VR feeds. Well, you definitely need a fiber connection to all those towers support all of that bandwidth.

And like, that's the actual problem in these rural areas. And if you can get fiber of the rail, your mind is just like, run the rest of the fiber because you've already spent so much money. We have done endless coverage on this problem on our site and on this podcast. I won't belabor it. I'm just, it's a very nice phone. It's very cool. It comes in multiple colors, including midnight and starlight. It's not black and not silver. It's not black. Midnight and starlight. Midnight and starlight. But it's just hard to not look at it and look at the entire 5G hype cycle and be like, oh man, like Verizon was just head faking us and what their 5G plan actually was this whole time.

Today I'm excited to talk about iPad Air. We're bringing the breakthrough M1 chip to iPad Air. Let's talk about the iPad real quick, because I think we can get through it really quickly. Dan. It is an iPad Air that you may be familiar with from 2019, same exact appearance, and now it's got an M1 inside of it. Yeah, and 5G. And it does have the 5G. It has the same sub-6 5G that we've been talking about.

So it's really like they took the upgrades that the iPad Mini got last year and applied them to the Air to except they upgraded the processor also all the way up to the M1, which means that this is the same chip in it as the MacBook Air, as the 13-inch MacBook Pro, as the Mac Mini, as the iPad Pro, both sizes of the iPad Pro. So for $600, you are getting one of Apple's most performant processors that it uses in its mainstream most widely sold laptops, which is pretty incredible. Can you do anything with that performance? I mean, it's an iPad.

So, sure, maybe there's something. Well, you can download your movies real fast. You can download your movies real fast. And it's got the center stage front facing camera. So it will, if you're doing video calls, it will automatically follow you. But it's still in the wrong spot. Still in the wrong spot, yes. Baffling decision.

And, you know, because you can use this thing as a laptop replacement, as you can with the iPad. You could. I mean, it works with all of the same accessories as before. So it works with the magic keyboard. It works with the smart keyboard. It works with the same pencil. Apple will confirm that it is exactly the same dimension. So if you have an old iPad air and have cases and accessories and all that stuff,

they're just going to work with this new one right away. There's nothing really new you need to buy. But it is a 10.9 inch screen and it's running iPad OS. I do not know how many people would really want to use that as their only computing device if they have an opportunity to have a laptop with a larger screen and a more capable operating system on it. But it looks to be like a very nice iPad. The thing that's interesting about it is this kind of happened.

last time with the last refresh of the iPad air is now it steps on the toes of the iPad Pro a lot. And the only differences between the Air and the Pro-an-the-Pro 11-inch now are you get Pro-Motion or the 120-Hurt screen on the Pro, you get Face ID on the Pro, and you get a second rear camera and Li-Dar sensor on the Pro. Oh, you get four speakers instead of two. Ooh. Yeah. Sign me up.

I mean, if there's one thing that's going to sell me, it's a Li-DAR sensor. Yeah. I'm just Li-DAR-R-A all over town. Well, the pro, the 11-inch pro was always kind of like the ugly stepchild of the lineup. No. No, no, no, no. I have one most people bought it. I love it.

I have the one from the previous generation. But it was really frustrating when they announced that, when they did their last refresh, because really, really cool display in the 12-inch. And then the 11-inch, it was like, nope, you get some, you get faster than the iPad Air. Like, that was the big difference between it and the iPad Air. why I bought it stupidly. But now I feel I've got just a lot of FOMO. This is just me processing my feelings.

Well, so you can see what they would do in almost any other case would be they're going to upgrade the iPad Pro to the mini LED display. Maybe still keep the M1 in there. That's fine. But you get a better display, better speakers. One more camera, face ID, and LIDAR. Who doesn't love LIDAR? We have to wait like a year and a half for that to happen.

But yeah, all the rumors are that the mini. the LED is still too expensive. So I do think it's stuck in the middle. You know, the price difference is vanishingly small, right? Between the 11 Pro and the iPad Air is $200. But you do get twice the storage in the Pro. So the air, this is like the one criticism I have against the air, is that they are still keeping it at 64 gigs in the base storage.

And then getting more storage is a $150 upgrade to 256. And they absolutely have done that on purpose, right? That's where they know that if you spend $150 to get the storage, you might as well just buy the pro. Yeah. I mean, it's like, it gets this annoying, like, matrix because the $150 that you spend on the air gets you $256 gigs of storage, and the pro starts at 128, so you aren't getting as much with the pro.

But I think most people on an iPad are going to be perfectly fine with 128 gigs. 64 gigs might be pushing it if you are trying to actually replace a laptop with this kind of thing. If all you're doing is like iPad stuff, tablet stuff, you know, I think 64 could probably be fine and cover you. But if you are trying to replace your main computer or trying to make it your main computer, you're probably going to run into some issues with storage. I think Genshin Impact is like 16 gigs. So, you know, there's a quarter of your storage gone if you play that game. So it's a little frustrating that they've kept that storage level. But like you said, it seems perfectly designed to get you to be like, well, if I'm going to spend the upgrade, I might as well spend a little.

little more and get the pro and the other nice features because I will say face ID on the iPad. I think I said this last week. Face ID on the iPad is a lot nicer than touch ID on the iPad. Yeah. I answer it. Apple is historically very smart at being like no matter how many dollars you have, we will have a product within $50 of how many dollars you have, right? Like in either direction, you just tell us an amount of dollars and we have an iOS device for you, right? And like, I think there's a little bit of muddle there because right, the upgrade cycles are not not perfectly aligned. Yeah.

But I think part of that is chip shortage. I do think all the rumors about the display technology not getting cheaper, fast enough is real. They're the only company shipping mini LED screens like in scale. I have a very hairbrained theory that does not have a lot of evidence backing it off. Those are the best kind. But I was very surprised when they announced the M1 chip was coming into the air and they were just using the A15 because the predictable thing was the last one used the A14, I believe, And so this one would have the A15, and the iPad Mini had the A15.

