Upgrade - 326: The M1 Macs: Interview and Review

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

In this special, extra-packed episode we've got an interview with Apple's Tim Millet and Tom Boger about Apple's new M1 Macs, followed by Jason's review of the new Macs after spending nearly a week with all three models. Plus, Myke and Jason review the iPhone 12 Pro Max and iPhone 12 mini!

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 326 today's show is brought to you by doordash pingdom same box and remote works my name is mike hurley and i am joined by Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell. Hello, Mike Hurley. What a week. We have a monumental, historical, groundbreaking episode of Upgrade today. Product reviews, interviews, so much more. We have a ton to get to. It is going to be a fantastic episode ahead, but we must start, as we will every episode of Upgrade of a Snow Talk question sent in by an upgradian.

And this time, we'll choose Molly's who asks Jason, what's your favorite mini? iPad mini? iPhone mini? Mac mini? HomePod mini? What's your favorite mini? Well, what I want to say to be super cool is to say the iPod mini. Remember that? Ah, yes.

Yes. I think that would be mine. Mac mini? Ah, yes, yes. I think that would be mine. But it's the Mac Mini. It's the Mac Mini. It's mine because I've had a Mac Mini in my house as a server since the first Mac Mini. I'm on my fourth now, third or fourth? I mean, and it's been like 15 plus years since, it's been more than that actually.

It's been like almost 20 years since the Mac Mini first came out. So it's, more than that actually it's been like almost 20 years since the mac mini first came out it's uh so it's yeah that that's got to be my answer because i have had a mac mini chugging away doing stuff in my house uh since the very beginning and uh so i think it has to be my my favorite because it's uh it's been the longest longest longest serving. Mine is iPod Mini because my pink iPod Mini that I had was my entry into the Apple ecosystem. It was my first Apple product. I love those colors.

I love the iPod Mini. It was great. We had one. Loved it. So thank you so much to Marlies for that question. That was a good one. You can send in a question to help us open an episode of Upgrade. All you have to do is send out a tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade or just use the command

question mark ask upgrade in the relay fm members discord so we do have a lot to cover this week one thing we're not going to be covering is mac os big sir um love you mac os but we don't have the time for you today plus the other thing is jason i've not used it um okay i have my macbook pro coming this week my m1 macbook pro which has big sir on it it does that's going to be my first use digit big sir i mean i i put big sir on a 16 inch macbook pro review unit i had um but i i made this was like beta 1 and I got to use it for about two weeks before I had to send it back again. And, you know, look, we've spoken about it in a bunch of places.

Big Sur has been shaky for some types of applications. Audio applications is one of them. So I wasn't going to put it on any of my recording machines. But my M1 Mac ships with it. So we'll talk about Big Sur in a little more detail on next week's episode right now one thing we do definitely must have to cover today

is our iphone the remaining iphone reviews that we need to get to yes so you've had uh the iphone mini and the iphone max for Max for nearly two weeks. But of course, there's been so much going on. I don't think you've actually, when we spoke about it, you haven't written a review. I don't know if you're going to write a review. When did I get the, I don't actually. It would have been last.

No, last Monday. Something like that. The day before the Apple event. So yeah, so a little over a week yep i got them right here now obviously i've had my pro max uh since last friday and i have a lot of thoughts on it and uh so i think really to cover these i think we should probably both take one of them because the mini is more of the phone for you the max is more of the phone for me the pro max is not a phone for you right like especially this one

so i want to get your thoughts on the iphone 12 mini uh really the the question to ask is what do you think of the size is this the right size for you or has the ship sailed for you at this point? Well, I love the size of it. I'm really loving the iPhone 12. I think, it's hard to say, I think I'm right on the edge where I see the benefit of both of them. And I'm not sure which way i would lean at this point but you know it i don't use my iphone as much as a lot of people do because i never leave the house although a lot of people don't do that now but i never did and i still don't um the iphone mini The iPhone 12 mini has appeal to me because, first off, I like the 12. I don't feel like the 12 Pro would be for me anyway.

It has additional features, but I prefer the feel of the 12. And the 12 is cheaper. It's a better buy. The mini is cheaper still. And it's delightful, right? It feels like an iPhone 5, kind of, even though it's delightful right like it feels like an iphone 5 kind of even though it's slightly larger than that it actually is so small and that that i could i can put my finger up on the top where the um where the on off button used to be but they had to move to the side because it was

too far up you can actually reach that part now um so i guess what I'm saying is anybody who's had pause about the size of the iPhone and has fought that and has avoided buying iPhones and always tried to find the smaller iPhone and choose that one. This is the phone for you. Like if you've ever questioned the size of the iphone this is the phone for you because it's good it's fast it feels great to hold in your hand and it is much smaller than any iphone apple is ever going to make like this is it if you want it this is it um yeah so i i i would seriously consider buying one it you know from my own use, but I would also seriously consider the regular 12 just because I'm kind of used to that size now. It doesn't feel oppressively big. I'm not putting it in a case, which makes it feel a little bit smaller.

But it's totally usable. And actually, for people who are concerned, because the way the 12 screen works, the 12 mini screen is a shrunken down version of the 12 screen, it's actually scaled down. So everything's a little bit smaller. And if you're somebody who has like issues with your vision, reading small things, that's not great. Although I will say there's a scaling mode in the mini that makes everything bigger. And it's still quite usable in that form. The only limitation I would mention is I think some apps are not prepared for that size of screen.

Some of them work better than others at that smaller screen size. than others at that smaller screen size but um because it's then it's using like the real uh smaller screen uh resolution as opposed to just using the iphone 10 resolution but in general like it's just it's just an iphone 12 except smaller it's it's really nice so i that for now that's sort of my review of it is it's the ip iPhone 12 for people who look at the 12 or the 10 or even the 6, 7, 8 and think it's bigger than I'd like. Like literally if you've ever given some pause or changed your buying patterns because you're concerned about the size, I think this is the phone for you. concerned about the size i think this is the phone for you i feel like maybe if this was always a product it would have been likely where you would have gravitated to naturally i think probably so i mean i was i wasn't thrilled at the size increase in the six um i wasn't thrilled with the size increase in the 10, although it was subtle,

so I got used to it. But I'm not one of those people like you, for example, who says bigger screen. And so many people are like, bigger screen, give me more. I want more. And with my phone, I think I want less. I want to have a phone and I want to be able to look at it and see what's going on in the world but I also don't feel the need on my phone to have an expansive uh I just don't use my phone that way I'm going to use an iPad or a Mac or a TV for that I'm not going to be completely kind of engaged in the content on my on my phone my phone is more utilitarian than that that's just sort of how I treat it it's kind of intriguing to me

that Apple decided to make this phone now. It's like, why now? I don't know. Maybe they always wanted to, and it was just a matter of sort of their timing. They were experimenting with lots of things. They had to do the OLED transition with the iPhone X, and then they wanted to do that other class of phone with the XR the next year. Maybe it just, it really was that it was always

on their list, and now is the time when they finally were able to do it. Yeah, it's just intriguing. I'm going to be, you know, I i i'm you know i have my eye on this there's been outlier phones right so many outlier phones um you know you look something like the 5c to 10r these phones that that are one and dones or they're they're kind of peculiar things like even the se to some degree like whilst they've done another one of them they've both been very different like the original sc to this sc is very different product they're recycled old products is what it is right they're recycled old products and and the 10r became the 11 essentially so that was a that was a a product transition but that product has kind of disappeared now

yeah and and we're left with because we don't have an 11 Max or something that's a little bit bigger. No. But the Mini, you know, the Mini really does, honestly, it feels like the return of the iPhone SE1 or really the return of the iPhone 5, essentially. Like, it's an iPhone 5. I know it's not quite the same size. I have an iPhone 5. I pulled it out. It is smaller than this, but, like, not much. iphone 5 i know it's not quite the same size i have an iphone 5 i pulled it out it is it is

smaller than this but like not much and they look the same because they've got the flat sides it's just it's i think it's remarkable because there were a lot of us who figured apple was never going to go back there right like it's over just get used to it and i I wonder to what extent the iPhone mini exists because Apple did keep hearing from people that there was, you know, this category, a subcategory of, of iPhone users who just, just didn't want a big phone. And at some point they decided, well, we need, I think, you know, I think the source of this is that as, as iPhone sales stalled, Apple realized the way that you continue to grow the iPhone is by offering more models with more variations so that you can focus on some new sort of sweet spots and spread out the different slots that you're using. And obviously, that's for new phones, right? You can try and find the edges and cater to the edges

a little bit more maybe yeah also the se has done so well for them i mean but the the thing about the se you know because tim you know in the earning schools they always talk very highly about the se about how you know like i think maybe the original one at least i remember them saying like it vastly outperformed their expectation but the question on that which i i think is it's it's hard to answer i don't think we can answer it is like what is the appetite for the se is it i want a small iphone or i want a cheap iphone because the mini is not a cheap iphone right like the mini is the start of the line but it's the cheapest of the modern iphones yeah so it is it is still a little bit both but it's also not like dirt cheap or anything like that yeah cheap it'll be interesting

to see they have i think apple has underestimated the se um and i think maybe an apple learned the lesson of the success of big android phones a little too well like they learned it and they integrated it and they had great success with larger phones and maybe they just kept driving on the larger phone for a while because it's like as long as this is working for us let's keep doing it yeah and maybe now have realized that although that drive because here's the thing it's not like that drive was wrong people do love big phones not not everybody and those people out there who don't love them are going to roll their eyes at this but it's like you can't argue with the sales people love big phones the moment apple made a bigger iphone iphone sales shot up like dramatically like people and and we saw it with samsung and

other android phone makers big phones there are a lot of people who just want a big phone. And so they made the right decision to go in that direction, but you've got to wonder if maybe at some point after that started to cool a little bit, they realized that there is also a section of the market that doesn't like the big phone. And so making something that is a little more in tune with them gives them another piece of the market that maybe they were ignoring. And when you're trying to get every last sale out of the iPhone, which remember up until a couple of years ago, Apple wasn't even trying very hard with the iPhone. It did so well that Apple didn't really need even, they didn't try very hard in the stores. They weren't marketing the iPhone because it sold itself in huge quantities and then their sales fell off a cliff and they're like oh um we need to work on sales of the iPhone and then maybe in

that era they're like what are we missing here and they looked at the at the size and said that's a place where we can we can attack that corner of the market that seems dissatisfied with what we're doing. There's one question I did have because and I actually had quite a few people write in to ask this. How does it feel to type on for you? It's more cramped to type on, for sure. Although I never really have felt super comfortable with typing on the iPhone X either. I mean, it's still not great.

It's still not a huge expanse to type on and there's, you've got to wrestle with autocorrect. In fact, I can maybe make the argument that it's small enough that you, that it might be more conducive to leaning into the autocorrect because you're just not going to be precise on such a small keyboard. But, you know, in the end, all I can say is in my use, which is going to, it's going to differ for everybody. I thought it was fine to type on. Like I was, I, I, I had my frustrations, but I have my frustrations typing on an iPhone period. So I don't think it was any more frustrating than it would be.

And of course, for those who haven't, you know, used a, a big iPhone and, uh, you know, the iPhone five, um, they, there was no swipe typing on the iPhone 5. It might actually be a better experience now, right? Because you can also, you don't have to tap. You could also swipe if you want to get words out that way. So there's other options now. But it was, you know, for me, not a big difference in that it was sort of equally frustrating to typing on a regular iPhone, but everybody's mileage might vary. It is a smaller keyboard for sure. Okay. Can I talk about the Pro Max now?

