Upgrade - 259: Get Ripped with Pro Max

Episode Date: August 19, 2019

Special guest Stephen Hackett joins us to discuss the current state of the Mac in both hardware and software. We also ponder Apple's choices in naming the new iPhones, Jason muses about whether the Apple Watch even needs an upgrade this fall, and we wrap things up with a Mac-themed #askupgrade.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 259 today's show is brought to you by express vpn bombast and fresh books my name is mike hurley i am joined by mr jason snow hi jason snow hi mike hurley how are you very well it is the is the Summer of Fun. Summer of Fun! And Summer of Fun today brings with us a summer guest. Hi, Stephen Hackett. Hi, Summer Stephen. Summer of Fun! There we go. He's been practicing that all day.

He's been very excited about how he would say Summer of Fun. I have a Batman version, too. Okay. Summer of Fun! Yeah. Okay, so this has been a... There's the summer. Show me the fun.

Okay. No one cares about this. Hashtag Snow Talk question comes from rick rick wants to know how many max active or retired now abide in the snow zone uh i had to count it's about 12 four are active and one is mildly inactive and then the rest are archival there's a couple laptops that are just floating around that my family isn't using anymore and then i've got a few old macs i've got a um i've got my wife's actually um it's a 512 upgraded to a plus and i've got a i've got a g4 imac i've got a power mac g4 those are my old ones and a titanium powerbook g4 i've got those are my old old old max that i've got in my house but nothing compares

to the hackett museum in which you are sitting right now i'm sitting in it right now how many computers in here it's roughly 75 with another 15 or so in the attic that is horrific 75 it doesn't look like that there's a lot of laptops that they're stuck there is a high density laptop there's a shelf of laptops it's like four laptops wide and about six high yeah a lot of laptops there'll be a link in the show notes if you want to prove the collection well there oh boy well i put in the google doc steve it's on my hands after that there you go look at that you have a whole there's no link for my collection it's just around me in my garage yeah it's cute one day you'll get there jason i don't think a couple people should aspire to get

there i think it's fine i think there should'll get there, Jason. I don't think a couple people should aspire together. I think it's fine. I think there should just be one person, and that could be you. I need to update this picture. This picture's old. Actually, there's the John Syracuse Museum in his attic, but it doesn't accept visitors. It's a closed collection. I don't accept visitors either, but mine is on a shelf that's lit, so it feels like a museum much more than an attic collection. You say you don't accept visitors and yet there's a visitor there right now. Yeah, well, I'm stuck with this one.

If you'd like to send in a Snell Talk question, just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk and it may be included on a future episode. Thank you to Rick for that great question. We have some follow-ups. So on Ask Upgrade last week, we had a question talking about the odds of Marco and John from ATP buying the Mac Pro and the Pro Display XDR.

As was, I think, our plan. This ended up being discussed on ATP, episode 339, where we gave, I mean, so me and Jason gave our odds and then the guys spoke about them. I think by and large, Casey agrees with both me and you, which is it's a very casey thing to do to agree with everybody because he's so nice like that um but in in a sense marco and casey both agree with me that john will get the pro display john john didn't really seem to answer either way uh about whether he was gonna what he was going to do with that casey agrees that marco is going to buy everything within the time frame that i specified marco says that he's not going to get it i think marco is is brainwashing himself uh and john is not

he has said he will not get it on day one and quote hasn't decided on the monitor i think he wants to get that monitor but um i think the price is is really fighting him because he's such a practical person which is why i came back to that lg display even though it's ugly and awful um but but then again he threw us a curveball where he said maybe he'll just use non-retina displays on a new that's that is like if he just used the display i've got right now that is that's an untenable situation somebody needs to go to his house and take them i was thinking about this i'm not positive he could do that easily i don't know i don't know exactly what display he has but if you go back far enough i mean we

talk about dongle town he would be in like he'd be the engineer on the dongle train to make that work i think i think he could make it work i i just don't the idea of john i'm trying to picture john syracuse sitting in front of a non-retina display, but he could use Sidecar. So if he needs retina, he could just put that on an iPad and use it there and then go back to his non-retina. Come on, John. Who are you kidding? He's going to buy it.

I know he's going to get it. So thank you to the ATP boys for discussing that. Yes, we're going to be starting our new ATP fan podcast segment perhaps at a later date. What would we call it, do you think? The ATP fan show. I don't know what it would be called i don't know atp ff atp fan fiction not fan fiction that's a different thing i don't know i bet some of that exists anyway anyway i don't want to go down that road i think it would just be atp fu right yeah that works i can do that um there is a bullet point that somebody has entered into this document, which says, Stephen, question mark, question mark, question mark.

Well, you and I were talking about the Mac Pro. I didn't know if you wanted to talk about this. Well, I don't know. I've talked about this on Mac Power Gears or some, how I'm really happy with the iMac Pro. Jason and I have the same computer. Mike, it sounds like you may have an iMac Pro in your future at some point. Marco is very happy with his iMac Pro and has said that he doesn't need more than that. But he's going to get more than that.

Yeah. And there is part of me who, it seems like I should have one. Why? It's like the same reason John doesn't. What does John do? John is like managing photos and recording podcasts. Yeah, but John hasn't bought a computer in 10 years. Yeah, and I haven't bought one in like a year and a half.

What are all these like 75 years with you? Yeah, a lot of these are donations in here. I came to a decision over the last couple of days, Jason. So I think I've mentioned, I don't know if I mentioned this show, but I decided I wanted to get an iMac Pro, right? Like I wanted to see what Apple did with the Mac Pro. I can see the Mac Pro isn't for me.

So I want to upgrade my 2015 iMac to an iMac Pro. And I was going to wait to do that to the end of the year. That was like my plan, right? Like what if they update, you know, something in the iMac Pro? Maybe I'll leave it to the end of the year after the Mac Pro comes out and then make my purchasing decision. But I had a thought yesterday, which was Catalina.

Now, I don't like to use the most recent version of mac os if i buy an imac after catalina the imac that i get will have catalina on it yeah there's an argument to be made that the current imac pro is the most powerful mac that will ever be able to run 32-bit applications and it depends on what they do so it may be that they come with catalina out of the box but if there's no hardware revision it could run mojave or i think even high sierra which is what it came with initially but there's two asterisks here one they could have like a silent revision that makes catalina required yep or with the t2 stuff they could enforce it there as well well and they could move mojave or high sierra to some sort of untrusted with the t2 stuff they could enforce it there as well well and they could

move mojave or high sierra to some sort of untrusted state for t2 max at some point in the future i'm not saying they would do that i think that'd be a bad move but if you don't want to run catalina which is understandable it's not the silliest thing in the world to buy an imac pro before then that's what i'm thinking I'm thinking I might just get it now and then still have an incredibly powerful computer running the previous version of macOS, which is what I prefer to do.

What do you think about that? I think it's not a bad point. I don't think that there is much that they will probably do to the iMac Pro to turn it over. I mean, I thought you were going to say you were worried that the existence of the Mac Pro was going to mean that they just get rid of the iMac Pro to turn it over. I mean, I thought you were going to say you were worried that the existence of the Mac Pro was going to mean that they just get rid of the iMac Pro.

Maybe also that. That's another thing. But like what Stephen's saying, which I agree with, like anything that they do to the iMac Pro, I probably don't need. Like it's already so much power anyway. Like how much more do I need? It's due for a GPU.