And they just went straight up to the M1. And my theory is Apple's producing as many A15s as it possibly can, and it's putting them in all the iPhones. Like we just said, it's in the iPhone SE. It's in all the iPhone models. And so it is reserving them for that and figured it could just put the M1 in the air because it now doesn't have to take stock away from the iPhones. And this is based on the fact that the mini is almost impossible to get.

Yeah. Mini is really hard to get. And there's been a lot of reporting that Apple. diverting production of the mini towards the iPhone so that it could keep up with demands for the iPhone. I think all that said this on our earnings call. Like chip shortage is finally sort of caught up to them. This is all, by the way, you have to, we'll talk with this in a, they're putting an A13 in the display.

So it's like, I think it's catching up to them in extremely odd ways, right? They're just making as much as they can. I can't wait until they have to just use A-series chips for like all the little, little things. Like the display controller in the iPad is now an A-13. Bionic. Yeah, for no reason. So I do think there's a little bit of that weirdness there. I don't know that M1s are not also constrained. Like they're making, they're selling every Mac that they can. But the M1 is based on a 14, right? So it's got a longer life cycle in terms of development for that process. Whereas a 15 is a new process that they only started a new process. No, do you mean? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that's where my theories come from. Like I said, I could be way off. And I don't have like, actual hard evidence backing this up. But it kind of slots together if you, you know, squit really closely. If you've been drinking, this makes a lot of sense. Yeah, if you've been drinking,

yeah. The other theory is this is all just a long lead-up to killing iPad OS. That's not a theory. That's just your fond hope. I've not heard this theory. I would like to hear this theory. This is Alex, you're just a manifesting. No, I'm not, because I don't believe it. I fully do not believe it, but I was hearing it a lot the last couple of days of people being like, oh, this is all just, They put the M1 in there, just put Mac OS on it, be done with it, kill iPad OS. They're never going to do it. You're 1,000% manifesting. Like, I wanted them to do that too.

But I do a little bit feel iPad OS has a short lifespan now because one in one, right, that's on all of the, most of the major iPads with the exception of the original iPad and the iPad Mini, right? Yes. Yeah. And then the other thing is we're going to get a folding device at some point, right? We're going to get a folding device. We're going to get a folding device. And it's got to either run iOS or iPadOS. It can't run both. So you're not going to kill iOS. iPad OS and iOS are the same thing.

No. Well, sure is that. It's just UI differences. But the Apple's going to have to explain that. And they're just going to kill it. They're just going to kill it. They're not going to kill it. We talked to a bunch of folks after the event and their position, because I asked very

directly, like, hey, you used to run around telling us that the, iPad was the future of computing. Yes. And you took your eye off the Mac and you've admitted it. You had meetings with people to be like, we are sorry. We forgot about the Macintosh. Because you were all in on the iPad. Like this was a real thing that happened to Apple.

And that, you know, Apple is pretty direct about it. They had the meeting to say we took our eye off the Mac and now they're putting out Macs that everybody's wanted forever. And they're like, yeah, that happened. But everybody buys a Mac, buys an iPad. And it's still our vision of what this kind of computing could be like. they are in no way trying to blur those lines. Like if you are Apple, you're Tim Cook and you're like, so my choices are, I can sell people two computers or one.

Yeah. They're always going to pick two because that is currently what's happening. The amount of I own every product in the Apple ecosystem is the envy of the computing world. And so I just, at some point, yep, the lines are getting it real blurry and Apple is going to be like, well, are they blurry enough for you to buy two computers or one? If they can keep you behind two, they're just going to keep you behind two. One day, man, it's going to happen. They're going to keep. They tried to kill the Mac, is what I'm saying.

They did everything in the power. They put a terrible keyboard in it. They took all the ports away. They're like, stop buying these things. And they're like, people still want this. What do we have to do to kill this product? Yeah, that original MacBook air, or I guess it was a second generation MacBook air, that just persisted in that design forever.

Like literally their stated explanation was people won't stop buying this. They were like no retina display, like ancient processor. Like 14 by 900 resolution. Had mini display port on it. And like they were just like, we don't know. And we're like it's because it's the only good bag. Like everything else is kind of a disaster. So like I think that they are they are pretty committed to not necessarily iPadOS.

but I think they're committed to their strategy of selling more stuff. Selling more computers. Selling more, they are very committed to the strategy of selling more computers. That we know for sure. It's very sincere that they would like you to buy more computers. No confusion there. But I think they are actually committed to the Mac is this platform where like pros make

pro stuff. Yeah. And lots of consumers want consumer Macs to. to work from home. And we've got this vision of another kind of computer where every button pays us 30% of every dollar. Like, right? And like, they're just going to keep rolling in that direction for a long time.

Look, I hope you speak this into truth. I like, I just feel like we're careening towards an end game. Like, Apple's going to have to like. Even saying that for so long. When the folding iPad comes, when the fold or folding whatever comes, that will be the moment. Like, that will be the moment. but we're all going to be like, wait a minute, wait a minute, iPad OS is just a rescreened iOS. Why are we doing two of these?

It's dumb. Like, it's coming, and we're going to have to kill it. We'll see. What's your prediction when a folding Apple product comes? I think. If ever. It's like a year or two, right? We keep hearing maybe even next year.

I thought the last reporting was like 2024 or 2025. But I need it now. Like, Samsung did it. It's usually Samsung does it And then Apple does it three years later Well, we have history to lean on, right? The Galaxy Note came out in 2011 Proving that big phones were something people wanted

And three years later, Apple had the iPhone 6 plus. There you go. But three years from the Galaxy Fold launch would be like now. So that doesn't like work if you use that logic. That's what I said. They're behind. So it's going to be next year. I'm manifesting that part.

I don't think Apple feels like they're behind. I think they're looking at Samsung foiling. Like, I mean, the phones are good, but Samsung's like, yeah, I don't know. Apple's looking at its record sales and it's like, wait, we don't have to do that. I do not think they feel pressure. Like, we've said this a lot. Like, new form factors are what prompts people the switch. Right.