Yeah. I have one thing to say about it before I hand it over to you, which is I got this thing last Monday. And the first thing I did, I picked it up. I looked at it. I held it in my hand. And then I went to Slack to a direct message to Mike Hurley. And I said, you are going to love this. And the reason I said that is not only is it, I've got the gold model. It's pretty. It's shiny. But I picked it up.

And the way it feels, it feels solid. It is heavy. It is huge, but it is like a, it's like a gold bar, Mike. It's just like, it is some, there's something really pleasing about the density of this thing and the uniformity of the density of this thing. It's so big that I feel like I can can just like my hand doesn't just hold it but it kind of like wraps around itself and you know the fingers are against the back like it's so large that i feel like i can hold it in two hands and and i don't know i don't know how to put it it is i and and that's why i i sent you that message is because i feel like you're gonna make a big phone just embrace it like make a big phone, just embrace it.

Make a big phone. Don't go halfway and be like, well, it's larger, but we don't want to push it too far. It's like, push it. Make it a big slab of a phone with extra cameras, extra zoom. Do all of those things if you're going to do it. And in my mind, that's what the Pro Max is. More than any large iPhone ever, Apple has just embraced. It's huge.

Like you wanted a huge phone and there is none more huge. So the phrase that has kept popping into my head. So I do have the gold Pro Max. This is the ultimate iPhone. I'm not saying that my iPhone is better than yours, but like this iPhone, it is everything an iPhone has ever had and more of it. It feels like the most iPhone there has ever been.

So ever since the original iPhone, I have always been the kind of person to plan and save money to make sure I buy the new phone every year. Like so many of our listeners, right? Because I want the new phone. I always want the new phone. If I was living a completely different life where I was not a technology podcaster as a living, I would still get the new iPhone every year because it's what I did before, right? This is just one of the ways that I chose to spend money in my life to either buy it or be on some kind of phone contract that would make sure that I get it.

You know, like I would probably be on the iPhone upgrade program. That's probably what I would have chosen to do. So for me, this phone, if it had nothing but the new design, I would be completely happy. The new design is, in my opinion, the very best thing about this phone. And, you know, I think that might be the same for the whole line. It's kind of strange because I feel like for the last few weeks, I have overlooked it, the new design, because it was an inevitability. We all knew it was going to be the case that it was going to have these flat sides.

And I kind of just didn't really think about it. I heard a bunch of people say, you know, like you've said it. I heard every review that I've listened to said it's like it changes the way that it feels to hold. Some people like it, some people don't. But for me, I absolutely adore it. So I think this is definitely enhanced by the fact that I have the flashiest one, which is the gold one. am i feel like i am visually more aware of it like if i look at my phone face on i still see a hint of gold around the edge and i i feel like maybe on some of the other phones especially the darker ones you maybe wouldn't see that so much but i can always see a glimpse of the gold oh yeah it's it's it's there like i'm looking at this one and it's that same

thing which is when you're looking at it from the front there is no mistaking no even when it's it's it's there like i'm looking at this one and it's that same thing which is when you're looking at it from the front there is no mistaking no even when it's just in your hand and you're looking at the screen there's no mistaking that it's gold and i think that it makes it not only feel great but it feels luxurious like honestly i know this phone is so expensive but it feels like it's more it should be more expensive than it is. This feels like a luxury product. This is the kind of look that you have seen companies mod phones and sell them for $10,000 for the last few years, right?

You'll see it on YouTube, right? Some YouTuber will get sent a 24-carat plated gold iPhone, and it's like, there's 10 of them. That's what this phone looks like. It's 10 of them, and you know, that's what this phone looks like. It is your call as to whether you want that. I do, right? And I think that this phone is stunning. But irrespective of the look, this is the best feeling iPhone. I absolutely love how this phone feels in my hand. It feels so much more usable than from a sense of being able to grip it. I feel like I can hold it much easier than before. And even though this phone, I know it's physically bigger, it feels just as usable to me. I don't

feel like I'm struggling with this phone and i picked up my 11 pro max yesterday and it felt small already which is hilarious but i genuinely like you see i'm not kidding i picked it up and i thought that i picked up a dino's old 11 it like took me a minute i was like oh no that's mine um the camera bump is absolutely ginormous on this. Like it is astronomically large. You cannot conceive of it until you've seen it. I look at it in images and it didn't register to me that it was bigger, but it is so much bigger. It's bigger and deeper too, right?

Like it's not just that the square is big and the square is big, but also the lenses are protruding more from the square. This is what I mean by if you're going to do a giant phone, embrace it, just embrace it. But this to me, though, is like it's kind of proven that the camera differences, they're here to stay again because you couldn't put this on another phone. It's too big.

So I expect they will find ways to trickle the technology down once they can get it smaller. But I think all it's going to mean now for the foreseeable future is that the Max phone will have some kind of differences to the regular size phone in the camera now, because they've ripped the Band-aid off and it's massive and so they've given themselves the space and the excuse to do new things with that so i expect that to to continue so the camera itself this is a difficult one for me to test because the way that

i would usually test out how good a camera is, is to go out into the world and take lots of pictures, mostly of architecture. That's how I like to test the camera. This is not really something that I'm doing. Um, I've been taking some photos inside of boring things and I can see differences in sharpness, detail, and color with indoor photos. I can see it. It's there. The sharpness especially, you know, like I take a picture of my office and I can zoom in and more clearly see text, for example, on certain images. And that's great. But there are, I think, more tangible benefits than those.

So the two biggest benefits that I've felt with the camera system on the Pro Max, one is the telephoto. It's a noticeable difference, the 2.5 over the 2. And I like to have more zoom. I hope to see Apple to do something more aggressive with this in the future, but I'm happy to have an increased zoom. But honestly, my favorite thing is the fact that and this is on both pro phones i believe it might be on all of them i don't remember maybe you can correct me uh night mode on the front facing camera night mode on the front facing i think it's on all of them i think that was part of the a14 like all the phones got this yeah the the it's the it's the night mode portrait that's different

and you've got to have the lidar scanner for that yeah and then so it's only the pros but night mode is on all the cameras now and night mode just a one second night mode exposure on a selfie is night and day different like unbelievably. Like I will take pictures on my old phone and select the texture of my skin is just this blurred mush. Right. But with a one second night mode exposure, there's so much more detail in selfies. And so that I was like, I've been testing that out a bunch. It's like, that is a big difference. And that kind of thing is something that you won't see a lot of like, hi, I'm doing my camera review for you kind of thing

because it's not really exciting. But those are the types of differences, like that one, the front-facing camera, that's going to make a bigger difference on people because people take lots of selfies. And better selfies indoors is a good thing all the time. And so that I saw that as like a real cool thing and a big difference. But look, the biggest the biggest change in the camera system is the HDR video.

It is fantastic. It looks so good. And it's a combination of what the camera can do and what the screens can show. But video on these phones just looks so gorgeous because the screen is lit up so well. And I think it's absolutely fantastic. So the camera is an interesting one. And I'm kind of keen to see how it goes. I mean, everything else, you know, I don't have a 5G plan. I have no desire to upgrade to 5G.

A14 and LiDAR, I'm sure will be helpful when I need them. MagSafe is not a thing that I'm using because I like to use popsockets and there isn't an option there. So I just have my popsocket on and I can kind of get it to work, but like, I'm not interested. I'm excited to try out the Apple Pro Raw when I was 14.3 ships and just see like, what can

I make this camera system do? But overall for me, like it is the physical attributes of this phone that make it what I want. It is bigger. I get a little bit more detail, a little bit more information on the screen, but not a lot. But it is the overall design and the way it feels in my hand and the way it looks when I look at it. This is without a doubt my favorite iPhone design of all time. Like hands down, it is, in my opinion, the best iPhone that they have made. And I am talking personally specifically about

this gold pro max i think the pro max is great overall but this gold one is amazing so what you're saying is i was right yep yep your your instinct was bang on and i was i was worried because when you said that my expectations got set really high and so i was i was worried because when you said that my expectations got set really high and so i was i was concerned right that it's like oh no am i gonna as jason like kind of put that in my brain now but no i you were completely right i friggin love this phone it's fantastic yeah it is like, it's not for me, but, um, what it is, is so, you know, it's, I, I've been doing this in the 20 max or 20, 20 series. I've been revisiting a lot of the kind of classic max from the early days of Steve jobs and Johnny I've, and there is this thing that they say, which is, uh, uh, products should be true to itself and the elements of it should be true to itself. So in the G4 iMac with a floating screen, that was the example they used. It's like you want the elements to be true to themselves and the product needs to live its best life, basically.

It needs to be what it should be, what it needs to be. it's what it should be what it needs to be and looking at this phone the 12 pro max makes me think that as successful as apple was with its large phones with with the plus and then and then max models that apple was always a little embarrassed about having a big phone. Like they were always like, well, it's a compromise, but we'll do it because people want it. And I'm not saying that those phones were bad. They weren't, but I felt like Apple, you know, Apple wants everything to be smaller and thinner and lighter.

And they're like, okay, bigger phone, like almost apologetic. Or like, how do we mitigate the fact that this is such a big phone and when i started using this pro max the 12 pro max i thought they have any remaining um embarrassment or or limitation has been dropped like they have fully embraced that it's an enormous phone. And I know that that sounds, it's almost intangible. It's like,

well, what, what makes you say that? And it's like, I don't know. You gotta, you kinda gotta feel it and look at it. Like they leaned all the way into making a gigantic full featured heavy slab of technology,

like as much as they could possibly. And, and so I, I see where you're coming from, which is if you like a large phone, this is Apple giving you everything you like about it to their fullest extent. So it's not for everybody. It doesn't have to be for everybody. But if you like that kind of phone, and I know you do, they really did a great job with this one. It is unabashedly an enormous slab of technology, and that's what it should be. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by SaneBox. When we think about time wasters at work, the biggest one has got to be email. In fact, a recent study found that almost 50% of the time that managers spend tending to their inboxes is spent on emails that probably should have never been sent to them or

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That's why I subscribe to them. But if they're in my inbox, it can be crowding things up. So I might be more likely to remove them. But if I put them all in this, if they're all automatically filtered into the Sane News folder, I can go and dip into that when I have some time to spare. I love it. See how SaneBox can magically remove distractions from your inbox for free two week trial. Go to Sane.com slash upgradefm today to start your free trial and get a $25 credit. That's S-A-N-E-B-O-X.com slash upgradefm. Our thanks to Sanebox for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right, so now we would like to welcome back to Upgrade, Tim Millay, Vice President of Platform Architecture, and Tom Boga, Apple's senior director

of Mac and iPad product marketing to upgrade. To help you tell their voices apart, the first question is going to be answered by Tim. We had the pleasure of being able to sit down with Tim and Tom a few days ago to have a great conversation about the new M1 Macs. Here it is. Gentlemen, welcome back to upgrade again. We, welcome back to Upgrade again. We're so happy to have you back. It is great to be back. So yeah, we got to speak not too long ago about the A14, but now we have the first Apple Silicon for the Mac,

which is the M1. The performance gains that we saw in the event a few days ago, they feel like a real generational shift, like a huge leap. And I kind of wanted to know from your perspective what it's been like to see the M1 chip come together and how it felt when you first started to see the results that you were looking for. Well, I mean, as you can imagine, such a great feeling for me,

but for my team and for the broader silicon development team at Apple, this was a huge, huge step forward for us. And we've obviously been seeing the results in the lab a lot longer. And so, you know, our excitement has been building for yesterday for a long time. And I think we couldn't be happier with how it's executed. Now, that said, I think really what I have to give credit to is the full broader engineering teams at Apple because we don't build chips to sell chips.

