Upgrade - 135: Trashed The Can

Episode Date: April 4, 2017

The Mac Pro finally gets an upgrade—and an expiration date. What do Apple’s announcements about the future of professional desktop hardware mean? How might this have changed the way Apple announces future products? Myke and Jason break it down live and in person, and then discuss 1979’s “Alien” in the latest installment of Myke at the Movies.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 135 today we are in london together my name is mike hurley and i am joined across this very table by mr jason snell hi mike hi jason i'm looking at you i know we are recording in my living room right now. Mega living room. Mega living room. So I guess it's going to sound different and everything, but we can do the high five that you know well. The real in-person high five.

You didn't hear it because it was a small high five, but it happened. So it is only time, it is now the time, that we must address hashtag Snell Talk for the week. And our Snell Talk opening question for this week comes from Matthew. Matthew wants to know, other than Guinness, what is your favorite beverage when you come to the UK or Ireland, which you do every year now? Yeah.

I'm trying not to say anything bad about Guinness. Guinness is fine. It is a style of beer that I like, and it is perfectly fine, although there are better stouts in the world than Guinness. I don't know. And tea. Tea is good. Right? This is a good place for tea.

If you like tea. These islands are good for tea. I will seek out—I like dark beer, so when I'm in the UK especially, I will seek out if there is a local stout or porter. Since this is the home of the porter. I believe it was invented here, and that's my favorite style of beer. I look for those. I keep an eye on those. I had a local London beer yesterday, but it was a Belgian wit style beer, so it was a little bit different. uh but yeah so i would say a dark beer is probably the answer not not guinness not guinness guinness is fine again but a local

different brand would probably be my choice if you would like to submit a question for our opening segment of the show you can use the hashtag snell talk and you can do that and they will come into a spreadsheet and thank you thank you to Matthew for his submission. We have already had the first casualty of Snell Talk, though, last week. You bought a new car. You bought an electric car, which we would have definitely spoken about at the beginning of the episode when I asked you how you were doing.

As I gazed out my window to check on the sky and see if it was gray or blue. You would have said, oh, there's a new car out there. I would have. What did you get? gray or blue. You would have said, oh, there's a new car out there. I would have. What did you get? We bought a used Nissan Leaf.

This is full electric, right? Full electric. It's not hybrid. No, there's no place to put gas. You can pour it in, but you're just going to ruin the leather inside of it. You'll ruin the seats. One of these days, I'm going to be driving past a gas station, and I'm just going to drive the car right through it and back out the other side, and it's just trolling the gas station.

But yeah, we were looking for a new car for our second car. We have a minivan that's sort of the number one car, and it has some issues with its transmission, and I decided I didn't think it was suitable or safe for my daughter to drive. I'm okay driving it right now, but even I think that in the long run, it's just getting up there and it needs to go. So we needed a second car, and our daughter learning to drive has been something

that sort of precipitated it happening soon. And we realized that, I mean, I kind of wanted to get an electric car, but we realized that for a second car, we really didn't need a lot of range. So it wasn't a big deal to buy a new electric car that's got a couple hundred miles of range. We could get a used model. And the thing with a lot of these electric cars and people who are in the know about electric cars, a lot of electric car usage is lease usage because it's new technology and why not lease a car and not be stuck with it?

So after three years or whatever, you give it back and you move on to your next electric car. Well, what happens to those cars that were leased when their lease is up? And the answer is they put them out on the used car market at a pretty reduced price

from what they cost originally a few years ago. And that's what this car was. It was a lease. So we bought it for less than a third of what its original list price was, I think. So that's, you know, and I think for us it was a good choice because we have,

even though its range is not particularly great i think it gets like 70 miles of range but that's more than enough for where it'll get used yeah congratulations on the new addition to the snail driveway thank you um let's do some uh let's do some some some some more items some follow-up and mini stuff. MLB at Bat has gained personalized app icons with iOS 10.3. You remember that one of the things that was in 10.3 was the ability for an application to change its icon, and it wasn't dynamic. You had to make a choice. Sometimes there'd be this little pop-up.

It seemed really super weird. Well, now the MLB at Bat application will allow you to choose your team's logo to replace the mlb icons on your home screen have you done this with yours um i did it and decided i didn't like it and went back to the original mlb icon because i use that app not just to check on my favorite team but i use it to check on other teams and scores and watch other games and things like that. And so it seemed weird to me to turn it into a branded app for one team. And I'm used to the MLB app. So it's kind of funny. I get why you'd want to do this if really the whole point of using the app is to check on your team. But for whatever

reason, I just decided I kind of liked it the way it was. I am. I do have my favorite team and all that, but I am checking other scores and looking at video of other games and things like that. So I decided not to do it. I tweeted about this and I heard from a couple of people that they'd heard from people

like as the grapevine goes, that this entire feature in 10.3 was for MLB. That is what I've heard from those same kind of, you know, grapevine sources. It makes sense that they would ask for it, but I don't think it makes sense that Apple would give it to them. Like, why?

Why would they give them that feature? Like an entire feature in the OS just for this. They've been a trailblazing developer for iOS for a long time. They've always been. This is a Hall of Fame app. And Macworld, I think, put it in the app Hall of Fame. You speak very hard of it, right?

It was a week or two ago. It is a great app, and it's been a great app for a while now. So my guess is that what probably happened is they said, it would be nice if we could do this. Or they said something like, we are thinking of releasing individual apps for every team because people want this and we can't provide it. And Apple said, no, no, no, no, no, we'll do it. But my guess is that Apple wouldn't implement this just for them, but that this may have been the impetus for it. Because you can see other examples of this um just off the top of my head um imagine you know

overcast the podcast player has a has a light theme and a dark theme and the icon is based on the light theme well you know it's got another color scheme why not offer another color scheme for its icon and that's true of any any app that's got that or you know you've got an you've got an app icon that you can skin in eight different colors based on people's design choice. Why not allow them to do that? It is a sort of a silly feature. And of course, it has to be done through a user interface. So you can't just change it as a calendar app. You can't change the date every day. It doesn't work like that. But it allows some more customizability, and I think that's fine. The new iPad has been torn down by iFixit, and they confirmed that it's basically identical in build on the inside to the iPad Air, the first iPad Air.

Just confirms what we thought that Apple were going for. They're trying to make an iPad at the lowest price possible, so they're reverting some parts. They're maybe reverting to an easier-to-build machine, and that's what they've done with the iPad. I don't think that really this is to be criticized, but I just thought it was interesting to get the affirmation from iFixit. Right, and it seemed like that, that it was basically the specs, other than the processors that they upgraded,

it seemed very much like an iPad Air. Now we know that Dan Frakes at The Wirecutter, who is the czar of iPod and iPad and iPhone accessories, he has been the iPhone accessory guy for so long. Dan said that iPad Air cases, some of them will work with the new iPad, and some of them won't. iPad Air, not iPad Air 2, but iPad Air cases, some of them will work with the new iPad and some of them won't. iPad Air, not iPad Air 2, but iPad Air. Because the shape is the same,

but the location of the camera, I think, and some of the ports is slightly different. So you may not be able to reuse that case if you've got an iPad Air. But really, why would you get an iPad Air, or an iPad if you've got an iPad Air? I mean, it is slightly upgraded, but it's essentially the same. It's really targeted at pre-iPad Air users.

Yep. All right, should we take a break? Sure. Jason, would you like to thank a returning sponsor? I am very excited to tell you about our returning sponsor. It is MailRoute. MailRoute. That's right. MailRoute is a secure hosted email filtering service that you can have up and running in just minutes. MailRoute gets rid of spam and viruses so you don't have to. You can trust MailRoute to get

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And with one click, you can deliver that message or deliver the message and whitelist the sender. So if there is a false positive, you can override it. And then that mail just appears in your box automatically. And that person will never be filtered out again, which is pretty great. So you can find out more about MailRoute today by going to mailroute.net slash upgrade

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Thank you, MailRoute, for their support of this show and their support of mailbagging. Mailbagging! Before we sat down today, I was giving Jason a tour of Mega Office, and I showed him where the mailbag that he bought me lives. Mm-hmm. So it lives.

The mailbag lives, ladies and gentlemen. Greatest gift ever. Not only do mailbags live jason snell so does the macintosh professional oh what an unlikely turn of events this is i was so prepared for today's show i had a whole document done we had a bunch of topics all set down out we were ready to go what a great show one of the all-time greats one of the all-time greats um and then a bunch of i guess an embargo lifted and a bunch of articles were published yep uh to name a few uh john gruber we have buzzfeed

tech crunch axios which i wasn't sure existed until you mentioned it to me what is axios uh it's a new one it's a startup and uh in a free who used to be at recode is there is there and mashable they all have pieces where apple sat down with them with literally those five people Startup and Inafri, who used to be at Recode, is there. Is there. And Mashable. They all have pieces where Apple sat down with them. With literally those five people. Yep. And a bunch of people from Apple. I think it was like kind of one-to-one in Apple representatives

to press representatives to talk about primarily the Mac Pro, but as a whole, Apple's commitment to Macintosh professional users. They kind of touched across the whole gamut, but it's primarily on the Mac Pro. So let's start with what they have done today. Can we start with hashtag Jason was right? Only because I would say when people felt despair, I was definitely not alone, but I was on the team who said that mac pro is not sticking around and looking old just to be discontinued that there has to be another story you remain faithful everybody else otherwise they would have just killed it yep and that didn't happen and it

turns out we got uh we kind of got a one-two punch today about the Mac Pro. So what is happening immediately is that today, Apple is releasing a small speed bump for the Mac Pro. New Mac Pros, everybody! I think so. I think it says new on Apple's store page. They are new. So the $2,999 model goes from a four-core Xeon CPU to six cores and it gets a GPU upgrade. I don't understand the GPU

upgrades but I know that there's more numbers. Well there's two, yeah I don't understand it either. There's two GPUs and they got upgrades. They made the innards faster than it was. I haven't seen whether this is, I'm sure that other people will be writing about it soon if they haven't already.

I don't know how current these Xeons are. They may be a year old. But they're newer than what was there when they introduced the product, which hasn't changed since then. And the $3,999 model goes from a six-core CPU to eight cores and also gets a GPU upgrade as well. That's it for upgrades.

No Thunderbolt, no Retina display support, no USB-C. Yeah, it's still using the old Thunderbolt and the old USB 3 and all of that stuff. It's literally a swapped-in chips on the Mac Pro. But this is merely the starter to what is the big news, the main course of this.

Apple has pre-announced today they have pre-announced that a new Mac Pro and external display made by Apple are being worked on. They won't be out this year, but they're saying it will be out next year. Can I read a quote from John Gruber? Sure.

Apple is currently hard at work on a completely rethought Mac Pro with a modular design that can accommodate high-end CPUs and big honking hot running gpus i'm not sure if that's a quote from apple exactly but it's what john said and which should make it easier for apple to update with new components on a regular basis they're also working on apple branded pro displays to go with them so let's let's start off with one one key word in this is it honking well not not honking so much uh modular modular so

looking at the context of that word my guess is what it means is it's something that we'll we'll talk about more in a little bit which is modular for apple that it makes it it's a system that is less carefully balanced and integrated than the trash can mac pro that allows them to more easily swap in new parts it's possible that it's a modular design for users as well there's no extra detail here it could mean that it'll have slots and things but i think i think the context here is that the existing one was not modular enough for them to easily swap in new stuff because it was balanced on the head of a pin it ended up being less modular than they expected or like the the modularity there's a new word for you that they expected didn't pan out

which was that you would just connect stuff to it. And that just wasn't a future that was realized. I hadn't thought about the idea of the modularness. I'm going to go with modularity. I'm going to go with modularity. Well done. I didn't really think of it in a sense of like it would make it easier for Apple to upgrade.

I was thinking of it in the sense of like cheese grater Mac, right? Where you could open the door and you could pull stuff out and put new things in. So do you think that maybe we're looking at more like the design is modular for Apple's machines to build more of these and update them quicker? Or that users may be given the ability to pull off a door and put stuff in it? or that users may be given the ability to pull off a door and put stuff in it. Yeah, I think Apple's never going to prioritize card slots. Right. I mean, there's literally not a system they make that has something like that.

Cards and bays and open spaces with a question mark where it's your product, add-on product, can go here. But the fact is also true that they could do things to make it more repairable and upgradable than it is now, even if it's not officially repairable or upgradable. And if they did that, it would probably be a side effect of the real reason they're doing it, which is they want to be able to quickly drop in new hardware. Because quite frankly, I mean, this is the thing about the existing Mac Pro that frustrated people and that made no sense is, quite frankly, for pro users,

they're most concerned about, can I buy the highest spec system that I can? And if you have to wait two years to buy that system, or you can never buy it because it's never going to be compatible, then why do we have a high-end product at all? Instead, you want feature one of the high-end product to be its ability to rapidly be turned into the latest and greatest processors or GPUs when they're available. So we'll come back to that part,

like the idea of the updating in a little bit because Apple gave some information about, at least they tried to explain, I think, what happened with the trash can. But there was more stuff that they spoke about today. Apple said that they will have great new iMacs for release this year, which will include configurations

specifically targeted at large segments of the pro market. Which I do wonder if that's the iPad or the iMac Pro rumor that has been going around. Well, at least the idea. Yeah, the idea that there are iMacs that are specifically targeted at large segments of the pro market, like they say here. Like, what can we do, if we're Apple, to take the iMac and make it even more appropriate for the high-end pro pro market which they've been pushing it up to right now you do not need a Mac Pro no we don't although you know I do have those moments when I'm processing when I'm denoising

audio in isotope where I've pinned the cores and it still takes a minute or two to to denoise a two-hour audio file and where I think faster CPU and faster storage, which my iMac is the original 5K, so it doesn't have the faster storage, that both of those things are something I could use. I probably don't need a Mac Pro. I could just get a more powerful iMac if one existed. So I do think that that rumor going around, that it's sort of gotten taken by some people as an example of why the Mac Pro wouldn't exist, probably has its roots in this idea that for them to specifically say configurations targeted at

Pro users suggests that there's more above and beyond where the iMac is today that they're going to try to push those systems to be capable of. I also see this as no matter what that actually ends up being, no matter how powerful it is, it feels like another part in this puzzle where Apple is trying to satiate. We don't know what it's going to look like yet. It might not be anywhere even near a Mac Pro,

but just like a bump that we would expect. But what they're trying to do is like, okay, we don't have this new Mac Pro until next year, but we do have some more powerful machines coming this year. And they may just call it an iMac Pro, like no matter what it looks like, right? But I think it's the idea that they are trying to let people know that we care about professional users.

They bang this drum all day right with this and one of these things is like oh it's for segments of the pro market because they just want to say like we promise like we really seriously promise that we've got something well i think it's an interesting line for them to walk because i they know how many of these models they sell and yes there there's true truth that it's not exactly what everybody wants, but they know that the iMac sells really well, and it's true that the Mac Pro in its current state, it does not appeal to Mac users so much as a certain level of Mac Pro user type, right?

Yep. So I think this is the, uh, I think this is the, the, the, the line they have to walk is making a new Mac pro doesn't solve it for all their pro customers because a new iMac is actually a better solution for a lot of the pro users, not the ones who are really clamoring about the Mac pro, but you know, the iMacs peeled off a huge professional user base. So that's what they all... It's not neither or, in short. They need to make the iMac better for Pro

users who want to use an iMac, and they need to make a Mac Pro because there's another class of user who does not. So the other thing you neglected to mention there in that quote that you read, Apple branded pro displays.

So even though they told Neelay Patel at the first that they're out of the display business, apparently they're not out of the display business. Maybe you just didn't listen to the rest and they said for now. Maybe. Or maybe that was something not. I think things have changed. Or something not authorized to speak about it. But it's also possible that they did this LG thing

and then they saw what happened with that monitor, which is not very pretty to look at and don't put it near Wi-Fi and all these things and thought, why did we... This is what happens when we don't make it ourselves. So let's make it ourselves now. But it's also possible that that was just, they changed direction and, and, you know, there are lots of, lots of possibilities there, but this is a definitive statement, right?

That they're going to make, uh, they're going to make a new Mac pro and they're going to make an Apple branded display to go with it. Yeah. And I'm happy to see that just because it's something that people want, you know, it isn't a part of the puzzle, right? For people that care about this stuff a lot, right?

John Syracuse, like it's, it's important for them to have this whole thing. And it does help. It does help inform and enforce the commitment. And it's going to be an expensive monitor and it's going to be more expensive than your usual external high, you know,

high quality monitor. It's going to be, but that's so, and they're going to do monitor. It's going to be. But that's... And they're going to do that because they're going to sell these things in bundles and they're going to sell them at the Apple Store and they're going to... It's an Apple product.

And with the Apple label on it, it's going to cost more. And that's going to be a profit center for them. But there are going to be people who are happy to pay it and people who don't want to pay it will buy something else. But at least the option will be there. I think it's great news because I know, you know,

the LG display when I saw it briefly looked perfectly fine, but I heard from a lot of people who, you know, they would rather just buy Apple hardware down the line rather than go out and buy some third-party display. And right now the Thunderbolt display is the only one. That was the last one that Apple made, so you're out of luck right now. The best Apple display you can buy right now is to buy a device and use the built-in display.

John Pakskowski of BuzzFeed asked about the Mac Mini, and a very interesting comment was given. The Mac Mini remains a product in our lineup. Yes, the Mac mini is a product that exists good work everyone uh-huh congratulations we saw it on the website would you like to talk about iphone cases yeah it remains a product uh but and we have nothing more to say about it today i think i saw on one of the in one of the requests which is uh interesting right? I think the Mac Mini thing has much to do over nothing. Forgive me if I've said this before,

but when I see countdowns or count ups of how long it's been since a Mac Mini update, go check on how often the Mac Mini gets updated. This is a product that gets updated seldomly and has been for a decade this is not i i would argue i mean it's probably not even much more than the longest it's ever gone without an update i haven't checked that but just my gut feeling is when the last mac mini update came out it was hailed as being a rare update to the mac mini it's not a product that gets updated

very often i was going to point out that the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro are both interesting examples of products from Apple that in many ways failed to be better than the product they replaced. Yeah. Because like with the Mac Mini, you had the four core version that got kicked out when they went to this version. And that four core version is still the fastest Mac Mini you can buy.

And the high configuration of the previous cheese grater Mac pro is actually more powerful than the highest grade Mac pro you could buy. At least until today, it may not be anymore. So these are both categories with issues, but I think the Mac mini will continue to be around. They even said that it has pro, I believe one of the quotes from an Apple executive said,

I think Schiller said that the Mac mini has its pro users as well, but it's got a very different profile. So maybe even in the pro context, you know, we know people who use Mac mini and all sorts of things pro, I see it in like music environments and, you know, in audio environments. And there are lots of places where it's useful to have a Mac to stick a Mac mini. So I don't think it's going to go away either. The only question to me is, you know, does Apple make the Mac mini a low end configuration of what is currently like they're working on as a Mac pro and say like we have one standalone Mac and you can get a cheap version or a super expensive version. Or if I think the easiest thing would be just keep it rolling, right? I mean, if that mac mini enclosure and the and the design inside work more or less just update the processor every couple of years and call it good of all of

the macs in the entire line laptops desktops the whole shebang it is the one that requires the least amount and just not even necessarily requires from a technical perspective but just from a customer perspective like it is the one that needs the less attention. And as long as they keep it, it's going to remain a product and they just put new bumps in it every couple of years. That's fine. I think it's fine. Yeah, so the Mac mini has gone two years without an update,

but it previously, it was updated. There was a gap of, this, this is thanks to, uh, end Cremins in the chat room. There was a gap of, of more than this is not the record. Um, the gap between, um, October, 2012 and October, 2014 was 723 days. So's more but not a lot more and there was also a 574 gap so i guess it is a record but not by much i mean the mac mini the mac mini was ignored for two years before and now it's been ignored for three years or two and a half years or yeah yeah two and a half years maybe it gets updated in a year and then not touched for four years yeah i'm not sure but like it's like whatever it might get upgraded this summer or this fall and but then if they do i can almost assure you that they will then ignore it for a couple of

years at least just because they think that that's enough the the sufficient amount of focus to give to the mac mini i hope when they do update the mac mini that they do bring in some of those low-end four core configurations again because that was a pretty great system to buy that was a pretty powerful mac mini but we'll see but anyway the mac mini has a history of not being introduced uh with a new version for at least a couple of years so it's not a it's a record but not by much this is exactly what we wanted right what they've given us today like i mean the collective the collective we of the apple think piece podcast whatever yeah i think so in the sense that not just in the sense that they've announced that something will exist

not just in the sense that they've updated the existing mac pro which we could argue like why did they even do that and the answer is because they're still selling that old model and for that price and it's pretty sad and there are people who still buy it because they need a mac pro they need something about it and they have to buy it both of these things happened because of each other it was one or the other either they wanted to update the mac pro so they had to talk about it or they decided they really wanted to talk about it so at the same time they also decided to update the Mac Pro. Because they couldn't have done these updates and not said anything. That would have been

worse than I think even leaving it there. Probably. It wouldn't solve the larger problem which is we can talk later about the method by which they disseminated this information and why. That's a little media inside baseball. But the short version is, my gut feeling

is that this is a reaction to the fact that they've tried to tamp this down twice with statements from Tim Cook and neither have done anything to fix it. And so this is like, alright, we're going to lay it on the table here this time.

They went a little bit further with it. Look who they had in the room. Tim wasn't there. Oh yeah i mean and they're quite right that it's that it's they know who they need to have hardware heads right craig and phil yeah i mean tim's not the right conduit for that information but it still feels to me like there were attempts to send the signal yep and the signal was rejected it didn't stick it's like no it's up that's right you need you're gonna give it need to give us more than that, friend, for us to get this. So I think that's interesting. But the larger point is, is this what people wanted in the sense that they said in advance,

here's where we're going. And that means that we're no longer in the dark about where they're going. And it puts out, it deprives of oxygen all the conversations about whether Apple cares or not about this. You can still have a conversation about how much Apple cares or if they did the right thing or what they messed up. Absolutely. But it kills the thread that is they're not working on anything they've given up yep and that thread can respawn after this one ships right they'll bring that back because that will be inevitably a storyline because it has been and it will continue to be but it it's more than

a head fake it is a direction of like we are doing this and it calls to mind actually nothing more than when they did that statement before the last mac pro where tim cook said we do have a great new solution for our professional users that we're working on that will be available next year which they did before they did the trash can mac pro and and this is the this is more than that but it's a very similar kind of announcement where they felt like they needed to send a signal to an unruly pro user base that they were working on something but it was just going to take some time to mirror what you were just talking about a moment ago they've tried to do it again but it didn't work this time right like last time they said we have very professional devices coming and we were like okay then this time they

tried to do it again and we're like no we need more than the difference was is there had been relatively recent like within a year speed updates to the cheese grater and it'd been too long for the mac pro right in this case it was so stale that that was not going to be enough i would argue that if the mac pro kept getting hardware updates every year even if they were, that would have tamped down. There would still be frustration of like, why don't they do more? Why don't they make these updates better? But instead they got in this really weird position,

which we've talked about numerous times on this show, that it's their own fault for being here. And we can talk more in a little bit about why, but the fact remains that this was the spot they were in and they had to find a way out of it. And this is the way out is to very clearly disclose we are working on something. Also setting expectations. You won't see it at WWDC. In fact, you won't see it in 2017.

It will be, I'm not sure they said 2018. I think they just said not this year. So look for it in 2019. No, it'll be next year. I think so. It'll be, I'm not sure they said 2018. I think they just said not this year. So look forward in 2019? No, it'll be next year. I think so. It'll be next year. But they don't want to commit everything. Right.

They'll say it's coming. Yeah, but I like them saying it won't be this year because that's good because the next thing that would start up is maybe we'll see it at WWDC and they'll tease it and then it'll ship by the end of the year. And they're like, no, that's not going to happen. Maybe they will tease it and then it'll ship by the end of the year and they're like no that's not going to happen maybe they will show it tease it this year maybe not but at least we know we don't expect it right there's nothing to expect I think it's great for Apple to set expectations like this this is not a consumer product this is not a frivolous product this is not a product that they can really legitimately worry about sales being cannibalized

because I think they're the only people who are going to buy the existing mac pro as it's been for the last year or two or people who absolutely have to have it today and are not going to wait because everybody else is waiting so they'll wait a little bit longer so it's a unique position for apple to be in but it allows them to break out of their rules of we never talk about future product announcements and say okay we are working on it. You won't see it till next year, but it does exist. And here are the vaguest parameters about what we're working on. And let's never speak of it again until we see you in 2018. You've been covering this stuff more than anyone for longer, I think. I can't think of anybody who's

been covering Apple product releases longer than you. Can you have, would you have ever imagined that Apple would talk so openly about an unreleased product? Like this isn't just a speed bump, like from what they're saying, this is like a brand new design. I think it's, um, I think it's a little less, um, a little less divergent from what Apple does than you might think, only because Apple's main goal in talking about products before they're released is to avoid that is because they want to avoid cannibalization. They want to avoid the Osborne effect for people who are very old. They may remember that that's a famous computer industry thing named after the guy who ran the Osborne computer and he pre-announced a product and then his company lost all of its current sales, which

is a really bad way to do business. You want to sell those computers until the day they're replaced. So there's a great podcast. One of those Gimlet creative podcasts. It's like the eBay one open for business. Idina was listening to it once in the house and it was amazing. I'll put a link in the show notes. It is telling the story one, open for business. Idina was listening to it once in the house, and it was amazing. I'll put a link in the show notes. It is telling the story of the Osborne effect.

I didn't know anything about it, but I knew the phrase. That is fascinating. I'll put that in the show notes if anyone's interested. Yeah, so I'd say, when has Apple announced a product that it wasn't ready to ship? And the answer is, you can look at it. I already mentioned the Mac Pro, which was a head fake, but it was pretty clearly we're working on a new Mac Pro and it'll be available next year, or you'll see it next year. And then everything else is exactly what you'd think, which is

they announced the iPod and they shipped it a couple months later. They announced the Apple Watch and they shipped it six months later. They announced the ITV, which became the Apple TV, and they shipped it like six or eight months later products that didn't exist before that couldn't be osborne right that's when they do a pre-announce the iphone the iphone great example six months to ship it all of these all of these products that were new so the difference with this is just like look i mean you can see it apple doesn't care if it doesn't sell more trash can mac pros that that right because first off like i said only people buying them now the only people who should buy the new speed bumped version are people who are so desperate the only computer they can buy as a mac pro and they have to buy it

now so they buy it and it's the same person buy it and it's the same person. And it's like literally the same person. I think it's literally the same person as last week. Yeah. Right. I don't think it's even any different between this week and last week, even though the specs have been updated because it's like still not a great buy

and it's still outmoded technology. But it's so much better now. Like we'll say you're being ripped off if you bought it like, if you were someone who was buying it before today, like, I mean, you're probably still not getting great for your money, but how old it was was like sure but they kind of are okay that the only people buying this thing this is a stop gap and that's why they're okay saying we

will have something new next year um i also think that it's interesting that they did that mention about like great imax stuff for the for the high end because that is also a promise of more things to come. They're vaguer about it. They're not ready to announce the hardware yet, but I think it's telling about how little they care about their current Mac Pro sales, which are probably very small, that they're willing to do this

and potentially cut those sales off entirely because they are, I mean, like I said, they already know nobody's buying the mac pro unless they're desperate and they just have to do it and i don't know who that is but those people do exist where they're like i gotta get it and it has to be a mac pro and i need to get it today they're like all right for you we have one for you we have a special one in the back we don't want me to be working on cooking it up for you handmade in the usa just for you there is still quite a lot to unpack um let's take a second break and then we can jump right back into this today's episode is also brought to you by away look your luggage shouldn't

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all right so it turns out turns out turns out that the trash can mac pro was kind of ended up being a bit of a misplaced bet for apple yep that's i think the best way to put it they uh what craig federighi said was we designed ourselves into a bit of a thermal corner. The idea here is that Apple thought that the future of high-performance professional stuff was multiple GPUs. So the Mac Pro trash can, for those who don't know, is on the inside, it's a triangle.

It's basically in the very center, it's got the fan core. The fan blows from the bottom, blows it out basically in the very center it's got the fan core the fan blows from the bottom blows it out the top or sucks it from the top and exhaust puts it out but anyway there's an air chamber right down the center of it and that's that's for cooling and it blows it out the top yep and so the in the triangle around it there are these three motherboards or three boards and one of them has the processor on it, there are these three motherboards, or three boards,

and one of them has the processor on it, one of them has GPU one, and one of them has GPU two. So that was the whole design. And Apple's like, this is gonna be great, this is the way of the future. Turns out. Turns out.

It's not. Turns out, the way that this went, Apple tried to steer the industry, right? Apple tried to do one of those things where it's like we're visionary this is going to happen and it totally didn't happen instead it turns out that the future was pretty much what the present was back then which was we're going to make gpus faster and faster and more powerful and more powerful single gpus and what happens mike when uh you make a chip faster and faster and more powerful it gets hotter and hotter it gets hotter and hotter and what Craig Federighi said here is that the problem with that is they became unable to put high-end GPUs in the Mac Pro because they couldn't cool them fast

enough that they had balanced this design on a head of a pin, that they had made this three-design thing, and that limited the amount of thermal capacity that they had. And it's a big admission from them. They didn't talk about this in terms of it being a design failure, but it's a failure of vision and a failure of design, or some combination thereof. I mean, they designed it the way...

They knew what they were doing when they designed it. The problem was they were designing for factors that turned out not to be true and that they couldn't recover from. And I think that's the... I think that is the most telling explanation about why the Mac Pro has been sitting there like a lump for the last few years is... They spent too much

time trying to fix it, I think. Right? Like... Yeah, it could be. They've wasted time in trying to fit stuff into this machine and they could just never get out instead of just declaring it dead yeah they may have tried for a couple of years because they would have which way they've wasted money right and which may have been why the upgrades didn't happen at all and then they finally had a moment where they realized we just got to throw this thing away this is not serving anybody pushed it past the point past the point where it's in use anymore. Or the way they would say it is not that it's not serving anybody,

but it's not serving enough of a group of users. There's still a group of users that it's not serving. And those people aren't being served well enough. The people that it is serving, the people that are buying it and using it and needing it, they're not getting the experience that Apple wants them to have. Yeah. So something should have said as well as we've said we made something bold that we thought would be great for the majority of our mac pro users and what we discovered was that it was great for some and not others enough so that we need to take another path so they're basically saying

look some people are okay with it but we know that we failed yeah we fail people that's it and and at one point um one of the executives it might have been schiller said use the word sorry yeah he says sorry so that we're sorry to to these users that have been frustrated by it yep this is i know that people are going to say well apple didn't really say whatever this is the most you will ever get out of apple this is this Apple. If you want more contrition than this from Apple, you're never going to get it. You're never going to get it because they're never going to be more contrite than this. This is them saying, we blew it. We had a failure of vision. It led to our design going in a bad direction. We failed to support

some of our users and we're sorry. I know that they have too much pride, even in this statement to come out and say it in that way, because it's PR and they want to have it be a positive spin, you know, and a positive spin is yay. New Mac pros are coming and, and Apple recommits to the high end, but, but you know, you can read it unless you are willfully trying to ignore what they say. you can read it very clearly here that they're admitting they blew it. And that's good because, I mean, they blew it, right? The fact that they give detail about why they blew it is fascinating to me because they could have probably just kind of whistled and said, yeah, it wasn't for everyone. We learned our lesson. We're going to do something

different and it'll be better. But instead, you know, they went into some detail, which is, you know, we designed this thing for something that it turned out to be completely wrong for, and that's why it's a goner. From Schiller, the current Mac Pros you said a few times was constrained thermally, and it restricted our ability to upgrade it. And for that, we're sorry to disappoint customers who wanted that. And we've asked the team to go and re-architect and design something great for the future for

those mac pro customers who want more expandability more upgradability in the future it will meet more of those needs so you go like we are sorry to disappoint is what they're saying right there's a lot of these quotes are coming from john gruber's piece which you should go and read like we'll put links in the show notes and that but john goes into detail a lot about like just his experience of being in this environment which is also kind of fascinating but yeah so you know as well like they don't apple do not go into uh any details on what stage you're in the design process they're not talking about that like sheila said look we're just not going to um but they're looking to do something that can be supported for a long time of customers of updates and upgrades throughout the year

will take the time it takes to do that. And that is where the modular concept comes from, I think, which is the idea, it sounds to me, and we'll see it in practice, right? But it sounds to me what Schiller's saying there is, okay, you're right. When we design this new thing, it needs to be something that we can upgrade regularly.

Like we get it that pro users want the cutting edge and we can't deliver it right now and so that's too fancy that's right and so whether that is we're going to release this and then once a year do a processor upgrade or or maybe it certainly opens the possibility that what they're really saying is we will design this thing so that whenever there's a new cpu in the class that we support we will we will rapidly update these things because that ideally what you'd want for and what what the pros want is intel comes up with a new processor that is appropriate for this this machine and within a small time horizon apple is selling that in the mac pro so that's what you want that like in that in that kind of guys

that you could just buy from intel and put it in yourself do you think they could do you think they'd ever make a computer like that no i don't think they would intentionally make something like that i think it's more likely that they would, that the engineering choices they make in making it upgradable by them internally would have the side effect of it being upgradable externally. It's possible. Like if they had, you know, if it makes sense for them to do it that way,

they'll do it. But it's going to be one of those aftermarket things where I feel like more likely it's going to be an aftermarket aftermarket things where i feel like more likely it's going to be an aftermarket thing it would be great if they put the gpus on a card and said hey pro users upgrade it yourself go for it knock yourself out i feel like they might go like middle like kind of middle of the road like you won't be able to pop out everything but you might be able to do more than you can currently do right so it it returns to a world that is more like the cheese grater right where you have the ability to pop and pop out

more stuff you could you could upgrade the graphics card and stuff in those can't you so you know they might go back to that world yeah i mean it's possible it's possible my gut feeling is that they won't like i said my gut feeling is they won't do it as a as as something they hey would be nice if if third parties could sell graphics cards for this that we're then going to have to deal with like configuration and support and drivers and things like that yeah but it may be a side effect they also i guess don't want to just sell one of these to people and then they keep it for 20 years right right they Like John Syracuse. Yeah, they probably want to make something that at least, because it's such a small market

and they're putting all this time in again, that people are going to buy them maybe once every three, four years or something. It is really interesting to me that they're doing this. I mean, I'm happy they're doing it. I'm pleased. But I don't know if they're ever going to see the money back that they're going to invest in this thing if you consider the loss of the the trash can right that

the trash can must be a loss to apple from an r&d perspective now i think it's i think it's a cost of doing business is they want to be in the mac business and the mac business requires they have a high-end pro system and they made a bet on the mac pro trash can, and it's a failure. And it's a rare abject product failure from Apple. Now, you know, it doesn't happen often. People who are agitated about the touch bar may say that that's a failure. We'll see. But it will take Apple trashing it

for it to be an official declaration of failure. Trash the can. But they trash the can, or they're in the process. They updated the can in the trash the can or they're in the process they updated the can in the process of trashing it it's a interesting decision sometimes you gotta go live with what you got so they also spent some time talking about the mac in general right to i think alleviate the concerns federici just like head-on like talks about the fact that people as he refers to on internet forums uh are concerned that apple doesn't care about the mac anymore websites and

podcasts are forums it depends on the internet it depends on your depth like how he's using the word right because forum could just mean an avenue for contributing thought i mean what he's talking about is podcasts and blogs right um about the concern that people have about like and he talks about it right if they release an ipad or they release any new product but they don't touch the mac that it means that they don't care about the mac anymore right and and? And does it mean that if they're not updating the product that I love, that they don't care about my product? And he says, look, I understand how that will come out in the form of concern that this is happening to you.

But they say the Mac, we say it over and over again, is here to stay. It is a huge part of our future. We are deeply invested in it. to stay. It is a huge part of our future. We are deeply invested in it. Three years ago, Federighi and Schiller told me in person on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Mac and I quote, the Mac goes on forever. He's absolutely right to say Apple has been consistent on this point. We care about the Mac. In fact, they

used this opportunity, Federighi did especially, to try to bat down this idea that the existence of the iPad means the Mac isn't important anymore. And they said, people talk about the iPad and it creates a sense of insecurity. What does this mean? But they say it's not a zero-sum game. That they care about the iPad, they care about the Mac, they care about the iPhone. These are all product lines they care about.

And they're not taking steam away from one in order to inject it in the other. Now, you know, in the end, they're one company, but companies can scale. So I think their argument here is that as their product line grows, they're growing and they're able to keep this attention. We can, you know, again, you can say, we can argue about whether Apple is living up to this promise or not, but the argument that Apple's not making promises you can't make, right? Because they've restated it again. It could not

have been more recent, saying, no, it's not a zero-sum game. We do love the iPad, but that doesn't mean we love the Mac any less. And we are going to keep on doing this. It's part of our future, and we want to invest in it. We can all argue the details, but unless you just want to say they're a bunch of liars and they don't mean it, I think you have to at least give them credit for committing to the Mac here. We can talk about the details of whether it's a good commitment and whether they're really capable of committing

at the level that's required. We can debate all of that, but it is interesting to see them feel they needed to make this affirmation, to feel that they needed to put it in the context of the iPad, right? Which is a big part of the conversation on internet forums so it's good to hear right it's good to hear that because they didn't need

that's talk about things in this in this event that they didn't need to say that they went out of their way to say that is that is a big one chiller doubled down we're committed to the mac we've got great talent on the mac both both hardware and software. We've got products planned for the future. And as far as our horizon line can see, the Mac is a core component of the things Apple delivers, including to our pro customers. Now, technically, the horizon line is as far as the person observing it can see. And as far as the horizon line can see,

is that like even further out beyond, I can't see it, but the horizon line tells me that it doesn't see it either, or is this one of those things where it's like infinity plus one? Probably he just means as far as to the horizon. And it looks like we can look forward

to the Inside Apple Pro podcast coming quite soon. As Sheila says, we're really serious about this idea that we want to figure out how to better communicate with pros we understand their jobs rely on this stuff they make important decisions about this stuff they need to hear from us we do have a process we need to go through to make products and not tell competitors what we're doing and on and on but we're trying to have it not all be one way and find the right balance i think this is really interesting that is yeah here's the thing again chiller if you want to come on the show you know

as part of your outreach for professionals he'll notice who i am it's cool we can i have had great interactions with phil but um the the idea here i think is a good one because what he seems to be potentially suggesting, and this goes back to Apple's culture changing, is consumer products need to be surprises. But enterprise products, business products, professional products don't. Bottom line, they don't. They're buying them anyway.

That's right. The curtain reveal that Steve Jobs was so great at is great for consumer products. But I think you could really make an argument that on the professional level, and the Mac Pro is the perfect example of this, is anything gained by doing a big reveal on the Mac Pro? example of this, is anything gained by doing a big reveal on the Mac Pro? And I would say, no. In fact, what is gained is giving a roadmap and being clear about what your update strategy is going to be in the long run. Back in the day, I learned this when I started in this business, Mac Week existed. It was a weekly newspaper, essentially, about what was going on in the Mac. The entire premise of Mac week was that they rooted out what Apple was going to do next when Apple wouldn't say because their audience, which was decision makers who spent a lot of money on computer hardware, wanted to plan their buying

decisions. Now I'll grant you a little bit of that was a lie. People like to know what the rumors are just in general, and people would lie to get copies of Mac Week. But the fundamental premise is true, which is professional markets, people who spend a lot of money, whether they're individuals or they're big corporations, for stuff like this that doesn't have any consumer impact, it's not going to be a big holiday seller, they would rather get information up front that makes them confident investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware, rather than being like, well, I could plan my budget, but instead I'm going to wait for somebody on stage to pull a drape off of a product and reveal it. Now, I think it's interesting the venue that they chose to announce this because most of the people that they talk to, while all of them are excellent tech journalists,

most of the channels they write for speak to a broad consumer audience, which for whom, I mean, I love BuzzFeed. I love Mashable. Well, okay, Mashable's fine. I love BuzzFeed. Sorry. Title suggestion. Mashable and Guinness are together inable's fine. I love BuzzFeed. Sorry. Title suggestion. Mashable and Guinness are together in the fine group.

No, they're fine. And Lance is great. And Lance has been doing this a long time. The people are great. But some of those brands, those are consumer brands. The BuzzFeed audience, the BuzzFeed tech audience does not care about the Mac Pro, right? So I think that's a little weird.

Like Gruber, I think, is the perfect. Like if there was one person for whom everybody who cares about the Mac Pro, right? So I think that's a little weird. Like Gruber, I think is the perfect, like if there was one person for whom everybody who cares about the Mac Pro is going to get the information, it's somebody like John Gruber. So that part's a little bit weird, but the truth behind this statement still goes, which is this isn't a product Apple should play coy about. Apple should be more transparent about this. Apple should get over its obsession with secrecy about something like this. In fact, Apple would be better taking a this. Apple should get over its obsession with secrecy about something like this. In fact, Apple would be better taking a page out of Microsoft's playbook, which has played this game for decades now,

which is when you're communicating with businesses, just tell them what you're going to do. Not only is that good for their planning purposes, but it actually allows you to blunt the competition because you've now pre-announced what you're going to do. And that makes it harder for the competition. You know, if you don't announce anything, there's a window where the competition comes out with something better and then they're better than you and you've got nothing to say. And so they can make hay with that. But if Apple's out on the record is saying, look,

this is what we're doing in six months, it makes it a lot harder for somebody else to come in and say, Hey, what's Apple got for you? I've got this thing today. I think it six months. It makes it a lot harder for somebody else to come in and say, hey, what's Apple got for you? I've got this thing today. I think it's good. I think it's a good move. I think Apple could really move in that direction with products like this. Apple doesn't have a lot of products like this. This is a product that has no appeal to consumers,

literally zero appeal to consumers. If anything, you want to stop consumers from buying. I'm not sure Apple has another single product like this, but it has this one. So why not disclose? Let's talk a bit about the briefing, from what we know, right? Mostly from what Gruber has told us, and a little bit from Panzerino as well. It happened in Apple's product realization lab, which is effectively, I think, kind of internally called where the Macs are made. I haven't decided whether this is a brilliant

bit of theater or whether they literally have no place else to host something like this because they're moving everybody to campus two. They wanted to walk people through this room. Yeah but again maybe it's a little from column A and a little from column B like where are we going to put them and it's like we'll do a

fancy meeting in some place that impresses impress us upon you this hotel clean up a conference room thing right like they chose this place to like really set the scene of like look at all the macs we've made it's similar to when you get the johnny ive interview in the johnny ive studio it's similar to after the antenna gate thing where a bunch of us were taken over to the the anechoic chamber i was trying to think of that word earlier anecho the anechoic chamber. I was trying to think of that word earlier, anechoic. Anechoic, yes. That's like one of the, you know, I think we spoke about this on the show every now and then.

We all find out a new phrase and like use it a bunch, right? Because they told us a new thing, like chamfer. Yes. I prefer my anechoic chambers to be chamfered. There were nine people at the table. Yes. This is from John Gruber. Phil Schiller was there.

Federighi was there. John Ternus, who is the vice president of hardware engineering in charge of the Mac. That's a new name for us. That's also a nice, yes, there is a guy in charge of Mac hardware. This is a new name. Here he is. Bill Evans from PR. Yep.

Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch. Lance Ulanoff of Mashable. Ina Fried of Axios. John Paksowski of BuzzFeed. And John Gruber of Don't Fireball. Yep. Who wasn't Fireball. Yep. Who wasn't there? Everybody else.

But when you look at that list, because you said that you find it weird that BuzzFeed and Mashable were there, so who should have been there? I think they got the right guy there because it's Gruber. Everybody else, and Panzerino, I think, TechCrunch, although technically it's about the business of technology,

at least they are a very arcane site for a very specific group of users, and Panzerino is the best, right? He knows that stuff down. In fact, their coverage of Apple detail is way more than what TechCrunch probably should have. But they've got Matthew Panzarino. They've got Matthew Panzarino. So why not cover it? Because he can cover it.

So let him cover it. And the other people are all great journalists. I'm just not sure that they're... So it's fine. And they reach great audiences. I mean, Ina Fried, Axios is new. But I think that's paying her respect as a tech journalist to have her be there, even though she's moved to a different outlet. And then as for BuzzFeed and Mashable, those are great people.

I'm not sure their audiences are a great match. I was joking before we got started that one of is, like Apple PR now invites YouTubers to events, but they didn't- MKBHD got an exclusive interview after the MacBook Pro. Right. As he should always, forever. Well, yeah. So you could argue that maybe MKBHD

should have been at this event. They wouldn't let him make a video. Well, that's the thing, right? So I can see that. And then podcasters would be the same way. And I'm not saying us, but given how much the ATP covered this subject, would they invite Marco?

And would he come? And would he want to do it? I don't know. That might not be the best fit. John Syracuse, I didn't even mention because he wouldn't want to come. And Casey List would turn them down. Casey doesn't want to talk about it.

So I don't know. I don't know what the right answer is. I'm going to say it frustrates me. The challenge is there isn't... Ars Technica, maybe? There used to be you could list off the litany of publications that care about the high-end computing market. And they kind of are not prominent anymore.

They do exist, but they're kind of not prominent anymore. I would honestly say that these audiences, markets they have turned to podcasts it doesn't make sense to me why they don't invite like the atp crew they just have they just haven't gotten i think i think that's it's going to take them some time to to warm up to that frustrates me but i think the advantage of inviting john grouper is that he has his he has his very broad and and deep technical audience of daring fireball and the talk show yeah and so it's a great two for he it's a great and you were saying great choice like we're saying this before they could have just invited john like this could have just been an exclusive for daring fireball and it would have reached everyone it needed to i um i

agree i mean that's i i think i think it's great that they invited more they may have felt like they they wanted more coverage but i think better's great that they invited more. They may have felt like they wanted more coverage, but I think the only person they needed to invite was Jon Gruber. Because everybody, like, you know, I've read Jon's, I've read Panzerino's as well before, because this broke like an hour before I was recording Connected, and Panzerino gave another insight, which was great. Like, his opinion was really great.

But, like, if all they were doing were trying to reach the pros, then Daring Fireball would reach everyone they needed. I would say, you know, somebody like Jim Dalrymple, because he's got a very broad audience, although the loop is a small site. And I can say that because I'm an even smaller site, right? Six Colors is an even smaller site.

But at least Jim has had great relationships with Apple and is listened to about these things. And like ours is a good example of somebody, a site that still has a lot of technical depth. But it's tough. I'm not saying this is a no-brainer and they miss some people who are obvious. It's just interesting to see who was there and who wasn't.

If I was still at Macworld, I would be super bummed out that I didn't get invited, but I'm not at Macworld anymore and brainer and they miss some people who are obvious. Um, it's just interesting. If I was still at Mac world, I would be super bummed out that I didn't get invited, but I'm not at Mac world anymore. And I don't have that bully pulpit anymore, but you know, there was a day, I guess is what I'm really saying. When you could count on a,

a bunch of kind of enterprise and high end creative sites or, or magazines or newspapers that you could say it. And that, that doesn't really exist anymore because you're right. It has gone to blogs and the web. And the reality is that there are only some bloggers that Apple's comfortable with. But some of these websites are, you know, they're great sites. Again, I feel like this is going to come out as being like Jason's got sour grapes that he wasn't invited. First off, I wasn't available. But more than that, it's like, no, I have a little site. I'm just interested in the mismatch of news that is very important to us

because we've been talking about it all this time. But like the bulk of people even reading the tech section of BuzzFeed just don't care. I mean, it's an esoteric product for the very high end. I'm not sure it's that important. It's great because you've got a great writer who you're comfortable with if you're Apple that you invite

to do it. And so that's what they did. But it is a little weird. It is a little weird of a list. I look at this list and my mind is boggled that there were no Vox Media properties of this. It's a little surprising. No Recode, no Verge. That is very surprising to me. Surely, surely, the Verge has a higher audience.

That's a great example. Than BuzzFeed Tech. CNET is another not a bad example. Or Mashable's Tech. Maybe even for this type of thing, bigger than TechCrunch. People go to TechCrunch for the moves and shakes in Silicon Valley. It's entirely possible. In fact,

given how Apple, I think Apple PR, so much of it is, I don't know if they pride themselves on it, so much of it is personal relationships. My best guess

is that whoever originated this idea, and it was probably Phil, said, said, these are people, well, it's not even like,

these are the people who are gonna get what we have to say right. Because it's going to be a pre-brief, and they're going to write their stories, which means that's a leap of faith for Apple. Because Apple has to say, here's what we're saying, now go away and write it, and we'll see what you come up with. And you could spin spin that as being these are the people that apple considers dependable sources for their pr i think that's unfair but people will spin it that way and already have been but i do think that apple doesn't invite you if they're not comfortable with you and these are writers apple trust trusts to get it right not necessarily to parrot what they say but to get it right in this context. And so bottom line, I think that's why. Because like Ina is a great example. Like the Axios audience is not the same as the Recode audience.

It's building and it may be great someday, but they trust Ina and they should. And so it's great that they invited her. So let's talk about like, they get some statistics today, which I think highlight why it is strange to go to like broader tech websites Apple's Mac sales comprise 20% desktop 80% laptop right so for the

there is 20% of their entire market which may even be interested in these announcements today right and of those 20 a single digit is mac pro customers less than a single digit yeah well you know it's not no digits there's nothing sorry you know what i mean like a low single it's a lot yeah um this is good because this they dropped out the mix of desktop and laptop they used to report desktop units and

laptop units of max and they stopped um and so i desktop units and laptop units of Macs, and they stopped. And so I've been saying for a while now that somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of Macs sold are laptops, because those were what the numbers were regularly. They were going closer to 75%, but we haven't had hard numbers there. And so for them to disclose

that it's 80% laptops. It's more then. It's more laptops than you even thought. Yeah, so it's gone. Since I've been tracking that number, it's gone from two-thirds to three-quarters to four-fifths now. It's full-on 80% laptops. And yeah, what do you think most of those desktop sales are?

They're iMacs. And yeah, what do you think most of those desktop sales are? They're iMacs. So what's left over is tiny numbers for the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. MacBook Pro sales are up 20% year-on-year for Q1. I think that's a false flag. I don't think that it's saying that the Touch Bar is amazing. I think it's just saying people were waiting.

It was pent up demand. Yeah, I agree. And 15% of all Mac customers, says Phil Schiller, use a pro category app multiple times a week. And I think it's 30% use one once a week. And they consider their pro apps or I guess something like Photoshop or something. All of this just goes to indicate this market is small.

Yes. It is small. Yes, and that's important to keep in mind when you think about everything they've done. When your favorite tech podcast, and it might not be this one, but when your favorite tech podcast, well, my favorite tech podcast, ATP, right,

devotes so much time to this topic and has historically for its entire run. But I assume it's they have a very large percentage of their audience that want to hear it. I agree, but this is the point. It may be your favorite tech podcast. It may be your favorite tech podcaster's favorite subject. It may matter to you.

This is always the challenge, right? Just because it matters the world to you, just because it matters the world to your friends and the people you listen to, you can't lose perspective of the fact that for a lot of people, it doesn't matter and it's not important. And so it's just something to keep in mind that it's an important, just because it's small doesn't mean it's not important, but it does mean that for the vast majority of the people who care about Apple products in general,

or even the Mac in particular, it doesn't matter to them. This is a niche product. It's an important niche product. It should exist. I'm glad that it's going to exist, but let's not forget that the number of people who actually need a Mac Pro, even in our audience, I would imagine, is small and will remain so even if there's a snazzy new model in a year. Anything else to say on this? No, I'm, I am bombshell of a day. I am relieved that Apple, this has been my frustration with the two Tim Cook head fakes, right? Is that they really seem like, calm down, it's going to be okay. No, by saying it's going to be okay, he means it's not going to be okay, right? That was like the answer. It's the internet,

it happens, right? So he's like, no, no, no, it's fine. That means not fine. He's just saying it's fine. It's like when Jason said Guinness is fine. It means that he doesn't really love it, and I want him to love it. So I'm glad they finally are like, all right, listen, listen, you people. Here are the details. Good. It's great that they did it. It at the very least changes the debate to something more tangible than Apple doesn't care and I don't think it's going to be around anymore.

And I think it perhaps suggests that Apple is going to open up about this stuff more in the future, which I think it should. Take a break. This week's episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Blue Apron. Blue Apron, they are providing people with beautiful food to cook at home. For less than $10 a meal, Blue Apron delivers seasonal recipes along with fresh, high-quality ingredients to make delicious home-cooked meals. They are the number one recipe delivery service

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sourced sustainably under standards developed in partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch. Their beef, chicken, and pork comes from responsibly raised animals, and their produce is sourced from farms that practice regenerative farming. You can choose from a variety of new recipes every single week or let Blue Apron's culinary team surprise you.

No recipes are repeated within a year. You'll be able to cook food like smoky seared catfish with glazed udon noodles, baby broccoli and fontina paninis with hard-boiled egg and arugula salad, or maybe even parmesan-crusted chicken with creamy fettuccine and roasted broccoli i didn't have lunch today because there was far too many things happening and i'm dying you're killing me this is i understand now why these ad reads make you cry this late in the day because i always read them around dinner this is breakfast time for me back home right so i wouldn't be bothered but now it's brutal all the food jason right now i have

like a list of recipes here and i just choose from a few of them you could make me all of these right now and i would eat all of them i'm feeling the hunger pangs right now blue apron delivers to 99 percent of the continental us there's no weekly commitment you get those deliveries when you want them and their freshness guarantee means that every ingredient arrives ready to cook or they'll make it right check out this week's menu and get three meals free with your first purchase by going to blueapron.com upgrade and that includes free shipping as well. You'll love how good it feels and tastes to create incredible home-cooked meals at Blue Apron. So go to blueapron.com upgrade and we thank them for their support of this show and RelayFM. Blue Apron, a better way to cook. Time for Ask Upgrade.

a better way to cook. Time for Ask Upgrade. Christopher asks, a question probably only Mike can answer, what Apple device color is best for stickers? So I have recently become partial to the gold devices for this. So my regular size iPad Pro, the 9.7,

I keep calling it the 10.5 because I'm like so set on this happening. You're living in the future.7. I keep calling it the 10.5 because I'm so set on this happening. You're living in the future. That is gold and so is my MacBook Adorable. That's gold. And I really like that it's just something different. It's an interesting backdrop color. I'm interested in seeing what rose gold might look like or maybe like

red or, you know, give me a color. Let me see what I can do. I haven't tried it on any... Well, I got the dark gray one. Space gray. color let me see what i can do um i think maybe more i haven't tried it on uh any well i got what i got the dark gray one space gray and that looks pretty good but it's still too close to silver go for the colors interesting i have no opinion about that although i will point out that i have my macbook air with me today and there is a there is a decal on it it has the rainbow one i i try and get the rainbow stickers for all my devices yeah marco asks is there any

twitter client that lets me group who i follow like sports people tech people and professional related people um i feel like lists lists is what marco's looking for here i don't know if you tried that i use lists all the time and that's the answer is twitter has a feature called lists it's built into twitter and they could be private many twitter clients have that built in as well that you can build them and you can add a person. Instead of following them, you add them to a list. You can add them to multiple lists. So I have a sports list that is a curated list of sports journalists and athletes and things like that. It's people I'm interested in who say interesting things. And it's great. Not only is it great to read, but it's also great because Nuzzle has a feature that you can, Nuzzle is the service that looks at your social media feed and provides news headlines. You can also use your lists to feed Nuzzle separately. And that's great because that creates a sports news reading list. And I also have a space and science list that is curated of journalists and scientists and things like that who cover space and science.

And I love it. So I couldn't recommend it more. All reputable Twitter clients support lists as does Twitter itself. Change it so the list becomes your timeline essentially. So it looks like it's just your timeline but it's that specific list of people. That's one of the things I love about,

since I use Twitterific, is that the list interface and list support is really great for it. I've got a little sidebar with all my lists, and I can even make one of my icons, like my timeline and my replies, I have them for my two lists, too. Oh, nice.

And a saved search. So like in the little tabs, like the little tab thing, you can change them to... Yeah, yeah. That's cool. Mine is timeline And a saved search. So like in the little tabs, like the little tab thing, you can change them to... Yeah, yeah. So mine is timeline mentions a saved search for the incomparable so I can see if people are talking to the incomparable instead of me, and then sports and science.

That sounds pretty sweet. It's great. Michael asked, any suggestions for a media player that can access files from Dropbox on iOS? I don't know. I wondered if this is one that the upgradians can help with. I tried to look for something. I found an app called Ecute,

but that's just like to play your local music and stuff. But this is like to take files from Dropbox and play them. And I don't know if it would maybe pull them from the web or it would like pull them and download them. I couldn't find anything. If any upgradians know, let us know. Well, like Goodreader can be linked to Dropbox and you can download things into Goodreader from Dropbox.

And it's a pretty decent media player. Someone in the chat room, I've just tabbed out. I'm on my iPad today. Suggested VLC, maybe? Maybe VLC could do it. I don't know. But yeah, I think there might be some options, I'll put those two in the show notes, so Michael can get those, but yeah, so maybe Goodreader, maybe VLC, maybe there's something else, if there is, we'll provide it and follow up next week when we do that. Doug wanted wanted to know do you buy any magazines or comics in print

curious to know which parts of your media libraries are still analog what about you jason i am almost entirely digital at this point i don't buy comics other than occasionally something that i truly love i will buy basically a keepsake. Especially, even though they make trade paperbacks now, I won't even buy those, but I'll buy the hardcovers sometimes. So like when the entire Hawkeye run from Marvel Comics with Matt Fraction as the writer, when that finished, I bought the hardcover of Hawkeye.

So I will occasionally buy the hardcovers of things, but even that is becoming more rare. It's all digital. And books, it's all digital. If I buy them, I buy the eBooks. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm pretty much done with consuming analog media. Um, I guess, you know, Blu-rays aren't analog, they're digital, but they're physical media. I will occasionally buy a Blu-ray and uh i immediately convert it to digital right i rip i rip it and put it in my plex library so but i will at least occasionally buy those

because they've got better stuff on them or they're or they're uh cheaper i uh you can see my vinyl over there oh yeah so i i have a record player um i got the record player because i started buying vinyl records of my favorite records as like a keepsake yeah so just nice to display then i ended up with so many that i was like i want to have something to play these on so i bought a record player and every now and then i will add to it some of my favorite albums i haven't done this in a while and i should because i have a bunch of albums that i really love and want to add to my collection. I do that, and then I buy the occasional graphic novel or book in hard copy if I really like them, but I'm similar to you. I never start, right? I never go into something cold and it's physical. I start with the digital,

and if I really love it, then I'll buy it physically. Yeah, I feel like that is the secret to the success of physical stuff. Video games is maybe the only thing I still do that with, just because it can take, I mean, not now with my mega internet, but it can take so long to download something. Right, like you ordered that game and you wanted it delivered by drone. Yep, and it will come with it.

Well, I think they know that for keepsakes and things like that, that's a market for it. And that's why you see, even for video games that are available for digital download, there's also the special edition that comes in a booklet and has all the extra stuff.

I have so many of those. But like with the Switch, the Switch carts are so small. I'm still buying some games on the carts as well as buying from the eShop. Cliff asked, Mike, you really got into buying watch bands, Apple watch bands in the beginning.

I was wondering if you're still adding to your collection. I haven't added any in a while. I really like the nylon bands and I'm keen to see the new ones, the new stripy color ones. I haven't got any of them yet. I showed the pictures to Adina and she said she didn't like them.

I'm wearing the blue nylon today yes i'm the first edition of that and i really like those so i want to go and take a look at them if there's any that i really love i'll get them but like i showed them there at dinner she was like i don't like the look of them um she is kind of she helps me with the things that are supposed to look good um smart but i do want to see them because i think they look cool but i haven't bought any yet that's us upgrade this week if you want to send in because I think they look cool. But I haven't bought any yet. That's Ask Upgrade this week. If you want to send in any questions for Ask Upgrade, you can always tweet at us with the hashtag AskUpgrade,

and we'll get that. Now, we're going to take another break here. And when we come back from the break, we've got Mike at the Movies. I watched Alien yesterday. And we're going to talk about Alien. But before we do, Mike at the Movies this week is brought to you by our friends over at Encapsular. Hey, Encapsular. Oh, we love Encapsular. They are the Movies this week is brought to you by our friends over at Encapsular. Hey, Encapsular.

Oh, we love Encapsular. They are the multifunction content delivery network that boosts the performance of your website, protects it from denial of service attacks, and secures it from bad guys whilst ensuring high availability. I want to talk about those bad guys because websites of all sizes can be attacked. This happens every single day.

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That's a lot of attacks, Jason, in a second, 30 billion, but Encapsular's got it handled. This is why Encapsular's network has successfully defended some of the largest website attacks on record. You can see anything as it's happening on the Encapsular dashboard. It can help you adjust your security policies on the fly. And if something bad does happen, Encapsular's powerful CDN ensures that your content is delivered to your customers fast. You don't want people bailing on your website because something bad's happening. And with Encapsular, they wouldn't even know because everything loads so quickly. As a listener of this show, you can get one whole month of service for free. All you need to do is go to encapsular.com slash upgrade. That's I-N-C-A-P-S

U-L-A dot com slash upgrade. This is where you can find out more and claim your free month. Thank you so much to Encapsular for their continued support of this show and RelayFM. So, Alien.

Yes. 1979. I watched it yesterday. 1979. 1979. I watched it yesterday. I was very apprehensive of this one, Jason. Very apprehensive. I don't like scary movies. And I was worried about it.

I was very uncomfortable going into it. I've seen some of it. I think I mentioned before, I've studied some scenes of this movie for a media degree. So I have seen the stomach scene about 50,000 million times. We watched it over and over and over again to study everything that was going on in that scene.

So I knew what I was in for. Everybody knows some of the scenes from Alien, right? It is a landmark movie. So I was a little bit like, I'm sure about it. So, but I've watched it. I watched it yesterday.

Do you want to know how I felt about it? And we talk about some of the parts? Yeah. Yeah. I can see why so many people love this movie. It is incredibly well made. It is an intriguing movie. It is an well made. It is an intriguing movie. It is an interesting world.

It is a movie from 1979 that holds up in every respect today. Right? Other than, you know, the monitors. We'll get to that. The old text. The big TVs with weird text on them. I mean, like, production value perspective that holds up. I mean, I probably watched a restored version, you know.

Sure, but it's still the movie that they made back then. So, this was three years before Ridley Scott made Blade Runner, which is often hailed for its visuals and it's sort of a visionary science fiction movie. We should maybe do Blade Runner

next, because there's a new Blade Runner movie coming, right? I know you're all going, eh, but I've never seen Blade Runner. Alright, we could do that. people are going to really be unhappy with me I don't speak about Blade Runner publicly because I don't really like it so that's my maybe we should talk about it instead of it being on the incomparable where like serious people you know um but Alien I feel like you could argue I'm not going to compare it to Blade Runner I will say there's a reason it looks as good as it does and is as interesting as it is.

And it is not a surprise that three years later that guy made Blade Runner because Alien is itself a pretty tremendous technical achievement. It just, it looks amazing. And in not, I think maybe it has some benefit of being, of following Star Wars. It is aggressively not the kind of sci-fi movie

that you saw in the late 60s and early 70s where everything is clean and white. It is, like Star Wars' universe, taken to an extreme. It is dirty and gross. There is steam flying out of everything. For 95% of the movie, steam is pouring out of a pipe. Yeah, and you get the sense that this is a spaceship that has been worked hard.

It's a blue-collar spaceship. These people are workers. They just want to go home and get paid, and instead they have to go and get diverted to this other place. Their ship is their workplace. It has shown signs of wear and signs of work. It's been out there a long time it's dirty and messy uh and yet still a spaceship which is a great combination like me and i told her you know

i was watching it and i told her that i was like um apprehensive of the movie and she asked me after i watched it like oh how silly were the special effects um that they weren't because it wasn't it's because she was like oh how dumb was the cgi right was her quote was right or like stop motion or you know you know like the stuff that looks stupid in terminator right right it was none of that no the only the only the and i had somebody tell me that it's good that it's this way because it's a release of tension but at the end of the chest burster scene where the alien emerges and runs away it's like it's literally like we tied a puppet to a fishing line and pulled

it across the floor it is so terrible the only other part as well for me is when the alien is shot out of the ship and it's so obviously a man in a suit right like it looks so bad fair enough those are the two parts but most of the time it's terrifying it's the Jaws story, right?

Which is, by not showing it so much, you make it more scary. And you don't give the opportunity for it to be demystified and for you to pick it apart. And they don't show too much of the alien, right? Like, they just show parts.

And it is a legendary piece of creation of character design. It's freaking me out thinking about it right now. The HR Geeker Alien could not be a more iconic monster design. It's disgusting. And yet one of the things I love about it is that, you know, it doesn't linger too much on the monster, which I think makes it better and more scary.

And yes, I think this movie, for a movie from 1979 i think it holds up pretty well technically not perfect but it holds up pretty well i i it's not my it's not my kind of movie it just isn't i don't like feeling anxious or uncomfortable when i watch movies and like i was for the whole time this is the only movie where that i have watched for this show where i was doing other stuff while it was on for parts. I had to be reading Twitter and stuff because I was so uncomfortable. So we talked about this on The Incomparable and one of the things that I think we all agreed about it

is we think of it, or you can think of it as a science fiction movie. It's a horror movie. It's a horror movie. Like literally the characters are picked off one by one until there's only one left and like just like every other horror movie it's a slasher movie right the start of the movie the computers coming on are supposed to scare you yeah no because it happens like dead silence bang computers on it's like oh but i think the brilliance of setting a slasher

movie essentially in a science fiction universe is that is one of the reasons for its its appeal is that it it is not the movie you think you're watching it's also less scary because it's not a human right it's a monster because i you know it's like that alien's not going to come kill me right because it doesn't exist it's but like i can't watch the home invasion type movies right because that that that could at least plausibly even if it's but like i can't watch the home invasion type movies right because that that that could at least plausibly even if it's only slightly possible it does it could happen and an alien xenomorph um stalking you on my spaceship is probably not going to happen not in my lifetime yeah so i struggle to watch a lot of it like in really focused because i knew a lot of the stuff that was going to happen right like you could tell, but when it was more action or drama or suspense,

not suspense, but like not a suspense in a, not a thriller tent, you know, kind of way. I actually, I really liked it. Like,

and I can see why this is considered to be one of the best movies ever made. Like I can see all of it. I just couldn't enjoy it because I was too uncomfortable watching it so that's kind of my overall feelings yeah i i know and i can see so clearly why this is one of the best movies ever committed to film but i just couldn't i think i think the first part isn't great i think it starts out really boringly and a lot of times i use the phrase if this movie was made today and I follow it by pointing out all the ways that modern movie making

would screw it up. I feel like some techniques of modern movie making would help the first 30 minutes of Alien because it is a slow. Yeah, but some of the space stuff is just so slow. But when they're out on that planet, oh my God god I wanted to kill myself

it was so boring it's yeah it's trying to build up the tension but it's not for all the visual strengths here I think Ridley Scott the late 70s early 80s

Ridley Scott of Alien and Blade Runner I have issues with the pacing of his movies and I realize that just means that I'm a I'm a whippersnapper but i i feel like both of these movies have parts that are just super sleepy was ash they're trying i mean a lot

of it they're trying to show that ash is a weirdo right like you're supposed to feel like he's weird because that's set up for later but like you could have done that more economically it just when he's in that seat and they're out on on the ship like out on the alien ship and stuff, it's like, oh my God. Well, they land on this planet and it's a soft landing and it's fine. And in the landing, you get the impression it's supposed to be a pulse pounding, thrilling, dangerous descent, but you kind of don't see it. And all you hear is like these alarms going off all over the ship. And it's really weird. Cause what were the alarms for?

It was apparently a routine. Can you imagine in an airplane as you were landing, like all of the alerts go off because we're going to be landing now going to be landing. There's no problem, but like, we're going to make a load of noise. Yeah.

It's, it's, it's weird. I love, it gets a lot better. It gets a lot better when they bring him back to this, when, right.

When they bring John Hurt back to the spaceship, it gets a lot better. So I like the conce back to the spaceship. It gets a lot better. I like the conceit of they're asleep on this ship and they're in suspended animation. All of that is super smart. I've seen that used in so many other places. I don't know if Alien was the first movie to really use it, but I liked it. I liked all of that. I thought it was cool.

I love the super old school technology that's intended to look futuristic. The ship is just covered in lights like the mother room. Why are there just lights everywhere? It doesn't matter there's loads of lights everywhere like the keyboards are like super clacky like your kind of keyboard like you know i i like it one thing that i found really weird about this movie and i didn't like and i didn't understand why there was so much corporate politics baked into it all so yeah it's it's funny so the reason is maybe i don't know whether you got this or not and i this is why i think a modern science fiction movie would do the setup better is the reason we get

the detail about they're working for the corporation and they're being sent on this job and all that is that there's the revelation when ash turns out to be an android one of the revelations is that they're all considered expendable because all that really matters is they want to get the alien. And, and, and so the corporate politics is all meant to be, I mean, it's,

it's a biting satire because these are blue collar workers who are being sent on a mission that might, that is highly risky and may result in their death because the corporation has decided it's worth it to risk the lives of their employees for profit. That's actually what's happening here. But you don't know it. I think it is. the corporation has decided it's worth it to risk the lives of their employees for profit that's actually what's happening here but you don't know it i think it is it is not told as clearly as it should be one of the problems for me anyway is like the sound is terrible like at any point where people are talking like especially when they're sitting around it's like oh my god they're

having seven conversations and like you can't hear don't watch a robert altman movie okay but you know like when they're sitting around that table it's't hear any of them. Don't watch a Robert Altman movie. Okay. But when they're sitting around that table. It's a 70s thing. It's a naturalistic dialogue kind of thing. I really didn't like it. It is hard to follow. And again, you could argue that a modern SF movie would set up this better,

but it would also be really obvious and less artful. And that's also true. But I do think that there might be a... I think there's probably a really good fan edit that probably has already been made of Alien where you could make the story clearer. I really like the kind of Hitchcock vibe of the way the characters are set up.

You have no idea Ripley's the main character of this movie for such a long time. And you're like, what's the guy's name? It's a Hitchcock-level thing. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. Because, again, when this is probably— Oh, Tom Skerritt is the captain, right?

Yeah. What's his name in the movie? I don't remember now. I haven't got IMDb in front of me. Yeah. But as well, in that media class, I mean, this is probably why we did it. I don't remember. I don't remember enough of it.

But in that media class, we cited Psycho, which is probably why we also watched alien that's why i'm like it's the same idea you the movie you're watching is not the movie you think you're watching like she's just this background character like she has barely anything to say for like the first 15 20 minutes in a movie and then she gets killed john hurt is clearly john hurt but starts as your main character well no i mean tom scared as dallas he's the captain of the ship right john hurts the first person that wakes up sure right so like he's your hero and then also like he's the person who goes out and like he's out on his own investigating and then it's like oh but he gets eaten by the monster basically right so then it becomes dallas is the ship's captain he's the only one that gets to go into the special room to talk to the computer and he

gets taken away by the monster and then it's like oh and then you got ash right like it's but like ash is like this dude he's doing all the investigation he's suspicious but you follow him no it's this woman ripley yeah it's a total badass but you don't know that until the end of the movie yep and i loved that right like i loved that i mean it's slightly spoiled for me because hindsight shows me that i actually know it is sigourney weaver who is the hero yeah i know it's hard right but but it's you can appreciate the art of yeah I could still like really appreciate how the movie is built like when I'm watching the first time like oh maybe like in this movie Sigourney Weaver isn't that much of a star like you know you see that where it's like someone's in a movie and then they go and

make another movie and they become a megastar so they make them more important i think a parks and recreation yeah parks and rec has chris pratt and like and he's like a bumbling character but then they make him more and more important because he's about to become the world's biggest movie star yeah right and so yeah i liked all of that um you know and the intrigue begins like when ash lets the alien in right the face hugger in um i didn't like ash for good reason he was seemed untrustworthy how do you how do you like his uh how do you like his death scene or his almost death scene the the the the robot smashing the head smashing and he's squirting all right milky goo so instead of blood yeah they they screwed this up. This scene is not done well enough. And the reason is because they

clearly add in voiceover work to say he's a robot. Obviously no one could tell what the hell this character is supposed to be. He took it too far. He tried to build his own world in a way that is imperceptible to

what people would expect these things to be. Why the hell is the robot bleeding? It looks like an alien. We are in a world surrounded by aliens that are bleeding weird things. He's already set up in this movie that these aliens drip weird goo, and then you've got this thing

that's having its head smashed off, and it's got white liquid milk pouring out of it. And all of the parts of the inside don't look like anything like robot parts. having its head smashed off and it's got white liquid milk pouring out of it. And like, it doesn't, all of the parts of the inside don't look like anything like robot parts. They're like these weird balls and like tubes which just look like innards of an alien. And obviously, the way that I look at it, they're showing this movie,

I'm sure there's a story about this, but this is the law that I'm telling myself. They're showing this movie to test audiences. They don't understand. No one understands what the hell this thing is because you can hear it. I mean, I can hear it, because I'm quite tuned in to the way audio sounds

in different environments, because of what I do for a living. And what's the character's name, the guy who hits him in the head? He's one of the worker guys. He's the one who's left alive at that point. Like, wears a bandana. Is it Yafit Khodo with Parker?

Parker, yeah. I think it was Parker. And he's the one who smashes the ash on the head is it Yafit Khodo with Parker Parker yeah I think it was Parker and um he um he's the one who smashes the ash on the head with the like

fire extinguisher or whatever it's like a big piece of metal and all this liquid starts pouring out of him and he lands on the ground and he turns away and you hear him say

he's a robot hmm ash is a robot yeah but like he that wasn't in the original movie alright

right because you can't tell like what the hell is this thing it took me so i'm like is he an alien like this is what i'm going through my head until he says it because it doesn't look anything like a robot robots don't bleed and i know what it's meant to be right it's like the liquid that calls an android yeah he has milky milky goo but i don't think that they did a good enough... I think that they took it too far. All right. Fascinating.

And I didn't like that scene, right? I just didn't like it. It was too brutal for me. Like the skin tearing and all that stuff. I really liked his head being on the table, though. That was freaking awesome. Yeah. I really liked that.

That's the only effect that doesn't work, like when he changes. When he changes from one to the other, like, what are you going to do? That's hard to even do today, right? Like, with CGI or with practical effects, like, it's hard to do that sort of thing. Because, like, there's just something about humans, right? You can just tell when it's a human and when it's not.

Like, we just have that ability to just be able to tell, right? Like, you've got the rogue one. There are people, not everyone, but, like, a lot of people, I mean, we can tell when Tarkin's not real. Right. You can just tell. And I i liked all that part right like everything that happens before that as well like the lead up to his death is funny to me i love that mother as a um modern is accurate to modern digital digital assistance and she cannot understand the commands being given to her does not compute unable to compute reminds me of siri right like i don't understand what you're saying let me google that for you the crew being expendable is good right like when they find out the crew is expendable like that's

cool right at that point it's like you you understand all the story and everything that's happening around it like i enjoyed all of this i i really i loved the scene where ash explains his motivation when his head is cut off it's my favourite scene in the movie like when he is like laughing at the end so you have no chance and he thinks it's awesome I love that I loved all of that part like that was so

it was all such great acting and I love the idea that this is like this evil vindictive robot and because I think that one of the female, the one who's super hysterical, she's just saying, you like this, don't you? You love this outcome, that kind of thing.

And he's just kind of like, I just like seeing what's happening. He just likes to see what's going on. And I think that's really interesting. Then, of course like you know it kind of all moves along I don't like the logic of Ripley risking her life to save the cat

I don't think you'd do it I know you have cats I like the cat but it's more that like I know you want to save the save she doesn't do a lot she looks for the cat at the point when she could be like finding the escape pod like when she's on her own after everyone else is killed she has to double she has to double back in one of the things that i really like she says the self-destruct and this movie does what few movies i think do which is you buy the self-destruct and she's going to the exit and then she realizes that she can't.

And so she like, or she deactivates it, but then it's too late. Too late and she starts screaming at the digital assistant. So she tries to deactivate it, fails to deactivate it, which turns out to be fine that she fails. But that's a nice moment. I don't know. I like the cat.

I think that's a great example of the lived in world that this is, that they's a nice moment. I don't know. I like the cat. I think that's a great example of the lived-in world that this is. They have a cat on the ship, and it hisses at the alien. I feel like she should be too scared, in my opinion, of this alien. To even think about the cat.

But again, I know that I'm not the right person to judge this because I don't have animals but like i just don't really get in the rest of the movie that she's super attached to this cat like to the point that she would risk her own life to save it opportunity to save the cat it's the only other creature left alive on the ship other than her and the alien i guess and she doesn't kill the alien right the aliens like i don't really i didn't really get what the alien was does the alien asleep in the pod like why is the alien just laying up in the pod i don't i didn't get that

at the at the end yeah it's uh it's hiding it's stowing away it's hiding it's hiding right so it's trying to get to earth yeah okay that makes sense then i didn't fully understand yeah it's a weird ending it's like it's like what is it doing and yeah that but i did like it's a it's a scary monster that you think is dead that's not dead and it has to jump out at you and say boo because it's a horror movie but it's just super weird that like she sees it it doesn't see her she gets into the uh like into the space suit um i was kind of uncomfortable with her being in her underwear. Yeah, that came up in the Incomparable episode.

Because her underwear is so small. It's voyeuristic, yeah. But I find it, there's something, you're talking about like the lived-in world, her underwear is too small for her. And that was kind of an interesting choice. Yeah, I like that you might end up, space is so bad that you may end up being chased by a monster in your underwear like i like that but the choice of the underwear was kind of like this is this strikes me as being

a a choice that was made in a less in a less audiences yeah but yeah there was just a part of it like where i was just like it was just interesting to make her vulnerable and i mean there's i i get the reasons for it but i just wish it hadn't happened i think today i wish she would have she was just like she would have slightly less revealing underpants or that she was just not in any armored clothing or like she was in like long john you know she's just not in the appropriate clothing to deal with an alien but i wish that she just wasn't in such revealing clothing because it just makes me uncomfortable to see that kind of thing now because my brain knows that it's wrong you know it's like i don't i don't

like this they're yeah that's an obvious uh thing that they're doing but we see a lot watching the movies from the era that we watch these movies from this sort of stuff happens a lot it happens sure we should count ourselves lucky that she doesn't that the alien doesn't come and rip her top off was it star trek was it the second one or the first one right where the um like the captain's daughter's changing and there's that scene of her taking her clothes off and she's in her underwear oh star trek into darkness yeah that's a bad scene yeah i know that i've received a lot of flack but it's exactly the same scene as this right it's like she's just changing for the sake of changing on camera but like having her not having her have to put clothes on adds tension

so she has to get into that suit right she has to get into the space suit so like the build of her having taken off her clothing gets in the spaceuit so she can live when she opens the hatch. All makes sense. But if it was made today, you know it would be made differently. Right, right. And I love the murder scene because it's not scary, it's action.

And I loved that scene. I say murder, where she gets rid of the alien. The way in which the plan that she formulates to get rid of the alien, including the point where she's in the closet like all of that is really good I liked that scene because like it didn't feel scary because you know the alien

is already there like you know it's there it's suspense it's not a surprise but it is one of the effects that doesn't look so good like when the alien is like jumping out of the steam like one of the many steam scenes and then it's difficult to understand what is happening to the alien. Like I ended up just working out on my own

that like she's just sucking the oxygen out. And that is not clear. Like initially it just looks like the alien's just getting shot with steam. But it's like, well, steam's a problem. It would have been dead hours ago because that spaceship is full of steam. Very steamy spaceship.

Very steamy spaceship. So yeah, I have to say, look, look this was not a i didn't dislike this movie because it was a bad movie and i didn't dislike this movie i just couldn't really like this movie because it's not my kind of movie so that's alien i think we should maybe do blade runner okay we can discuss it i mean if you if you think that it's going to be bad then maybe we shouldn't do it. It would be a fascinating compare and contrast for you. We were originally planning on doing Alien and Aliens,

but I don't think I want to watch another one of these. We can do Blade Runner. Let's do it. Okay, so Blade Runner next time. I actually think we're going to do one maybe at the end of this month. So maybe we'll do Blade Runner. So that's Alien, and that's this episode. We're done. We're actually Alien, and that's this episode. We're done.

We're actually going to be together again next week. Oh, yeah, we are. So this was our London leg, and we're going to be in Dublin. If you're listening to this before Wednesday, if you're coming to the meetup, can't wait to see you. That's going to be fun. We're doing a meetup in London tomorrow. Other than that, thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. You'll find our show notes for this week, loads of links this week.

Go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 135. Thanks again to our sponsors, Encapsular, Blue Apron, Away, and MailRoute. We'll be back next time. You want to submit questions for SnellTalk? Hashtag SnellTalk. Questions for AskUpgrade? Hashtag AskUpgrade. You want to find

Jason online? He's at jsnell on Twitter sixcolors.com incomparable.com. I'm at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E, and we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye Jason Snell. Goodbye Jason Snell. Yeah.