Oh, man, that means we're going to have to like, it's going to be like four or five years because the MacBinney just came out. Oh. This is upsetting. I have to leave this first cast. I'll talk to you later. But I just, like, if you're, I just don't think the iPhone team is, like, looking at any of Samsung's foldables and, like, quaking. I mean, they're good phones. They're very cool.

I'm not denigrating them. I just think no one is switching in that direction. Right? This was the stat they said about the SC. Right. We've, like, attracted more new customers, the iPhone with these products than ever before. And as long as they can just, like, wedge eye message into the American discourse. Yeah.

They got it. They're good. The phones are natural. Okay. We should take a break. I don't know how we got to I message. Everything just leads to blue bubbles. I am not to blame.

I have this theory about like things the verge believes. And that's just on my list is that the entire phone market is like distorted by I message. Yes. And we all know it and we can't you can't just like walk the streets proclaiming this. Like everyone will be like, who are you? Like we're just in Cinebond, leave us alone. But it's extremely true.

Okay. We got to take a break. We're going to come back and talk. about this Mac. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS,

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Upwork.com. All right, we're back. This is Mac Studio and Studio Display. I'm very excited about this. So the Mac Studio, new Mac got a new chip in it. It's basically just a tall Mac Mini. It looks like a toaster. It's got a bunch of ports.

It's got plenty. Two USBC or Thunderbolt ports, depending on the chip. We'll talk about that. ST card on the front. Front facing ports. Front facing ports, fan. What a beautiful thing. All kinds of I-O, new chips.

I'll just, to preface this, I will say, this weekend we're going to have Jason Snow. He used to run Macworld magazine. I have a piece on the site about the history of people demanding a product exactly like this from Apple. Like, easily since the 90s. can you ship a mid-range powerful tower-ish computer with a lot of I-O that we can just bring our own monitor and keyboard to, like, since the 90s. Like, it's hilarious how long people have wanted something exactly in this slot from Apple. And it, you know, who wrote the headline in the site?

Was it John that Apple's just doing what people want now? Yes. Like, that's their whole Mac strategy is like, what if people always wanted? We should make those things. So, like, I am excited about that. just because we did it, kids. It's interesting to see Apple just deliver a thing that people have wanted for easily 20 years. They've never made a product like this.

They did it with a MacBook, like the refreshed MacBook era, the MacBook Pro. They're like, oh, wait, if we actually give computer users what they're requesting, they will buy computers from us. They'll be happy with us. Yeah, I mean, I think that came to, like, the most clear way with the MacBook Pros last year, right? like people were waiting for so long to buy MacBook Pros and then Apple finally rolled out everything everyone was been asking for in MacBook Pros and everybody got up

at gangbusters. My M1 Pro 16-inch MacBook Pro is by far the best computer I've ever had. Without a doubt, no questions. I've had many stupid computers. I have many computers I've been very fond of but this is just by far the most capable computer I've ever had. It's great.

But what's interesting to me about this is this is the first time they've done it in a new category. Where people were demanding as Apple enter a category they were not in for 20 years. The last time that they made a computer

like this was the G4 cube. This is a stunning product. Quite possibly the most beautiful product we've ever designed. The computer is in an 8 inch cube and it's suspended in a stunning crystal clear enclosure. It was actually a terrible,

terrible device, but it looked so cool. It looked so cool. When I was in the, when I was in college, I was like the IT. support person in the science library. It was great. It was a great job. And you had all the G4s,

the little cubes. Yeah, we had tons of little cubes. I mean, that job was like sit around and do your homework for like 12 bucks an hour. It was great. It was an amazing job to have in college. But people would like lose a file or they would get confused or like they couldn't figure out of print and then you would like go help them. In the science library it was full of G4 cubes. And so everyone would sit down and they get all excited and they would put their papers on top of the cube and it had the vent on the top. So it would block the vent and the thing would overheat and it would shut down the middle of the work.

And so we had to put signs on the G4 cubes To be like, do not put shit on top of this computer Thoroughly ruining the aesthetic of the entire thing Anyway, that's last time Apple has ever made anything like this Notably, the vents are on the back of the back studio And not the top. They fixed it. Air comes in, there's two fans, air comes in from the bottom,

the fan spin, they go out of it. It's like 20,000 little dots in the Mac. It's basically the same concept as the Mac Mini, just bigger with more fans and a bigger heat sink area. But same flow. And bigger processors. Yeah, we'll get into those. I'm just saying it's the first.

time they've entered a category that people demanding for 20 years after this one notorious failure. Steve Jobs announced that the cube was only put on hiatus by saying it was going on ice because it was a cube. So now it's back. It's not on hiatus anymore. It's back. This thing looks, you know, people are excited about it. It is basically the replacement for the iMac Pro, I would like to say.

It's paired with the studio display, which costs 1599. And then it's got these chips in it, which actually really changed. change the pricing. So the base model's M1 Max, same as a 16 inch... Which we know and love. Yep, same as a 16 inch MacBook Pro. That configuration costs $2,000. Yes.

And then there's a new chip called the M1 Ultra, which is effectively two M1 Maxes stitched together, which we should talk about. And that configuration starts at $4,000. Yeah, you can, you can like whittle it down a little bit and get it for like $3,800 if you're willing to go with

512 gigs of storage instead of 1 terabyte. But everything in these computers is soldered in. Yeah, you probably should just spend the 200 bucks. If you're spending $3,800, you probably should just spend the $200 to get at least a terabyte of storage in it. So yeah, but it's kind of funny because it's like the base model, Mac Studio, it comes with the M1 max, 32 gigs of RAM, and 512 gigs of storage for $2,000. And then for $4,000, you get the M1 Ultra, which is 2M1 maxes, you get 64 gigs of RAM

and 1 terabyte of storage. So you get two of everything twice the first. That makes sense. I like it. So Alex, this chip is like fascinating, the ultra. Yeah. I think, I think, and Tom Warren did a great piece about this too. Probably the most interesting thing about it is the ultra fusion tech, which is what's

allowing them to stitch two processors together. Because, like, everybody's kind of started embracing something called chiplet design, where you take lots of little smaller components, put them together, make a big fast chip. I think just last week, there was a new standard announced for chiplet design. Heim wrote a wonderful piece about it. So Apple's not using that same standard. They're focusing on this thing called Ultra Fusion Tech, which is more like AMD's infinity fabric.