We build systems and we always do it in an integrated, collaborative way across hardware, software, the industrial design teams, the product design teams. And so really, it's a celebration from every perspective because, you know, in the end, if it comes out and works, it's because every corner of Apple has participated in it. Yeah. And if I could add some color to that, Tim sees this stuff a lot earlier than we do. But as we got prototype systems in our hands and we started working with them on the product marketing side. When you first turn one of these systems on and start using it, you are just blown away. And you realize that, oh, my gosh, this is going to be an amazing experience, you know, from the how snappy and how performant the system is and how fast apps launch. And just everything about it is is incredible and then as you're using the system you start realizing my gosh my my battery is not

going down i mean the battery life on these systems are insane and so we've been using these systems for a while now and on a daily, we're blown away by what they can do. And you start to get very excited about, I can't wait to introduce this to the world, and I can't wait for our customers to get these in their hands because they're going to love it. You know what happens at the end of the book, and everybody else has to wait. Exactly. they're going to love it. You know what happens at the end of the book and everybody else has to wait. Exactly. It's a very good analogy, but we have to bite our tongue and wait for our moment and tell the world all about it. And then it's really interesting because you keep things under wraps and you keep things a secret. And then in an instant, the whole world knows what you've known and you just feel the

excitement and you get, you know, the text messages and you see the posting on Twitter and everything. And it's just incredibly exciting for us. And, you know, it was such a big moment on Tuesday for what we announced. And it was a huge day for the Mac and a huge day for Apple. So now on the Mac, we are all going to have to change the way we think of describing Macs and what's in a Mac. And I'm thinking in particular of how we're so used to seeing specs when we're looking at Macs about, you know, it's got the i3 or the i5 or the i7, or it's got a particular gigahertz clock speed that's attached to it and all of that. And one of the things that I think is notable about the announcement is we got the M1. And that's the story is it's the M1 with a slight variation

on the low end MacBook Air having seven GPU cores instead of eight. Otherwise, this is the M1. MacBook Air having seven GPU cores instead of eight. Otherwise, this is the M1. So I wanted to ask you directly, is there truly just one M1? And if we see speed differences across these systems, is that mostly due to the thermal envelope, just as we saw some speed differences between the iPad Air and the iPhone with the A14? Yes, there is one M1, that chip. As you mentioned, there is a variant to it on the MacBook Air where the 999 config of MacBook Air starts with a 7-core GPU and the 1249 configuration has an 8-core GPU for even more performance. But it's the same chip from the Air to the Mini to the Pro.

And you will see differences in performance based on the thermal characteristics of the system. Now, in the MacBook Air, as we talked about in the keynote, it is incredible the performance that the Air now has with the M1 chip. It's the largest generational leap in performance the Air has ever gotten. largest generational leap in performance the Air has ever gotten. Three and a half times faster CPU, five times faster GPU, nine times faster ML performance. It is crazy how much the performance of the Air has gotten with M1. And it literally means that you can do things you would never think of doing with a MacBook Air. One of the stories I tell is, I think your listeners all know that we have a pro workflow team. And one of the guys on our pro workflow team, he's a professional photographer. And he got one of the MacBook Airs with M1 in it. And he said, you know

what, I'm going to just try to move my entire pro workflow onto this, my photography workflow, to move my entire pro workflow onto this my photography workflow and uh you know using things like light room etc and he was blown away he could take his whole workload put it on an air and he's one of those photographers that goes out and shoots you know on location all the time and so now he's going to bring an air with him wherever he goes. And he is he is incredibly excited about it, you know, but when you get to the the other part of the product lines, like Mac mini and the 13 inch MacBook Pro, they have an active cooling system. So what you're going to see is for those demanding workloads that are more sustained workloads, workloads that you know, operate over time, that active cooling system is going to allow that M1 to just maintain that great performance indefinitely. And so, you know, customers will see the difference there. But it is

profound how much performance the M1 is bringing to these systems. But and I'm sure we're about to talk about it. But what's even more profound is the incredible power efficiency that these systems have because of M1. At the same time, they're getting a gigantic increase in performance. Right. One of the things that we've been talking about and speculating about Apple Silicon since WWDC and before that when we called it our max is this idea of what will Apple choose? Will Apple choose more performance and to blow us away with the performance in the first Apple Silicon Macs? Because we knew you could do that if you wanted to. And then there was this tantalizing idea that the chips that you use in the iPhone and the iPad

are so well optimized for power consumption because those are battery devices and you want to have good battery life. And so there were a lot of conversations that were, where will Apple choose to land in terms of performance and battery life? And in looking at what you've rolled out here, it's kind of funny, it feels like the answer was both. Yeah. It's interesting to hear this question because the idea of optimizing performance without considering power is sort of, you know, it almost doesn't make sense to us because we have been so focused over so many generations of iOS products where you don't get to deliver more performance unless you've managed the power. We think about them together. You kind of heard that in some of the keynotes from WWDC and in the keynote on Tuesday, where efficiency equals performance. That's the way we think about it. If you're not introducing performance in an efficient way in an Apple product, you're not going to get to recognize the performance. Because in an iPhone, my team doesn't get to go talk to the industrial design team to say,

hey, could you make it a little bit thicker and maybe add a fan? Because we really want to boost the performance of the machine. So instead, what we do is we focus obsessively on moving the performance up and locking in on that power target. And for M1, the beautiful thing about an active cooling system is not that we built a bigger power-burning chip. It's that we always build some margin into the chips to make sure that we can get the burst performance on something like an iPad Pro, for example. And that burst performance is huge because you can do a really interesting scroll or a very complex game transition.

And if you're doing it in a brief period of time, you can sustain that. You can absorb that power. But what's beautiful about the active cooling system, that extra boost, that margin on top of it for the CPU and GPU, we can sustain it now. We can actually, for pro-like workloads, you can run at that performance level for a lot longer. And so that's super exciting. Would it be fair to say that the discipline that you had to exercise in building chips for a phone is sort of what has led to this philosophy that, I mean, you were in a limited space with limited battery. You needed to be as efficient as possible in that context. Absolutely. Like I said, we didn't have an option. And so our focus on delivering increased performance for user experience, because that's what it's all about at Apple. It's not about selling chips. It's about participating in the delivery of this amazing product and the amazing experience. Well, our part,

we deliver the performance that software needs to deliver the experience that our HI team wants to deliver. And so for us, the only way, it's really in the end. It's those constraints. It's the thermal constraints and the power constraints That led to the invention the methodologies that have led us to this point because it wasn't that we didn't want to increase performance Every generation it's just that we had to do it with you know with that one hand tied behind our back and so okay That's fine. We're gonna get really good at designing these chips within those constraints. And frankly, I think great designs come from those kinds of constraints. And I think that's really, really what led us to the culmination where we were able to deliver our first SoC into the Mac. And as we said in the keynote, M1 was specifically designed for our most popular and affordable systems where power efficiency

is incredibly important, right? And so M1 going into the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac Mini, those were conceived from the beginning. And so to Tim's point, they're perfectly matched in terms of providing this tremendous increase in performance while at the same time giving our customers ridiculously good battery life. While we're talking about performance and efficiency, you have four cores of each of those things in this. This is a new thing for Mac users to experience. We've had multi-core computers for a long time, but what we haven't had is the balance that's been in existence on the iOS side for a while now of cores that are focused on performance and cores that are

focused on efficiency. Just as the system has to arbitrate what goes on what core, and that's been true for a long time, these systems have to arbitrate sort of what goes where in terms of performance and efficiency. How does that work? And is there a way for individual apps or individual user preferences or anything to influence what gets prioritized? Or is it more that the system handles it and it's a black box? Yes and yes. Okay. The efficiency cores have been a part of the story for iOS, like you said, for many years.

And part of my group in the architecture team is to build part of that power controller. You hear about the power management controller that works very tightly with the operating system scheduler to try to figure out what to place where and how to make decisions about that. It is a new domain for the Mac, and it's going to be an interesting experience to see developers get their heads around what it means. We think for multi-threaded workloads, it's going to look like an extension of the high performance that we're getting from our performance cores, just like it does, for example, on our iPad Pros. I think in other cases, we have more control over background tasks that the operating system can schedule, and we can constrain them and say, hey, we can make choices about where we place these things, because we think this would be a more appropriate thread to run on an E-Core if we're in control of it.

Ultimately, though, I think we do try to figure out how to just treat those cores as just part of the scheduling targets. It's giving us that additional performance and efficiency in the background when it's necessary. And we find that we try to drive as much as possible down into the E-cores. I mean, that's sort of the philosophy. If you can run something on the E-core, why not? Because it's going to end up, on average, giving you a better efficient story. And frankly, these are not to be trifled with. These E-Cores are, I think there was a comment, if you turned off the P-Cores and just ran the E-Cores,

you'd still have an amazing experience. Yeah, but what we said in the keynote was, on their own, the four efficiency cores is providing the performance equivalent to the previous generation dual-core, previous generation dual-core Mac with Air. That was easily my favorite stat. Like, I felt like I was having to bring myself back to Composure again, because it was like, wait a second.

Is that what they said? That was the thing, I think, that really... Like, 2X, 3X, 5X, they sound great, right? But that was really something where it was a great statistic for contextualizing just the sheer power of these chips. I thought that was super cool. So we asked for some questions from our audience, and we got lots of questions about the new unified memory architecture.

So I wanted to dig into that a little bit. We're all used to RAM and more recently video RAM and that becoming a thing that people think about in the products that they may or may not purchase. Does the new system that the M1, does it change how we should think about RAM, RAM amounts and what they're capable of? Yeah, I love this question. As you can imagine, we've been, for the iOS computers, we've been living in this unified memory world from the beginning. And the challenge and opportunity of a unified memory system is we need to make sure that the graphics system, the GPU, has the bandwidth it needs to really demonstrate its strength. In a lot of ways, the bandwidth from the main memory system is the fuel that allows the GPU to do its work. And we build them in balance. We make sure that the great eight-core GPU inside

M1 is balanced with the bandwidth it needs to be great. Those go hand in hand. We also appreciate CPUs. We need to make sure the memory system has the capacity to make a reasonable platform. And I think the 16 gigabyte capacity that we get out of M1 is a really great solution for the broad set of the MacBook Airs, the MacBook Pro 13, and the Mac Mini that we released. But what unified memory does and the opportunity really is that if you were a developer who was ever frustrated by the fact that the memory system the CPU had access to was relatively low bandwidth and was limiting your multi-threaded performance, well, a unified memory system gives you the bandwidth of a GPU, but it's available to the CPU. And if you were ever a GPU developer and you were always frustrated by the capacity that you ever

got out of a video RAM, because they tended to be high bandwidth but relatively low capacity compared to the main memory system. Well, all of a sudden, you got the capacity of the main memory system at the bandwidth that the GPU needs. That by itself is super interesting because now developers don't have to choose. But the third dividend is,

from a performance perspective, if you're a developer that's using both engines and you have a mixed workload, then you're trying to move frame buffers back and forth between CPU and GPU, you're kind of constrained both in performance and copying the data back and forth and in the extra energy it takes to copy the data back and forth. So it's a double whammy in a constrained platform. So unified memory is in a lot of ways a developer's dream this is super interesting it's also it's complicated because it is challenging something that i feel like i've known about for as long as i've known

about computers right which is like what memory is and how we think about it but it does seem i mean like with the way that you explain it it it seems incredibly interesting. And I guess, you know, like something that you mentioned iOS devices, you know, like iOS devices have long outperformed like Android devices that claim huge amounts of RAM in them. I imagine it's a similar idea, right? Which is, I think it was Craig in the presentation who mentioned the line about like the software and hardware working together and how that's apple's greatest strength and it seems like that the m1 is really allowing that

better than ever for the mac and i guess this is one of those things right that comes out of that absolutely i think the metal the the software team that does the metal of api frameworks and the and the drivers for the gpu this is again we've been working in concert with that team really from the beginning in the iOS chips. And the transition into M1 has really just been a long dream come true for both our teams. And we think developers are going to love it. Yeah, one of the very important points that was made in the keynote is, and Craig made this point, is this is the first time where we've been able to optimize macOS for our own silicon, right? And we also talked about the fact that as we've been designing M1, we've been analyzing and running workloads

from macOS so it can inform the design. And so this unified memory architecture is a perfect example of the synergy of that. So Craig mentioned the fact that, first of all, we use similar data types in Big Sur to make sure that we're not doing expensive copying and translation of the data. And also we can make more memory available to apps for graphics so that they can run at incredible speeds. So this ability, the strategic advantage we have of designing and building our own hardware

and integrating it with our software really, really shines now that we have brought our own silicon architecture to the Mac. Follow up for that, listener Zach asked, Craig Federighi mentioned that some apps will perform better on the M1, even though they're Intel apps running under Rosetta 2, which is the translation engine, better than they do natively on Intel machines. Now, you've mentioned the Metal team. I think that that's what's going on here. But could you talk a little bit about how it's possible that you're going to have scenarios where software not written for this platform, at least the chip architecture, is actually going to outperform

on it. Absolutely. So one of the great stories of the Mac and Apple software in general is that we develop these rich set of frameworks for application developers to leverage. So if you're thinking about a typical application, especially something that's using Metal, well, Metal is actually, if they're calling it to the Metal framework, that is native code. Though their application might be an Intel native code base, when they make that framework call, it calls into the operating system and it's taken over by the native Metal code. Now, if it's a Metal app, it's probably using the GPU. It doesn't take much time spent on a 5x faster GPU for you to accelerate an application that's depending on GPU performance.

