Upgrade - 114: Get On Down to Dongle Town

Episode Date: November 7, 2016

Fresh off of Jason's 10-day travel odyssey with the new MacBook Pro, we debate where Apple’s taking the Mac, the high price of Retina displays, Apple’s tough decisions about who its Mac customers are, and the case for and against the Mac Pro.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 114 today's show is brought to you by pingdon encapsula and mac weldon my name is mike hurley and i am joined from across the pond from way to too too far away mr jason snell hi mike i you know when we did our podcast last week i i it was hard to believe that the very next week we would be back in our respective places and yet here we are we're back in our respective places i i'm i'm on the west coast i'm on the pacific ocean and you're there in london so how about that less than seven days ago in fact i know which is well i i just saw you i just saw you friday and it's monday now it did dawn on me yesterday evening uh i wasn't sure if you were

gonna be home for the show today and and there was just a moment where i was like have i misforgotten something like i i you know maybe you told me and i just hadn't remembered no i got home last night so we spent yesterday in transit it was one of those long long flying east to west days where you uh you know the sun goes up and it stays up for a long time although this was exciting because i um i got to i got to see the coast of greenland which i never see because usually it's either dark or uh it's just totally covered in clouds but uh there were there was a clearing in the clouds and i was actually able to see because we flew sort of right

over the southern coast of greenland on our way over so that was pretty cool because it's some islands and a lot a lot of snow i like to imagine you with your head out the looking out the window for the entire eight hours waiting for the moment where Greenland would appear. No, they have a little map that tells you where the plane is. So I waited until we were by Greenland, and then I looked out, and I took a bunch of pictures in my iPhone, and then I was done. And I put down the shade and proceeded to do other things.

How was your jet lag? You know, it wasn't too bad. We managed to force ourselves to stay awake until, like,'clock last night. And then, uh, and then, uh, I woke up, I think I woke up at three in the morning, but then I just kind of went back to sleep and I didn't get up until six, 6am. So you go coming this way, the jet lag isn't so bad. I did gain an extra hour of jet lag coming back because they changed the clocks here this weekend. So I I left, it was plus seven, and then I came back at minus eight. So a little bonus hour of jet lag, but it's fine.

It's all good. That was one of my favorite things about all being last week because I didn't have to change any of my recording times. Right, because you just didn't record, or you recorded in person, and that's the week that you hate, I know. So I was happy about it too because I didn't have to go through the time change thing.

I just came back to a different time zone and that was that was uh that was good it's a long you know it's a long trip but it's amazing that we have the ability to do that that you know i had the ability to go to ireland for a week and see a bunch of people including you and uh we did upgrade and clockwise and a bunch of other podcasts and uh that was all good and then just get back on the plane and boom we're back in san francisco again talking about a couple of podcasts we mentioned this at the end of last week's show that you were creating something called all radio whilst you were at all where you were interviewing a bunch of people that were involved in the conference and giving talks and

you made a podcast out of it i want to point people to it for a couple of reasons one um it is interesting to listen to even if you weren't at the the conference because jason does a good job of making people kind of explain things you know like it would be easy to just be like wasn't it funny that thing you said but you you actually do a really good job of uh making it accessible for everyone but i even if you're not interested in that uh i i urge you to go and listen to the escape room episode. There was an escape room that was put on as one of the special features at all by a guy called Chadwick Seven, who is a genius. And he created an escape room, which was in the guise of a secret Apple design lab in the hotel that we were at.

And it was fantastic and me and you and a bunch of other people including james thompson who creates pcalc we were in a group and we did the escape room together and you recorded the audio of that as well as interviewing chadwick about what's going on and you kind of mix the two of them together which is it's really is fantastic to listen to that was that was a lot of fun i edited that on the train coming back and yeah so there's seven episodes up there and most of them are interviews i tried to keep some sort of context to it so even if you didn't go to all you'd get some sort of sense about like what was going on our friend kathy mrs soup in the chat room was one of the speakers and i interviewed her plus

she was on clockwise last week so it's a lot of kathy and uh all the great yeah and and the uh all the great kathy um and the escape room thing was fun to do it was fun to do it too and we won we had a little bit of help uh we were the last ones to go through but uh but really we solved all the puzzles we just basically he gave us permission to look in a place that we sort of assumed we weren't supposed to look because we were very polite. And then we solved all the puzzles, including James Thompson. I mean, what a great moment when James Thompson had his iPhone out with his app up doing calculations in order to get the secret code to unlock the last puzzle in order to get to the end. Which we genuinely needed. He wasn't just doing it because he could.

No, no, we really needed the math. And then he did it and you pulled the final lever and we won. But yeah, so that episode is fun to listen to. And yeah, I encourage people to listen. It's just a series of interviews. And that was an experiment, right? I mean, I just sent them a note saying when they asked for feature presentations and special guests and stuff, saying I could do these interviews of speakers.

And it was kind of, it just kind of came together. It wasn't super planned because it was hard to get everything planned in advance of being there and knowing what the schedule was. But in the end, I'm pretty happy with it. I think it was a fun idea to do that from a conference. And I would totally do something like that again. Just like they always learn from their conferences, they sort

of have this TikTok approach where they kind of do it one way and then they're like, all right, we got that part down. Let's do it a different way. They do it and then perfect it and then they move on to the next thing. I felt like I learned a lot from this process and there's some things that would change, but I think it's kind of a fun idea to let people on the outside experience some of the goodness of the conference and maybe be interested in coming i think that's part of it too and then also for the people there to have this kind of souvenir and supplement to what was on stage um i've created a couple of vlog episodes of my time in ireland um as the time that we are recording this i've posted one of them which was my time in

dublin yeah where's the other one that shows the live up? Did you put in the live upgrade report according time lapse? Yep. It's in the video that will be posted later on this day. I split it into two parts because 20-something minutes was too long for one video, I think. So the second part, which is the all part, will be up probably around the time that you might be listening to this. If it isn't, you should still go to youtube.com slash Mike Hurley and subscribe, and then you'll get it when it arrives. How about that? But I am going to be putting it up later on

today. Once I put it all together, 20 minutes, it just felt too long, and there was a real natural break, which was the point where we went to all, and there is a live upgrade recording time lapse there is uh footage of me in my back to the future marty mcfly costume which i don't think i've ever been more proud of anything um as i was of that costume the uh there was a new cgp gray video out today that that um i'll just say that you and i had some creative discussions about while it was being made, which is a first for me. And that was just fun to see the final product after we debated. There was a particular shot that was under debate about what it could contain. And yeah, that was a fun little moment of being in person to be able to have that.

Plus, I posted on Twitter, I took a picture of you pointing your finger at cgp gray yep like no i i i oppose you sir um yeah it was a lot of fun if you were at all of mine and grace meetings you would take that photo a lot that that that picture would pop up very very frequently that was good stuff it's all good yeah it was a good time there's no face spoilers in that picture would pop up very, very frequently. That was good stuff. It's all good. Yeah, it was a good time. There's no face spoilers in that picture, by the way, if you want to click on it.

No, I had people say face spoilers, but it's like, no, no, I very carefully took it from behind so you could see that Grey has a head and glasses and an ear. The fact, yeah, ear, glasses, and side of, like, the back of head does not count as a face spoiler. The only spoiler there is knowing that he indeed has a face. Or at least a hint of one.

Right. But that could be all a fraud. That could all be a fake out, for all you know. What else do we have? Oh, I want to mention something real quick, as we're in follow-out right now. RelayFM has a new show called Mixed Feelings, which I think people listening to the show would enjoy.

It's hosted by Quinn Rose and Gillian Parker. It is a show about news, politics, and pop culture hosted by two women who are at college, and they have a very unique perspective on things that I enjoy very much to listen to. So I want to point people to go to relay.fm and try it out. It is a different show in topic and theme

to the usual shows that we have here at RelayFM. They have no real desire to talk about technology, which I like a lot. And it has excellent artwork, which has now created a fantastic sticker in the RelayFM iTunes sticker pack. iTunes? Is that what I call it?

iMessage sticker pack. Sure, whatever. I think people should go listen to the show because it's great and I think it would be good if you listened to it because I think you'd enjoy it. You can get it where stickers are gotten. Yeah. That's the most important thing. You can get stickers where stickers are and shows where shows are and all the great shows. Where are they, Jason?

They're all in your podcast app of choice or on iTunes or elsewhere or on the side of the road i was gonna i was hoping you'd say relay fm but i know that you have uh you have conflicting feelings other podcasts are available mike where where are all the great non-movie and tv podcasts, Jason. Relay FM, Mike. Thank you very much. Talking about all the great movie and TV podcasts, Mike at the Movies is returning. Yes.

But we have a slight twist. Well, so what happens is, and we're not going to reveal the secret of why Mike at the Movies happens. I'm going to leave that. We did reveal it at all, and people were shocked by the reason it happens but we had planned one holiday themed choice and then you revealed to me that we had a second that we needed also during the kind of the run-up to

christmas and then just in a a normal give or take at all a little give and take uh we're just having a conversation and you mentioned a film and i said i haven't seen it and you just pointed at me and said that's it that's our second one so we have we have slated both of our movies now on the 28th of november the episode for the 28th of november we're going to be doing gremlins which is um a holiday themed movie right it's holiday themed it takes place it i mean it's kind of a horror comedy thing but it's set at christmas so yeah no i know i saw this movie as a kid but i remember literally nothing i think i haven't seen it since it was in the theaters in 1984 or whenever but it is uh people love it and we're gonna watch it and we'll see what we think and then i was

mentioning one of my very favorite holiday movies, Home Alone, which Jason has never seen. And I think that that is a travesty. So for the first time on this show, we're going to be doing- Turn the tables. Jason at the movies. Yeah, it's just Mike at the movies, but this will be Mike bringing me a movie. I think it's still Mike at the movies in the end because you're there.

Snell at the cinema. At least it's still Mike at the movies in the end because you're there. What about Snell at the cinema? At least it's got some alliteration to it. Whatever. That works. But I haven't seen Home Alone. There was a period, I think, right after Home Alone came out, like a year after it came out,

because it was a huge hit that I thought I was maybe the only person in America who hadn't seen it. And I've seen Home Alone 3. That's the true tragedy. I've seen one of the lesser sequels, but never the original. So we'll do it.

December 12th. I'm very excited. I'm very excited. So it's going to be December 12th. So you have two Mike at the Movies on the build-up to the holiday season. All right. This week's episode is brought to you by a new sponsor, and that is Encapsular. Encapsular is a cloud service that makes your website faster and safer.

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Playing with the big boys. You should take a look at their... If you're interested, go to the Encapsular website and just look at who their customers are. There's some... I think you'll be okay. You'll be okay. So, we were talking at length

about the MacBook last week, and you have now completed a trip with this thing. And also you wrote a mini review, I guess. It was a shorter review than some other products that you've written recently. Well, you know, I was traveling. It was kind of hard to find review time with it. And also, I wasn't sure since it's just this one model i'm not sure how much i had to say so it's about a thousand words let's be frank the exciting thing is not in this machine

no no it's not i mean this is this is a uh an interesting product that is part of uh you know is being released along with two other products that have a much more interesting thing about them but and and since the macbook already existed, that stole a lot of the thunder from this product. But I did live with what Marco keeps calling the MacBook Escape, the 13-inch MacBook Pro without the touch bar. I got it right before I left because I got it the day of the Apple event. And just for people's knowledge of my schedule, I was at the Apple event Thursday, and then I flew to LA Friday for the podcast festival, and then flew Sunday to Ireland. So I took the laptop with me. And that was my I traveled with that MacBook for whatever 1010 days, and wrote the review on it. And that

was my you know, I edited podcasts on it and had to copy files and connect things via USB. And I did all of that with it and i thought that would be since i wasn't going to be able to turn around a review in a day because of all the travel and everything that i had to do um i thought that would be my next best thing would be what's an angle i can take here and the the sheer fact that i was traveling it with it for more than a week ended up being the angle so So, let me ask you then, because when we spoke about it last time, I don't think that you'd had too much time to really do any kind of power,

pro stuff on the machine. Yeah, a little bit, not a lot. How do you feel about the performance from doing things like editing podcasts and stuff like that? Well, I mean, I think that the MacBook itself is probably pretty good for editing podcasts, but the MacBook Pro 13, yeah, I had no issues with it.

It was great to have the bigger screen. Keeping in mind, I'm used to an 11-inch laptop screen. Having the 13-inch Retina screen, it was beautiful. It was heavier than I'm used to, but that's because, again, 11-inch air. The MacBook is more of the analog for the 11-inch air, and this is an analog for the 13-inch air. I never had problems with it in terms of power. It felt very much like it could handle anything. The truth is, a lot of what we do with podcast editing is more disc intensive than it's processor intensive and this has the faster ssd in it so when you're even if you've got six audio

files running in parallel uh from a live recording or something like that i mean my macbook air can handle that this thing certainly can handle that so i didn't have any problem with that i did run some denoising plugins um which are more processor intensive isotope denoising program yeah even my imac can struggle with that stuff sometimes yeah and i mean they're not fast on it because they're not fast anywhere even on my imac as well but it handled them all uh without without any real trouble in in a reasonable amount of time so no it seemed it seemed really solid to me. It is exactly what you'd expect. I think the only thing, and I wrote about this in a Macworld column last week,

which I wrote, I think, after we talked last week at UL. I think the challenge is the price, right? I mean, what goes into a Retina laptop in terms of having to have the power to drive that screen and the cost of the screen itself? You look at it compared to the MacBook Air, the 13-inch Air, and it's, what, $500 more? It's, you know, that's the challenge here is that everything Retina is a little bit more expensive.

But it was exactly what you'd expect, which is more little bit more expensive but it was it was exactly what you'd expect which is more than the macbook but not the big macbook pro that is you know not yet out so do you think that's what it is is the retina screen that's driving the prices well i mean i'm sure it's more than that but you know that that is the that's the line of demarcation here is all the retina max have been more expensive than their non-retina counterpart and whether that's apple saying well if it's retina we're going to charge a premium or whether that's apple saying this you know all of this all these parts are in order to make this acceptable are more expensive and so we need to raise the prices in order to keep our margins but you know either way that's that's a the net result is that you can get a 13 inch macbook air

for $9.99 and you can get this one for what $14.99 so yeah that's the that's the problem you know we're going to talk a lot about the Mac today, as we did in previous weeks, and I just want to take a slight aside to just mention something that I think is kind of a little bit sad, which is that we've spent the whole year mainly talking about iOS devices, and the Mac will pop up every now and then with anything interesting to say, right?

Now, we are finally in the time of the year where we thought we were going to have a lot of interesting stuff to say about the mac but it's still just kind of a little bit sad like a lot of the commentary around the mac right now is sad stuff you know yeah i feel i feel like uh that's probably enough for a for a later topic though right yeah i mean we it's actually in the show later on today but but i just wanted to mention it now because it's just like you know it's like this is a great machine but it's more expensive in in not even a small way like it's expensive in a really good way and yeah outside of the u.s that's like a lot more expensive and it's not really a lot more computer you know like it's kind of i don't know it's it's a bit of a shame really and

i know why and you've made a good point as to why it would be but it's it's just a bit sad right like it's just a bit i really wish there was more just overriding good stuff to say right now well i mean this is this is this was a hurdle that Apple was going to have to leap at some point, I think. And we've seen it. We've been talking about it. Like, how do they get the Mac laptop product line down to a price, down to $1,000 when they go to Retina? And the answer is they can't or they won't. But either way, I mean, why is the macbook air still

alive at $999 there's only one reason which is they need and and the 11 for education only at $899 it's because they need they need a cheaper laptop than they are capable of or willing to make with retina and so they have a non-retina screen there and the difference in processors is not tremendous it is different this is a more modern processor the you know the power should be good the battery life should be good all of those things should be you know in the mix compared to something like a 13 inch air but the you know bottom line is they have this barrier which is upgrading everything because they think every computer ultimately right should be retina but if they make every mac that they sell retina they're

going to lose um low lower end um the lower end of the price range and that's that's really tough to do and and that's why i've seen a lot of complaints i mean there are a lot of complaints about price out there and um i'm not gonna, everybody's got their own budget, and everybody's got their own complaints. What I would say is, there's always some percentage of complaints about Apple that are about price. And you can kind of wave that percentage away, because there will always be somebody out there who says, you can configure a PC and save money. There was an article last week being handed around about look at this PC you can build instead of buying this MacBook pro. And it was like,

yeah. And it doesn't have retina. And I mean, right. It's like we, we can, those arguments go back and forth. They,

they are what they are, but there's the other argument, which is, this is just for, for what is supposed to be a mainstream Mac. This is just more expensive than anybody expected it to be. Or the, and, and there's, even if there are reasons for it it's disappointing because what you're seeing now is apple's basically

saying we can't make a brand new state-of-the-art mac for the prices at the same price points like we used to this is too big a hurdle so instead what we're going to do is we're going to offer old stuff and then the new stuff's going to be more expensive and that's just that's different because there was a time when apple would do major upgrades and then hit the price slots and here they haven't hit the price slots in fact for the macbook pro what they've done is they've they've hit the the bottom configuration is now what used to be the better like good better best this used to be the good is what the better used to be in terms of price and in terms of specs but but you can't go below you can't go down to good they're not

letting you do that i feel like ever since maybe around the time that the original ipad was introduced the kind of apple is too expensive thing hasn't really held a lot of weight like that's kind of to me like the turning point that i can remember about how like we expected it all to be like a thousand dollars and it was 500 and that kind of seemed to me in my mind at least in my memory to be a turning point of like apple is not just expensive for expensive sake and i'm not saying that that's what that is here but this is like the first time that i remember in a very very long time where this that there has been a price which has been harder to to really kind of wrap your head around and and it is the price of these macbook pros it's it's tricky for them to

bring the prices up on the model and then kind of just like that's all you have and it sort of makes sense for something like the touch bar because you're talking about an extra display and processor. New chips and all the R&D. Like, I get it. Like, I totally understand why that version is maybe not as expensive as it is, but I can kind of say to my... I can wave it away and be like, it's the Touch Bar, you know? That's how I kind of reconcile that in my mind.

But then you look here and all you can really say, like I said, is Retina seems to be the line of demarcation here. Now, the question is really, what does that mean in terms of Apple's margins? Is that a line of demarcation that Apple has set there because it wants to make more money on these macs or is it a line that they've set there because it just is way too expensive and there's no way that they can make money on a thousand dollar it really it really struggles me to think of that though right because we've had retina screens for a long time now and i i would just feel like apple surely at this point has gotten those margins under control. Well, I think saying we've had Retina screens for a little while now distorts it a little bit, right?

It's only been two years since there was one iMac with Retina screens. And even now, there are lots of iMacs that don't and there are lots of laptops that don't. It has been a challenge to bring Retina to the Mac beyond that first Retina MacBook Pro, right? to bring retina to the mac beyond that first retina macbook pro right it has been a challenge to get retina into the product lineup and to to have it be you know at these at these premium prices for whatever reason i know it's on our ipads and it's on our and it's on our uh our iphones but those are also smaller screens and they're in the case of the iphone they're at much higher volumes the ipad pro and the macbook the screen sizes are very similar to the MacBook Pro. And the prices are very, very different.

Yeah, but the iPad Pro costs like $1,000. Yeah, but it's not $2,000. And I don't know how much more, I mean, you know, I don't understand the volumes and pricings of all this stuff, but is there really like over a thousand dollars more computer in there than than in the macbook pros there is to the macbook and the and the ipad i don't know well i mean that so that leads to another another conversation that we might have to have at some point which is how is apple's pricing logic different for uh ios devices than

it is for the mac yes they view the mac as something that... Well, I mean, we don't... Unless you can tell me what the parts cost, you can't say that, right? I mean, this is the thing, is we don't really know, because there's a lot that went into these new Macs, but they're a lot more expensive. So the question is, is what Apple's doing following a normal formula of,

here's what our profit margin is on these products, or is it them saying the mac is a uh somewhat captive market that they their goal is to make a nice profit from the mac business but not to have thin margins in order to gain uh share because they don't really want to play that game and they would rather just have the mac be very profitable for the people who are willing to spend a lot of money on a really nice Mac, because that seems to be with the MacBook Pro, that seems to be their strategy is like, look, we're just going to make the premium laptop, we're not, we're not going to make a sort of, we're just going to make a premium, we're going to price a premium, we're going to put

a screen on it, we're not necessarily going to load it up with super high end pro features, but we want to make this like really nice, expensive laptop. And that's what they made. So I think that's the question is, is that a strategy to just have the mac be expensive now or not and i don't know i don't think any of us can really say without knowing the details of the cost of all of these parts that apple is putting in these things yeah i mean you know like just we could do this forever but you know like on a pricing like the pricing of even the ios device it seems very strange. Like,

if you consider retina screens being something that makes it more expensive, like, iPhones are more expensive than iPads to buy outright.

So, you know, and again, I know that there's a lot of different technology going into all of them. Miniaturization goes into that. Yeah. And then with the MacBook,

you've got the, you've got the back, you've got the backplate, plus you've got the entire other shell, so you're essentially building two surfaces where the iPad only needs a single surface. There are people that understand this way better than us, but this is just an example of how pricing

is confusing, right? Pricing is a minefield, and it's a difficult road to get into. It's always been a minefield. The difference here is that Apple seems to have either made a change in their pricing philosophy or has been sort of led into a change in pricing

because of the technology that they've chosen to use. And that's created this line of demarcation where if you've got a retina system, I mean, the line of demarcation is two computers that are not that different. And one of them is the 13-inch Air and one of them is the 13-inch MacBook Pro new model. And although there's new tech in the MacBook Pro,

you can't discount all of it. The fact is there's a $500 spread between those systems that are kind of comparable. And the reason is because the new tech is $500 more expensive, and that's that's where i think a lot of this is coming from is just you know this this retina transition and i'm a little surprised that we haven't like to your point we haven't seen everything kind of come down a little bit but that may not be apple strategy either the only thing that i can keep coming back to on this

is that they just sell way less max now and well that's part of it the prices are just going to be as they are because the people that need them really need them yeah well that's that's sort of what i was getting at is that you know you you make a you make a niche product like this and and you know at some point is your is your goal not to just make max for the people who want to buy max whereas your goal with iphones is to make a big profit but also be aggressive in the market and the mac users don't want to buy Macs, whereas your goal with iPhones is to make a big profit, but also be aggressive in the market. And the Mac users don't want to hear this, but the computer market is a dying market. It will take a long time to die, but it is a shrinking market. It keeps shrinking. Apple has, except for 2016, when Apple didn't release any new Macs, except the MacBook,

Apple has gained share and in many cases has grown the Mac business. And I think all of us would like to see that continue. But from a business standpoint, like the Mac is not where you put a huge amount of resources expecting growth because they're not going to be any. There's not going to be any Mac growth. There may be a limited amount where you're taking share away from the PC. But, you know, what are they doing with it? It reminds me of when I was at IDG and we would talk about print and online. And at some point, the official mantra at IDG was, you know, manage print for profit. Like, don't get caught up in trying to grow your print business because print's going to go away.

Instead, manage your print business for profit and once it stops making a profit you kill it right well is that that different from what apple's doing with the mac business which is they're managing it for profit they want to be a good successful profitable business but they're not managing it for growth because there isn't any and you know you can say well yeah i'm going to give microsoft some growth because I'm going to go buy a Microsoft product, or I'm going to switch to Linux or whatever. It's like, okay, but in the end, the net share of the computer market is going down anyway. So this is the challenge, I think, for Apple right now is what do you do for the Mac where you're putting in enough effort to keep your Mac users, or at least the bulk of your Mac users happy, you can't make

everybody happy, but the bulk of them happy users happy you can't make everybody happy but the bulk of them happy while also not like overdoing it to the point where your other places of growth like the iphone and the ipad and the apple watch and the you know the list of new products get uh get shorted for this product category that while profitable is not going to be a source of of of growth and in, will probably shrink if you look at five or ten years out. Yeah, looking at the way that the pricing could change and stuff like that,

the iPad is a good example of this, that the iPads now, the new iPads now, are more expensive because they're pros. More expensive, that's right. And it's because it's a small market. So Apple are increasing the average selling price of the iPad by putting more pro features and calling them pro rebranding them for the people that want to upgrade every year they're

the people that really want those and there will always be a cheaper product in a category than apple's product yeah there will but it might just not be the one you want and whenever these subjects whenever the subject comes up and there's discussion that people cart out the whole thing well i can get this from that it's like you like, you know what? Yes, you, you have always been able to get a cheaper product somewhere else. If that's what you want, go buy it, you know? Yeah, exactly right. But the challenge for Apple is what you want is to reach that market of people who want their product and make a product that is in the range where it's going to be profitable for Apple, but that they're not going to be turned off and not buy the product and how to navigate that is hard. But you know,

it's just it's important to keep that in mind that it's not really Apple's business to make to set features for everybody and set prices for everybody. They're trying to hit a sweet spot. Now, the reaction to these MacBook Pros might suggest that they didn't, or that it will take them a little while and they're going to take a hit in the meantime. think that they're what i don't want to do is say oh there's not a big deal here this is the same as it ever was because i think that's not the case i think there's something a little bit different happening here because of all these other issues that we've talked about but at the same time you have to pick through like the people who are who are saying you know they missed the boat here because this is a legitimate issue that I need to do my job

and I can't do it on these computers versus people who are like, I had a dream that this computer would be the most awesome thing ever and I've waited two years for the next rev of MacBook Pro and now that I've gotten it, it doesn't have all my dream features because those were dream features.

But the dream features are exacerbated by the fact that there were no features for so long yep that's it which we is what we said last week right that's just because um some of the feelings about this product might be kind of unreasonable um because they're based on kind of wishing it's not that apple isn't at fault for leading them to do that because Apple sent no signals and let them sit there and spin and get worked up and dream and get angry and all of those things by being so lax in updating the product line. Yeah. I mean, what choice do people have except to just dream of what their Mac could be? Yeah.

Right. Yeah. There was nothing happening. what their Mac could be. Because there was nothing happening. But this actually leads into this happening again in both directions, now with the Mac Pro.

There has been a lot of discussion since the MacBook Pro came out about Apple's approach to the Mac. We spoke about that a little bit last week, about does Apple care about the Mac? And I think that we both came to the conclusion of yes, Apple does care about the Mac? And I think that we both came to the conclusion of, yes, Apple does care about the Mac.

But there is an asterisk on this. And I think maybe the question should be, does Apple care about all Mac users? And what I mean by this is not like individually, I'm sure they care about all of us, but it's do they care about every single use case for the Macintosh? And this is coming up quite a lot in the consternation as to whether there will be another Mac Pro. Would you say that that is a fair description of this discussion?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's a very broad question to say, does Apple care about every Mac user? Because the fact is, companies choose their target audience. And the angriest people are the people who are not inside it. But that's how it goes. That's the way it goes. And companies make decisions saying, you are not in our target audience. Or you once were, but now you're not. And then people get to make decisions and say, well, I know I'm not in our target audience, or you once were, but now you're not. And then people get to

make decisions and say, well, I know I'm not in their target audience, but I really want to use this computer or product, whatever. And it's, I can make it work. Or they say, well, I can't use your products then, because this is a deal breaker for me, and I'm going to go somewhere else. And I think that's perfectly valid. I think companies need to make, and this I want to specify here, I want to describe Apple's thought process. I'm not saying it's not necessarily that they got it right, but I want to have what balance do we want to have to have the broadest use of that product with everything else like what available technology and what it costs and all of that but like within all of that here's what we want and they will take a shot and they may they may get it wrong but they're they're saying you know the bulk of people this will this will do it and then and then for some people it's not gonna it's not gonna touch them so that that's when you end up in a situation when those people are kind of mad because they

feel like they've been let down by apple this is not the apple apple's not making this product for them um the the issue here and the danger here and in kind of losing perspective is um if you start to get into this approach uh where you believe like how dare they not make a product for me because apple is not entitled to make a product for everyone apple is not obligated to do that apple's going to pick its shot and you you um and i see stories where people will say i'm you know i'm angry at these macro pros i'm going to go buy a PC or I'm going to buy a laptop and install Linux on it. And those people, well, first off, how many of those people will actually do that? My guess is that some percentage of them are talking big.

But then when the reality of what that would mean hits them, they realize they would rather compromise and stay on the Mac than go to that new platform. But for some of them, they'll go. But then you end up with other people pointing at them and saying, see, Apple failed. It's like, you know what? Nobody likes to say, everybody likes to say the customer's always right. But the fact is, Apple didn't fail. If Apple chose to have 16 gigabytes as the maximum amount of RAM, and again, maybe not the right decision, but they chose that for power reasons, battery reasons they wanted to use the lower power chipset guess what apple is saying if you need more than 16 gigabytes of ram in your in your macbook pro we can't help you go somewhere else that's not a failing of apple that's a choice

and you may not like it and it may be a bad choice but they chose it was not, so you can't point at people saying, I'm just going to go use a, buy a PC and say, oh, look, had Apple, how Apple blew this because like Apple made that decision. And I would like to think made that decision knowingly, again, maybe it was a bad decision. We can argue the details, but come on, like that, that's a choice. Apple, Apple doesn't have to serve every user and some users who are not going to be served are going to get bent out of shape about it. And that's fine. That's valid. I totally get their frustration. Yeah, like, as you say, there are people inside of Apple that know this stuff way more than we could ever wish, right?

They understand that by limiting it at 16 gigabytes, they're going to be cutting off people that need more. They know that. That wasn't a surprise to anyone i'm sure no they they clearly debated it right yeah they decided to go with the chipset that was limited to 16 the intel chipset because of the low power because of they're trying to have it to be small and light which again some people will know give me a 10 pound laptop it's like apple wasn't going to do that they made this decision and they knew what the trade-off was going to be which is you're going to get this uh more power efficient laptop but you were not going to be able to have more than 16 and that they knew that was their that was their call but it is that same knowledge that

will then concern people uh marco armand wrote a great post where he kind of outlaid his feelings as to why he believes the mac pro should continue to exist and i think this conversation kind of percolated in his head after atp um it's always fun i get to see this with you like me and you have a conversation and then a really great article pops out at the other end of it right like yeah it just it percolates in your brain um and and think that it is, Marco knows exactly what we do, right? And he can see, or can at least assume what we will assume, and can see that Apple made a decision in which they knew they were going to be cutting off some of the top end of the market. And does that type of decision, and this is the same for like the displays and

stuff, right? That Apple were making a decision to cut off a certain type of user that would really want an Apple display for their desktop as opposed to an LG. And are these decisions, are they red flags to indicate that the desktop power Mac, whatever it might be, you know, like whether it's the Mac Pro

or something else or whatever it would, you know, whatever that product is, like maybe even an even higher and iMac or something are those days over what do you think uh so I like Marco's piece I retweeted it I think he makes a good case I hope people from Apple are seeing this case my guess I also really like the way that he wrote this in such a way of like let me sensibly outlay all of this without a lot of emotion and then kind of he presented it to the world and he's like get this out there and i can see what he's doing right the idea being that if he can show there

is a critical mass of support for this it might highlight something inside of apple that they don't necessarily know which is is the feelings of people, right? Well, yeah, I think that's unlikely. I think most likely what this, if this has any effect, it will be that the people who argue on this side of this, if there is a debate inside Apple about the Mac Pro, and I think that's a big if, if there's a debate about the Mac Pro inside Apple,

what this article does is give those people ammunition to say, see, this is what I've been saying. They can print out Marco's tweet and take it to a meeting. That's right. I had this tweet made for you. I'm going to pass it out now. Everybody gets a Xerox of this tweet that happened. And then you should listen to this guy because he is a guy on the internet. No, I think he makes good arguments. And I think it's one of those things that it's another item on the pile of users saying,

we are concerned. We want you to show our commitment to this market. And it may have an impact. I mean, this sort of thing actually is the kind of thing that can have an impact, even if it is at as simple a level

as somebody gets a little more ammunition to say, no, no, we do need to do this update now, not put it off again, or, or, you know, we need to keep this product and not kill it. If that's the debate, my, my quibble with Marco's piece is that it begins with a, something that I would consider just a complete, um, fallacy. It's a little bit like saying I, lots of people are saying, and then you, and then you list something and you don't cite it. He says it look, it's looking increasingly likely like saying i lots of people are saying and then you and then you list something and you don't cite it he says it look it's looking increasingly likely that there will never be another mac pro come on where does that come from that is that is just invented we've all

talked about the scenario here where apple thought that they could get away with letting the macbook pro or the mac pro lay there for a long time and then they got caught between processor cycles and they look really bad but i don't i mean yeah the mac pro not getting updated in a couple of years is really dumb or three years or whatever it is it's bad but i'm not sure that i can take that as information that the mac pro will never will never exist and will be eventually quietly removed from priceless because the mac pro is dead i just, call me an optimist, but I just, I don't think there's information there.

I think it's just frustration that is leading to, geez, it's been a thousand days since the Mac Pro got updated. It's probably never gonna get updated again. And I get the emotion there, but I just don't, I don't see it logically. I feel like this is coming from fear and frustration. And those are valid emotions,

but I don't feel the factual backing. I don't see that. I can see how you could be led to believe it, right? Like just in the conversation that me and you have had, right? About like decisions and the amount of products that are sold. Well, I mean, so the right thing to say is given that the mac pro hasn't been updated in a few years i'm really concerned that it's not

gonna ever be yeah i'm afraid that it's not gonna ever be i'm frustrated that it's not gonna ever be but i i mean correct me if if somebody can cite a a reliable inside Apple source of a story saying that Apple's killing the Mac pro, but as far as I can tell Apple's radio silence on this and has been for three years or whatever, since they, since they said, can't innovate my ass. The Mac pros it's been so long since the Mac pro was updated that I worked.

I think it's won't innovate now. I think it's gone. Yeah. Well they can, but will they just won't? They just won't. Yeah, it's true. I just, I think those all won't innovate now. I think it's gone. Yeah, well, they can, but will they? They just won't. They just won't do it. It's true.

I just, I think those all make sense to me. Like, is this, what's going on? We haven't heard anything. It's making me afraid and all that. But factually, I don't know. I'm willing to guess that this is very much like when we were told, what, eight years ago, seven years ago, that the Mac Mini had been discontinued. No, it hadn't been. It was just sleeping. It came back. They just, it was just on a very long cycle. I get that the Mac pro, I mean, I'm not going to defend the way the Mac

pro has been treated. It's really unacceptable that it like is still being sold in its current form at its current price. It's a joke. It is embarrassing for Apple to have that product not be updated. And I think it goes to Apple's gut response to issues like this, which is just don't talk about it until you have something to say. And I think that's a mistake. I think this is from the classic Apple marketing playbook, which is just don't say anything. And this is one of those cases where it really hurts them, I think, to not say anything because people like Marco are just led to finally be like, OK, I guess. Well, I guess it's never going to get updated.

I guess I need to move on with my life and do something else when all they would need to say is yes or no. And instead, it's just kind of sitting there probably because they are working on something. And that's why they've remained silent about it. on something and that's why they've remained silent about it so i i think that the real tell will be uh when the imac gets updated which i think will happen before the mac mini and the mac pro if the website comes back to life and those two products are still on the page i would then say yeah they're still working on stuff because that would feel like the perfect time to remove them right like we've updated the desktop Mac. There is only one desktop Mac.

It is this one. If we're talking about premium products at premium prices with big profit margins, the Mac Pro is a great product to keep around for all of your clients that have, that are not going to buy iMacs because they want, you know, for biotech or whatever,

all these other markets that they want to be in. And it may be, now, another theory that I've heard, which I think is not a bad one, is their brilliant idea for the Mac Pro three years ago, they realized after a year was a mistake, and that having all those extra GPUs didn't actually serve their customers. And they've been in the background, they've been building a new Mac mac pro because they kind of need a do-over on that and that's that's not a bad theory either and which point it would kind of explain why it's sitting there is that they kind of don't want to keep updating it because they're working on a new one and if they update it they're going to lose even more money than they're already losing having

spent all this time on it i i just, I find all of these more likely scenarios than that the Mac Pro is just going to get shut down. So, I mean, what I said in my Macworld column last week is basically, you know, check in with me in six months. And if there's still nothing, check in. Like if by WWDC, let's say next year, there's still no moving on this front, then I'm going to, then yeah, okay, I believe you.

But I just, i can't imagine that that will be the case i imagine that the imac and you know maybe or maybe not the mac mini but the imac and the mac pro something will happen in you know maybe the spring just i i just can't i just can't envision it and i love but again i love that marco made the case because yes it's absolutely true we mac users one segment of mac users does need the flexibility that a computer like the mac pro can offer and that an iMac can't and there should be something around that can serve those people i feel like we are at the point right now that apple need to say something because the only people that care about this product point we're past the point. We're past that point.

I think they should have said it on stage, and even then it would have been too late. But that was why I think we had it as a draft item, right? I really just wanted Phil Schiller to say, and we've got some great, like the Chuck von Rosbach post that got linked last week from a bunch of places. And I think we mentioned it maybe even on the show last week. It's like, all you need is the little head nod. All you need is to say, and we've got some great stuff for the desktop coming early next year or something like that.

You don't have to be specific. You can just send a, you know, you can't wait until you see the new update to the Mac Pro that we're working on. Just something that says, here's a signal that we haven't forgotten about you. But there's been nothing because again, I think Apple just kind of falls back on radio silence.

Because this product does not matter in the realm of Apple exciting product launches. Like an iPhone would. Like you wouldn't say that you've got an iPhone plan for X because of all the problems in doing that and how much of your message you lose. What PR mileage did they get out of the Mac Pro launch the last time, right? I mean, people covered covered it but it's like such an esoteric computer that you know

nobody the volumes on them are very small it's like it didn't it didn't really matter so i i'm agreeing with you that like they did that right they did that with the new mac pro and kind of nobody nobody cared you know the mac pro like the mac mini honestly is part of this um it's like a gestalt of the mac right it's like on its own it's not a very interesting product to the whole product line but it fills a part of it out and so it's important to have it around and the mac mini is the same way like is the mac mini a very important product to apple no but it's good to have it around it probably doesn't take a lot of work to keep it, you know, updated every two or three years and just kind of keep it there.

I know a lot of people who have them. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a popular product, but nerdy people often will have one. It's relatively cheap, so that gets them into other areas that maybe they sell those that they might not have sold a Mac otherwise. And the Mac Pro, honestly, it's a very different product than the Mac mini, but it's like that. It's like, it's, it's not important on its own. It's part, it's important as part of the whole platform. And my Marco made some of those points too.

It's like the iMac 5k is great, but there are some people who can't use an iMac 5k. And let me throw in another thing of it, which gives me confidence that the Mac pro is going to really be a thing. Um, and get an update again is now we've got the 5k display external display that does usb see thunderbolt 3 anyway um now we've got that out there so that's perfect for a mac pro update and i believe according to marco the xeon processors that the mac pro would use would are going to get revved sometime next year although i agree just put in the last generation but that that that speaks to maybe that there's a bigger story here of them making more revisions to this product i don't know i mean if

you listen to atp kind of uh john and maybe mark if i'm remembering correctly kind of say that the the og monitor is a signal that they're not working on it because they've kind of given up i know they say that um i couldn't agree couldn't disagree with them more i think it's i think i think it is not true at all apple makes computers apple doesn't have to make monitors is the is the lack of existence of an apple printer evidence of Apple giving up on something? No. It's not a market they need to be in. The argument on that is there isn't an iMac where there's a printer built into it,

but there are lots of iMacs with big screens built into them. Yeah, so? I'm just saying, like, the argument of, like, they don't make a printer, I don't think holds up so much. No, it holds up because it's a category that is not important to Apple. Okay. That Apple's never going to be the leader in. Apple might make one of it.

And at some point, I think you look at it and say, why are we doing this? Especially if they can make a deal with LG to put in all the features that they would normally roll into a product like that. And then they just get to walk away and not worry about it. And that's what they did with that LG monitor. I do agree with you that I think the LG monitor is a good flag, not a bad flag. Yeah. I do agree with that.

I mean, now we've got an external 5K display for Macs that Macs will support any Mac that's got Thunderbolt 3 on it. That sounds to me like all of the Macs that come out next year are going to work with that monitor. And that may include, especially if they're turning over the whole product line to thunderbolt 3 then then i think that increases the chances that we're going to see a mac pro and a mac mini next year because they're going to want

to put thunderbolt 3 on them because i think the fact that they worked with lg specifically is more than like they could have just said oh and it's our new computers support this and this and this we are releasing some technical documentation for monitor manufacturers to make stuff that will work with this. Like if they truly didn't care, like I feel like you could do that. Right. And just be like, well, support standards. People should just sign up for our made for MacBook program. And, you know, sure. I mean, they could have done that but they didn't they they took what i think is is it seems

to me anyway to be clearly what they were going to do for their next monitor and gave it to lg and said can you do this for us please because we just can't and don't want to deal with this anymore yeah but we still want such we still want a good product to exist we just don't want to be the ones to put it in our stores anymore because it's big and heavy and stupid yep i'm sorry john but that's just the way it's gonna look and if you don't like and i've seen lots of people complaining about the way it looks i've seen lots of pictures of it from the side i just don't know why okay i know why that matters to people but just like you know i'm sorry but that's your monitor

now yeah you know apple apple has decided not to do that also um i get the complaints about apple care and i was actually thinking about that thinking one way that apple could perhaps soothe professional users would be to do something like allow people to purchase some kind of support for those monitors like as an add-on to apple care you know essentially like if you buy a yeah one of those monitors with a mac pro question mark or a macbook pro that you can pay an extra whatever and you know your apple care will cover that monitor too or something like that i don't know if that will work given that it's not an apple monitor it's an lg monitor but i can see how you almost want you want your professional users to kind of be in the be all in be in the family like yeah if you buy that monitor from us bundle with one of our computers then you can spend money

and we will make sure that if it breaks you can bring it to the apple store and we will we will do something yeah like don't, we've got this. We've got you taken care of. Alright, there was more news around the display and some other stuff that ties into this in an interesting way regarding

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Upgrade, you can get 20% off at MackWeldon.com by using the code UPGRADE at checkout. Thank you so much to Mack Weldon for their support of this show and relay fm yay man it was sad times for me i was not i was just not comfortable well now you've learned something about yourself i've learned a very very important lesson important things about traveling and yourself time time was you used to get dressed up for the airplane

back in the olden days now sweatpants apple discounted a bunch of dongles here we are we event we have arrived at dongle town so to get to dongle town you have to make a bunch of connections and like get off of one train and go to a different train that's a different size and then but you can get there it just takes a little extra work you gotta you gotta pack for dongle town you gotta have your big bag you do you gotta bring two different cards for two different train systems. And if you forget one card, you've got to go home. Now we're done pushing this metaphor to its absolute extremes. I'm not done.

No, I'm done. Okay, fine. This is very surprising to me. And it goes against a bunch of the stuff that we were just saying. Apple have cut prices on USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 accessories and dongles until the end of the year that actually also includes the display we were just discussing apple have cut the price of that but i think it's like 25 which is a huge discount it's down under a thousand dollars now which is crazy oh however it makes me want to go buy one i can't use it but makes me want to go

go get one uh i'll just look at it because i hear that the case is beautiful and i should just stare at it from the side oh it's just just trolling trolling snow um it's interesting though about the monitor because there's these discounts are through until the end of the year and the discount the monitor doesn't go on sale until december yeah so i'll pre-order it now however so there are a bunch of peripherals the usb c to usb adapter lightning cables and other many myriad adapters have been reduced in price and also in a in a in a really good move i think i didn't have to do this but i'm really pleased that they did uh people that bought online through apple received credits for the difference of these which i thumbs up uh silly old me for buying while amazon prime to get it quickly

uh that will be my fault for so apple should do quicker shipping that's that's that's the next that's the next guys who shipping gate any, they have reduced the prices on these. Basically, from the statement that Apple gave out, kind of just seemed like we had no idea people were going to be so upset. And the line is, we recognize that many users, especially pros, rely on legacy connectors to get work done today, and they face a transition.

We want to help them move to the latest technology and peripherals, as well as accelerate the growth of this new ecosystem. David in the chat room is surprised the discount is only temporary. I think a temporary discount is all that's needed. If Apple discounted this permanently, I think it would raise more questions than it answers. It's like a holiday promotion and a transition to the new thing. It's like a holiday promotion and a transition to the new thing. And maybe it's also a way for them to encourage people if they're wondering if they should buy a MacBook Pro to do it now before the end of the year. So, right.

It's like, oh, but if I buy it later, then all those adapters will be more expensive. Oh, maybe I should just go now. This is it. Mike, tell me if I'm wrong. This all happened while we were in Ireland. But I looked at this story on a Friday night, by the way, is when they did this. It was like a Friday afternoon release thing, which is typically when you bury bad news,

which is kind of weird. It's hard to read this as anything but damage control, right? It's 100% damage control. Let me read you a quote from Phil Schiller to The Independent. We took a bold risk, and of course, with every step forward, there is also some change to deal with. Our customers are so passionate, which is amazing. We care about what they love and what they're worried about,

and it's our job to help people through these changes. That is purely saying this was damage control. Our customers are so passionate. It's like, no, our customers were super mad and wouldn't shut up, and now we're discounting dongles. So now, a few things here first off why not anticipate this because it is the most anticipatable thing ever that apple chain's ports on a product and people get upset so why not anticipate that they anticipated it

for the iphone 7 and put the adapter in the box well their anticipation on the iphone was telling us about it a year in advance basically right but they still put the thing in the box, right? They put the adapter in the box. Now, with this, you've got a much more expensive product. Presumably, it's got better margins. One, why not put a USB A to C adapter in the box? I think that would be my question, number one. And two, this is damage control, but doesn't it also strike you that this is def deflection because it doesn't seem to me that the number one complaint people have about the macbook

pros is the cost of dongles right dongle town is like a distraction for you know frustration about mac pro town and uh maximum amount of ram town and right and and gpu mid sort of middling quality gpu town these are the these seem to be the other suburbs that are more likely to have uh have unease but instead sort of like the quick fix quick damage control is we got you some cheap dongles yeah because i think people are complaining about the fact that there are all these dongles but this is a complaint added on to the base complaint this is like a i'm really annoyed about this and i also have to buy a bunch of dongles and connectors it's true and and and it is it is showing so what it does so we complain about apple not sending a signal earlier

what this does do and i'm going to give them credit for that it sends a signal right it sends at least a little bit of a we hear you we get that you're upset kind of signal and that's that's good that and and does it in a i think a better way than i'm thinking of like antenna gate where where steve jobs said something like you can have a a case if you really want it well you know you can have a I expect that this came out of PR and marketing the way this did but Steve on stage just couldn't help himself yeah that that's and I think you're exactly right with his disgust about it and I think Phil is Phil it was better at at at messaging that part of it um although I will I want to put in a little footnote here which is it goes back to what we said a little while ago which is is why do people get so upset about things like the max Ram and the GPU in the Mac and the

MacBook pro. One of the reasons is because they're concerned that when Apple updates their products, now there won't be another update for years and that they're going to be stuck with this, not just if they buy this, but like the line won't get any better over time. This will not be, this is just going to be like this for three years or something like that. And again, that's kind of on Apple because that's, that's because Apple has not shown more attentiveness to updating Macs to the latest and greatest. But regardless, I mean, I think it's great that the adapters are cheaper. I do think that the USB A to C adapter should have been put in the box. I do think there's also this great question about like,

I know that Apple doesn't care about connecting Macs to iPhones and stuff, but we now have iPhones and iPads shipping with a USB A cable and their computers are USB C. It's a little bit strange too. So they're going to have to deal with that. There's more adapters on the horizon, basically. And they've discounted those cables for the time being. For the time being.

So get them while they're hot, I guess. So again, you know, making products cheaper is good. Making that monitor cheaper is great, I would say. That's surprising me. I don't know why they did that part i can see the the dongles and stuff but like i don't know if they had to make the monitor cheaper i wonder if maybe that was a planned price cut that they might do a like like black friday or something like that i was like let's let's bring out all the all the deals now i don't know i i

that's just a complete speculation but my thought was like this is a real easy way to hit the minimums you agree to og yeah right just keep them off your back right and and again i think it's it's also providing motivation for people to upgrade like if you're so the the the you know the people are a little restless about the our macbook pro announcement that more than we thought what can we do to make them feel better well we can't put in a new chipset, right? It's not going to happen. What we could do is make all of the accoutrements to upgrading cheaper. And that will not only maybe soothe them a little bit, but it also, by making it expires at the end of the year, more likely that they're going to jump than not because they want to take advantage of this stuff being cheaper in the next two months so but this this um this press release and and round of the press where they give the

little comments and interviews etc only serves to concern people more in some instances though right because apple are looking at what people are saying and the message they've chosen to address is dongle town not where's my mac pro right you can see how this will upset people as well right because at the same time they could also say and we've heard people's complaints about not they wouldn't use that phrase but you know they would all say oh and we also you know want to say that we have some other really exciting Mac announcements due for next year. Well, again, right? If they do have them, it would have been an opportunity to do that.

But I don't know. I don't know. It's something. I'll just say, you know, Phil, if you're listening, we've offered this before. If you want to come on this show and just say that one thing to everyone that our door is always open for you my friend anytime you just you just give jason a call i know that you have his personal phone number i know you you two i think he does i think i think he may he certainly has my email address you can just give give jason a call and anytime we'll uh we'll have you on and you can tell

the world that there's something All you've got to say is we're working on something and then you can just hang up, there's more than enough So, ladies and gentlemen buy your dongles whilst they're cheap Get on down to Dongletown

It's all the discounts at Dongletown uh i want to before we go into ask upgrade this week i want to shift gears talk about something a little bit more optimistic and happy which is nano raimo um because i know this is something very near and dear to your heart so for people that may not know what is nano raimo jason nano raimo is national novel writing month it is an event that takes place in November, although there are a couple of satellite events that happen in the summer for people who can't write in November. And the idea, it's run by a nonprofit and I'm on the board because I did it like six, seven times, something like that. The idea is like climbing a mountain or running a

marathon. It's something you can set for yourself as a goal and achieve it and sort of unlock your personal creativity by doing it. You write a novel in a month. So the idea is you write 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November. I did this several times. It's pretty cool. You can go on to NaNoWriMo.org and sign up. Signing up is free. You can join join a local chapter there are people all over the world who are writing and they have little write-ins where people come to cafes and things and hang out with other writers and then they do word sprints where everybody puts on their headphones and they they uh they write 2 000 words or they write as much as they can in the next 30 minutes or whatever um and the goal is yeah like i said to set this goal of 50 000 words by the end of the

by the end of the month which is uh now that it's later in the month, the pace would be higher if you got started today. But for the 30 days, it's basically 1667 words per day, which is not an it's not an unreasonable amount. Believe it or not, you just have to kind of commit to doing it every single day. believe it or not you just have to kind of commit to doing it every single day so you i don't know if you're working on any novels but i know you have in the past and i'm sure you always had that little idea bubbling around what apps and services you use today to to write novels or what would you what apps and services would you recommend to listeners that are getting started with this well today today i use scrivener and icrivener. I'm editing and rewriting existing novels. I decided I don't want to keep stuffing new novels in the drawer

when I have three novel manuscripts that I've written that I need attention. But you leave this as a time to take care of book stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah. You'll love this. I have a little time on my calendar every week to do some book stuff. Of course you do. It's part of my organizational system is to

work on the book stuff yep uh at a particular time right that that's what calendars are for aren't they so i use scrivener um it's now on ios as well i love it that's my that's my number one choice if you're looking to buy a tool that is both an organizational tool and a writing tool kind of combined into one that's great but you could. I mean, that's the beauty of it. If you've got Microsoft Word, if you've got BBEdit, if you've got any text editor, you can do it. There are websites that will let you do it. You could use Google Docs.

There's all sorts of... If it takes text, you can write a novel in it, quite frankly. And that's all that really is required. There's no novel that is going to There's no novel that is going to, or no app that's going to solve you writing your novel. You have to put your mind to it and commit to doing it. Now, I did get by with, I started with OmniOutliner before I went to Scrivener

and just wrote in BBEdit. And I also had an Excel spreadsheet because there's this tool that you can get from the NaNoWriMo website, but you can also like, I built my own version of it, which you put in your word count every, every day. And it tells you sort of like what your pace is, how many words you're going to need to write every day for the rest of the month in order to hit the goal, how far ahead of pace or behind pace are you? How many, you know, how many good

days have you had? Like low numbers turn up in red and good numbers turn up in green, stuff like that. So I did some personal motivation stuff too. Scrivener has a progress tracker, so you can actually just tap a couple of things and see whether you've met your quota for the day. What if I wanted to write 25,000 words? Can I still take part in NaNoWriMo? Yeah, I think they're not going to judge you. I mean, the goal is 50,000 words. Can I still take part in NaNoWriMo? Yeah, I think they're not going to judge you.

I mean, the goal is 50,000, but I think they're very open to people setting other goals for themselves, whether it's less or more. But, you know, everybody needs a goal. A novel is actually, a full-on, full-size novel is probably more like 75,000 words than 50,000,

but 50,000 is an achievable goal i would say in 30 days but you know i think they're i think they're open during the camp na no reimo um events in the summertime i think you get to pick a goal and the young writers program for uh for kids um the kids get to pick a goal i feel like i should do the young writers program yeah you could do that i'm a young writer right like i Like I don't write, you know. A little nipper. A little snapper. Got my first story about Mike going to Dongletown.

Mike, that's right. Mike the vlogger goes to Dongletown. So go check it out at nanowrimo.org. There'll be links in the show notes. I thought it was something worth mentioning. Thank you. I would love to know if listeners out there are working on novels. Let us know.

You can just tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade, and it will go into our little sheet. I would love to know if listeners out there, Jason, are working on Nen and O'Rymo novels. I think that would be cool to find out. That's cool. Speaking of AskUpgrade, this episode and this section of AskUpgrade is brought to you by our friends at Pingdom.

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So we have some Ask Upgrade questions. First off comes from Eric. Couldn't a third party make a breakaway magnetic USB-C cable now that MagSafe is dead? Why isn't this a thing? I have to say. So I have a MacBook now, which I'm trying out. And those USB-C cables, they go in and stay in. Like, those things do not pop out.

If someone steps on that cable, that thing is going to fly in. Yeah, I've heard some people say different things about it. Glenn Fleischman did a whole story at Macworld about like pulling it out. The new MacBooks are heavier, so it might provide a little more leverage than the little MacBook. So it might provide a little more leverage than the little MacBook. I will say, Griffin Technology has a breakaway USB-C cable called BreakSafe for $40. So it's not cheap, and it leaves you with a little dongle sticking out of your USB-C port. But if you really want it, you can get it.

I'm going to miss MagSafe, but we'll see. We'll see how it goes. It was a fun feature, although it also popped off a lot. Here's the thing, Jason. I'm nearly 30 years old. I've never had a Mac laptop without MagSafe.

Well, you do now. And that's weird to me. It's weird to me. I mean, it started to become weird when I moved to iOS mostly, right? And iOS devices have never had that. And my iOS devices are big. You know, I had the big iPads. And that's the strange thing.

But, yeah, it is something that I think is awkward. I really wish Apple could have worked out a way to do it in some magical way. Even if the cable broke off at a point on the cable, I don't know what it would be. But I wish that there could have been a way to make that work. But obviously, they would have done if it was easy enough to make it work reliably. Because they created this technology. Nobody else has had it. It would be really great if they could continue it,

but obviously in this new USB-C future, they can't. And I do think it's a shame, and I'm sure I will have more bad things happen than I've had in the past because I've never had to think about it. It's just never been something that's popped into my head because my laptops have been that way however i really do like the usbc idea the idea that i could use external batteries and all that sort of stuff and it could be more universal and in the future more likely that i can just charge my laptop wherever you know like i now um i have usbc cables that can work in a bunch of different places like i

have i have a brick that i can plug my ipad or my iphone into because i have usbc to lightning cables that's how i traveled android phone is all usbc right i like this i mean it goes back to like there is a i think we have a question in here yeah it's actually the next question which is chris's question which is how long until lightning gets replaced on ios devices i think we have a question in here yeah it's actually the next question which is chris's question which is how long until lightning gets replaced on ios devices i think we mentioned this in the past i really wish that that uh that we could have usbc on our on our ios devices you know so i just have the same connector everywhere that'd be amazing i can't see it happening for a long time i think apple had to go through a lot of of you know, if we think Dongle Town is bad now and the reaction to that, when Apple took the 30-pin away, a lot of upset people, right?

Which makes, and I understood it at the time, right? Because so much of everything had a 30-pin connector on it. We had devices strewn across our homes and cables and such, which were the 30-pin sleeping around for so long. But I really wish that all of my devices charged via USB-C now, because it has a lot of benefits that Lightning does. Super small, it's reversible,

but even better than that, you can get a lot of data and power and stuff all passed through this one thing. Imagine the world of iPad peripherals if we could have USB-C. Imagine that. Yeah, that's the one that I'll throw out there as a possibility as I feel like the iPad Pro, it wouldn't shock me

if the iPad Pro ended up with a USB-C port at some point. That would take a lot of extra iOS work. I think it's going to happen. I think it's going to happen. I don't know why. I have nothing except my own opinions on this the counter argument would be apple really cares about the its leverage and the growth of ios and on the mac it's like yeah it's a computer like we were saying before it's like they're okay with giving

into the uh the standard they already were using a standard on the mac anyway so might as well have it be this nice new standard going to a standard on ios when they have their own thing that they control that's a that's a harder sell but uh but i do think i have those moments when i think if the ipad pro is truly like a laptop basically it's a it's a professional computer then uh why not put usb on it i don't know instead of like a little lightning dongles to convert to everything let Let's go with both. It'd be crazily confusing. Two ports on an iPad Pro. Come on. How about that? It's big enough.

Frank asks, could the iMac and Mac Pro merge into a new Mac line? Something we didn't discuss. So Frank, my feeling would be if Apple were going to do this, they would not merge the iMac and Mac Pro. They would merge the two monitor and Mac Pro they would merge the two monitorless Macs into one I agree I think that that was what I was going to say too is

I think it's more likely that Apple says okay there's a market for these monitorless Macs so we're just going to make a monitorless Mac and it's not going to be the Mac Mini or the Mac Pro, or maybe we'll call it the Mac Pro, but it's going to be this thing. I'd like it if they just called it the Mac. The Mac? You can go for the Pro Bundle, you put a bunch of stuff in it,

and it costs $6 gajillion. Yeah, and this goes back to for the last decade, all sorts of people have been talking about what, I think Rob Griffiths at Mac world back in the day called it the mythical mid range mini tower. Uh, people call it the X Mac. Uh, yeah, it's possible. Right. I mean, the problem is that it's not a very focused product at that point. It's just sort of an all things to all people kind of product. And I'm not sure Apple makes that product rather than a whizzy Mac pro and a, and a, you know, also existing Mac

mini. But, uh, I think that would be more likely than, you know, also existing Mac mini. But I think that would be more likely than like the iMac and the Mac Pro. I mean, the iMac is pretty powerful, but they would need to do a pretty big redesign of the iMac to let it do some of the stuff that a Mac Pro can do. And I don't think they're going to do that. Google has just turned up an 11 year old, 11 year, one week old article from John Syracusa and i was technical called night of the living x mac see yeah it's been it's been going around for a long time yeah i'm looking now at a

an article by dan frakes from so not rob griffiths although those guys were both agitators for this a lot the mythical mid-range mac mini tower on mac world from june 2007 so that's another classic it's out there it's it's it's out there and again i i think it hasn't happened yet and probably won't but i think it's more likely to happen now than ever that they would just say we're just gonna make one of these you know and you can look and then you can build to order it with whatever and put it wherever put it under your desk we don't care because then

the reason was we just want something in the middle but at the time those two product categories were both selling but now I just don't think Apple really has the bandwidth in 2016-17 to do both a Mac Mini and a Mac Pro.

It just doesn't feel right to me. Yeah. I wonder which one of them sells more. I bet you that. Well, I mean, who can tell now, too, because nobody should buy a Mac Pro now. But my guess is that when they're both refreshed and selling, that the Mac Pro makes Apple more money. Oh, it definitely makes

more money right i wonder how many more units they sell uh i don't know lackland wonders uh what updates are you expecting in the spring and it's given us a bunch of options ipad pro 97 12 9 macbook imac mac pro something else you think everything you think we're gonna get in the spring what i thought we were gonna get two weeks ago yep yeah i do new ipad pros uh updated macbook updated imax and with any luck updated mac pro although that the question there is does that come in the spring or does that come at wwdc or you know when what is the timing with intel stuff and um i would I would say I think all of those that Lachlan listed, I would say, I think are going to get updated. The only products in that list that I would say are surefire

are the iPad Pros 9, 7, and 12. And I would throw in a Mini in there as well. I think we're going to get a new Mini. I don't think it's going to fall into the Pro line as I've seen some people speculating. to get a new mini i don't think it's going to fall into the pro line as i've seen some people speculating i think that would just ipad mini pro just doesn't make any sense i think there's going to be an update to the macbook because i think that they can do it i think they could do it now but that they've got more planned and that's why it didn't get revved when the macbook

pros got revved because they could have put a next generation i think there's a new chip generation now that they could have put in there and they didn't so and you know after two years i'm holding out some hope that it will be slightly redesigned to perhaps have two ports i know crazy right adam wants to know, how often do you completely power down your iOS devices? My iOS devices only ever get powered down when they run out of battery or I have to reboot them. I never turn them off. Every now and then,

I will have a phone or iPad. Usually it's a phone that is draining battery rapidly and seems warm. and i'll be like okay something weird is going on here i will power it i will power it down but it usually i will power it down and bring it back up um but that's basically a restart and uh so yeah i mean basically never unless there's a uh an os update or something like that. Just never. And finally today, Dylan wants to know, has anyone come up with a reason to get the big Apple TV

yet? In case you don't know, because I'd forgotten completely until this question came in, there are, what is it? What's the sizes of the Apple TVs? It's something like 64 and 128 or something like that? Was it 32 and 128? I don't know. there are two sizes and uh

yeah it's storage it's storage on the device yeah so you can load it up with apps so there's a 149 32 gig model and a 199 64 gig model for those extra 50 bucks you get more storage for whatever for apps lots of apps i guess but then like even like you know you think oh games but all of the games do the app slicing thinning thing yeah i don't know the reason no dylan the answer is no no one's come up with a reason to get the big apple tv yet sorry if you out there, the listener, have a legitimate reason other than I just wanted the bigger one, let us know. You can let us know

as you can ask us questions every single week. We always get many and we really appreciate them by just tweeting with the hashtag AskUpgrade and we will try and answer as many as we can

on the show every week. If you want to catch up with our show notes for today, just go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 114. Jason is on Twitter. He is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. You can find Jason's work online at sixcolors.com.

I want to take one last moment to thank our sponsors again for this week. That is Pingdom, Mack Welden, and Encapsular. We'll be back next time. As always, thank you for listening. Until next week, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.