And if you've never heard of AMD's infinity fabric, it's why you've probably been hearing all about AMD for the last couple of years. This is absolutely was a huge game changer for AMD when they rolled it out with the new Risen chips, like when the Risen line launched. huge, huge game changer and it just allowed the various chiplets to communicate really quickly. And it allowed them to start being really competitive with Intel in the integrated CPU space because they could integrate and have the GPU and the CPU talk faster than an Intel product could. Apples is 2.5 terabytes of bandwidth between the two sides.

And that's just like unreal. That is so much faster. They're basically faster than the infinity fabric. They're basically faster than invidia's, like, comparative product, which is called NVLink. And it's just, it's wild and it's neat. Tom talked about how it's aiming to beat the Nvidia's RTX 3090. I don't quite agree with them there because I think most people are still buying GPUs are like 3090s and stuff. gamers for the most part.

And Apple, I say this is someone who tried to build a gaming beat around Apple in the late 2000s. Wow. You know, I'm not famous for it, and there's a reason. So Apple made the claim with the M1 Pro, M1MX, a launch, that it was comparable to an RTX 3060. And we found out that there's not really the case with any reasonable test that you might do. So now they're making the claim against the 3090 with the Ultra. We're going to have to see. So with this chip, the claims are hard to even describe.

Right? They did the thing again where they put up a bunch of graphs. The graphs, if they have labels at all, a lot of the graphs are like, it's 3.7x faster than a 27 inch iMac. And the 27 inch iMac has a bar that goes to 100. And then the other graph is just longer. Yeah. So it's like, I don't even know. Extra vibes.

And then, you know, it's longer, but it's also more call. So if that speaks to you and you know how to test that, let me know because we're, you know, we got to figure it out. The other graphs are like the classic power performance graphs that Apple does. Relative performance versus wattage, yeah. And so they measure the watts and then give you relative performance in tiny print on those graphs, which flashed by extraordinarily fast during this already extraordinarily fast event. You find out that it's a 3090.

You find out that, you know, it's various PCs that are powerful. But it's impossible to know what they're running. Yeah. So, like, if we are reviewing this thing, we want to, like, verify their claim, like, I don't even know what to do. Yeah, they could be, like, it's faster than the 3090 at the AI test on Civilization 6. You're, like, cool, that only tests the CPU. That was a real big.

Or what if it's faster than 3090 at running Final Cut Pro, which you can't run by 3090? It's just like, all that is just, like, hard to understand. What I will say about this ship is that I think that the fun of the first. metal technology is very cool. Because Apple makes both the hardware and the software, it doesn't, nothing else runs in these chips, except iPadOS, I guess, in one instance. But like, they make all that too. They are able to abstract the fact that it's chiplets in that way in a way that other

companies cannot. Yeah. So, like, a lot of, like, metal, the graphics system on the Mac is called metal. A lot of metal developers were freaking out about a tweet from an Apple engineer who's like, the M1 Ultra only presents one metal interface. Like it's not two GPUs to your software. It's only, it's just one chip that's extremely powerful. That is somewhat revolutionary.

Yeah, and it's one, one pool of shared unified memory. And that, and that's crazy. So if you can get 128 gigs of memory to a GPU, like no one has ever been able to do that. You get 128 gigs of memory to a CPU that runs as fast as graphics memory. No one's able to do that. I will say, and I asked about this and, we're just going to have to see Apple's big bet has been on this unified memory architecture. Yeah.

And with the early M1s that only shipped 8 gigs of RAM, people do just run out of memory, right? Like the video card and the CPU are competing for memory and you can just max it out, which is not something you're used to on a modern computer at a 128 gigs of memory. I'm ultra. Like, if you are doing gigantic 3D scenes or you're doing this other memory intensive stuff, I think Apple is going to have to be careful. It's unclear if Apple reserves RAM for the system. Like that stuff is just, it's a big bet that is now playing out at the high end of the market.

We've already kind of see how it plays out at the low end. We're seeing it in that base model studio too, right? Like most people's base model stuff is still 8 or 16 gigs. Like Windows PCs and stuff, they're all going to be. Well, the studio is starting at 32. Right. And that's what I mean is the studio is starting at 32 gigs because this is a little bit more, memory hungry, like setup than an Intel or an EMD processor. So I think Apple is very like

cognizant of it. That's what I felt like I was winning when I saw I was not going to have to pay extra for 32 gigabytes of RAM. I was like, ooh, a surprise for me. And I was like, oh, actually, I need it. I'm going to really need it. Yeah. So I think this computer, it's the first computer of this kind we've seen from Apple with M1 chips in it. Yes, the macro pros exist. But in the context, people are going to use this computer, I think the memory issue will be more complicated. I don't think it's going to be bad. Yeah. I think it's just going to play out differently because this is a professional desktop machine

and people are going to do that kind of stuff with it. So we'll see. It is a huge bet. What is interesting to me is that, like you said, Apple's saying this is going to show up as one processor in the system. It's going to show up as one processor, one pool of memory, one GPU to the apps that access it. But you get all the benefits of two. processors because you get twice the headroom for memory. So now, you know, you start a 64. You have

128 as an option. You can only go to 64 on the max. So if you have two maxes, now you got 128, and it quite literally is a north and south bridge of that memory that is like a pool of 64 and a pool of 64 that's blended together. Then you get more thunderbolt ports on the I.O. with the ultra because it has more lanes of PCI bandwidth because it is two chips as opposed to one that are fused together. So it's you're like getting all the benefits of having. having two processors, but you're also getting all the benefits of one super fast processor that can communicate very quickly between all of these lanes of memory and whatnot. So it's a pretty fascinating setup.