So there's another explanation for why. Though on the surface, it might seem surprising. You can kind of get your head around, ah, I see how this is happening. And the third, just to be clear, Rosetta 2 is really something special. This is a tool that we developed starting in my group, just at the same time we started thinking about this transition, just to make sure. And we developed really, really something special from a translation perspective. It shares the name with Rosetta 1. It's a complete rewrite from scratch, focused on this transition, and we're

just, we couldn't be happier with how well it's performing. So it's quite good, even for code that isn't running through the frameworks. When it comes to apps on M1, along with Big Sur, one of the things that I'm really excited about is iOS apps running on the Mac. I kind of wanted to get a little bit of discussion about that. Like how are these apps running? What kind of experience can people see? I just wanted to kind of get your feelings on that a little bit because I know it's something that I and many of our listeners are really excited to try out. Yeah, this is one of the great features that every Mac with M1 will get. And that's the ability to run unmodified iPhone and iPad apps, right? So this is the great benefit

of having this scalable architecture that we bring over from our iOS devices to the Mac. And so customers will be able to simply go to the Mac App Store and search for their favorite app. And if the developer has agreed to let it be available on the Mac App Store, they just download it and it runs and away they go. And so it is going to open up, you know, hundreds of thousands of apps

to our Mac users on day one. And it means that a Mac with M1 is going to be able to run, you know, a wider variety of software than any Mac ever. I think the translation of some of these apps into the Mac, you know, if you needed the gyro, obviously there's going to be certain applications that were, you know, we didn't add a bunch of stuff to the Mac, as far as I know, to make it, you know, something you could pick up and turn. They've really done a nice job in doing the translation of the Touch UI. And I think a lot of the great work we've done on iPad in the last few years has really helped make that even better. Got a couple of questions

from listeners who are concerned about changes to the platform going into the new Apple Silicon era. Listener Ben wanted to know about if there is any support or plan for it for virtualizing Windows on Apple Silicon Macs. And Leighton wanted to know about support for eGPUs, external GPUs, because that doesn't seem to be supported in this first round, at least. Things that Mac users are maybe used to from previous generations. What's the status of these? Virtualization technology is built in M1. And we've been working closely with Parallels so that they could bring the ability to Mac users to run other environments like Linux and Docker. And so that's one of the foundational features of M1 is virtualization. In terms of Windows, nothing's been announced at this point. And in terms of eGPUs, eGPU the incredible GPU that we have in M1.

You know, 5X faster on Air, 5X faster on the 13-inch Pro, and 6X faster on Mac Mini. And so we think our customers who are using those products are going to see phenomenal graphics performance on those systems. We're all using video conferencing more and more and more. So one of the things that everybody cares about maybe more now than they ever have is their webcam. It doesn't appear that there was any change to the webcam itself, but there was talk in the presentation about some additional work that's been done. What kind of improvements

do the laptops see? And is there kind of any reason for the time being why there's been no change to the actual camera hardware? So the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air do have 720p cameras. However, the ISP in the M1 chip does a phenomenal job increasing the quality of the video experience from those cameras. Our users are going to see a noticeable difference. It brings auto white balance and greater dynamic range and face detection and other things that you're going to see. The camera's quality on these systems really look

great. And on the MacBook Air, we want, you know, a little, you even made some changes to the display itself to allow more light to get to the sensor in the camera. So we think our customers are going to be really delighted with the camera quality in these new systems. Yeah, I think that Tom strikes that point. I think the ability for us to leverage all the work we're doing on the camera software for the ISP and our iOS products is now finally coming to the Mac in full force. this is just going to create the foundation on which we're going to make it even better. But I think the M1 systems are already going to see a huge uplift from that. So this is obviously step one was said in the event, step one of Apple has a

two-year process. This is the first set of products, the first processor. There's a lot of runway here. What are you most excited about when you think about what Apple Silicon and the M1 and the future path this is setting us on is going to bring to the Mac? What makes you excited when you're thinking about the world we're just entering right now, which is the Apple Silicon Mac world? What excites you about that? So from the beginning, and we've talked about this relentlessly over the number of years at Apple, we're all about the user experience, right? And that's, what's most important to us. And with the advent of Apple silicon, and in this case, M1 in the Mac, the user experience

that our customers are going to have is what we're incredibly excited about. As I mentioned earlier, you're going to, first of all, you're going to open, if you have one of the notebooks, you're going to open it and you're going to get instant wake. It's like, wow, just like my iPhone, just like my iPad, boom, it's ready. And then you're going to start noticing how incredibly snappy and fast and fluid it is. You're going to launch an app and bam, it's there. And bam, it's there. You're going to open large apps like Final Cut Pro, and it's going to open like instantaneously and you're going to be blown away. You're going to say to yourself, did that really just happen? I'm going to quit it again,

and I'm going to launch it again. And you're going to be able to do things on these Macs that you've never even thought you could do before on an Air, on a Mini, on a 13-inch MacBook Pro. So you're going to be blown away with the performance. And then you may use a feature in an app like Pixelmator where you can sharpen the resolution of a photo and the neural engine is going to kick in, and bam, it's going to happen so fast, and you're going to be blown away about how fast that is. And this whole time as you're using your Mac,

and it's the Mac that you know and love, but just so much better in every way, and the whole time you're using it and experiencing it, you're going to be just so delighted by that. And then at some point, you're going to look up to the upper right and you're going to look at your battery indicator. And you're going to go, is something wrong? I've been using this system for a couple hours now and my battery hasn't really even ticked down. And then each day you're going to be blown away with, I can't believe I just did that.

And I can't believe how much battery life I have this system has. And it just, it's almost like discovering your Mac all over again. It really is. And that's what I can't wait for customers to get these products in their hands because they're just going to be blown away. I couldn't agree more. And the other shout out I would make, and we talked a little bit about this in the last time where my brother sort of sent in that trick question. My brother and I were hackers on the Apple II early. There was that TRS-82 weeks, but we put that behind us. But the exciting part for me as a person who's been building into this iOS and just the surprise and delight we've been able to deliver is, well, now we're able to expose some of the cool stuff we're doing to the tinkerers,

the hackers, the people. The Mac is this great platform for people who are scientists and students and developers who really just want to understand what's going on underneath the hood. And now they're going to get access to our neural engine and they're going to be able to do really, really cool, interesting things on that platform in ways that are beyond the amazing things they're doing on the iOS products. They're going to be able to learn and explore. And that's one of the other big differences that the Mac has always played for Apple and for the world is this really great hobbyist spirit is there. And now we're going to be able to expose some of this cool stuff to them as well. I'll give you another example of what this means, kind of a more personal example.

I can still remember to this day, and it was a long, long time ago when I got my first Mac. And I took it up to my room. I was much, much younger than I am today. And I opened it up and I was so blown away by it. I literally pulled an all-nighter and use it till the next morning. And that feeling that you get when you first experiencing that. feeling right it's like oh my gosh this this is incredible i love this thing and and i i'm just so looking forward to people to to to get it in their hands because they're going to have the same feeling and and that's what's so exciting i know that i speak for so many people an entire audience to say this is a very exciting thing and you know, we have an audience of people that are diehard Mac users. And this really feels like something super exciting and new. So we're really

excited to see it. Can't wait until we can start using them. And I want to thank you both for the work that you've done in making this happen and also for coming on the show today to share some of these stories of our audience thank you so much guys well this is why we do what we do it is it is you know just making our users lives better and just giving them that delight when they use our products and that's why we do what we do and we work so hard and and we just hope that they love these uh systems as much as we do and and we're we're very confident they will yeah and thank you for thank you for the opportunity to come in and talk about it it's my favorite subject anytime to paraphrase apple we can't wait to see what you will do next so that you can come back here and talk about that too okay we'll make this a regular thing. All right. Yep, great talking to you guys again.

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you have all the Macs. I have all the Macs. I've had them for a while. Not to lord it over everybody, but for the last kind of week, I've had a MacBook Air, a MacBook Pro, and a Mac Mini surrounding me running M1 chips. I got all the M1 chips everywhere.

You did send me an iMessage with just a picture of a huge box. Oh, God. I was like, oh, man. So jealous. So let's review these things. Let's talk about them. I want to get probably the most boring part out of the way first, which is just to talk about the hardware real quick,

and then we'll dig into what's inside of these machines. Do you have any real thoughts on the hardware i mean i know they haven't really changed anything uh but what are your kind of thoughts about the way these things look the ports that they have that kind of stuff well i feel like it is you could you could call them boring or you could call it reassuring and familiar and i i think that's what apple is going for right they want to reassure everyone that these are just macs and so the macbook air looks like a macbook air couldn't tell it apart the macbook pro looks like a macbook pro couldn't tell it apart the only way you can tell the mac mini apart is it's silver and not space gray and

it only has two instead of four Thunderbolt ports on it. But, um, but the laptops are just, they're the same and that's on purpose, right? Apple has decided with this round, not to try and reinvent the personal computer on the outside anyway.

Um, and, and I think Apple's goal is that if somebody were to make a an apple store order or in parts of the world where they could do this go into an apple store and buy a macbook air before christmas bring it home that they would basically not notice that it was using a new chip architecture that most people don't care all they should really care about is the speed and the battery life really and even then they probably don't care about speed as much um which means they'll just notice that the battery lasts longer and i think

that's the goal is like it's it's just a mac but it is better and otherwise it's exactly the same so in that way it's you know it's not much of a story writing a review about these products is fascinating because they mean a lot and yet a lot of the things that normally are interesting and different about new computers are not interesting or different about these it's clear that the m1 is constrained it is you know we'll get into the details of how fast they are, but they are low-end chips. These are low-end models with a low-end chip in them. And the first Apple Silicon chip we're seeing is the M1. It is the slowest M1, the slowest Apple Silicon chip ever to ever be made in a Mac, right? Ever.