They can move the gpu needle now on it and they haven't maybe that would happen or maybe it only happened at the high end and they keep the five thousand dollar model like jason i have effectively the same but either way you're running what a 2014 5k i'm at 15 2015 the first 5k that was 2014 well okay well i'm i think i'm running the first five but um it would be a huge upgrade for you either way yeah that's what i'm thinking of doing we'll we'll talk we have a whole segment about the the mac coming up later and one of the things we're going to talk about is where the imac is going and that's the only thing that gives me any pause at all is that this the look of the imac is unchanged for a decade and at some point they're

going to rethink the iMac and the questions I have are are they going to rethink the regular iMac first are they going to bother rethinking the iMac Pro or is it such a niche product that it'll just stay looking like it is now that would be the one thing would be ashamed to buy a new iMac Pro and then in three months they come out with a complete small bezel, totally different kind of thing. It seems unlikely to me that they would do that, but you never know. Jason, do you want to talk about

dead podcast subscriptions? Yeah, well we had this I think an Ask Upgrade question about this. It was like two weeks ago I think. When a podcast ends, do you remove it from your podcast player and i said i generally do not always but i generally do and there was this idea that we mentioned occasionally something will happen that's a surprise like when you look nice today

came back and they just went into the feed and so if you have a podcast you love especially you can delete all the episodes and keep it around and it's not taking up any space. But what if something magical happens and an episode after its death, an episode is released? I thought it was really funny that in the last week that has happened to me twice. The Chernobyl podcast from HBO, which is really excellent. They did an episode about every episode, all five episodes of the series, hbo miniseries um they dropped another random unannounced episode last week we're talking to jared harris the one of the stars of the show um and if you canceled your turnable podcast you didn't get it and then uh this morning lex friedman's personal daily podcast your daily lex returned after 927 days of him not posting an episode to his daily personal podcast he says

he had to update uh two different things of php in order to get it to actually work um he uh but but it was there and i would have uh i would not have known had I not heard about it on the internet but so my lesson is never unsubscribe never do it no because you never know if that download feed is going to have a fuzzy puppy update in it someday maybe maybe never unsubscribe it is real afm membership time we spoke about this last week but we wanted to say it again because our bonus episode, Danger Town Beatdown, the crossover with Cortex, which is a tax adventure,

is now available. So if you become a Relay FM member, membership starts at $5 a month. You get a lot of wonderful perks, including bonus episodes. If you need to be enticed further into why you should become a Relay FM member to get our member specials, there is a

animated trailer now of the trailer that we played in the show last week of Danger Town Beatdown, so you should go and check that out and become a RelayFM member. If anybody out there has, we really, really appreciate it. Well, I know that a lot of you have, so thank you so much for

deciding to sign up and become a relay fm and we really appreciate it and i hope that you enjoy our uh wonderful bonus episodes that we have for you and i can say i think it's the best text of material i've done yet thank you thank you so you can go and check that out and uh thank you so much and also as well we have mentioned this before we're doing our live show in a couple of days in san Francisco. We had to do some team selection for that because we're doing a Family Feud game, which is going to be amazing.

Jason's going to be our wonderful host. We had a team selection, which we did on Twitch, and there is a YouTube video of that as well, if you want to see two things. One, who the teams are going to be, and I guess the other is who's actually going to be on stage with us for that event. So we're looking forward to

seeing a lot of you there in san francisco in just a couple of days there there will be 20 relay fm hosts on stage so i think it's like 20 yeah it's about 20 21 something like that big thing big big thing so you can go and check out exactly who uh is going to be there by watching the youtube video or maybe you want to be surprised and you don't want to look. That's completely up to you. Should we do a couple of upstream pieces of news? Yeah. We spoke about the morning show last week because there was like a teaser trailer.

There's a full trailer today. Real trailer. Jason, do you agree with me that this is not a comedy show now? Do you agree with me? I would say it's probably got some humor in it. There was, in fact, a laugh out loud moment in the trailer. But yeah, now the premise is much clearer to me. And it feels a little more West Wing than I thought it was going to be.

You know what? I thought I remember why a lot of people thought it was comedy. Because Steve Carell couldn't stop cracking jokes when he was introduced on stage right so like he was coming on and being jokey joke guy and i think that that made a lot of people think oh that's what the show's gonna be but it's not we've got serious steve which he's done a bunch of movies like this in the past few years he beats a uh a tv with a crowbar in the trailer yep and screams uh i think this looks really good that's really good. It does look really good. I'm genuinely very excited.

There are people in that show who I know from other movies and TV shows that I didn't know was going to be in this show. So it's shaping up to be, I think, something that looks really, really interesting. I'm getting more and more, as Tim would say, bullish on the programming that's coming out of Apple TV+. That just seems like a genuinely good TV show. So I'm really excited to see what comes out of that. Look forward to see the reviews,

but it's a good trailer. Good trailer. And this is, I feel like the floodgates are now about to open, right? Like we are perilously close to whenever they're going to launch this thing, whether it's in September or October or even November. It is getting close and they're going to have to have a bunch of shows.

And we've really this is the first what I would call a full trailer. There was like a sneak preview trailer for All Mankind, but it was much more kind of quick cut. Here's what the premise is. This feels like the real full disclosure kind of thing. I imagine we'll be seeing a lot more of these uh in the weeks ahead so i think the rollout is is starting and presumably we'll get more data about when and how much at the hopefully at the iphone event next month cbs and viacom they've merged back together again um they they split, they're now merging.

Why is this important, Jason? Mostly because they split apart in the 2000s, first decade of this century, because there was a feeling that they needed to be managed differently. I think there was also maybe a clash of executives, the idea that a traditional broadcast network was going to go its own way, and then the more hip cable content was going to skyrocket. Ironically, the reverse happened, which is that the cable company Viacom kind of lost its way and Paramount Pictures, they kind of lost their way. Whereas CBS was managed really well

and was very successful as a business and kept growing and has launched a bunch of streaming efforts. But they always had the same primary ownership control, which was the Sumner Redstone and now his daughter, Sherry. And in this era of these giant companies doing entertainment and streaming services, and we talk about them on Upstream all the time. This is Disney and NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia, which is owned by AT&T. These are big companies. And the perception was that CBS and Viacom were way too small. So first thing you do is you stick them back together. It's aided by the fact that CBS's longtime CEO, Les Moonves, is out of the picture. And he fought the re-merger really hard with him out of the picture it's easier to get those two companies put together and there's an anticipation I think in Hollywood that they're going to start trying to pick up some other smaller players and kind of merge them together with this feeling that you've got to be bigger in order to compete with the not only the the big entertainment conglomerates that I mentioned but of course obviously Amazon

and Netflix too and also Mindhunter series 2 this is this is the thing that's in upstream i have no idea what this is what's going on here mindhunter series 2 mindhunter is a netflix drama series that is starring jonathan groff hugh mcculaney and anna torf it is great it is about um um, it is, uh, the executive producer is David Fincher who directs a handful of episodes. Um, and it is really great. Season one was excellent. It is people who are creeped out by like killers. It is about FBI agents trying to figure out like the minds of serial killers, but I would

say it's more to use David Fincher movies. It's more like zodiac than it is like seven it's not gross really but it is psychological uh it is about uh really the main characters of these people who are working at the fbi and it's a true story based on a true story about the creation of the concept of a criminal psychological profile and using that to investigate criminal cases and so it's set in the, I think, late 70s, early 80s. And it's got a very period feel. It looks great. It looks very, you know, all this old stuff. The art direction's amazing. Anyway, very good show. Big name creator.

And season two of Mindhunter debuted Friday. And we'll put a link in the show notes to a piece that Tim Goodman wrote in The Hollywood Reporter about this. Because I think it makes an interesting point about Netflix making no effort, essentially, to promote this thing that is a super high-profile creator. Looks great. Spent a lot of money on it. And I think it's an interesting data point in what Netflix chooses to just not do that is traditionally done. They didn't give critics a long advanced look at it for reviews purposes. They didn't really advertise or promote it.

A lot of people, the first they heard about it was hearing Tim and I complain about it not being promoted on the podcast we do. not being promoted on the podcast we do because uh i'm sure netflix's view is that um if they put it on the netflix screen on friday night you'll watch it and that's all they need to do but it is fascinating to think about netflix in this era where they're about to get a lot of serious competition taking this content that they spent a lot of money for and then saying we don't even need to really push it we just need to put it somewhere and and people will find it and i'm not sure i entirely believe that because i've run into a lot of people who are completely unaware i i talked to somebody who was saying the other day who was saying that the first they heard about the second season of a show they liked on netflix being available was when they read a news article that said that Netflix had canceled the show

after two seasons. They didn't even know that that second season had dropped months before. So I thought this was a great example. How much more high profile can a Netflix show be than Mindhunter with David Fincher producing it? And yeah, second seasons are harder to promote. Although on Netflix, it's easier because the whole first season is there. you're promoting the whole show not just the debut people can go back and watch those that first season and then roll right into the second it's great and yet almost nothing you know maybe it's an experiment although if i were dave fincher unless he demanded there'd be no publicity for his show like i'd be mad like why why aren't you plugging my show like i'd never heard of it like i've literally never heard

of this tv show before yeah it's great and i figured that i look around netflix a lot and it's just never come up or it's never grabbed me yeah well i highly recommend it it's really good but uh it is also fascinating that it basically got no promotion from netflix which it's that's a netflix thing sometimes they do big promotions but but a lot of times the shows just get added to Netflix and you got to go find them. All right. Today's episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. When you're preparing to travel abroad this summer,

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It also uses new cutting edge technology called Trusted Server to make sure there are no logs of what you're doing online. It costs less than $7 a month and comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. As I am traveling, I'm using ExpressVPN. I'm connecting to hotel Wi-Fi every day because I have complimentary Wi-Fi with the hotel. But I want to make sure that everything is safe and secure. So I'm connecting express vpn it's nice and easy nice and fast no problems don't travel this summer without downloading express vpn protect your online activity today and find out how you can get three months for free at expressvpn.com upgrade that's e-x-p-r-a-s-s-v-p-n.com upgrade for three months free of one year package go there right now It's one thing off your summer checklist. That is expressvpn.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. All right, so there's been a lot of discussion over the past week about iPhone

naming. So this has kind of just been one of those things. It's been a question that's popped up, and then a bunch of people have kind of like thrown their thoughts into the ring. iPhone 11, just the numbers 11, and Pro, these two kind of terms seem to be decided upon with naming conventions. Typically, the idea is that the XR will become the 11, and then what was previously

the XS and the XS Max will become iPhone 11 Pro models, possibly with the larger being called Pro Max. This is what Jerome Gruber said. I think I saw Marco say just they're both, he believes they'll both be called iPhone 11 Pro.

And then people will just say whether they want the big one or the small one. And I want to see what we think about this. So I think there's a couple of things here that are interesting. The XR becoming the starting point. Jason, what do you think about that? The XR just becoming,

well, the replacement for the XR, iPhone 11. I kind of like it i think it's an interesting decision in that it's the low-end model becomes the sort of standard one but um you know the 10r has always been you know for this year it's a weird product right it's it's the lowest price product but it's not the smallest one and it's missing some features. At the same time, you know, Apple really, I think, wants to position it as like, this is a crowd pleaser of a model. And why not?

If you're going to split, because I don't like the, you know, 10R, 10S kind of thing. I think if you're going to split it, having a base and a pro feels a little more sensible. And obviously, the XR is the base because it's going to be the cheapest of them. And then the pro above it. I don't know. It's interesting. But we've been saying this for a couple of years now that Apple is kind of trying a bunch of different things in terms of figuring out how to name their products in the iPhone area, especially and especially now that they're trying to have multiple iPhone versions, which they didn't have to deal with before. I think, too, it is a an understanding or recognition of understanding that the XR is the default iPhone. I mean, they seem to sell a whole lot of them.

And I think the way it is now, because the XS inherited the mainline name, there's sort of a penalty that comes with buying a XR. It has a different name. It has maybe connotations in certain circles that you bought the cheap one, even though it's more expensive than the iPhone 8 was. So maybe it's just an alignment of the line and the marketing to how these phones actually perform in the marketplace. And the XR being sort of the default phone for most people, it should probably have the quote-unquote default name. And it brings the start price point down. It does. Well, not to get into a new iPhone, but to get an iPhone with the sort of the quote-unquote normal iPhone, then yes, that price would be more in line with previous years. But I don't think it's going to make a difference in the bottom line of the company.

No, I just look at something like this and this is the first iPhone really, or at least the first iPhone release plan since the iPhone decline. release plan since the iPhone decline. So a lot of the stuff that they will be doing this year, you would expect is like the attempt to try and not let that happen again. And something like that, the idea of like, well, the standard phone

now is a little bit cheaper again than what the standard phone has been in the previous year. But it's not going to be because, well, if they keep the $10 pricing, that is more expensive than the iphone 6s 7 oh i just mean cheaper than the 10 and the tennis yes but the 10 and 10s weren't the defaults even though apple wouldn't you think they were like i think we're saying the same thing from opposite sides and i think the whatever the entry-level price people who buy iPhones via entry-level price don't give much

of a care about what the name is but I think what this does do is it does to me what it does is I feel like Apple is giving the XR line being cheaper than the pro model for now oled versus lcd you know one fewer camera they're giving that phone a lease on life that i wasn't sure the 10r would have had before we knew it was such a big success there was part of me that when they introduced the 10r i think a lot of people thought this said well they didn't they're going to relearn the iphone 5c lesson and they did it because the 10r is a really really good phone better than the 10s the 10s max in a lot of ways and it is modern tech it's the same phone internally when the 5c was old where i will be concerned is if they do this and the 11 11 pro have a clear difference in spec i think if it's just the number of cameras and the type of screen that's fine but

they widen the gap any i'll be like i'll be worried maybe the chips are different i hope not so that's that's going to be the interesting thing right what does pro mean what does it mean to have a jump from the 11 to the pro the 11 pro like what specs do you realistically need to have a pro iphone or does it even matter they're just need to call it whatever they want it doesn't matter and apple has used pro as a word to just say it's the better one for a long time i think people get really hung up on pro meaning professional used by professionals and i i feel like apple has this this word has been abused for so long yeah it doesn't mean professional anymore it just means better most right yeah

or better it means it just comes in space gray exactly but what are what do you i mean you know for let's say then for pro as in what it is today so like better and best you know but the best iphone what should be in a in a 11 pro it's like i saw mkbhd saying that pro motion display would be something that he would want to see like he he really thinks that should be in there. And I agree. Like I would love like a higher refresh rate screen on my iPhone. And other manufacturers are pulling that off. The Razer phone and some others have a higher refresh rate.

Yeah, there's a lot, especially gaming focused phones that have like 90 or 120 refresh rate. What is the, is it 120 on the iPad Pro? Is that what ProMotion is? Yeah. So, you know, I'd love to see 90 or 120 on the iPhone. That would look really good. But I don't know if that's going to be the case right now.

I feel like that's something that they could do without it leaking out. Nobody knew ProMotion was going to exist in the iPad. Even if you have the panel, unless it's running, I don't think you could tell easily that it was capable of it well i was thinking about this uh in preparation for this you and i hanging out with the galaxy note 10 the last good because we ended up in a best buy yesterday yep for reasons uh it is a very nice looking phone but that is that phone's reason for being because the galaxy s10 sn plus are in the same size class now as the Note,

and battery life and features are kind of very similar, but it still relies on the pen to be the reason for the Note existing, right? That's it. And S-like different designs and stuff like that. But it's not a drastically different phone. It's not anymore. Do we think that the pencil is going to come to the phone at some point? I still do, but not now. Every year I write a new piece for Tom's Guide

where I say that that's one of the areas where Apple could differentiate and where Apple has. And you look at the Note, which has it, and you think Apple's got all the tech to put it in there. It's just a matter of wanting to do it. I think it's more likely for 2020 because there's the rumor of the Macs getting bigger, right? Yeah.

If that screen gets bigger, it could happen then. I don't think it's now. And we're also in this weird deal now where these phone cycles are really four generations old even though the names are still only two generations of change. You have the X and XS. Yeah, this will be the third iphone 10 generation so is it like the 10ss like that's really kind of what it would be in the old

vocabulary so in a sense the generational names aren't lining up with new features actually coming out anymore yeah i think fundamentally and we know this because of all the leaks and things is at the very least this will be differentiated by camera and display, right? It's going to have a third camera. It's going to, or we could just say better camera, but the rumors are three cameras on the back and better display because it'll have the OLED display. Whether or not it's at a higher refresh rate,

it'll have the better display. And that is, you know, that's enough, you could argue. Better camera the better display and that is you know that's enough you could argue better camera better display is probably enough there are other things they could do to differentiate it if they feel they need to they could make it a better processor they could increase the refresh rate but i feel like or they could change the sensors there could be some other like sensors in there that do other things that we don't even know about but um i think it would probably be enough to differentiate it as it is not not to keep in mind the perhaps most important spec of all which is that it'll be like 300 more expensive that's a good spec it's a big spec spec it's a

big spec uh i don't like iphone 11 pro max as a name oh it's i mean okay let's start here let's start here iphone 10s max we already last year we're like still don't like it it's a bad name it's never grown on me it's a bad name and i and pro max is is just as bad it might max sounds like a weight gain protein powder pro max yeah it's it's a it's a muscle milk competitor that's what that's what i get ripped with pro max yeah it's it's a it's a muscle milk competitor that's what that's what get ripped with pro max yeah that's what it sounds like it sounds like you would see it written on one of those huge tubs it's an extra testosterone yeah i'm gonna get ripped just picking that phone up every day that's true i don't like pro max no it's a bad pro max i think

it's a mouthful i think what we've been saying kind of all along is true here, too, which is at some point, why are you differentiating in name based on screen size? You just differentiate on screen size and leave it at that. And that's the MacBook Pro. There's a 13-inch MacBook Pro and a 15-inch MacBook Pro. It is not the MacBook Pro Max. Thank goodness. Yet, anyway. The Maxbook Pro.

Thank goodness. Yet, anyway. The MacBook Pro. According to some images found in betas by a website called iHelpVR, it seems that September 10 could be the announcement of the iPhone. There is an image that they found called Hold for Release or something like that, and it's an iPhone home screen with September 10th as the calendar icon. There's also no app labels on these icons yes i noticed that too we talk about that that's weird too we don't need to worry i'm a little concerned uh i have

two thoughts about this one is of course it says september 10 it is by far the most obvious date it is uh tuesday in early september it's not the day after labor day which is a holiday it's better if it's not i think ideally it's also not september 11 which is often holiday. It's better if it's not, I think, ideally. It's also not September 11, which is often, you know, kind of an awkward day to have a big event. September 10, it's the most logical date. We've always thought that. So this follows. But I want to mention the other thing, which is how are images that are marked not for release getting through into beta? Because we're going to get to a story about the Apple Watch in a minute. It's the same thing. It's like, how are these images getting in beta releases? How many times does Apple have to get its images swiped out of its product builds or off its web server

before it locks that down? It blows my mind that this is still happening. So what Jason's referencing is the same website, I hope BR, claims to have found some assets that reveal new Apple Watch cases, one in titanium and one in ceramic. So there's like the kind of the image that they show that kind of goes on the back of the watch, you know, like it's got that kind of like back of watch look. I don't really know what to describe, how to describe it, but it shows the ceramic case, titanium case. So this is apparently again, come from a script, some screenshots found within beta seven, I think. So maybe this is what we're going to get this year, right? Like it feels like maybe this was an Apple watch year where we haven't got a lot of rumors. Like I can't put my finger on anything you know like any kind of sensor changes or anything like that we got the new design last year so they're not going to make significant

case design changes from a visual perspective there is no say no real rumors of like always on screen or anything like that so maybe these materials are the new look and new features that they give to make people want to buy a new Apple Watch. Yeah, makes sense. Our friends who like watches, and you're one of our friends who likes watches too. Yep, I am. So, yeah, it seems exciting. These, yeah, these materials are nice materials. We've seen a ceramic Apple Watch before. These would probably be the high-end expensive materials that you'd pay a lot of money for,

but that they're very nice and that the titanium, especially, you know, watch-grade titanium, it's very light. And so, it would be a light watch that maybe would actually even have more clear haptics and stuff in it which is kind of cool so yeah that's something to talk about about the apple watch i guess yeah it doesn't really feel like there's much else i mean it doesn't i don't even really remember what's in WatchOS 6. New watch faces and probably some activity stuff. Yeah, I don't remember either. But like the, you know, I know there's some health stuff. It's the App Store and independent apps is basically what it is. I'm talking to two guys who don't wear Apple Watches.

It might be okay if the Apple Watch just cooled it off a little and advanced as a stable platform like the independent watch apps and app store stuff and um swift ui like it feels like that's what it's about is really like okay we've got it to a decent point in terms of features let's get the apps better and i would applaud that and uh and will there be a new apple watch piece of hardware i think probably although it wouldn't blow me away if they did variations on the existing apple watch hardware like these titanium and ceramic ones and maybe didn't even upgrade the series um they probably will because they can sell more of them but do

they need to unless they've got like i mean i guess it's all incremental right they upgrade the upgrade the series and basically at this point there's no feature with the cellular in there there's no feature crying out for change but they could as always make the processor more efficient and make the battery better and make the balance work a little bit better. But I feel like the watch isn't crying out for that level of improvement like it has every year since it's been announced this year. I'm intrigued because I always liked the way the ceramic watches looked, you know, and I'm interested to see what they do. Because they did a white one, they did like a gray one. And I wonder like what is that, what kind of color are they going to do?

Like ceramic is nice. And I think that's kind of an interesting choice to pick back up again. Yeah, and I wore the stainless steel watch for a long time, stainless steel Apple Watch. And Jason, you mentioned this. The haptics on it weren't ever very strong because it's a lot of mass to move around to get the vibrate vibration to come through and wearing an aluminum watch is a totally different ball game than that and maybe titanium can split the difference a little bit still look premium still be all shiny but the taptic motor actually be able to keep up with it and and be as noticeable as it is on the

aluminum watches so i think it's really interesting. And I agree with you. The watch has been on such a tear and it needed to be right. The first couple were so slow and so limited and the series four feels great. And I'm sure the five will be even faster, but at some point I think they'll move from a every year to, you know, maybe like an iPad release cycle. It's every 18 months or so,

you know, alternating spring and fall where you get a new watch and they can still keep the bands refreshing they're still doing that every season so you can still keep interest there and you could refresh the materials right like that's the thing i keep thinking is there they could totally not saying they will but they could totally just say we've got some new series four watch materials and it's titanium and it's ceramic and who knows maybe there's some different colors on the aluminum and it's still just series four because they've shown with those watch bands like interesting they can keep selling watch bands in different colors and they just keep doing it and i'm not saying they'll do it this year but i agree with you steven they

could lengthen out the cycle and they could even like drop in a mid cycle set of changes and that would serve to lengthen out the cycle. Right. And then maybe in six months or a year, there's a series five. Um, I, I, because I struggle to think what earth shattering feature update has to be in a series five Apple watch. And I, I can't come up with anything. I think the hardware is pretty good. And I've sort of given up on the, you know, eternal battery life and the screen always stays on thing. I think that Apple has just decided

that they're not close to that yet. And short of a breakthrough like that, where the battery is going to last, you know, they add sleep tracking and a battery that you can run for 36 hours or something like that and leave the screen on until they get to that point i feel like i don't know it's so incremental that do you need a new watch every year i don't know i think so but i hadn't thought of the idea of these just

being series four like that that's interesting like i kind of like that thought that this is just a series four watch there's ones. Go crazy. Yeah. We'll see. All right. Today's show is brought to you by Bombas. Every kid can remember what was cool when they were younger. For me, it was Pokemon cards and yo-yos. That was like a big thing.

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for their support of this show and all of relay fm now we have steven hackett with us today yes so we're going to talk about the mac a little bit so jason do you want to do you want to take it away i thought we would just take a little time with Stephen and talk about the Mac and talk about hardware and software. And Mike and I do talk about the Mac, but Stephen, I feel like, is our go-to excited-about-the-Mac, Mac power users co-host friend. And so I thought we would use this segment in the Summer of Fun to talk about the Mac a little bit. And I wanted to start with sort of hardware, where we are now, where we're going with that. And this is hearkening back to our Ask Upgrade at the beginning of this episode.

The desktop Macs starting there, like, let's talk about the iMac. I think that this is an open question. When we did our interview back in the spring, we were really expecting maybe that the iMac would finally have that generational moment, and it didn't. And so here we are speculating about where the iMac goes from here and the iMac Pro, which we talked about earlier. Like, Stephen, what do you think?

Like, where are we in the iMac lifecycle? Is this what the iMac is just going to keep on looking like? Or do you think that there is a new conception of the iMac waiting in the wings? And when would we see that? I mean, the general recipe of the iMac, aluminum foot, LCD screen, computer glued to the back of it, that's really been the recipe now since the iMac G5. It was the first flat one, and that was back in, you know, the early 2000s, 2004, somewhere in there. And here we are, really 15 years into this general design concept. Now, they've changed a lot, right? They ditched the optical drive. They went from, they have a white

plastic iMac G5 over there behind Mike, and then they went to aluminum, and now it's all aluminum with glass and much thinner. But the idea of the iMac feels like it's pretty stable at this point. I think the iMac, okay, it's the all-in-one. The way you make all-in-ones is you put this screen in front of the computer, different than like the Microsoft Surface Studio, which put the computer in the base, like the iMac G4. I think that that's proven out not to be the way to do this. However, the ingredients may always stay the same, but I do think there's room for revision. We talked about thinner bezels a second ago. They're chunky. You know, it's awkward. It's been 12 years basically that the iMac has looked more or less the same. It's gotten a little bit thinner, but the front of it, I'm'm looking i have a 2007 i mac in my office and i can look at it from here and it doesn't look that

different other than silver versus space gray from my i mac pro yeah you know they went to widescreen or and some other things but yeah basically the same and i think it's time for that sort of change again you know when they went from 2007 to whenever it was when they got thinner, you know, maybe it's time for one of those types of things again, where you bring the bezels down, maybe make the chin a little bit smaller again, you know, sort of tighten things up a little bit. But I think the iMac as we know it is how the iMac will be. I think the far more interesting story is what's going on inside the iMac.

And I think you guys did a really good job in that interview and the coverage after that. The iMac, in a sense, is the every man's computer, right? They sell them to families and schools and businesses and individuals, and they've reached a really wide audience. That base iMac with a spinning hard drive all the way up to a 5k monster than of course the iMac Pro but it sure feels like it's time for them to bring even those base configs into the modern world get rid of the spinning hard drives revamp the cooling put a better FaceTime camera in it like when we did that Twitch video the other day like we did on the iMac Pro because it has a 1080p camera but that's the only Mac with a 1080p camera in it all the others are 720 the poor old MacBook was 480 it's time for Apple to do those

sorts of things that they've just really let linger for a long time yeah I agree I do wonder about the the bezel thing like it feels like there's something that they could do on the on the outside that that it's been and I looked 2012 i believe is when the thin yes design that we have right now came in still seven years and uh in terms of like viewing it from the front and not three-dimensionally it's 2007 but um i don't know what they're waiting for and this gets into the conspiracy theory land of like is apple's ultimate goal to make its non-pro products all arm based at some point and would they wait for a really massive uh platform change to bother revving the imac maybe i figured when the imac pro

looked the same as the 27 inch just in space, that this design was going to be locked in for several more years. This is where we're wrapped up. If you're going to have a new fancy iMac design, you debut it on the iMac Pro, and then it trickles down to the 5K and 4K, but that's not how it works. You would think, unless again,

unless there's a plan for like an Arma iMac that looks totally different, but I also agree. Well, maybe they just don't have like they just don't have a drastically different design in the end it's a screen right like I mean there is only so much they can do they could bring in the bezels and get lose the uh the chin if they really wanted to they could do that and maybe it's like one of the things where it's like yeah they could do that but then that introduces issues with the you know like it's like oh well we could make it smaller but if we do that it's like a ton of work and effort into trying to fit everything back in again so is it

worth it i guess that's the question is is it worth it i mean if you look at the desktop line you have the mac mini you have the imac and the imac pro soon to be mac pro as well the imac's got to be the most popular of those but but compared to notebooks, it's nothing. I bet notebook sales are easily three quarters of their sales now. And even there, they move more slowly than we would like. So I think just in the amount of attention and resources Apple has, the iMac, unfortunately, is just going to to get you know less attention than i think the Mac mini is another uh like another indicator they could

have done anything with that and they kept they kept the chassis the same gray well that well and internally they are drastically different sure but they were that the Mac mini under with the iMac pro transformation where my old 5K iMac and my iMac Pro, other than the color, they're the same on the outside. But as soon as you crack one open, it's like, oh, this is a totally different ballgame. Right.

And I guess it's like, when does the iMac benefit from that previous work? They've already done it with the enclosure. You just have to trickle it down. Yeah, that does feel like that's inevitable, right? Is that inevitably there will be a better, an SSD only and better cooled imac that will just use the tech that's in the in the imac pro that right that does seem to be something that will have to happen but for that to happen apple is going to have to grapple with the idea of not making spinning hard drives in imax and that's

one of the ways that they make them cheap is by doing that. And they sell, my impression is they sell a lot of those that if you were to do a chart of what the price point of the iMac is that's most popular, it would be shifted way down from what, you know, we would buy because they sell a lot of them into education but also you know if if they're trumpeting how great they look on desks and hotels like you're not ordering the i7 for the hotel check-in desk right you're not and you're not ordering the terabyte ssd fast check-ins that's right much faster with ssd check-in speedier check-in. And that's the real crime in the iMac line to me is that, okay, if you're going to put hard drives in it, at least do 7200 RPM. But they're 5400 RPM. Those iMacs are painfully slow.

They are. I don't like them. But then I look at the Mac Pro, which is like, looks so different, right? Like they really kind of went for it with that thing. If you look at it next to a cheese grater, it's not all that different. Well, yeah, no, but like even then though, if you compared the two of them together, like it's like, oh, okay, you took a design and you updated that design and made it new, which is kind of what we're talking about with the iMac, right?

Where like they could take that design and make it more new. They could make it look more like the Pro Display XDR, right? Which if they wanted to, which is like a completely different type of design. Squared off, sort of muscular looking. And like much more kind of sleek. Full of eyeball sockets on the back. Ignore the holes on the back

because in theory an iMac wouldn't need those unless they use that in the iMac Pro. That's the way they call the iMac Pro, right? Because they have to call them on their own. But that is a data point of like, well, they did that with a Mac Pro, but I just, I don't know. I would love to see a change to the iMac, but they might just keep making the computer better as opposed to necessarily changing the design. And I think the audience for the iMac, except for us who live on the very high end of the iMac line,

those people Jason was describing, people putting them in hotels and schools and offices, they just don't care the design's the same. In some ways, it's a benefit that it doesn't change because you can, if you have a 2012 and you buy a 2019, you can just drop it in place and all your cables reach and you can just keep going and there is benefit to that and no doubt at this point the enclosure is pretty cheap to build for them right they've got that process down so i think there's part of this like the people who would benefit from a design change kind of don't care about it and at some point apple will get around to it but clearly there's other issues in the mac line that require attention first i agree like the like the laptops like the laptops oh so yeah in writing a piece for mac world last week two weeks ago

i came to this realization that um you know apple is trying we talked about it, whatever, 75, 80%, who knows how much, of the Mac is laptops. And the entire consumer laptop market for Apple, which is presumably really large, is this MacBook Air that's essentially a single configuration. And there it is. And that's, I mean, it has a little bit of variation but it's like here is one product

that is designated to fulfill the needs of every consumer who wants a mac laptop i mean i think the 13-inch macbook pro picks some of that weight up especially in the era before the macbook air was good again but uh but yeah you're right you know but even thinking sort of historically that's kind of mostly been the case i mean the ibook they had two different sizes but there was only one macbook you know the white and black plastic one there was only very little variation in that in that as well so i don't think it's that unusual it's two two MacBook Airs, two MacBook Airs plus, uh,

you know, for a while there was a MacBook. And that, that's, but I think that's the, the outlier. Um, I,

I do think there is room for something else. I mean, not the 12 inch MacBook clearly, but could they take the, the 13 inch MacBook Air and have a 13 and like a 14 and a half or, or there was a room. Remember that weird rumor a couple of years ago, there's gonna be like a 15 inch MacBook Air and that never went anywhere the MacBook and the MacBook Air existed for a while yes they coexisted for quite some time

uh with the first MacBook Air when the MacBook Air got good the MacBook had had kind of was going away yeah but uh where I look at the MacBook Air in terms of what they should do with it if that's the lens we're looking through today clearly there's still room for a cheaper model 1099 is pretty good 999 is better but you can't decontent that 1099 anymore has a tiny ssd you can find it for 999 this is the thing i keep harping at i bought two over the last year for 9.99 yeah you can find them because yeah they're on sale at amazon or best buyer or woot or wherever you can find them for 9.99 pretty often if you look but apple's not going to sell it to you unless you're a student yeah at least at least for now um but you know maybe there is room for a notebook you know

designed really for education because like the mac MacBook Air is still pretty expensive to repair. It's aluminum and a nice screen and a fragile keyboard. Maybe there is room for something other than a beautiful carved piece of aluminum at the really low end. But Apple has never really played in that space in the notebooks. I mean, the cheapest notebook in modern Apple history probably is that $9.99 MacBook Air for a while. And after the MacBooks, they weren't willing to go back to plastic. So I think it would be really interesting. What would a $6.99 education notebook look like from Apple? Well, the answer, of course, is, well, it's an iPad with with a keyboard which is that is always going to be the basement of the mac line is they're not going to

be willing to get mac peanut butter in their ipad chocolate too much in these markets i hate that metaphor but because you don't like peanut butter exactly uh you mentioned keyboards like that's still a big thing i mean we would expect that there'll be a complete turnover of the entire mac laptop line within a year anyway to change the keyboard it sure seems like it yeah it feels like because it feels like once they fix it they've got to fix it everywhere yes because it's causing them headache well it's gonna kill the other models right like to a degree uh i have a 2019 macbook pro it's here on this table in front of me it's the 15 inch eight core it's the current you walk in apple sort of day you can buy this laptop

and the keyboard is bad in the sense that i still don't like the travel and feel but that aside i have not had any sticky keys or any failure and i've had it for several months now so even if they did fix it with this revision which which is still not enough data, we need to know years and years of how they operate. Even if they fixed it this time, I still think they have to really revise this line because people are never going to trust the butterfly keyboard. And there are issues with this notebook past that. There are issues with thermals. There's issues with just limiting it to thunderbolt and a lot of those aren't going to get addressed like if you're out there thinking oh the 16 inch macbook pro is going to bring usba back an sd card slot like don't hold your breath this apple

doesn't go back on these things very often but there are things they can do within their current set of restrictions to make this notebook more palatable the lack of an sd card is not causing them issues from a repairability standpoint right like you know what i mean like they're gonna go back on the keyboard because well they need to they've got to do that but yeah the port change stuff is like that's that yeah i'm afraid that a lot of people have put all their hopes and dreams on a 60 inch macbook pro that whatever your problem with the notebook is, that'll be the problem it'll fix. And it's going to be how this works. No, that happens so often where everybody heaps all of their dreams on something. And then the thing that comes is actually pretty good, but it doesn't check every box and then they're

disappointed. And that I feel like that is the product cycle for a lot of Mac products, especially Apple products in general, is there's the rumors and then there's the dream and then there's the reality. And instead of being excited about the reality, you're disappointed that it isn't the fulfillment of a dream,

which is silly. Of course it isn't, but it happens. I do, if we look out with the MacBook line into the future, yeah, it does seem like the keyboard's going to get changed. I take that 16 inch macbook pro

rumor and i kind of assume that that there will also be like a 14 inch macbook pro next year and that that will be that whole line kind of flipping over into a new line you've got the macbook air which just got replaced uh you know or reset and i feel like they tried to kill it it wouldn't die they brought it back it's here to stay for a while because, I mean, it's not going to die. So you might as well keep updating it. I'd love to see that. I'd love a 14-inch notebook.

I honestly like a lot about the 13. I like a lot about this 15, but a 14, which is a size of the 13, but with those small bezels around it. Yeah, that would be pretty awesome. And that would be a machine that would definitely pique my interest. And it differentiates it from the 13 inch macbook air which is nice yes the one that is speculated about endlessly that's still floating out there

too is that you know what if there's an arm transition and what if it happens with an arm transition laptop that can do probably ridiculous battery life compared to the existing laptops and you know i'm still kind of a believer that that might be the other product that doesn't that doesn't exist right now with the macbook going away that could potentially exist in addition to two macbook pros and the macbook air but what do you think steven do you think that that we're ever gonna see that uh you know our macbook ARM MacBook that everybody has speculated about for like five years now? It feels inevitable that if they move to ARM, they would start with the low end. When they went from PowerPC to Intel, all the Intel machines were so much faster than the G4s and even the G5s.

They moved the whole product line in a year, including like the XServe and the Power Mac to the Mac Pro. Unless Apple has some sort of secret ARM chip that we're just unaware of and that is unlike anything on the market right now, they can't keep up with an iMac Pro, let alone the upcoming Mac Pro with an ARM-based machine. And so I'm torn on this.

Part of me thinks, well, they would split the line and the MacBook Air and the iMac would go ARM and the iMac Pro, the MacBook Pro, and the Mac Pro would stay Intel for a while. But that's not really a sustainable solution. Maybe they'd be willing to do it for a few years, but I think they'd only start down that path if they knew in 24 months we can be all in on ARM. I don't think they want to keep – it's bad for developers. It's bad for the platform, I think, to be split that way because you have Macs that may look a little bit different or vastly different in terms of what they can do. That's really – I just can't wrap my mind around that being something that Apple would do.

See, I think that it's very unlikely that the high end is going to ever leave Intel. I got to be honest. I don't think Apple's chip designers even want to make something that's the equivalent of like a Xeon. So I'm kind of coming around to the belief that Apple is going to differentiate consumer and pro in the Mac, and it's going to be ARM and Intel.

And that if you want a pro system that runs Intel and will run Windows and Boot Camp and will do all of those things, we sell those. But our laptop that we sell to college students and presumably at some point our iMac that's on the desk in a hotel check-in is just going to be ARM. our iMac that's on the desk in a hotel check-in is just going to be ARM. And I think they could get away with it because of what they've done in terms of how developers work. I mean, developers already, they're all in Xcode. On iOS, their simulator builds run on Intel, and then their final builds run on ARM. I feel like it wouldn't necessarily be crushing to their maintenance or as the platform developer or the app developer maintenance. If they can do it right, you're just building. And then we know from what they do with the App Store and iOS, like they can even on the App Store just send you the binary that you need, even though presumably if you're outside of the App Store, you'd need like a universal binary. I feel like they could get away with it. And the reason I've come to this conclusion is I try to

imagine the high-end MacBook Pro user and the Mac Pro user and a processor that's going to be Apple designed that fulfills them. And I just don't think Apple's ever going to try to make that processor. Yeah, I don't know. It's maybe the most interesting question about the mac in the last decade and it's one that feels like it's it will always feel like we're six months away like it always feels anytime now any any wwc this will be the one and they're moving that way and some of their software stuff and we can talk about that that maybe they are looking to bridge the gap between the ipad and the mac a little bit more but there's something about apple that's interesting and different from other companies that they want to control the stack they want as much of the key technology in-house as possible to the extent that they you know bought intel's 5g modem division right

they do huge moves to make that possible and so i think it's in apple's dna to move from intel to arm but yeah i think maybe we just disagree on what that would look like long term yeah part of the fun of this that is part of some of our fun of this oh yeah so let's take the software side of it because it's all kind of intertwined here mac os a big release is coming in the fall with catalina it's going to have catalyst it, which we all thought would be huge. And then Apple said, hey, Catalyst. And also, look over there. It's SwiftUI.

And let's talk about SwiftUI and also Catalyst is here. What do you think about Catalina this fall? It feels to me like it's going to be a pretty disruptive OS release in a bunch of different ways. Maybe the most polarizing Mac OS release in a while. Yeah, probably since Lion. Where I struggle with this is I fundamentally dislike the annual release cycle for Mac OS releases. And the last several years, they've been so quiet. That's like, you know, you sit down in front of anything from El Capitan to Mojave, it'd be hard pressed to notice anything as an average user. But this time you do it and the software you used to use every day,

isn't going to work because it's 32 bit and you've not really paid attention to the warnings you've gotten in Mojave. It feels like a very big release just to be shoved down the throat of the annual cycle. And I wish that they could slow that down. Not because I don't want the Mac to get updates, but because I think that there is benefit to having longer cycles in terms of stability. And when you bring something new, you can really make sure you've had the time to get it right. You know, Catalina is so complex because it brings the end of 32-bit apps, and it brings Catalyst apps, and it brings SwiftUI support. And for some time, Apple has known they were all going to be in one OS, but that may not have been always the plan. But when you have to release annually, things get pushed around and teams work on different things. And all of a to be in one os but that may not have been the always the plan but when you have to release

annually things get pushed around and teams work on different things and all of a sudden you have a mega release that to the user just at home on their iMac with a spinning hard drive it's just a pop-up in the Mac App Store and they do it and then you know they've got serious things to contend with so I am nervous about the release of Catalina from that perspective. And I wish that there was a way to really give users a heads up of the changes that are coming. There are still a lot of 32-bit apps out there. My iMac Pro is full of them. Some of them I use on a pretty regular basis. And I'm going to find the time to find replacements and be able to rework some of the things I do. But there are other people who are going to find the time to find replacements and be able to to rework some of

the things i do but there are other people who are going to be caught by surprise and if if you skip mojave a lot of users go every other release you won't have been living in a world with a year of notices every time you open this app that it's getting ready to die and all of a sudden it doesn't work and that is going to be quite the fun time for apple support i think they put in some notices actually in a late build of uh of high sierra for that reason i i remember writing a news story that actually they they rolled that into high sierra and and it's a good thing right because you'll be getting that but i agree i i am i'm really worried about catalina and it's a beta so i'm not saying I'm worried about bugs that are in Catalina, but I'm worried about the fact that there are all these new security entitlements that are being applied to all apps, not just apps that are in the Mac App Store. It's going to get in people's faces, unless they make big changes between now and release, get in people's faces in a way that the system hasn't before.

They're going to lose all their 32-bit apps if they update. that the system hasn't before. They're going to lose all their 32-bit apps if they update. And then separately from that is the catalyst thing where there's going to be software that's going to be coming in from iOS. There will be good and bad in that. But it feels like enough of a transitional moment that I wonder if we're going to see less migration, less upgrading to this version, and more complaints from people who do make the upgrade, perhaps not understanding how big a step

it is, than we've seen in a while. And that's not, you know, Apple doesn't like that. Apple wants everybody updating as much as they can, as fast as they can. But with this amount of change, it's going to be hard for that to happen, I think. Absolutely. I mean, we've been talking about how to handle this for Mac Power users. And I think our advice is going to be to hold off or to really do your homework before you upgrade.

And one thing that's unclear to me at this point, because I'm running the Catalina Bay just on external SSD still, because I've been traveling a lot and need my machines to work but in the past when you've updated a version of Mac OS and you have incompatible

software you get an error at the end of the installer the OS is already on your computer and it says oh BT dubs this scanner software you've used for 20 years doesn't work anymore and I really hope I just don't know And I really hope, I just don't know, but I really hope that in the Catalina installer, that happens first, that it does a

swoop of your disk. It says, oh, hey, if you hit upgrade, these eight apps are going to quit working. And if it's still at the end, that's a mistake on the part of that team, because people need to have information before they go into this. You're a 32- the part of that team because people need to have information before they go into this you're a 32-bit printer driver that allows you to print to that printer you've had for eight years that's perfectly fine it's not going to work anymore so good luck right like the last thing you want to do is get through that whole process from which you cannot recover easily and discover that these apps don't work and And this one hasn't been updated. And this one has been updated, but it's gonna be weird, you know, weird incompatibilities with the stuff you've

been doing, and you're gonna have to pay for it. And you're gonna have to pay for these other ones. And this one just isn't doesn't exist. And so you can't print or use the scanner or whatever, like, you don't want Mike and I did one of my favorite episodes of upgrade was that upgrade experience episode where we talked about how sometimes it was frustrating to get a new iPhone. And to Apple's credit, and with some new stuff that's in iOS 13, like, they have done such a good job of making that process so much easier in the last few years. But on the Mac, I'm worried that you're going to get this bad experience where you update your software and then

on the other side of it, it's just awful. And, um, I I'm with you. I don't know what form this beta is going to ultimately take, but if I, if, if it doesn't change from what I've seen this summer, I feel like I'm going to have to say, you should probably not update because it's such a radical change that unless you have it used to be like yeah it's got some new features and it's fine so why don't you update and this one's going to really be unless there's something you have to have in Catalina don't update because of all the things that are going to break or change or be different in ways that um you don't need yep it's uh and that's something that we haven't really dealt with in a long time

it feels like yeah no it is you mentioned lion lion broke a lot of apps especially if you had had audio apps that broke all my audio apps or you know changed the way that the save dialogue box that's true that's right redefined what save as meant uh that not not great um what do you think about catalyst i mean separate from the upgrade pain of catalina um one of the things that i found fascinating about the summers i expected to be kind of pelted with ios um ports to the mac and instead most of the apps that i would want from ios the developers have said i want to make a good mac app and so it's not going to be there i'm going to update first i'm going to update my ios app to be good. And so it's not going to be there. I'm going to update first,

I'm going to update my iOS app to be good on iOS 13. That's going to take my summer. And then in the fall, maybe I'll work on the Mac port for early next year or late this year. It's surprising, surprising to me that I just expected it to be a little more dramatic than it's been. What's your experience been? And what do you anticipate for Catalyst? I don't think I've tried a single beta from a developer. And I'm on a bunch of iOS test flights. I'm in this world. I think it's encouraging that developers are saying we'd rather take the time to get it right than rush out something that's garbage. So that hopefully is a signal that we are worried of just on just shovelware coming onto the Mac and it being a bad experience. Which I feel like is going to happen, but I agree. I'm encouraged that the developers that we know and care about their software,

they are going to be careful and they're going to do it right. Yeah. So I think Catalyst is important. I think those out there saying that it is a temporary stopgap to SwiftUI are underestimating the time it will take for SwiftUI to take over that is a years-long transition and that doesn't mean that skipping Catalyst is a good idea so I think that the developers who are doing it taking their time are going to be the ones who are rewarded in the marketplace for having good Mac apps even though they started life on the iPhone or iPad. I am concerned that this potential slow uptake is going to take the wind out of the sails,

though. Right. So like when Catalina launches and there are no decent Catalyst apps, that people are just like, that's junk. And then that's that. Well, from the average user perspective who don't know anything about Catalyst, it'll just be over time, there'll more mac apps that's good i think for those of us who are a little bit more in the know there may be i mean there are people who are already poo-pooing it now

who haven't run anything because they're angry but um i think that the worst thing like that's not great for catalyst but i think the worst thing is of being a bunch of bad apps and it gets a rep for oh catalyst is the way that people write crummy mac apps and hopefully this taking longer will help limit that but time will tell right like who knows this is uncharted territory in a lot of ways there could be a bunch of really bad mac apps like immediately and there already are but you know i would rather have a few good catalyst apps i think that's better for the platform than a comes out and it only runs on Catalina. And then that's going to be that moment where it's like, well, is there an app that you want to run on your

Mac? Well, then you're going to need to upgrade to Catalina. That'll push it. But it may not happen on day one. Although it may, right? Like, Major League Baseball could be there with their baseball app on day one. Netflix could be there, or Amazon or something like that with an app version on day one. Those are a little less, since's a web equivalent it's it's a little less of a of a thing but there will be some but i think over time there will be more apps that are um interesting

and worth considering and will require catalina good times it's a fun fun summer to be summer fun it's gonna be a summer of interesting fun for the mac i think this i'm really intrigued to see what catalina does right like we've been talking about security stuff on and off over the last few weeks which is potentially going to frustrate people along with like this big technology that might it's kind of going to like launch with a bit of a whimper and then a bunch of applications that are going to stop working. Like this is like a minefield. Yeah.

Yeah. So, Stephen, one last thing before we close out the special Summer of Mac portion of the show, which is what do you think macOS is going from here? Do you think the macOS iOS kind of collision that's not totally not them becoming the same os but becoming more alike and sharing software and all that are we just going to keep seeing that is the pace of mac os update going to speed up or is it going to slow down i don't know it no predict you're a pundit you're supposed to predict you're supposed to know the future i don't think apple i don't think apple wants to merge the mac os and ios like the actual operating systems themselves i don't think they're they have much interest in doing that anytime soon i do think we will continue to see the

veneer over both of them continue to be more of more in alignment if not the exact same thing now that leaves a lot of interesting questions like touchscreen max and arm max and all those other things but even if you just looked at swift ui as an early example of you do something one way and one place and it kind of works everywhere i think apple's more interested in that sort of solution as opposed to what maybe what Microsoft has done with Windows, where Windows 10 sort of spans the gamut between, you know, tiny little touch surface go all the way up to a big desktop, you know, with RGB fans in it. And the UI sort of changes and adapts to where you are. I think I was more interested in aligning the underlying technologies and keeping the UI level and the OS level separate, at least for now.

I don't see, you know, 10 years out, who knows, but I think we're safe and sound for a while. We'll see. I keep thinking about touch screens and if they will ever go down that path on the Mac. But, you know, iOS, macOS, maybe they just, you know, continue to be defined by those basic differences. And that will just, you've got to recall, just have to learn to live with it. Today's episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. Our friends at FreshBooks can help you save tons and tons of time. Hundreds of hours with their super simple cloud accounting software. They simplify tasks like invoicing and expense tracking, even getting paid online.

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So it's freshbooks.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to FreshBooks for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right, it is time for some hashtag ask upgrade questions. And a lot of these are, thank you. Oh, that was a lot of lasers. Stereo lasers. The guest lasers get a bit wild.

These are mostly Macintosh focused questions because that was what I asked before on Twitter and the upgradians obliged. And I'll start with Eogan who asks, how do you set up a new Mac? Do you have a script to install all of your programs to set it up just right? Or do you do it manually? What do you do? I use Migration Assistant and I have for a really, really long time. You just plug it in with a Thunderbolt cable or in the old days,

a Firewire cable and a bunch of adapters and I let it do its thing. And it's been super reliable for me for as long as I can remember. Yeah, I use Migration Assistant if I'm setting up a new Mac from an existing Mac. Occasionally, I am setting up a new Mac and I decide I don't want to migrate because it's like a review unit or it's a new computer that I'm going to end up giving to a family member or something like that. And then I just do it the old fashioned way, which is every time I hit something and think, oh, I need, I go and install that. So it's like I need one password so that i can find all my serial numbers so that then i can enter in the serial numbers for the software i

bought and it just kind of snowballs and i do it that way but yeah i i have a couple computers that if you looked in the preferences you would probably find files from more than a decade ago because they've just migrated over the years. Yeah, same. Rick asks, I'm using an i5 Mac mini with 8 gigabytes of RAM as my primary machine since December for development. What size kit should I get from iFixit to upgrade the memory? How hard is the memory to upgrade?

Is there anything that I need to be watching out for? I think I glance at the pricing and i think the 32 gig is kind of the sweet spot price wise if look if you've gotten by with eight for nine months ten months you don't need 64 right like you wouldn't be able to do what you do the upgrade itself isn't too bad you watch the, but this is something that if you're at all uncomfortable with completely taking apart a computer, just take it to the Apple Store and pay the fee. It's not just like right there. No, you take the logic board out. You take the blower off.

There's a lot of really tiny connectors that even I, as someone who has done this for a long time, was nervous about breaking. I know Jason and everyone else who ever opened the old style broke lots of things. Absolutely. Broke the infrared, broke the audio. Yeah, sure. New thing. The new Mac Mini has those fragile connectors too. I would really say, unless you're really comfortable, I would spend probably some of the money and have either an Apple store or an Apple authorized service provider do this.

The $100 or whatever will give you ease of mind. It will protect your AppleCare status. And if they damage something, they're on the hook, not you. G. Messner asks, any love for the Power Mac 7000 series? They were boring outside, but I like how they unfolded internally. They were awesome. I'm going to find something in the show notes so we can see how these opened up. They were beige, baby.

Beige computer. Mid-range. Very beige. Mini tower. Beige. It was like a desktop. Yeah. Right?

It was not even a mini tower. That was in the era where there was pizza box, desktop, and tower. It's set under your screen, under your CRT. What this question is getting to, though, is the design of how it opened. You took the cover off, and then basically the machine folded open like a flower, and you had access to all the components,

so you could upgrade it really easily. Way easier than that Mac Mini in the previous question. If you have one of these, upgrade the RAM yourself. Go crazy. How much RAM can you put in a Power Mac? Stick in a new SCSIuzzy drive do what you want that was in an era where apple really was trying to develop they were not particularly innovative in this pre-jobs era uh in terms of how they looked like i said this was a very beige computer

but they did try to do some things on the inside that were interesting um the there was also a computer that had the whole um cpu on a tray that you could slide out the back i have the uh power mac g3 all-in-one was that way amongst others yeah yeah there was a power mac there was a pizza box i think that had that that had like a tv tuner and a bunch of other stuff and you could slide it out the back of the computer which is very clever and then even the um you know when they it led to the first blue and white Power Mac G3, but even the beige Power Mac G3 had some folding tricks that it could do in order for you to get at the insides without having to sort of unscrew panels and things that you had

to do on PCs during that era. I just had one of those pointed to me while you were talking and I'm looking at it and it's really ugly. Hey. It is really ugly ugly i can hear you it has that super weird like spot of turquoise on it bondi yeah bondi oh and the the uh the beige g3 power mac yeah yeah yeah that was that was like johnny ive's little design flourish is that he's like one little plastic bit it was that we saw the signs it was like a proof of life

for johnny ive there was that there was the the molar the power mac g3 all-in-one that had the translucent plastic right it's next to the other one that is an ugly computer if you don't like teeth i guess and then finally with the blue and white g3 it was the breakthrough of like yes yes we can make clear plastic blue things and stick them on a computer and it went from there next question comes from majd who asks which alt mac would you like to see mike try and use i mean i have a 20th anniversary we could fire up i have used that i think i think you did use that i think anything mac os 8 or earlier right like you get system six or seven it's a real exciting time the older the better i want to see mike use a power book like first generation power book any particular reason you just want it i just think it would be fun because it's going to be running system seven and it's

got a trackball for the pointing device and oh i used to have one of those. My uncle gave it to me. CM Finley asks, I have a closet full of my uncle's old Macs, like an Apple IIgs through to the iMac G5. Where is the best place to go to ensure they end up in a good home? Now, let me step in front of Stephen here just to point out the Apple IIgs, not a Mac. True.

Okay, Macintosh slash Apple computers. Well, actually, CM Finley, I think you'll find. It did have a finder and a mouse. It totally wanted to be a Mac, but it was not a Mac. That's a weird computer. It is. I mean, lots of people email me in these situations, and I may take a few off your hands.

You may recommend an email as sent. Yeah. How would they email you? It's steven at relay.fm. Okay. With a PH, not a V. I'm not a heathen. And, you know, honestly, though, yes, please email me because I may take a few off your hands. But in your community, there will be some sort of technology recycling program.

And if you don't donate them to me or you can't find a place to house them or if it's at the end of its life, you know's just in bad shape any old technology please recycle it don't don't simply put it in the dumpster because they have bad things in them and you want to make sure that that's handled correctly to protect our planet ben asks which mac smells the best macs have a smell right i mean the guys who made that candle think they do but you don't agree they do when you it's interesting you open the box yeah but like they don't stay that way it's that magic factory smell yeah it's the magic factory eventually as steven knows from collecting old macs eventually macs just smell like where they've been yeah which can be bad i do have an answer for the worst smelling mac okay the white ibook g3 the adhesive that held like stickers on underneath the keyboard, smelled like body odor after a while.

They're really bad. So mine's way up there, out of the way. Some of the plastic Macs of a certain era, the plastic would get weird and turn, sometimes turn yellow and smell like body odor. Yeah, it was gross. There's one up there that doesn't look so white anymore. And finally, Brian asks, was gross there's one up there that doesn't look so white anymore and finally brian asks what current apple product would you want to have an imac style line of whimsical design and fun colors

hard mode not the iphone airpods and colors would be fun yeah i don't know it's not really whimsical but fun colors i think of the airpods i mean i don't know like laptops you got to carry around we don't need handles on laptops anymore i guess i guess the mac pro kind of is like i don't think colors but like you know it's a unique design it's very functional design i think honestly that we're just past the era in our computing evolution where this is going to happen beyond like electronic devices like the iphone so i'm gonna say that all of all of y'all who stick stickers on your computers, you're just trying to fill a hole that hasn't been fulfilled in a long time because Apple doesn't make computers that are fun. And so I'm thinking with my daughter going off to college

and she's got her MacBook and it's nice and all, but I want Apple to make a consumer laptop that has colors and, and maybe has the Apple logo light up again, because why, why not? Because it's fun. Like let's get, let's have fun and, and a couple different shades of, of monochrome anodized aluminum. And maybe if you're lucky, the model you want has a gold or something like that. It's like, it's not, it's not good enough. It's not, it's not fun enough. So since the iPhone is the obvious answer here, I'm going to go with hard mode and say consumer laptop. I want those to come in colors, anodizing aluminum and colors. Apple knows how to do it. They've known how to do it since the, the, uh, iPod mini and the iPod nano, like you can do this, you can make this happen this happen um and who wouldn't want to go off to

college or or whatever with their blue or red or whatever laptop with a glowing apple screen it would be great and people would want it and apple would sell more laptops bring back bring back the clamshell is what jason is saying it doesn't need to have a handle i want the apple pencil in different colors the apple pencil will be great in a bunch of different colors oh yeah that's a good one that's mine that's my one all right thank you everybody to who sent in hashtag ask upgrade questions today if you would like to do that for a future episode of the show they could be about the mac but they could be about anything they were mac today because steven was here just send out a tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade and they will go into a sheet and could be pulled out for a future episode.

I think that about does it for this very special episode here, Jason. Yeah, I think so. Next week's episode will be recorded in person in the Snell Zone, I believe. It will indeed. Thank you so much to ExpressVPN, Bombas, and FreshBooks for their support of this show. And Stephen, thank you so much for joining us.

Yes, thank you for having me in my own studio. That's an interesting phrase. Stephen is the host of many shows here on relay fm including mac power users connected liftoff and a genius is that all of them yep just four there we go did it in one look at me uh you can find jason online he is at sixcolors.com. He is at Jason now on Twitter. Stephen is at ISMH. And I am I Mike. I am YKE. And me and Jason, we're back next week. But we're all going to be live on stage in San Francisco on Thursday. If you want to check that episode out, it's going to be going out in the connected feed,

probably on Friday. So that's going to be a real fun time. We've got some exciting stuff planned. So thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, everybody. Goodbye. Bye, y'all.