Yeah, and I will say Apple is very clear. This is the last chip in the M1 family, and they were very clear that the only computer left is the Mac Pro. They did that on purpose. They were very clear. They were like, we needed to say this. So people like, no, like this isn't the replacement. for the Mac Pro.

This is the Mac Studio. We're still doing a Mac Pro, but we're not, there's no, like, M1 tremendous chip coming. Like, whatever words they have left. What's the big differentiator? Is it going to be GPU

and having a AMD GPU on it? Will that be the big difference between the two? It would be fascinating if they'd stick with other people's GPUs. I don't know that that'll be it. I just have a feeling the pro is going to come out with an M2.

Like, that's just my gut. You think they're going to go straight to it? You don't think it's going to be like, seven M1s bolted together. I suppose they could scale this ultra fusion. They can. So that they're doing two here and they can do four in it. But like then what do they call it?

An M1 ultra squared? Like I mean like they said that it's, there's not going to be any other chips in this M1 family. Right. So. Well, I mean they don't they don't call the various builds of the M1 ultra because you can get it. There's a couple of different thread counts for it. But those are just like cores being.

turned on and off on the die, right? Like, if they wanted to do two M1 Ultras fused by Ultra Fusion, that would be like twice the die bandwidth or twice the die footprint. I think that might be overthinking it. They might just do a Mac Pro and have two M1 Ultra chips in it or whatever. They could do that if they wanted to. I doubt it. But then how do they communicate?

Like, that's the magic of this is that the Ultra fusion is two M1 Maxes communicating really quickly. Like, I think M1 Ultra is just when we start fusing chips together, that's our M1 ultra. Because they said they're not going to do This is it, this is it And it would be really weird to announce I mean I guess it wouldn't be weird

If they do the M1 The Mac Pro as an M2 device But that means they have to announce The entire M2 lineup They don't have to announce the entire M2 lineup Yeah So there are some rumors that they'll do some more stuff at WWDC We'll see

I would say the thing you get rid out of Mac Pro is expansion slots Yeah. Like that's the thing that that category of user needs. There's all kinds of weird accelerators. There's storage solutions. They're going to have to figure out some kind of expansion slot. Got to figure out how to Frankenstein your old Nvidia processor in there.

I don't know if they think about GPU as expansion. Right. I don't think that that's the case. I think it is weird accelerators, weird storage solutions, weird controllers for specialized pro applications that need high bandwidth. Yeah, like actual pro stuff. I say actual because we all think, I definitely am like, oh, I got to get the pro device. I'm a pro.

But I'm not a pro. That's what I think. I'm not a real pro. I always look at buying guides and they say recommended for pros and I'm like, that's me. A real pro gets excited about those weird accelerators on the Mac pro lineup. They're like, yes, I need that. And I do not care. Look, I'm a professional podcaster.

And this 2015 IMac that I'm looking at right now is no longer. It's like, it's all I need, right? I get it. So I just think that's, that will be the differentiators. They're going to figure out that kind of. kind of I-O, which they've not had any call to do yet. We should talk about the actual computers for one second. It is port city on these machines.

It's beautiful. It is beautiful. I mean, this has USBA ports. This has the rectangles, as Monica's put on the site today, it has the rectangles. It's got two USBA ports. The back has four Thunderbolt ports. If you get the Ultra, there's two Thunderbolt ports on the front.

If you get the max chip, those are USBC ports. We already mentioned the SD card slot. It's got an HDMI out, which is still HDMI 2.0, not 2.1. This isn't for gamers, I guess. Yeah, what are you going to do with H-92.1 in a computer that plays no games and doesn't support H-D-R-R-A. I want to scroll really fast with 120 hertz on my screen. Yeah. It's a headphone jack.

Put that out there. It's a headphone jack. So the two USBA ports are fascinating. So the MacMoney has had USB2. Yeah. I think it's half a concession to reality that some people, especially for a desktop computer, There's lots of USBA floating around. I think we've also heard there's lots of weird pro software that has USB DRM dongles.

And you just need to plug them in and wasting a thunderbolt port on like a little authentication key. It's just the saddest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. So just like sticking in the back. But I do, but even that is concession to reality, right? Like Apple has tried this. I mean, I complain about 5G. Like the USBC cycle has been a decade in the main. making and it has utterly failed to win.

And like the reality is USBA is still here. It's still functional, still cheap as hell. And so even on your fanciest new Mac, you're like, here's two USBA ports because you might have a Pro Tools dongle or something else that just needs to off. And wasting a Thunderbolt 4 port on that is, I mean, it's a crime. Like I'll come to your house and rest. Notably, the last desktop computer that Apple introduced, which was the, M1 iMac had no USBA ports and it's all USBC.

I would love to hear from our listeners on this. I think Apple's belief is that consumers don't plug anything in their computers, which is like half true and have not. Right? Like, I think they just believe that everything a consumer does on a computer is wireless, and that's fine and that's what it should be. And then if you have, if you are a pro, you're plugging everything in your computer all the time.

And there's no middle ground as far as I can tell on Apple's thinking. It's like you get one port or you get 9,000, and that's it. I don't, like, whenever we do these reviews, I hear from people that's like, I haven't plugged anything in my computer all the time. And then I hear from another class of people that's like, thank God the ports are back. And I'm like, thank God the ports are back. Yeah. I mean, this is the kind of computer where like I love these Thunderbolt docks because they

turn my laptop into like a port monster. Like you could legitimately not need a dock of any sort with this kind of computer. If you need a dock for a desktop computer, I will come to your house. Or you could get four docs and just have all the ports. In every single Thunderbolt port occupied by docks. That's actually, I don't want to listen to you. I mean, like, yeah, we always want to hear from you. If you buy this computer and you buy four Thunderbolt Fort Box and then fill all those ports, like, I want that picture.