It will very rapidly be outpaced by other chips. There's no doubt about it, right? And this is how they've chosen to go out. What gets confusing is, in some ways, these are the fastest Macs ever, with a few exceptions. And so it gets really confusing. It's like, well, they're limited but they're they're so fast

and the answer is well yes the next ones will be even faster um and but this is the new floor and so they are constrained it's 8 or 16 gigs of ram like clearly this chip can't do more than that it can't do more than two thunderbolt ports. It's got two full channel, full speed Thunderbolt ports that it can do. And that's it. And then the Mac mini, they're using another means to do HDMI out and two USB-A on top of it. But it's limited that way. It'll only support two displays. So on the Mac mini, you can do two external displays.

And on the laptops, you can do one external display and then the laptop display. Like that's just, that's how they're built. So in all those ways, um, it's funny cause they're familiar, they're low end, but they feel high end when you put them in the context of Intel Macs. Uh, they're limited because these are the first models out and presumably, um, they, they can handle these limitations limitations and the future future computers and future apple silicon processors won't have those limitations um and then the other funny thing about them just in general is that they are all the same they're not only the same with compared to the look and feel of the previous models but they're the same with each other like performance wise they really don't differ that much. These are kind of the same computer in a few different wrappers. Yeah, it's kind of funny, really, right?

That this high-end, low-end in the same product is such a strange thing. It's like these are all the most basic Macs that Apple make, but they are absolutely unbelievably powerful. Yeah. Right. And that mixture is so strange. And that's kind of like, I guess, the story behind these Macs, right? Yeah.

Yeah, it is. Apple had to do it one way or another. And this is the way that they chose to do it. I think it makes sense the first apple silicon mac chip out the door the m1 is you know it's kind of a baby step in a way it really is i think based on everything we know the equivalent of the a14x right it's the a12x and z um are the chip used in the ipad pros and as far as we can tell this is sort of the descendant of that two chip generations forward obviously apple has done some additional work knowing that this was going to be used in max there are features that the mac needs that maybe an ipad doesn't need that they've rolled in here that's why they've chosen to call it the

m1 but if you look at it that way look at it as kind of the next generation iPad chip, but with some added Mac compatibility. Like we've been saying for a couple of years now, well, obviously you could use an iPad chip in a low-end Mac, but what about the higher-end Macs? And we can still say that because that's essentially where we are. These are the low-end Macs. And if you look at the benchmark scores and all the different tests and see how fast they are, it's very easy to get caught up in them and say, well, these are high-end, obviously, because they're so much faster than the other. Like that MacBook Air is faster than all the MacBook Pros that run Intel chips.

But it's still a low-end MacBook Air, right? It's still a $999 MacBook Air. That doesn't change. It's just that we're in a chip transition for two years and they've started at the low end. And that's exciting because imagine where they go from here, they go up. But also it's frustrating. I get it because we're looking at this new generation and being like oh it's only two thunderbolt ports and oh it's only 16 gigs of ram and all those things or memory if you want to call it memory since the memory is all shared now unified memory unified memory although we'll see we'll see how they approach that going forward if it's all unified memory or if there are some configurations that aren't in the future but in these systems they kept it simple because they're

the first ones and they they got them out the door shortly after announcing that they were doing this transition i think that makes sense and any more radical changes and and future steps forward we'll have to wait for 21 let's talk about performance and let's talk about benchmarks this is not a thing that we typically would pay any attention to, except when there's some kind of outlier. I cannot remember ever talking about a new Mac with you and we've spoken about Geekbench numbers. I'm sure it's come up.

I'm sure it's come up. But not with the focus that we're going to put on it now. And the reason for that is because these scores are particularly outstanding so do you want to tell me kind of what is going on we don't need numbers but just to stack them up against where they're sitting with other max and general competition there are a couple charts that are in my review that are not so i did the usual charts with the little green bars for people who see my charts on six colors.

Green means Mac. Orange means iPad. Like I have a... There's a system. There's a method to my madness. So there are the green bars that are like, here are these three M1 computers, which are almost identical. The variance has to do with the variance on the computer.

Like if we tested them a thousand times, i think that they would have exactly the same scores um with the exception of the gpu test on the seven core gpu on the macbook air which is you'll be shocked to discover one eighth slower it's like seven seven eighths the speed of the others funny that the seven core is literally that much slower like it's just that's just what it is which means you know it's still way way faster than the other integrated intel graphics computers that apple makes or has made but the other set of charts that i made are these charts about where the m1 fits in the in the existing sort of mac product line and i did two of those uh single core and multi-core for geekbench where i i went through the geekbench

browser and i found like historic scores for mostly sort of shipping products and then compared them to the m1 max and this is where it gets kind of wild but I think this also puts them in the best context, which is the single core. Apple, when they announced this product last week, said it's the fastest core in the world, basically, in a computer. And the tests bear that out. The single core score, where you're only running one processor core, is faster on the M1 than any Mac that is made

with an Intel chip in it. Now, performance is generally on an eight core system, right? Performance is not on one core. It's on all the cores. So this is academic in a way, although there are inefficient processes that only run on one core, and those will run really fast on these. But you want to look at the multi-core, right? Because that's where you've got a 28-core Mac Pro, right? Or an 18-core iMac Pro. And they're so fast because they have so many processor cores to do the work. And these M1 Macs have eight cores. They've got the four efficiency cores and the four performance cores, and they can use all eight at a time if they want to. And if you look at the Geekbench scores there, this is, I think, the most interesting thing

about these computers, which is they are what we thought they would be, by the way. They are faster than any Mac ever made in multi-core performance, with the exception of the Mac Pro, the current Mac Pro, the iMac Pro, so the Xeon processor-based multi-core pro workstation monsters, the Mac Pro and the iMac Pro. And this year's i9 iMacs, the high-end build-to-order configurations of i9 at 8 and 10 cores and last year's i9 iMac

with i think eight cores so basically those are the only Macs that i could find that actually beat the M1 Macs it's the highest end it's basically all desktop professional Macs yeah right because those high-end imacs are are essentially the ones that touch the imac pro in performance and that's literally the highest configuration and then you need to spec up the processor even higher to get there um and that's it like everything else every macbook pro every other imac every other mac mini is slower at multi-core performance than the M1 Macs. And, and keep in mind,

these are the low end Macs. It's unbelievable. I knew they were going to be good. Like if you draw the chart, like I've done on six colors a couple of times, sort of like plotting out a series performance and a series, you know, X performance,

it was going to be kind of in this ballpark but that's one it's one thing to see that and be like oh theoretically they could do this and it's another thing to see them landed and land it where they did where a 999 macbook air is for most tasks faster than any mac ever made that isn't a Mac Pro or an iMac Pro. Well, let's talk about that, though, because you say it's one thing to think it. It's one thing to see the benchmark scores, but it's a whole other thing to see the performance doing tasks that you do on a computer, right? Because scores don't mean anything, right?

Yes, I have no context. Exactly. So what have you been able to do? How has it performed? And how has it performed against not only just old Macs, but the three Macs, the three M1 Macs? How have they performed against each other? Well, against each other, they're almost identical.

I mean, that's the bottom line, other than the graphics part. And the battery is less in the MacBook Air than in the MacBook Pro. And that does show up. I did a battery test. And definitely the MacBook Pro has a better battery. It's pretty simple. But what I tried to do is some tasks that would show off this power in kind of conditions you would actually do, right? Because a benchmark chart isn't doing work.

It's trying to simulate doing work. So for the 20 Max for 2020 series, I've been editing all of those in Final Cut Pro. And there was a new Final Cut Pro update for Apple Silicon last week that I downloaded and I used to edit this week's 20 Max for 2020 video, which is from a new batch that Steven and I shot. We shot our last batch of those for the top six. We shot them in 4K. He shot his in 4K HDR shot his in 4k hdr um which you know we talked about earlier you said how

great the hdr video was and i'll just say um matching hdr video to non-hdr video is is not fun yeah that that's a pain and i understand that the idea of like the new uh you know it can be difficult to take the hdr video from iphones and and and edit them into non-HDR purposes, but most people are not doing that. No, exactly right. It's a lesson that I learned. Anyway, it's 4K video that we've got. And I've been editing these videos on my iMac Pro, and some of them not even 4K. Some of them just 1080.

But I think the last one I shot in 1080 and Steven shot in 4K. So his file was 4K. And I had to make a proxy workflow where I re-encoded those videos at a lower resolution and edited using the lower resolution. Because otherwise, I got way too many hiccups when I was editing on my iMac Pro. It just couldn't handle the file size, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's just like that's it's a lot of data and it has to decode the video and it was too much. So I stepped down the quality essentially.

brought my project over and I set it to use the non-optimized full resolution files and even the setting that was a better quality instead of better performance to have them have the video look crystal clear while I was editing it. And I never had a hiccup, not one the whole time. And that was that moment where i thought oh this little mac mini that costs uh whatever 699 i'm not sure which configuration i have i'll have to look that up but let's just say it was 750 dollars right let's just pluck a number out yeah sure it it did all these things that the uh that the five thousand dollar imac pro from three years ago behind me uh couldn't it's unbelievable unbelievable because right what you are doing there is exactly what the iMac pro is made for right i know yeah that was two streams of 4k video and it didn't

flinch it's not a problem god and uh so i did that i also did a video in code where I took an Apple ProRes file of actually that episode of 20 Max or 2020 video. And I encoded that. I just used QuickTime to encode an H.264 1080 version of it. Yep. And again, it's an eight core iMac Pro. It's good at this. And it was about 10 seconds slower at it than the other systems and again it's not a lot but the fact that they're even in the ballpark of the eight my eight core now deprecated but

eight core iMac pro is ridiculous because these are low-end systems um another test that I hear because we know a lot of developers is Xcode compile. Yes. And I did an Xcode compile. Our friend James Thompson sent me the source code to dice by peak elk. It's very nice of him to trust me not to sell that on the black market. Um, but I ran an Xcode archive where it's basically building everything that it needs to build for a project. And people complain a lot about how slow Xcode is at compiling software.

And, you know, it's another one of those cases where compared to... So they did that job in a little less than 30 seconds. My iMac Pro did it in 42 seconds, which is really fitting given that it's James Thompson. Yeah. The 2020 high-end 13-inch MacBook Pro, the, you know, the 13-inch that they released earlier this year with four ports,

51 seconds. And I think that that says it all right. This year's top of the line 13-inch MacBook Pro Intel system was almost twice as long to do it not quite but in that ballpark and i i i can't tell you how impressive that is like that that's that's huge like if you bought a 13 inch high-end macbook pro earlier this year thinking, you know, this is really, this is really great. I mean, it is, it's, it's fine, but that MacBook Air, I did it by a lot. And that's, that's the story, right?

Like across anything that, that you need that kind of performance, obviously, if you're just editing text or doing Microsoft Word or something like that, or working with graphics, you're not necessarily going to notice it. You're going to notice places where it used to stutter a little that it doesn't or that there used to be a pause that there now isn't but when you're using it for like these higher end things it's just a lot faster than computers that you know by all accounts in the past should have beaten the pants off of these little low-end Macs, and they don't. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if we need to redefine what a low-end task is, because obviously a MacBook Air and a 699 Mac Mini can handle editing multiple 4K video streams.