Please send us that picture. It's incredible. I think my favorite thing about this product, though, is that the M1 Ultra version has a two. pound heat sink. There's a two pound difference between the M1. Yeah, it's two pounds heavier. Yeah, exactly. It's two pounds heavier than the M1 Max

version because of two pounds of heat sink. That is so like, that's a lot of heat. It's just... It's twice as much as everything. It's twice of everything, right? So it only makes sense that you're going to have twice as big of a heat sink. Apple did confirm to us that it is

different heat sink. It's copper. It weighs two pounds more, which is great. I would the one thing we haven't really talked about is where this thing fits. I think people tend to forget the Mac Mini exists. The Mac Mini is like a great computer. People love it. This thing is $2,000. There is no more 27-inch IMac. There's just the 24-inch M1 iMac. You can still buy an Intel Mac Mini, which is wild to me. You should not be allowed to. It's like the only Intel computer left in the store, right? No, the Mac Pro. Oh, and the Mac Pro, of course. But where this sits is really, Apple announced a new computer. Everyone tends to

everything else exists. But this one's really interesting because there's a 24-inch iMac. Then if you want a 27-inch display, they now sell you at $1,600 display, which we can talk about. But you have to connect it to a computer, and everyone's like, well, now the 27-inch iMac

has been replaced by a $3,500 setup. But I'm like, no, the Mac Mini is still there. Yeah. So I think the second you, like, want something slightly bigger than 24 inches, they assume you're going to jump to a Mac Mini and then a large display. And if you want more processor,

you're going to jump to this thing. but the Mac Mini has been so ignored for so long. Not by Apple, but just by the world at large. Apple ignores it too, because when Apple did its refresh, it kept the same casing. Like the M1 Mac Mini looks the exact same. That was totally why I didn't buy it. Yeah, but so does the M1 Air. The M1 Air is the same model as the 2018 MacBook Air.

They didn't change it. The only change that they made was when they moved to the 14 and 16 inch pros. Yeah, but the Mac Mini hadn't been updated for years. In 2018, that's not that old. Compared to the air? Yeah, I guess that's true. I just felt, it just feels like Apple itself ignores the Mac Mini. And I think part of it is also, I feel like Apple doesn't take advantage.

A Mac Mini costs almost the exact same as an M1 MacBook Air, right? And there's no... I think it's a few hundred bucks less. It's like six or seven hundred versus a thousand. It's not a enough. It's not cheap right now. Like, like, I'm getting a keyboard. I'm getting a monitor.

I'm getting so much when I get a MacBook Air. And a Mac Mini, I'm like, no, you need to be, you need to be like $500 cheaper. You know what you get in a Mac Mini. You get some ports. Yeah, I do get some ports. It's not enough. But that, this weird place, and Apple will tell you the Mac Studio is a professional machine. Yes.

But this place between Apple's consumer products and their pro products, there is like a yawning gap. Like I think a lot of people would buy a 27-inch version of the M1 IMac. I would buy a 27-inch version of the M-1 I would buy a computer. I always want bigger screens. That's like your mantra. They always want a bigger screen. Cheap big screens.

It's all anybody wants it. So it's interesting that just sort of like once you're done at 24, Apple's like, well, buy one of our desktop computers. I think it's telling that when they did the IMAG M1, they moved from 21 to 24. Like they upgraded like the base IMAX size. Yeah. And that is kind of telling that like this is as far as it's going to go.

Like this is the size of the IMA now. And if you do want some more screen for whatever. reason, then you do have to move into a more professional setup if you're buying from Apple. But I don't know if the mini is like a professional setup. Like that's the weird thing about it. No, but if you stick it with the studio display, which we need to talk about, then it becomes a professional setup. We should take a break and talk about that. But maybe it does. Or you just buy whatever garbage monitor you want. Like, Vox Media IT will fire a garbage Dell monitor. You have a second. All right, we should take a break and come back and talk about this monitor.

I just, that's the thing that like, we were talking about with the iPad as well. If you just kind of look at Apple's various segments, there's some weird little corner cases where it's like, I just want a consumer Mac with a big screen. And now the choice is you got to put one together. Or maybe you want a iPhone SE with a big screen, which you wrote out today. It's a terrible, terrible opinion, despite everybody on this call agreeing with it and egging it on. Everybody wants cheap big screens. We're going to take a break and come back and talk about an expensive medium-sized screen. We'll get back.

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than we got to lightning round. The studio display is in a class of its own. 27 inch 5K studio display, 1699. I will say this is one of the most controversial things that has ever entered the version. Like we had our like usual after the event call and the fury that erupted on both sides.

is the best thing that's ever happened, this thing Apple should always make, and this is garbage, I hate it. Like, we had to, like, calm them down. There was definitely two camps. There was the camp of the PC owners, who are maybe more likely to be gamers, who are saying, you can get so much more for your money than this. This is awful value proposition. And then there's the camp of, like, people who have owned the ILG 5K, and they're like, this is actually great. This is what I wanted for six years. And, oh, it's $1,600. I thought it was.

be three grand. So Apple did the pro display XDR. It was their first external display in forever. It was a $5,000, $1,000 stand. It's incredibly expensive. Some people love it. If you love it, that's fine. I think a lot of people have found maybe not all the way up to the hype.

Yeah. There's probably other ways to spend your $5,000. This display is cheaper. It contains a lot of the same display language. The stand comes with it. It's not $1,000 extra unless you want to adjust the height, in which case you will pay for. $400 more, which is crazy. For all we can tell, we have not seen the thing yet. It is the same

27-inch panel from an iMac that we have been looking at forever. It's got a slightly brighter, yeah, so that it can get that HDR 600 rating because it can do 600 hits. I think that is a quote-unquote HDR. We'll see. But typical 600 nits of brightness is what they told us. Again, we don't know, so we'll see. No mini-l-D, no... It's a single backer. Backlight zone. There's no multiple backlight zones. Same old tech. You can get a nanote texture coding.

Do we know for sure it's the same backlight tech and there's not zones? Yeah, it's a single zone. If Apple was doing backlight zones, like the amount of backlight zone graphics that we would have been exposed to would have been through the roof. It would have been a four-hour announcement. Can't get enough of backlight zones in the spaceship. The thing about it that is just mind-blowing to me is it has an 813 chip inside of it. It has a 12 megapixel front camera. That is an iPhone.

They just put an iPhone in this thing. Yeah. Just to run the camera and the speakers. I love it. It has, what, six speakers, four woofers, two tweeters. Apple will happily tell you it's the best sound they've ever put on any of their computer products. They claim it does still be a head most in spatial audio. We will see the whole point of Atmos is like height, you know, it's like, is the monitor going to rise above you?

Yeah, if you pay $400, you can lift the monitor higher. And there's your height. It goes above you. You hear those helicopters. At most is $400. You got to lift it above your head. But the A13 is nuts that it's in there. It does not do iPhone things.

No. It supports center stage and like the Boca effect, the portrait effect that you can get off an M1 Mac. Yeah. My read on it is that if you have an M1 Mac, modern M1 Mac with a webcam, like the MacBook Pro or the IMac or whatever, it's going to look a lot like that. But because the camera is slightly better, it's a 12 megapixel camera. It'll be better.

but that's it. So, like, what is the point of this A-13? It's running the audio, it's running the camera, but it's not doing iPhone tricks. It's not doing night mode. It was the chip they could get. You think it's just the chip they could get? I mean, we're going to end up with, like, Apple watches with A-15s in them,

because Apple's like, ah, we got this is all we can get our hands on. And, I mean, like, I'm joking. It's probably the most efficient way for them to do it. No, I think you're right in that it is probably, influenced by the shortage because otherwise they were going to have to, if they wanted to do center stage, if they wanted to do all of this, they were going to have to put a processor in there. And they're either going to have to make a custom one, which means then they have to go and start that process of getting a custom processor made. And that takes a lot, that's a ramp up. That takes time. And there's a shortage. Like, everybody's going to be like, no, I'm not going to do this for your like one off small like monitor. Everybody's going to say, I can get way more money. What has the 813 now? This is the current part. I think the base model iPad has the A13 in it.

That does center stage. It has these features, so it's pretty drop-in. They're pumping out these A-13s already. And I think it just was like super cost-efficient for them to be like, yeah, we don't need to make something new. We'll just use this processor. Because it probably doesn't, like the A-13 does not cost them a lot of money at this point. Yeah. You know what you could do with an A-13 in a giant display, though, is make it a touchscreen and just run an iPad apps on it.

and they, I will tell you, I said this, and they're like, no, you can run iPad apps on the Mac already through our wonderful, blah, blah, blah. Like, they're like, no, we're not doing that. Are people going to figure out how to run iPad OS, like on this thing at some point? Yes, you plug an iPad into it. Well, it's not a touchscreen, so that's like your first problem. It's got mouse support. Yeah, it's true.

But at some point, someone's going to try to crack this thing, right? Yeah. I hope there's like a huge studio display Jillbray community. That would be amazing. But I don't know that this thing is connected to the display controller. Hmm. I think like from Apple's perspective, this thing like runs the camera and it runs the speakers and it runs the microphones.

So we're looking at like a couple of years before someone's like, yeah, I'll buy this and crack it open and figure out how to. No one's seen one yet. So I'm sure someone's going to pull this thing apart right away. But it is wild to me that, yep, it's expensive, especially compared to that LG 5K,

which everyone has hated forever. It's like a bad product. Yeah. And everyone's always been like, why can you just take the 5K display out of the IMac and sell it to us? Well, they did it. It's just really expensive.

And part of the reason it's really expensive is it has most of an iPhone in there. I mean, they also did it like five years later. Like, I feel like if they pulled this out five or six years ago, people would have been like $600 bucks. Okay, cool. You know, this is kind of a new screen. It's like you're getting the latest technology.

Now it's like six years later. And it is, you know, no HDR, no promotion. It is only 27 inches, which I don't know about you, but like 27 inches is pretty small at this point. It just feels dated already, even though it looks gorgeous. It'll probably function very well. It'll integrate. It's got a whole iPhone jammed in there.

I think that is a lot of the visceral reaction to the price. But I went into this event thinking they were going to announce a display those $3,000. See, I don't think it's actually that expensive. I mean, yes, it is $1,600. That is a lot of money. But when you're looking at like high-end 27-inch monitors. I'm staring at a 49-inch monitor that runs at 240 hertz that I paid $1,000 for. Yeah, and I'm looking at a 27-inch monitor that I spent $1,000 on.

Maybe I just got bamboozled there. I'm looking at a 2015 eye match, now. It's the same display. You already know what you're getting. That's right in front of it. I don't think it is for what you're getting in this product, I think, yes, it's expensive. but it's not as expensive as we think. Because one, it's got a really nice webcam.

And nobody else has a really nice integrated webcam. Who's making a really nice integrated webcam in a 27-inch monitor? Well, so this is actually my question about it. They should sell a version without the webcam. If you buy three of these, which some people will do. Or you should just sell the webcam. Your Zoom situation is going to be out of it. Bring back the eyesight, you cowards.

Like everyone is going to become like one of those Twitch streamers with multiple angles on a zoom when they buy three of these. But you only need one webcam. There's an argument to make that should definitely sell a cheaper version without the webcam. Yes. I think that would have taken a little bit of the sting out of the price, even though the price is still not $3,000, which Dan and I, like, I think before the event, Dan and I were like, yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be $3,000. I was like $2,500 if we're lucky. I'm excited to look at this thing. I'm a display nerd.

I'm very excited for it. I'll tell you, you are looking at it right now. I'm definitely looking at this thing already right now. I'm sure it looks beautiful. in person though. It does work with Windows including the camera, but you know, getting the camera features because that's software integration. So that's good. Yeah. It's not the end of the world. It is only

Thunderbolt input. It can charge any Mac laptop, which is good. It's actually pretty hard to find 96 watt power supplies for like the top end laptops. Out of a monitor, yeah. It's got a lot of ports on it. I mean, Apple's just doing what I want. At the end of the day, you know, just like, give me a couple of ports on a headphone jack. I'm happy. Oh, we cannot forget. It also has, Hey, Siri. Yes.