So is that a low-end task now probably not but that's the kind of thing you need to do to stress these things out so it makes the mac mini a kind of a weird outlier to me because all right so the macbook pro it's the clues in the name it's a machine for professionals do your professional work here and now that professional machine can do these tasks so much more efficiently than ever before. And the MacBook Air is typically a machine for the majority of people. I mean, I'm sure lots of MacBook Airs use Photoshop, for example, which I'm sure will run much nicer when Adobe put that version of Photoshop out there that is native for

the M1. But the MacBook Air benefits from much greater battery life which is something that people all macbook air users will benefit from but like the mac mini is in this weird spot right where it's not really a professional machine neither does it have to worry about battery life it's like it is in this peculiar like in the middle spot here with with kind of what we expect of it where these other two machines the two laptops maybe are more catered to this particular benefits uh when you think about where it lives in the the overall lineup it's just kind of like a funny little anomaly it's gonna work its way out right like yes eventually apple will once the transition is over

i think you'll look at the product line it'll make more sense than it does now but yes this is another one of those leaps where it used to be you said oh well you need a pro laptop to do that work and there'll be new work you know apple was talking about like 8k video and so like there will always be new high-end work that uh the low-end systems aren't going to be able to accomplish but the story of computing over the last couple of decades you know even longer three or four decades is always there's this task that is impossible to perform and then it's only possible to perform it on a high-end system and then you just wait long enough and it's possible to do it on a low-end

system and you know right but isn't it wild that apple is the company that's first to being able to produce the machines that can run this future work whatever it is that doesn't seem like the normal way that things have been done well the the overarching story of the m1 and of the intel to apple silicon transition in general is going to be that Apple came up from the streets. And by that, I mean the mean streets of smartphone development, where every bit of processing power

and every bit of energy savings was vitally important. And they're trying to make the iPhone and the iPad as successful as possible through their own chips. And that's tough. And like, that's, that's tough. And you get to the end of that story and you've got something really remarkable that you could apply to the Mac and see huge benefits. So if you've been following Apple

story, it actually does kind of make sense. But, um, from the, you know, it's a, it's a, an advantage that came from the other side of the, of the, of the street, basically from the you know it's a it's a an advantage that came from the other side of the of the of the street basically from the the mobile side and now is being applied to the mac because apple's done such a good job with their chips on the other side that they've rocketed past where intel was on this side and i i feel like i mentioned this in my review i feel like that moment at that brook Brooklyn event in 2018, where they started boasting about how the iPad pro was faster than most PC laptops.

That was the clear moment where we all went, Oh, they're doing this. Cause like if they've reached the point where they can compare themselves to Intel's processors favorably, then it's only a matter of time before they just replace Intel's processors. And that's where we are. Unified memory, I think, is something that, I mean, you know, we got so many questions about it.

We asked Tim and Tom a little bit about it, too. But I think this is something that a lot of our audience is really getting hung up on. I know that it might be too difficult to tell right now with just a week's worth of usage, but did you come across any scenario where you felt the machine struggling in a way that you could attribute it to differences in RAM? I haven't. I think this is one of those things that's very hard to detect. I haven't noticed anything like that. I'm sure that there are people who load enormous

files into memory who are going to be curious about it i would say that the combination of having um this memory which is very fast and you know and doesn't have to do some of the tricks that you do when the the memory is off the off the, off of the package. Also, the SSD speed, a lot of times I hear people complain about running out of RAM who are using traditional hard drives instead of SSD. It's easier to page out to SSD. It's not the same, but it's better. I am sure there are workflows and people who use huge amounts of RAM who will look at these systems at 16 and will run into some walls and say, oh, this is frustrating. And to them, I would say, yeah, there will be pro systems later,

clearly, that will support more memory than this. But I never ran into any of those things. I did not open gigantic image files that I don't, quite frankly, I don't have. I did not run 15 different apps and have a bunch of tabs open. I haven't done any of that. So I can't say on that side, all I'll say is that I think for most regular use, especially given that these are essentially low end systems, 16, you know, did I detect a difference between eight and 16? I didn't, but I still bought a MacBook air with 16 because I felt like that was something I wanted to do just because I do use my Mac for some more serious stuff, but I didn't run into anything. It's very hard to do that.

And honestly, I'm probably not the best person. I'm not somebody who leaves a million tabs open. I'm not somebody who works with enormous image files. It's very rare that I run into a moment. It does happen occasionally, but it's very rare that I run into a moment where I think, oh no, I've run out of RAM. Um, and now everything is slow. It doesn't happen very often. And I haven't been able to coax these systems into doing that. I think that that specific thing that with the, with the unit differences between the unified memory and the RAM and how that's going to shake out, that's going to, I think

that's going to take a while and it's going to take people sharing very specific use cases for us to be able to see it right we're gonna we're gonna see the edges because people are gonna push these things but i will say if you're somebody who never ever ever ever buys a mac with less than 32 gigs of ram wait at least wait until your colleagues who are more on the cutting edge than you dive into these things and say, oh, it's actually not so bad. Or, oh yeah, this doesn't work and find out what they say. Or if failing that, wait until the next ones, which will presumably have a higher RAM limit. That's what I would say. presumably have a higher ram limit that that's what i would say um these i would not bet against these things surprising you but also they are low-end systems uh that said it other than other

than waiting because i know there's something better coming along because there always is but there definitely is this time i was thinking today about how if I really wanted to maximize the efficiency of my workflows, I would be better off using the Mac Mini than my iMac Pro because it's faster. What about battery life? battery life? I only had a chance to do one test and you know battery life is so variable because the fact is mostly what we use our laptops for is a lot of stuff and there are quiet times and there are more intense times and it depends on what set of apps you're using and what kind of data you're processing and like there's so many things there that that it's unique you can't really measure like one person's battery life that That said, I wanted to sort of check Apple and check Apple's work because Apple makes these big claims. And you know, their video playback

claim is based on the video playing in the TV app. My guess is that it's the most optimized experience, right? Because Apple controls the app and has probably updated the TV app to use all of the decoders that are in the M1 and like, it's perfect, right? And what I did was open a Safari window and stream video. I streamed it from Plex, but, you know, basically web streaming video in a browser window. And the MacBook Air lasted for nine and a half hours, which I will tell you is a lot for a MacBook Air. It just kept going. And I got 13 hours and 15 minutes out of the MacBook Pro. So these are numbers that are smaller than Apple's quoted numbers, but I would say, suggest that Apple is not wrong when it says these things have long battery life, but exactly how much battery life it will be in the way that you use

it. Like how long is it if you are intensely editing 4k video the whole time? How long is it going to last? I didn't test that. I don't know. My guess is a lot less than nine and a half hours, but it's still probably a lot more than the last generation would be but battery life is very hard to test and i i've not had enough time to do it would literally have taken all my time just to run battery tests and i have to run other tests and write a whole review so that's all i got yeah because again like you know like people could say like hang on a minute they said it was 17 hours for video or whatever but but it's what type of video did they use, you know? And Apple is quoting the tests that best benefit Apple, right?

They're not, I said this last week, they're not lying, but did their video test happen in their app that has been written, happen in their app that has been written, has been updated to perform the best and be the most efficient on M1? Of course. That's why they quoted that one. If they quoted Netflix in a browser window, they probably tested that and they're like, oh, this isn't as good. This is only 13 hours and we got 20 hours for the other one. So let's say 20, which is fine. I mean, it's the same battery. It's just that every use case is going to other one. So let's say 20, which is fine. I mean, it's the same battery. It's just that every use case is going to be different. But I,

I will say as somebody who has used a MacBook air a lot and, um, we have lots of MacBook airs in my house, nine and a half hours of playing movies on Plex throughout a whole day. Um, it's pretty good. That's pretty impressive. I do think that this is depending on the workload,

it's going to vary, but like, this is the kind of computer where you're going to sweat the battery a lot less. All right, this episode is brought to you by remote works a podcast that tells extraordinary stories of teams that have made the shift to working remotely. On this season, you'll hear how the pandemic didn't slow down Aston Martin Red Bull racing drivers and their teams, which I'm very excited to hear that episode personally, how two women working in a tiny trapper's cabin in the Arctic are dodging polar bears while fighting climate change, and digital nomads working from the beach in Barbados, Bali, and beyond. But it's not just

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And it really brings it to life. And some of these stories are absolutely wild. Like how if you're remote enough, you could encounter a polar bear in your workday. And that's what happens to these people. It touches on how organization in your workspace is super important, especially if you inhabit a 200 square foot building in Arctic Norway. The interesting stories are right here in this show, showing how remote work challenges can affect you no matter who you are.

But it's still the same kind of challenges that we'll all come into on a daily basis. Search for remote works anywhere that you listen to podcasts and we'll all come into on a daily basis. Search for RemoteWorks anywhere that you listen to podcasts, and we'll include a link in the show notes. Our thanks to RemoteWorks for their support of this show and RelayFM. Okay, so we've spoken about how the machines look and how they perform, but there are apps that run on these machines. Now, we've spoken about the most optimized applications right we've spoken about apple's apps you know talking about final cut and stuff like

that what about apps in rosetta 2 what do they like to use how do they launch what is the experience like well the first time you launch them um it will say would you like to install rosetta 2 and then you have to say yes and then it installs rosetta 2 and i think that's interesting that there's a little bit of a gap there where they want to is that the first time for every app or just the first no okay the first time you launch a non-universal app that's what they that's what they do and then they launch and it's fine but they make you go through that one that one little extra step and then after that it's just apps and they're they're a little bit slower i mean it's going to vary so what it's doing as far as i can tell is it's it's caching like common commands essentially and so if

your if the app is really repetitive and it only really does the same thing it's going to be a lot faster and if it's really sort of having to change based on big data sets and stuff like that it's going to be a little bit slower but still you know i i managed to run the intel test on geekbench and like the intel benchmark test was still faster than like the previous MacBook Air and the previous 13 inch, the four port 13 inch. So like it's fast. It's going to vary, but it's fast. I didn't find that I was frustrated.

I'm sure again, if you're running an app that's not native, that requires every ounce of CPU that you can possibly give it, that it's going to slow it down. But keeping in mind that you're coming from a system, presumably that was much slower, you're going to pick up some of that. So like if you're going, if you're running a non-native app and you're coming from a two or three year old MacBook Air, I would wager it will probably be the same speed or faster, but it's going to vary. What I would say is don't sweat rosetta because i think rosetta just works and it works fine and in most use cases it's not going to matter i also used it with command line stuff i've got a couple command line utilities that are compiled for intel obviously

that i use for like audio stuff and they all just work because rosetta. So it's just, it's pretty transparent. There are edges like Homebrew where people can like download and compile and build all sorts of command line apps. Homebrew, first off, it doesn't really work on Big Sur and they're working out how to handle two different processor architectures. And like, it's going to take a while

for stuff like that to clear up. But for the regular person, it's just, you know, you take that old app and you double click it and it launches and it's fine. Have you encountered anything that doesn't work like at all? Not that I can think of. Like I said, Homebrew is a good example where that is still in this process of them updating it. And I think that there are going to be some things like that that are really on the edge. And then I guess like any virtualization

is a thing that is still to come, although they have shown it and talked about it and there's definitely going to be parallels in VMware Fusion in Apple Silicon. The question is, what are they emulating? And right now all they've ever shown is they're emulating Linux, I think, in a virtual machine. I don't think they're even

emulating it. They're virtualizing an ARM build of a Linux operating system. So it remains to be seen. I feel like Apple's playing a little coy now about Microsoft. I'm still a believer that Windows running on Apple Silicon systems is going to happen. Not sure it'll happen on the M1, but I feel like everybody is inclined to make that work, right? Like, like the challenge is, do you want to emulate Intel windows, which is going to be slow as anybody who used soft windows or virtual PC on power PC max will tell you. and then in the long run can apple and microsoft work together so that they might be able to virtualize windows for arm which would run at full speed yeah and i feel like they will windows for arm exists in case people don't know that it

is a thing that exists it's i think inevitable i do. I don't think that this is a case. People want to make drama about it and all that. But like, not only is Microsoft Office like in beta with native versions for Apple Silicon now, but like Microsoft knows that Apple's platforms are a place for them to pick up more customers and that some of their customers who use Windows also want to use Mac.