Why? Because it has a whole iPhone in there. Fair enough. Let's do a quick little lighting around. Apple updated all of its preferals to make black versions for the new studio. Magic Mouse, keyboard, trackpad. Magic Mouse, we've written this story every year for the fast five years. We'll keep writing it.

Still charges in the bottom, which is hilarious. That team, when they're like, make a black one, do you think they're like, I don't know? And they just like rolled the Photoshop dropper over and they're like, now it's black. Carry on. Apple TV Plus is going to do live sports, which is a huge deal. Katie Kack is written about this. Sports are the stickiest thing for a streaming platform. It's a shame they chose baseball, though, this year.

And it's two games on Friday. It's going to be free at first. Yes, it's true that baseball is on strike? There's no baseball yet. Is there going to be a season this year? Is that an open question? You know, I'm a cynic about Apple TV Plus. I think they do it mostly to say they have a services product.

Like, they can trot out Reese Witherspoon instead of Like a candy crush whale when they talk about services revenue. Like I think that's important to them. But it's interesting that they're going to sports now because sports are expensive to get. And they are the thing that makes people sign up for streaming services. But baseball also has like how many games, way more games than football or basketball. Yes. 10 times as many games as football.

Like they're only doing Fridays. I don't think we know yet if they're going to be blackout dates. If like what kind of games we're going to get. Well, we have to have a baseball season first. Yeah, we have to cease it. You know, we're putting a cart before the horse there. They need to actually, like, have an opening day. Yeah.

All their letting around stuff, they have a three meter thunderbolt four cable. It's $160. That's hilarious. A great price because you cannot buy a three meter thunderbolt four cable from anyone else. It's a great price. It's like the ultimate monopolist. Like a great price. There's all sorts of other stuff we talk about.

Google did a big Android feature drop. And then their new SVP of tablet stuff, Rich Miner, went on their own Android show and talked about the future of Android tablets is bright. Oh. Yep. We'll see that. Okay.

They believe it. They hired a guy there. There's a guy there. I mean, maybe he could do it. Android also finally rolled out their iOS-friendly emoji reactions and Google messages. In case, you know, you have chosen a Google messaging product. And it's that one.

You're brave. Pixel feature drops are in beta. So if you've got Pixel, you can do that. We've got a bunch of cool gadget stuff on this site. Yes. I'm going to plug something here that is very, very cool, and I'm super excited about. You could now, if you want, 3D print and build your own trackball mouse. That's pretty cool.

And we have a great story about it. The guy went, he's built a bunch. It's called plupy. Yeah. Pluby. Are you going to do it? Oh, yeah. Mine is en route as we speak.

I'm going to go buy some, like, I'm going to sand it down to get it nice and smooth. I am never been more excited to build. Trackball hacks in 2022. Yeah. It's great. I love it. Victoria reviewed the Eve St. Laurent lipstick printer, which is actually just like really cool. I want it.

Yeah. I should read that. The Steam Deck now runs Windows. Sean Hoster is just obsessed with Steam Deck. It's just a can't get enough of it. All day long. I'm like, what are you working? It's like Steam Deck stuff.

I'm like, okay, keep bleeding that dry. We have a cool hands-on alien. Senior monitors. Alienware has a gigantic QD-Oled mom. The thing that's significant about this is the first QD OLED screen that's actually shipping and you can buy. There was a bunch of QD OLED stuff announced as CES, including this monitor. A bunch of TVs were announced, but you can't yet buy those. So, like, this is the first experience of people are getting a QD OLED, which is pretty exciting, pretty interesting.

And it's also interesting that it's in a gaming monitor, which is usually one of the most demanding places for a new panel tech to go. I mean, I'm definitely going to buy this monitor. And then my favorite headline in the week, because I can't believe this company is called nothing. So I read this headline. I was like, Nothing can't stop smart phone leaks. And I thought it was like a large piece about the state of smart phone.

I have to take this credit because I wrote this headline. I was like, what does this mean? The fact this company is called nothing is the greatest troll in tech history. There's all their stuff going on. Actually, both Peloton and Oculus have now integrated themselves in Apple Health,

which is like pretty interesting just from a lock-in that's this week in lock-in. Like, Peloton finally gave in. Peloton finally gave in. Peloton got a new CEO and they started doing stuff they should have been doing forever, like letting you say, to Apple Health. They're trialing a program where you get the bike and the software subscription

for one fee. Like, yeah. The new guy showed up and he's like, what are you doing? Just like, just like, can we stop burning cash? Here's some ideas. Grabbing this low-hanging fruit. Exactly. But it's fascinating that Oculus is meta is doing it with Oculus too. It's fascinating to do that because there's rumors of a Facebook watch too. We're all over that. That's it. That's we've done a lot of Apple. There's a lot of news on the site. It's had a great week. It's creative makers week on the site. It's another DIY week. There's a ton of amazing stories what people making stuff, including a guide who sends tin-type photography. You should read that. And then we have a big feature on Justin Sun, who is a crypto entrepreneur. Just keeps getting

away with it. And that has most of the best art direction we've ever had on the site. So go read that. That's it. We've gone over. No, we didn't. Not us. We went over. You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless. Dan's DCC for it. Alex's Alex H. Kranz. Decoder this week was really fun. It was the CEO of Raspberry Pi, Eben Upton, and he was like, I'm never doing recurring revenue software. Like, you just make cool, cheap hardware. And then it beguiles kids and becoming software programmers. Great episode.

One of my favorites. That's it. We'll be back next week. We're like in the thick of it. Like the tech news cycle is like off to the races. I love it. So there's more to come. Actually, next week on Decoder is the CEO of WordPress.

So Matt Mullen, that was a really good one too. That's it. I can roll.