And they've had those customers for 15 years straddling those two platforms and they would probably like to let them continue and while i'm not sure i think we'll ever see boot camp although that's possible but i doubt it at least for a long time okay at least for a while but like within a virtualization system like parallels of vmware um yeah i think it's going to happen. I just, I don't know the timeframe and I don't know what all the technical hurdles will be and what Microsoft's priorities are, but I think that's an almost inevitable. Like I think Microsoft wants it. I think Apple wants it. I do think it will happen, but it's not today, right? Like if you're,

if you're relying on bootcamp or relying on running windows in a virtual machine at near native speeds do not buy apple silicon like that's a simple one i'm nervous to ask this okay what are ios apps like on the mac so you get them by searching and then toggling over to like iOS from Mac, which is the default search. Or if you look in your purchased list, you can also click on iOS and then it shows you your purchased iOS. There are a few things going on here. So first off, developers can opt out. So most of the apps I looked for the first time I got on one of these systems and the app store had been turned on for iOS stuff. Almost every app I looked for is just not there.

Like what? What were you looking for? So Ferrite. Right. The audio editor that I love on the iPad. It's not there because the developer has opted out. You know, Netflix is a good example. When they highlight HBO Max, that is a strong suggestion that Netflix is not there.

And that's an example of why you can just run Netflix in a browser. It's like, yeah, but I don't want to. I'd rather run it in the Netflix app, which is nice and is in its own app. And I don't know whether some of that is like paranoia on Netflix's part that it's going to lead to piracy or something like that, which is dumb because there's piracy anyway. And I'm not sure in the browser is any different. But like that, that's a little frustrating to me that there aren't more video apps available. And some of the productivity apps that I was looking for aren't there. So you end up with some games, which are nice.

Like all of all the games like flip flopflop and really bad chess all the zach gage games are there and that's great because they weren't on the mac before right and i think that's maybe what apple is really focusing on is is getting a bunch of games that are just not on the mac on the mac but when i was looking at productivity stuff like yes um timery is there hooray at least last time i checked but like a bunch of apps that i like are not there and that bothers me right because it's it's it's the developer's decision of course but i wonder like are you not there because you just don't want to be on the Mac? Or are you not there because you're working on something? Because I do think, oddly, I do think that this is going to maybe give developers more

of a reason to embrace Catalyst. Because they're going to look at how their app runs on the Mac and think, that's not good enough. And maybe we need to add some stuff in to make it more Mac-like. And that leads down a path to Catalyst. It also maybe improves their iPad version. So that's all up in the air. And it took some of the wind out of my sails to find out that a lot of the apps that I was kind of interested in seeing how they worked on the Mac just don't work on the Mac.

That they've been opted out. I could imagine a lot of developers wanted to wait until they actually got one as well. It could be. I'm concerned that Netflix was just saying, well, forget it. Forget it. We don't want to do that.

But like HBO Max, I tried to do full screen. It doesn't do full screen. I tried to resize the window. I'm actually trying that right now. It doesn't do full screen. I tried to resize the window. I'm actually trying that right now. It doesn't resize the window. So you get like a single size sort of a window with a movie playing in it.

It's just, I don't, why? Why would you do that? So that's frustrating. The ones that do work. Games, I've had some issues. I downloaded Flip Flop solitaire and it shows up in like one orientation and it cover it's covered by the dock at the bottom and i can't resize it so i have to hide the dock in order to get it to show up like the part where the cards are

which is kind of important can you not full screen it if i hit the full screen oh this is great if i hit the full screen it changes orientation into a better orientation which is uh landscape then i can play it that's better but when it opens it opens in portrait and it's under the dock and uh i would argue that the full screen widget is not made for changing orientation. That's weird. It's a lot of that. A lot of that stuff is weird. There's this whole touch alternatives mode, which is like, I don't fully understand it,

but there's a second mode that changes how the app behaves in order to better emulate a touch experience. And then you have to use the trackpad or hold down the option key to better emulate a touch experience and then you have to like use the trackpad or hold down the option key to like essentially emulate uh touches on the screen and if you turn that mode on a bunch of other things turn off and break so don't so don't turn it on so i use twitterific which is an app i wanted to try out because i use it on the mac all the time and i started using it i was like why is it not working right it's it's the keyboard shortcuts aren't working and i can't scroll right and all that and it turns out i had touch

alternatives turned on now i turned it off and it's like oh now it scrolls fine now it's got all of the same keyboard shortcuts that it had on the ipad And they're taking advantage of all of those, all of those features that they made available on the iPad. Um, so there's a lot to learn as a user and I think developers have a lot to learn. And I guess what I would say is it's, it's really early days for iOS apps on the Mac. And you're probably going to be disappointed that some of the apps that you wanted to see aren't there. Some of the apps you see are going to work great. Some of them are going to work less than great. Some games will probably be good.

Some things you'll get frustrated by because they have a Mac version and an iPad version and you bought the iPad version, you don't get the Mac version. Buy it again, I guess. So they've taken those out of the store. You don't get the Mac version. Buy it again, I guess. So they've taken those out of the store. So there's going to be indications.

It's going to be a rough ride, I think. I think this is the place where it's untested. Developers are going to have to learn about it. My hope is that it drives people who are developers to make their Mac apps better and maybe support Catalyst and uh, to be a little bit better because like even a really good iPad app running on Apple Silicon, like Twitter, if it's got all the keyboard shortcuts, but it doesn't have any menus,

right? Like, cause it's not, it has no menus on iOS. I expect we're going to see a big take up in catalyst post Apple Silicon. I think some, you know, some developers are going to just not

bother and they're going to take their apps out of the store and they're like we're not going to play that game use the use the web browser or whatever but i do think you're right i think some developers are going to look at their apps on the mac and be like oh we can make this better right and that's what catalyst is meant to do in fact looking through what we see now i would say maybe this is what catalyst was really meant to do all along which is have you run ios apps on the mac and then make them look more like mac apps right like because now you can see with an app that is not running catalyst really it's just stock loaded from the app store off of an ipad you look at it and you're like this could really use some

fit and finish from the mac that's what what Catalyst is, right? That's literally what Catalyst is. So it's weird. And yeah, it's weird, but it's got potential. It's going to take a while to shake out. And people should prepare to be a little disappointed when some of the apps that they're kind of hoping will run on their Mac may not be there. And if they are there, they may not work like you're hoping they will. But I do think in the long run, opening up the App Store and getting those apps on the Mac is going to be a good thing. It's just it may take a little while. Yeah, I think this still remains something that I'm really interested by because there aren't a lot of apps that I want, but there are apps that I do want. And the reason I want them is because there

is not a good Mac app for it. Right. And I still believe a kind of wonky iOS app is better than no app or a very bad Mac app. Like, for example, you mentioned Timery, which is the time tracking app that I love. You sent me a screenshot of that. Yeah. That it's there in the App Store. And that's one that I really want because the toggle, which is the service that I use there, Mac app is garbage. And so even if Timery only kind of works, I know I'm going to be happier than what I got. But there's no shortcuts for the Mac, right? only kind of works i know i'm going to be happier than what i got but the stuff that's you know

there's no shortcuts for the mac right and so like i wonder how that's going to affect my experience and i think that you're right i think that there might be things that developers see and then like oh you know what if i make this change to my ios app it will actually impact the way that it works on the mac here and stuff like that like i think this is going to be a thing that's going to take a little bit of time to shake out and is also going to take a lot of time to test, you know, like over the next few weeks to see how these things operate. I still remain excited about it. I lowered my expectations when I heard about how you get these apps, right? So that you mentioned

how they're downloaded. And I'd heard that last week, that it's like a very conscious choice you have to make to get one, right? Like you go to the app store and you hit the toggle or you go to the purchases thing and you choose. It's like, that's not as front and center as i was expecting and and that would indicate to me i mean that along with the fact that apple haven't really shown these things off in running in any way it's just like here's a picture of a ios app kind of made me feel like okay this is very 1.0 and it's a thing they're doing because they can do and is hopefully another kind of carrot on the stick for developers to take advantage of Apple's tools that are meant to generate better cross-platform applications.

So I'm just hoping that this is just like another step in that kind of larger push of making applications that work and run great everywhere. Also, this just in for people who are looking for this i believe twitterific which i described which actually is is in better shape on on mac os with apple silicon than i thought appears to have been removed from the mac app store oopsies on ios so they seem to have opted out just a little bit later but i got it you can't take this away from me but you know i don't know what that means either so we'll see it's just it's going to be like that i think it's going to be like that where you're going to have apps that like the developers like oh what we're where no take that down yeah um and that's that's

honestly that was my first disappointment with this whole thing was just a lot of the apps that I thought would be there. Aren't there because the developers have opted out and they probably have good reasons for it. I get it, but it's also disappointing when it might've been good enough for me, but it's not good enough for them. I hope that's what it is.

And not just let's just pull it and not be there on the mac that would be that would make me sad but i can't explain hbo max though i can't explain that there's a video app that can't go full screen as far as i can tell and that can't be resized i don't know why that app exists other than for apple to point to a video app but anyway to wrap this up overall how does this first set of m chip max make you feel about the future of the mac platform i think the future of the mac is really bright i think that apple is going to be able to dominate um pc performance at a bunch of levels in a way that they've dominated smartphone and tablet performance i think that there are long-term questions about the highest of the high end, but we're going to have to see.

Like, this is the famous, what is an Apple Silicon Mac Pro, and how does that work, and what does that product look like, and who is it for? And we also have to see the mid-range, right? We need to see what an iMac looks like and what a higher-end MacBook Pro looks like. We don't have the answers to those questions either. But I think that this is, given how impressive these are as low-end systems, that the future is incredibly bright. But there's still work to do. I do think that it's a real question about how is Apple's architecture going to handle,

are they going to scale up their GPU?'s architecture going to handle, you know, are they going to scale up their GPU? Are they going to do discrete graphics? How do they do expansion cards in a Mac Pro? Is that a thing they're going to do? Are they going to leave pros behind or are they going to cater to the pros? My gut feeling is they will cater to the pros and give them what they want because that's why they embarked on the whole Mac Pro thing in the first place.

they want because that's why they embarked on the whole Mac Pro thing in the first place. So, and it also, as we mentioned earlier, sets Apple up to be more innovative with its hardware in the future. Now that it's got this platform, we may see touchscreen Macs. We may see, you know, Mac laptops that are convertible and turn into things that are more like iPads and then back into laptops again, which is not a design that Apple has experimented with before. We may see an iMac that also supports touch or supports Apple Pencil and is more like a Surface Studio.

There are lots of things we have an opportunity to see in the Mac that maybe we didn't have before. And I don't believe that it's going to be a case where Apple rests on its laurels and gets surpassed by other chip makers, just because it's in Apple's best interest to keep this whole architecture moving forward for the iPhone and the iPad as well as the Mac. And they all, you know, the Mac is the processor inside the Mac is now central to Apple strategy, whereas the Intel processors were not remotely central to Apple strategy. And when you're a company that is making unified products that are software and hardware, and all the process of all

the product of your process, you can get better products. Apple has showed that on the iOS side for a while now, and now the Mac gets to do that too. So I think it's really exciting. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by DoorDash. You've got so much in your to-do list. Your laundry, your emails, your errands, who knows what else. Give yourself one less thing to worry about

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That's UPGRADE for $5 off your first order with DoorDash. Go download the app now. Our thanks to DoorDash for their support of Upgrade and all of RelayFM. Jason Snell, should we finish out today's episode with some hashtag ask Upgrade questions? Andrew asks, do you think that space gray or other colors will come back to the Mac mini when Apple silicon chips are available in high end configurations? Maybe it's like a Mac mini pro or something like that. Um, so, okay. So last week, apparently I, I was skeptical about whether there would be other Mac minis. I don't actually remember saying that, but I did listen to Connected last week where Steven said, I know Jason says that there's not going to be

any other Mac minis, but I don't think he's right. And I was like, one, how dare you? And two, I agree with you. So if I said that, I'm going to recant it now and agree with Steven, which is I think that the fact

that the Intel Mac mini remains in the product line because the M1 Mac mini only supports, Mini only supports up to 16 gigs of RAM and only has the two Thunderbolt ports. In every instance where Apple has left an Intel product behind, I think that's a sign that Apple doesn't think they've got a product to replace that product. So there's still the four port 13 inch MacBook Pro. There's still the space gray four Thunderbolt Mac mini, right? Like all of those still are there. So the answer is yes.

I suspect that at some point there will be a pro-ish Mac mini again. When remains to be seen is it in the in the spring or summer where they do a potentially modified m1 chip that enables higher end you know sort of mid-range max is it next year sometime in the next cycle an m2 of some form that has more features and they do that and roll out a mac mini but i i now would say it's more likely than not that they will have a more capable mac mini at some point because that's why that intel mac mini is still there and would they choose to have that be a space gray instead of a silver? Maybe so. That might be the tell there. So, and I like that because remember,

one of the criticisms of the Intel Mac mini when it got updated last time was it was too expensive. And that's because Apple really sold it as being this product for pros. And that like a lot of pro environments, people wanted more power in the Mac mini and they wanted to give that to them, which is great.

Except the other part of the market is mad because the Mac mini used to be more affordable. So I wonder if this is where they're heading, which is now they've made a Mac mini. That's more of a truly low end Mac mini using Apple Silicon and in silver. And it leaves open the space to do a more capable Mac mini, maybe in space gray down the road. And I would be surprised if the Mac mini didn't end up with a more capable Apple Silicon version eventually. I go back and forth on this a little bit

because that like professional Mac Mini only really existed because they had a hole to fill that might not be a hole in the future. So depending on what the iMacs look like, depending on if the Mac Pro changes, like they could bring the starting price down a bit. They might not need that Mac Mini Pro anymore. The Mark Gurman report about the smaller Mac Pro, right?

They might not need a pro-level Mac Mini. I still feel like, yeah, something has to replace that higher-end Mac Mini, and it might not be a Mac Mini. That's true. That's true. That is one of the uncertainties here. It could be that really the Mac Mini becomes what it

has always been a game, which is the entry Mac, right? The Switch's Mac, because this is a thing that exists or for people that have interesting use cases and that we still have a desktop professional machine but it's more like what it used and that we still have a desktop professional machine,

but it's more like what it used to be, which was the Mac Pro wasn't cheap to get into, but it was much cheaper than it is now. And I could imagine it going that way. Like, I think there will be something on a higher-end configuration for a lower starting price. Could be a Mac Mini, might not be the Mac Mini. We've only ever had the thought of a professional Mac Mini once, which is the current one.

And our needs were served by other products before that. So we'll see. Brian asks, the Air, the new MacBook Air does not have a fan the macbook pro does do you think there will be thermal issues in the future with the air could you give specific use cases in which a user might consider the pro rather than the air well it's hard to say um but my guess is that apple like apple makes the chip and apple makes the computer and Apple chose not to put a fan in it. So are there going to be thermal issues?

I don't think issues is the way I would phrase it. But it's very clear that because the Pro has a fan, the Pro will be able to do sustained performance at longer, at higher clock speeds. longer at higher clock speeds whereas the air eventually it's going to get so hot in there that they're going to have to scale it down and reduce the clock speed and it won't be as fast as the pro but having the macbook air not be as fast as the pro in certain circumstances when they're sustained actions like i don't know what video encoding or something like that something that super stresses the processor for a long time like i mean that to me that is a natural distinction between the air and the pro um i when when brian uses the word issues here i think it's suggestive of what's happened with some of the Macs with Intel processors in them, which have had to really severely constrain themselves because of the thermal limitations of Apple's designs. And I

guess to that, I would say the MacBook Air was designed by the company that made the chip that they put in it and they took the fan out on purpose. So I don't think there's anything that you would call an issue there. I think that Apple must be exactly aware of how that performs and they don't have a problem with it yeah and I think people are focusing on the fan too much as a differentiating thing between the air and the pro like there is more right the battery life is longer and it has a touch bar these can be benefits i personally do consider the touch bar a benefit as we've spoken about in the past i actually kind of like it i think that it adds something it can be very frustrating but i think it adds something and some people will want that like these are different products and i agree with

you as well like the issues thing i can see why you might say that. There have been thermal issues with some Apple products in the past. But I think that they must have been very aware of this going into it. They didn't have to do this. They chose to do this. I can't imagine that they put something else to fill that space up, really. It seems unlikely that apple said well what happens if we take the fan out and then looked at it and said oh no it's a disaster let's

ship it like that's not because it's their it's their chip and they're aware of it and let's just let's just say it um it's a mobile chip the the it's not gonna do what the intel chips, it's not going to do what the Intel chips do. It is that they're taking advantage of the fact that they've been making iPads with no cooling system in them and getting along just fine. So they should be able to do the same. But again, that, that is also why the air has no fan and the pro has a fan is it's a differentiator. And that's basic, you know,

chip logic that, um, if you have the fan you're going to be able to sustain performance and not underclock the processor in order to cool it down so um that's why you get a pro if you're worried about that roger asks what do you think about the next ipad pro becoming a dual boot machine with ios and mac os this could placate people who have been wanting a touch mac um i think it's not ever going to happen or at least not anytime soon i think apple has been very clear that the ipad is the ipad and it's a touch first device the idea of making it a dual boot so you'd like go into the settings in the ipad and say now be a mac and it would basically

not work right unless you attached stuff to it and turned it into a Mac. I mean, there's nothing stopping Apple from doing it. I just can't envision. It would be a radical change in direction for Apple and in their product philosophy. I think it's far more likely that Apple would one day do something like a convertible Mac that you could fold over and put in touch mode, and it would basically behave like an iPad Mac that you could fold over and put in touch mode and it would basically behave like an iPad than that you'd take an iPad Pro and boot it into macOS. That seems super weird to me. And I'm not sure dual booting an iPad is going to placate anyone who wants a touchscreen iMac or touchscreen Mac of any kind. So I think it's highly unlikely in the in the short term anyway and i

would say even in the long term it's not an ipad if it boots mac os it's something else and you wouldn't call it an ipad i think i've been seeing this argument a lot from people that don't want touch screens on macs so the thinking is oh we'll just the people that want touchscreens on max what they really want it's just an ipad right like that people can't conceive of these things as being able to be shared so the solution is just put mac os on the ipad pro like well that i didn't really solve the problem that i was looking for what i want and what i do want is a touchscreen on my mac so i can use the touchscreen when I want to, not that I assume that I will be using a touchscreen all the time.

I do firmly believe touchscreens are coming to the Mac. I do, 100% without a shadow of a doubt. And I think to think that that's not happening is wild to me. The march of progress will suggest that this is something that is happening it is wild to me that it is argued differently from that like we don't have them yet it's coming yeah i believe it let's not forget too that apple's whole kind of direction in terms of development is toward catalyst and toward running ios apps on Mac under Apple Silicon. Apple's not making an effort to back port, to build a bridge backward from Mac to iOS. And I know that implicit in this question

is dual boot, which is basically saying, can I make my iPad not an iPad so I can run Mac software on it? And not only do I think Apple wouldn't do that, I also have a hard time imagining that Apple would make any sort of bridge to bring old Mac software back to the iPad, because what Apple wants to do is push people forward to adopting new technologies and new ways of developing apps that run across all their platforms instead of providing this sort of backward bridge for Mac compatibility. So are there weird things that Apple could do? Sure. I mean, Apple could build a virtualization engine that ran Mac OS inside of iPad OS on iPad Pros so that you could have

a virtual Mac that only worked when you had your, you know, a pointing device and a keyboard attached. They won't, but they could. I think it's far, far, far more likely that the Mac, you view the Mac as the set of Apple's technologies and the iPad is a subset and that throwing the Mac inside the iPad is not what they would do. It's far more likely since they're going down this route already that you would have a Mac that would have a different shape, a different design in terms of the hardware than it currently does, whether that's just a touchscreen on a laptop or whether that's something more like a convertible, it's already got the ability to run iOS apps. And so I feel like you're all, you already have a device and an operating system that does all of this. It's os um and i don't think the ipad is a product that's meant to run mac os it's meant to be this simpler um subset that is not going to run old

software like that so i never say never but i i'm very i think it's very unlikely yeah i i don't see them going that way right like i don't see them going ipad pro to mac what they really are going like i it's the other way around like ipad software is coming to the mac mac software is not coming to the ipad because the future of apple's platforms is that well now all of our software is going to be closer to what ipad software is than the other way around. And honestly, I was thinking about this. I advocated for a while for an iOS laptop, like just build a laptop that runs iPadOS, and it's got a cursor now, cursor support and all that.

You could totally do it. I don't think Apple's ever going to do that because I think it's far more likely that Apple will just release... I mean, we already have, this week, Mac laptops that run iOS apps. There they are. So what's left? And the answer is, you know, like I said, you, maybe you can fold the screen back or

turn it around or something. Maybe we add a touch to the mix and Apple pencil support to the mix. But those are all things that Apple can do in the context of the Mac that already exists instead of building an iPad laptop or anything like that. And so, you know, I think Apple is going to define the iPad as touch tablet that can be attached to other things. And I think that's great. I love the iPad, but I don't know if it, you know, I just, I can't see it. I just can't see it. All right. And final question today comes from parker who asks

i always hear people say quote this is not a huge year-on-year upgrade when talking about new iphones in your opinion which iphone was the largest year-over-year upgrade oh largest year-over-year upgrade i have a thought on this if you'd like me to start. Yes, please. The iPhone X. That was a massive year-over-year upgrade. It's like, how about we take your iPhone, we get rid of the home button, which you've had for years,

we extend the screen out, we give you an OLED screen, it's got stainless steel sides, and now has Face ID. Like, massive year-over-year upgrade. And two cameras for those of us who had not been using the Plus and it's bigger i think that's a good answer for the people that hadn't been using the plus my other one is uh the iphone 6 because it included the larger screen like the larger option right the iphone 6 plus so like that was also like a huge step as well um in my opinion because it added a whole new model but i

think the biggest will will for a long time will will be the 10 is like the biggest year-over-year jump that was like a truly very different iphone like i honestly i couldn't imagine another one bigger until they have another new form factor you know like if apple ever do a folding phone um there have been rumors that apparently apple are moving forward with this for something in 2022 i saw these today that apparently they they're getting their suppliers to do some testing on some uh demo units that they've made that would probably be the next massive jump if they do change the form factor again. I think that's what it takes to be considered,

like, you know, year over year, no-brainer upgrades. It's like, well, you couldn't have had an iPhone that was even close to this one, right? Other than that, they are iterative because there is only so much you can do, like, just so much you can do every year and it still makes sense as a product to continue pushing. So there you go.

Nice. If you would like to send in a question for a future episode of the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or you can use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord. I want to thank again, Tim and Tom from Apple for joining us. It was a great

conversation and I'm really happy that we got to be able to spend that time with them again to talk about the wonderful new Macs. I'm looking forward very much to next week's episode when we'll talk about Big Sur and also I would have had some time as well with one of these M1 Macs. I cannot wait to get

my hands on one. Jason, very excited. I also want to thank our sponsors for this episode, DoorDash, RemoteWorks, Pingdom, and SaneBox. Don't forget, if you want to have longer episodes of Upgrade with additional bonus content and no ads every single week, go to getupgradeplus.com, become a member and support the show. And I want to thank everybody that has done that. If you want to find Jason's work online, go to sixcolors.com. And he is at jsnall on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. And we'll be back next week.

Thank you so much for tuning in to this bumper episode of Upgrade. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody.