Upgrade - 354: Even Safari Knows It's Yellow

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

Jason reviews the new iPad Pro, Myke reviews the new 24-inch iMac, and the future of Apple silicon might be coming into focus.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 354 today's show is brought to you by memberful paindom and public sector future from microsoft my name is mike hurley and i am joined by jason snell hi jason snell from my garage i I'm Jason Snell. Hi, Mike Hurley. Hi. I have a hashtag Snellcatalk question for you from Ajahn. What's it called? Snellcatalk? Yeah. I'm changing it up today. It's hashtag Snellcatalk from Ajahn, who asks, when walking outside in the rain, where do you keep your iPhone? Trouser pocket, inside your coat, underneath a iPhone-sized umbrella? What do you keep your iPhone? Trouser pocket? Inside your coat? Underneath the iPhone-sized umbrella? What do you do?

Well, this has got to be for you and not me because it doesn't rain in California anymore. We don't have that anymore. In fact, this question came in and I thought, oh, man, imagine that it rained. Okay. When it's raining, if I'm outside, it so seldom rains, I just put it in my pocket. I mean, I just put it in my pocket. And modern iPhones are all kind of waterproof-ish anyway, and just put in my pocket i mean i just put in my pocket and modern iphones are all kind of waterproof ish anyway and it's in my pocket and so yeah it's in my pocket i feel

like the two of us don't uh don't really worry about that because we are both professed to take the phone in the shower people right i feel like at that point that's way more water than any rainfall would yeah put on the phone the problem taking the phone in the shower is that the touchscreen stops working properly. But if all you're doing is using it as a speaker because you don't have your speaker or your speaker has a dead battery or something, then it doesn't matter. The biggest issue is if a water drop gets into the speaker because then it sounds like your phone's underwater. It doesn't happen very often, but it happens just enough that it can be frustrating. As a place where there is rain, I mean, I'm more concerned about keeping myself dry

than I am the phone. So like I will have an umbrella, right? So then the phone benefits from my umbrella-ness. Or if you've got a raincoat, then if it's long enough to go over your pocket, then your phone is protected in the pocket. Even with a raincoat, I will always want to have an umbrella.

I don't like getting the water on me even if I have a coat. Interesting. Because the raincoat doesn't protect your trousers or your shoes or any of that. No, it doesn't. It's true. I will take an umbrella,

but not as often. I think, maybe I think the difference is that when I'm out, if I'm like walking the dog or something like that, I don't bring an umbrella. But, and that's mostly, if I'm like walking the dog or something like that, I don't bring an umbrella. But and that's mostly if I'm out in the rain. It used to be I had like to go to work and I had a commute and I had to go places in the rain. But, you know, now I don't have to go places in the rain.

Plus, there's no rain. But yes, if I was walking to the bus stop or something like that, I would have a raincoat on and I would have an umbrella. It's true. It's true. But my phone would still just be in my pocket. So we actually have an action-packed show today, so I'm probably not going to end this rain discussion here. If you would like to help us open an episode

of Upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk and yours may be included in the future. WWDC draft next week. I can't believe we actually know when a draft is going to happen, but we know. It's hard to believe that WWDC is in two weeks and our draft is next week. And it is hard to believe because we've been so, it's been a year basically, to have enough notice that we can do a draft without it being an emergency draft.

And we can plan it and we can do it with a full week to go. So next week. So next week. The problem now, Mike, is that we're going to have to imagine all the possibilities for operating system revisions. This is the hardest. And it's one of the harder drafts to do, yeah. It is the hardest because, you know, even if we go on the rumors, which we will, there's always stuff in the software which is going to be a surprise. Yeah. which is going to be a surprise.

I would say, I mean, maybe, you know, maybe I'm tempting fate here, but I'm surprised about the lack of information or leaks that have come out leading up to this point. You know, being so close. That's okay. Mark Gurman will have a story on like Thursday that will reveal everything and ruin many of our draft picks. So there's that to look forward to.

But we have to come up with a whole set of stuff for ourselves, which me and Jason are working on over the next week. You already created the thing. So a bunch of upgradians have sent me in a note about something called eARC, Jason. This is something new for the Apple TV. So with Apple TV and eARC, if you have all of the right gear,

so if you have HomePods and a TV that supports EARC, you can now have your HomePods operate as the audio output for anything connected to your television. So if you had a PlayStation and Xbox or any like maybe you had something audio related you go into the tv and then it will be able to stream that out to your home pods now yeah this is only the original home pod not the home pod mini uh which is funny to me i have i have gotten this set up and i've been playing around a bit um i haven't really had a ton of experience with it yet because i only got it set up yesterday so i'll say more about on the it in the future. I'm also going to be talking about, because I don't have time for it in this episode,

we're going to be talking about the Apple TV and connected this week. So if you want to hear about my thoughts about the Apple TV and the remote, I'll be talking about the connected. But this eARC thing is intriguing because it is a new feature for a product that no longer exists, which is the HomePod.

The argument and something that you've mentioned before is if you if you really like the idea of using a pair of home pods as your speakers for apple tv the problem is if you have another device you can't do this and now with e-arc you can do it you can you can route everything into the tv and then the tv returns down the hdmi cable returns the Apple TV, the audio signal, which then it sends out. It's kind of wild. So if I was using my PlayStation,

I still use the Apple TV remote to turn the volume up or down, but I don't get any indication on screen about the volume level because they don't work together like that. It's really intriguing. The thing that also intrigues me about this is they label it as a beta feature so look if you wanted any kind of indication that apple's not out of this game of home theater stuff this is it like i genuinely think that this is a feature which all but confirms that they're working on something to replace the HomePod.

I agree. I feel like, look, it's possible that this is just a last vestige of work on the old HomePod, assuming it was going to be a hit. But it feels to me more like this is yet another clue that Apple has a new home strategy that has a bunch of different pieces. And one of them has something to do with a home theater kind of thing, whether it's a new big HomePod or revision to HomePod mini or a soundbar that runs some version of tvOS. There are lots of options here, but the idea that you might have, you know, my wild idea about an Apple TV soundbar, like when you add eARC to the Apple TV, it's like you are almost completely there now. Right? Like, it's really interesting. So something's going on, I think.

And although it is possible that this is all just the vestiges of a strategy that basically they've gone in a new direction now and killed the HomePod. I don't know. I think it's more likely that there's something else going on in the background. We'd like to thank everybody that has enjoyed and sent us in comments about the membership bonus special

that we put out last Friday. I also want to thank everyone who signed up for Upgrade Plus to get it. If you haven't yet and you want to enjoy our RPG special, if you go to getupgradeplus.com, you can sign up. And not only will you get the RPG special with myself and Jason and Gray and Tony Settler,

our wonderful game master, you'll also get access to our Upgrade Plus feed, which includes longer episodes of Upgrade every single week with no ads. This is a great deal. Go to getupgradeplus.com and thank you to everybody that has. Yeah. So Apple released a press release last week

about some new accessibility features that they've added to various pieces of the OS and their support system and stuff. I just want to go through some of these really quickly and then there's one that I want to touch on a little bit more. So the first is SignTime, which is just a fantastic name, which is AppleCare support via sign language in a variety of different territories and languages. SignTime is just so good. iPadOS is going to be supporting eye tracking via third-party devices. There will be enhancements to voiceover to help describe

what's happening in images. So you could use voiceover and it can tell you like in this image, this person's doing this, like it can describe what people are doing. There's a support for new bi-directional hearing aids, hearing aids that have microphones in them. So people could take calls and stuff. They're adding background sounds like white noise type stuff to the, to the OS. By the way, these OS enhancements these are coming quote later in the year they're clearly ios 15 things the big one though is assistive touch for the apple watch so in our show notes is a link to apple's press release you have to go to watch

this video it's amazing so if you turn on this feature you will be able to, with a few different physical interactions with your hands, to operate the UI. So the two main ones are clenching, so clench your fist or pinch your fingers together. If you clench your fist twice, it will enable this voiceover mode, and then you can use pinching your fingers and clenching to scroll through UI buttons and press them. It's unbelievable. Yeah, it's really impressive. It's like assistive touch on the phone, except it's using gestures, very broad gestures to drive the Apple Watch. It's a pretty wild demo.

And it's like, how does it do it? And I think the answer is it's got some very interesting, clever training about the motions that the Apple Watch senses that it's interpreting. But it's pretty remarkable. For somebody who, basically the idea here is if you're unable to manipulate

the little touchscreen on the Apple Watch because you can't make those movements or gestures you can now use these larger hand gestures essentially to do the same thing but again this is one of those features that like this is one of the great things about a lot of apple's accessibility stuff we've spoken about this in the past, anybody can take advantage of the power that these things unlock, you know? So, and I think that's super cool because they make these things so powerful. Like anybody can use this

and you can have it do wonderful things for you. And there's also an on-screen pointer as well, which using your wrist, I just think it's incredibly clever that they're able to use the sensors in the Apple Watch. Just the idea of you moving your fingers being detectable by the Apple Watch, so cool. So they announced all of this to coincide with Accessibility Awareness Day, which was last week. It feels like, though, some of these features, especially the assistive touch one,

could have been a big moment in the WWDC keynote. And I expect that this is a symptom of a packed keynote. So maybe they wanted to make sure that these features really got noticed properly. I think there's probably some truth to that. Although I think whenever you're rolling out all your operating systems, the keynote's always going to be packed. I don't think it actually tells us much because obviously, they can fill a keynote many times over.

And that's why there'll be a State of the Union. And there'll be all sorts of tidbits that we don't even see, but they drop in other sessions. I think what Apple has learned, and this is a new Apple thing relatively from the last few years, is that there are other venues that are good to make certain PR announcements and they get more pickup. that are good to make certain PR announcements and they get more pickup. And this is a great example where because of Accessibility Awareness Day, Apple is able to pull these features forward out of iOS 15 and get them noticed on Accessibility Awareness Day.

So it allows Apple to say, look at our great new accessibility features. They get covered at a level that would probably not get covered if it was just part of a developer keynote. The other example I was thinking of is World Emoji Day, where they use that. In journalism, we often will call that like a news peg. The idea is you want an angle, and it can't just be like, today, Apple just decided to show you a feature from the future. That's not that interesting. But if they can say, oh, it's World Emoji Day, that gives us an excuse to do a press release about all the emoji that

are coming in the future to iOS. And Accessibility Awareness Day gives them something to hang a story about Apple's support for accessibility. So I think that Apple likes doing this. And you're right, they can afford to do it because it's not as if the keynote isn't going to be packed. And if they still want to mention in the keynote, they can now mention it and have it be kind of an aside, which is plus we've got all these amazing accessibility features that we announced two weeks ago. So I don't think it's evidence of anything other than the fact that sure, that WWDC keynote will be packed as usual. But I like it. I actually really like the idea that Apple doesn't feel like they need to hold all of their future announcements until the one moment at one time when they roll out a

developer beta. If you want to know more about these kinds of features, you should check out Parallel here on RelayFM. So it's hosted by Shadi Brisbane. Shadi's going to do a better job of talking about all of this stuff than we will. So you can go check it out. That's at relay.fm. Parallel. Yep. Jason, you have some upstream news that you'd like to share. I do. I do.

I want to give you the upstream update. A couple of stories this week that I thought were interesting enough for us to mention, even though we've got such a packed show. One of them is there was a New York Times story about Netflix doing this trilogy of films called Fear Street. And I just thought it was really funny because they're selling it as if it's a new idea, which is they made three movies and they're going to release one of them every week for three Fridays in a row. It's like binge watching, but for movies. And I thought to myself, how is this any different from anything else

that Netflix does? Other than the fact that it's a weekly release instead of just dropping them all at once. But like, at what point is movies just TV? Like what makes these movies? What makes them movies? It seems to me like three episodes of a three episodeepisode TV series.

They're made, I would imagine, the same way that TV shows are made. I just thought it was really funny that Netflix is like, oh, get this, everybody. We're going to release this thing weekly. And everybody's like, yeah, that's what TV has done forever until you came along, Netflix. Why not like six one hour? Why three movies? Well, apparently it's set in three different settings. And so they're interconnected, but they're set in three different settings, which I would say, great.

That's three episodes. We call those episodes of a TV show. But I just I point this out. I mean, I can see the arguments either way. It's fine. I just think it's really funny because we, the definitions of movies and TV have become so blurred because of streaming and because of the way things get made and the way things get released. new it's weekly releases of new content on our platform like that's not new at all um but they've decided that this is a movie which it's not right it's or is it i don't know it's i just i think it's very funny that this is just it's literally we're releasing three two hour things on a weekly basis and it's kind of a stunt but also at the same time like it's entirely based

on marketing like they could do this they could have released it all in a binge they could have released it all across you know six episodes and called it episodes they just decide to market it as three movies so and it's from a from a long series of books so they could do this more i guess they could order more episodes of whatever this is. I'm also curious about how it looks in the Netflix interface, right? Have they created a new, like, Fear Street movie series index? It's like, oh, it isn't a TV series. It's a movie series. Look at movie one, movie two, and movie three of, I don't know, release one?

Can we rename seasons and episodes to sound more movie-like? Okay. So that's that one. Netflix. It's going to Netflix. There's a story that made me laugh that I wanted to mention, which we've been talking here about the plus, the rise of the plus, so many plus services. A bunch of streaming services offer ad tiers where you pay less and you get ads so paramount plus does this peacock does this a lot of the especially traditional um entertainment companies that have i think what we were talking about with peacock plus was um they've got ad sales people right and? And like, well, what do the ad salespeople have to do? And they're like, no, no, no, it's okay.

We're going to have an ad version of our service and we'll make money. We'll have more viewers. They'll pay us a little bit less, but we'll make money because we'll sell ads and show them the ads. But Warner Media hadn't done that. And HBO famously, you know, is is an ad free kind of service but now

they've announced uh ad supported tier of hbo max which i don't know what we call that is that you have a name we didn't we were joking around about like hbo max minus right plus hbo max HBO Max minus. Right. Plus. HBO Max minuscule. Max small. HBO Min. Min Max. There you go. Anyway, for $10 a month, which is cheaper than the $15 a month for no ads, you will be able to get a version with ads. And it's more complicated than that because HBO shows don't have ad breaks in them. So how will they do it? And the answer seems to be that you'll

get the HBO shows with no ads. Maybe there'll be a pre-roll ad or a post-roll ad or something like that, but like they're not going to be ad breaks in HBO shows, but all their other stuff that they do, they're going to be able to start sticking ads in there. And you know, the load of streaming ads is not as great as the load of ads on broadcast TV or anything like that. And in fact, the head of ad sales, because of course the head of ad sales is quoted here, says it will have the lightest ad load in the industry. So it's not a lot of ads, but they are going to basically cut you a deal where if you spend $5 a month less, you will get access to HBO Max, but you will see some ads. So HBO Max minus coming soon.

And then one more item, which is what we predicted sort of has come true. MGM looks like maybe finally getting snapped up by a tech giant. Reports that Amazon may buy MGM looks like maybe finally getting snapped up by a tech giant reports that Amazon may buy MGM. And MGM, you know, what it has, it's a studio. It's got some things that it owns. The classic MGM films all got sold off a long time ago, but it does have a film library. It has James Bond, although that's even complicated because the eon productions actually controls james bond uh so you can buy mgm and release james bond movies but you still need the basically the broccoli family has to work with you and approve everything that you do uh but so there's a the this story is interesting uh-wise because MGM has been trying apparently to sell itself for a long time to a tech giant.

And the feedback has been they're asking too much. But maybe Jeff Bezos is now intrigued. Maybe Jeff Bezos just wants to own James Bond. I don't know. But we had speculated that maybe this would be something that Apple could snap up. And apparently Apple and Amazon and other companies have sniffed around MGM, but they've all found the price to just be more than it's worth. Because it's not that great.

It's something, but it's not that great. Yeah, really, what you want is James Bond, right? That's probably what anybody would buy MGM for. There's the library of stuff. You get some content, and there's some franchise possibilities in there. But James Bond is the big asset for them, even though it's not entirely theirs.

That's the big asset. I do wonder, though, following the rule, which is who benefits by having a story leak like this. I do wonder if this is once again somebody at MGM trying to stoke the flames and

be like, look, MGM might actually get bought by somebody in hopes of either making the deal go along or making the deal close faster or making somebody else come to the table and say, no, no, I want to buy MGM. I don't know. But the story seems to be, the implication is that it's progressed a little bit further and that Amazon is in serious talks to buy MGM. But the truth is that Amazon is so huge and Jeff Bezos has so much money on his own that really they can buy whatever they want. The question is, is it worth it to them? And I do sometimes wonder if in the end, if the world's richest man says, yeah, but I want James Bond. They're like, all right. Okay, Jeff wants James Bond.

Jeff knows what a good TV show is. And he wants James Bond. He knows what a good spy movie is too. I also wonder, just as a sidebar, because of Eon Productions, which is the family owned company that is, Albert Broccoli was one of the original producers of the Bond movies and MGM does the releasing. And it's kind of this shared thing. And one of the stories that I read pointed

out that like one of the challenges with this is that they control it and they can say yes or no. And they have been, they are very conservative in what they do. And so they have been pretty focused on there's just a James Bond movie every three or four years and they don't do spinoffs and there's no TV show or anything like that. And I wonder if that's one of the deals here. And if one of the delays might be that anybody who buys MGM has to go talk to Eon Productions and say, look, what are you going to let us do? Or can we buy you out? Is the family willing to sell James Bond after all of this? And if not that, what does our partnership look like? Does Amazon go to them and say, did you see what we did with the Jack Ryan show? Now imagine what we could do with James Bond. We could have movies and we could

have a TV show spinoff. We could have the English agent's office 00 number TV show, and we could do all this stuff and it'd be like a huge franchise. And would you be amenable? And if they say, well, no, we just want one theatrical release every three yearsable? And if they say, well, no, we just want one theatrical release every three years. It's like, oh, well then MGM is less intriguing to us. So I wonder about all of those kinds of conversations. I love the idea that you can buy this whole company, but in the end, there's this other little small company that's basically family run that can say yes or no

to everything you want to do. That's hilarious. So we'll see. But anyway, there's a little bit of upstream and that was it. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by our good friends at Memberful. Memberful is the easiest way

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Go there right now and check it out. It could be the start of something exciting. Thanks to Memberful for their support of this show and RelayFM. Jason Snell, I am talking to you right now from a yellow iMac. What? Yep.

So kind of late last week, I took delivery of my very first pre-release Apple review hardware. So last Thursday, I had an iMac arrive. And this was kind of funny because it was originally supposed to arrive on Wednesday, but it got delayed in shipping. And I was so nervous because if it arrived on Friday,

it wasn't pre-release hardware anymore. It was just the day everybody else had it. And I was like, please let it arrive Thursday because then I'll actually get what I wanted from it. Because look, just as a quick sidebar, this is just was an important thing to me. You know, like I've been doing this stuff for 10 or 11 years now.

And this was always something that I wanted, right? Like I've had some review hardware in the past, but it's been a products that were already available. And this was like, it was 24 hours, but it was 24 hours where I had this iMac and nobody else had it, right? Or like just such a small group of people. So it was really cool. And I was very thankful to get that. But now let me talk about my experiences of it because I've been using this iMac for the best part of half a week now. And I've been using

it quite extensively, actually. So I have the yellow one. Apple offered me the choice and I've been using it quite extensively, actually. So I have the yellow one. Apple offered me the choice, and I said I would like either the orange one or the yellow one, and I got the yellow one. And I was actually, in the end, happy to have the yellow one because then I had a different one to you, right? Because you had the orange one, so I have a different one. And I wanted to try something different. One of the reasons I asked for yellow

is because I don't think it's one that I necessarily would have bought myself, but I wanted to see something different. And like, I think most of these iMacs, what you see in person is so different looking to what you see on the website because these things are hard to photograph, right? Like this yellow one, it's,

and again, like I've been sharing pictures of mine and I feel like I can, just can't get the color in my images to look how they look in real life. Did you find that with the images that you were taking of your orange model? It's really hard. Color, getting color accurate is hard.

And then depending on the setting and the context, there's a picture I posted, I think on Twitter, that was literally the orange iMac with, uh, with an orange iPad case and a San Francisco Giants baseball cap. And I was really, and my wall, which is orange. And I was really just trying to get at, look at all the different shades of orange, right? Just to say, it's kind of hard to get it across. And, you know, I think you're right. Like Apple has all of its sort of photography on this very light gray. It's very much like the border of the iMac screen. And, you know, are they trying to make it look accurate or are they trying to make it look good? I don't know. It's very hard

to get across what they actually look like. And honestly, as lighting changes, this is anodized aluminum and it's got a texture. And so the reflection and the texture change in different light. So it's very hard to get across what it looks like because it looks different in different contexts. And then you add in different lighting and it's, yeah you kind of need to see it in person and i hate to say this because it's not not practical but i think you kind of need to see it where you're gonna have it which means you kind of need to take one home yeah that's not and and and be willing to take it back yeah right which is not something that you can do but it there's truth in that. Depending on what it looks like in the store, it might not look the same in your house.

At least I have been hearing from people and seeing pictures too that Apple stores seem to have them all. Even though you can't buy all the colors or maybe whatever, they actually do have them. Because I think there's a few colors you can only get online, if I remember rightly. Yeah, I think Stephen reported on that. But they have all the colors at the stores.

Because I've been having people message me and say, oh, look, I wasn't sure about the yellow one. I saw it in person. Or like, oh, actually, I want the green one, that kind of thing. And so this yellow model, it's like a combination of like a pastel kind of yellow on the front and like a kind of like Easter kind of yellow on the front. And then almost gold, right? Like the foot and the a kind of like easter kind of yellow on the front and then almost gold right like the the foot and the back of it are gold but again like in the images that i take

the gold seems way more gold like i can't seem to get it like it looks like it's like a real like gold gold but it's it's way more on the yellow and it what it looks like to me honestly is anodized yellow aluminium but in the images that i What it looks like to me, honestly, is anodized yellow aluminum. But in the images that I take, it looks like they've tried to make a gold version and it isn't as so strong as that color. The unboxing experience is so good for this product. They did such a great job with the packaging

that even like the handle is like a woven material yeah it's fabric handle that's in the color of the iMac which again it's like yeah how hard do they make it for themselves right we're managing these products that now have like not only seven different boxes seven different handle colors for all the boxes um and and also you get colored stickers i have colored stickers in two tones. There's one which is more yellow and one which is gold, which is fun because they do the color stickers now.

But the actual opening of the whole thing is really nice. Like you lay the box down, you open it up, you pull the sides down and it all kind of presents itself. And you've got like a big sticker on the screen and it says hello again in the color of the computer i don't know you spend this kind of money on a product like this you want it to be special and i feel like you know apple is now i think finding its way in making special unboxing

experiences that are responsible from a environmental perspective yeah it's all it's all um cardboard and uh they also they do things like they have the pull tabs and stuff now that make it a lot easier to get in and out it is i what struck me about it that's funny is first off the iMac is shipped upside down yeah that took me a minute it took me a minute to work out how to open the box oh you gotta kind of lay it down. And yeah, it's upside down, which is funny. And right. And it's also a rectangular box now. It's no longer kind of angled where you can't put it anywhere.

The old iMac boxes were all like trapezoid or something like thicker at the bottom than at the top. And it's not like, no. So it's and it's really nice packaging. It's very easy to get the iMac out too. Because obviously when you open up that box, that's what you want to do is get your iMac out. And they did a good job for sure.

The peripherals, I just love the look of them all. Like the colors and shapes are nice. I like the shapes of everything. And like everything's nice and round and stuff. The keyboard, okay. So I love the look of everything and like everything's nice and round and stuff. The keyboard. OK, so I love the look of the keyboard. It's too low to the desk, like the profile of it's too low for me now. You know, I'm used to much chunkier keyboards with bigger typing angles and stuff now.

So using a magic keyboard is so strange feeling. Touch ID is great. I've noticed as well, like it's a little slower than touch id on other devices which i assume is something to do with needing to send that information wirelessly i'm leaving the keyboard on my desk right now like even though i'm using a keyboard one of my fancy keyboards i have the the magic keyboard behind it so i can get the touch id and i had a friend recommend to me to mount the keyboard underneath my desk so i can just reach under and authenticate when i have one of my own i'm going to do this it's such a silly little idea but makes sense because all i have this on my desk for right now is just to get to the touch id button

so somebody's going to need to somebody on etsysy is gonna make like a uh a magic keyboard touch id cover thing that you just snap on and it and it uh locks out all the other keys oh that's a good idea too but it has just the one key and then you can and then you mount it or put stuff on it and it's just for that one yeah so the power brick too is big it's bigger than i thought right the actual power brick itself but having ethernet that's great because i use ethernet in this machine i just plug it in it's one less cable that needs to be long right like everything's down on the ground now i like that because as well something that was happening for me was my ethernet cable was is definitely is shorter than the cable that apple ships with the power brick.

So I had to suspend my Eero on top of some sound dampening foam, because if I would put my desk into standing mode, my Eero was just hanging there. So now I don't need to do that, because it just plugs straight into the one on the ground, which is much nicer. Yeah. The iMac, we knew this, the stand, it's not high enough for me. It has to be raised. It's too low down to the desk. Mike, are you telling me that all of Apple's ergonomic consultants and calculations that

calculated that this is exactly the right height for the iMac did not work for you? It did not work for me. I'm sure, look, I believe that they did what Nevepreet told us, right? That they looked at a bunch of data and they picked the size that they think is best why would you not do that right but it's like the average size right and i'm not an average size guy well i was gonna say people who are taller or shorter uh in whatever length you know maybe it's from from the waist up when you're sitting down and it's different when you're standing but like there's gonna be a lot of people who don't fit in that area which is why there should be an adjustable stand because you get this beautiful thing that's all color matched and then you've

got it sitting on top of a mac mini it's sort of yep i mean yeah mine is sitting on top of my mac mini it was on my desk uh right now and i've bought this stand as a company called grove made who make nice but inexpensive products uh and i bought this stand because a company called Grovemade who make nice but inexpensive products and I bought this stand because I like the look of it and it matches my desk and I figure that this stand I'm going to keep around for whatever product comes next

because I was thinking about for my next iMac to go with VESA but for me put an arm on it. Maybe. Potentially. But I'm going to have to stand anyway, so I have to stand coming. Also, though, I do hope

and we said this before, that on a higher-end iMac, Apple creates at least an option for a height-adjustable stand like the XDR. Even if I have to pay extra for it, as long as it's not $1 even if I have to pay extra for it, you know, as long as it's not a thousand dollars, I would pay extra for it though. You know,

like if they said like, this is it, but you can get the pro stand and it's like 400 bucks more. I would think about it, right? Depending on how much I'm spending on the machine, I would think about it because I really do want that adjustability in just in a way that this machine doesn't provide. Similarly, this machine doesn't provide similarly this machine doesn't have enough ports for me you know like the four usb shaped ports two thunderbolt it's just not enough like what i really need is two regular usb ports as well because i just have stuff that isn't like so for example like i use a logitech mouse and i need a little unifying receiver and they only do those in usb the imac pro has seven ports on the back and i just looked i have five of them plugged so the four on the higher end imac would not be enough for me um i what we know

about the m1 right is that if you look at the mac, it's got two Thunderbolt and then two USB-A. And then we look at this one and it's got two Thunderbolt and two USB-C. Clearly, the M1 can't do more than that in terms of ports. So what I wonder is if they do the larger iMac at some point here, who knows? Mark Gurman said they stopped for a while. I don't know what that means. for a while. I don't know what that means. But if they do a larger iMac, which is what I would really like to see and be very interested in buying, will they then go back to doing what they did, especially if we're thinking it's more expensive and it's bigger and it's more for pro

level users and it's using a different chip? Would they go back to something like what the iMac Pro has, which is the multiple Thunderbolt and USB-C and USB-A ports to have a bunch of ports back there. I don't know what they feel about ports. And yeah, you can do hubs and stuff, but it's not as good. It's not as nice if you have to start buying hubs and hubs are expensive and complicated and it gets weird really fast. Yeah, like I have a seven port USB hub, which I now have three things plugged into. And I'm mostly fine with that, but some stuff just doesn't work as well when it's plugged into a hub. And those things I also can't

plug into the machine because the USB-A thing is kind of stuck, right? Like, my hope is that for more professional machines, like higher-end machines down the line, they find a way to put more ports on them. The rumors of the MacBook Pro, you know, getting the HDMI and the SD card slot, do actually fill me with some confidence because they do feel like for that machine specifically, that's the best stuff to plug on it

like i don't really mind so much about us regular usb on the laptops because you know you're probably gonna use a dock or a hub for those things anyway but it feels like they're adding more stuff on i would hope to see them continue to do that. I personally love how thin this iMac is. It feels like a complete flex from Apple to make it this thin, right? It's just like, we're going to make a thin computer. That's what we want to do. But like, it surprises me. Like when you turn on this machine, like the first time I turned it on,

like you reach around to the back to press the button, you know, you put your thumb on the front and your finger on the back. I kind of misjudged it based on my my iMac pro and it's like oh wait hang on a minute like yeah it feels like you're kind of just pinching your fingers together to turn the thing on like it really is very impressive just from a technical standpoint but adds just this thing is just so beautiful like how thin it is it's just so incredible to me and i for me like the thinness adds to the overall specialness of the design and i have more to say on the design in a bit but i personally i think they made the right decision with the with making this whole thing just so thin and modern looking i love it the way it is yeah i agree i i am not a

fan of the school of thought that's like, well, it's just an iMac. You should make it as thick as possible. Like, well, no. It is in a bunch of spaces and you want it to look pretty. It looks much nicer flat

than it did when it kind of had the thickening at the back edge and sort of trying to fake it at the corners. And then you're right for turning it on or tilting it. Anytime you're reaching out and moving it around, I imagine this will be true if you put it on an arm as well. It is, first off, your hands are, instead of on the sort of slope of the current iMac design that we have with the iMac Pro, it's just, it's very easily grabbable.

It's super light because it's less than 10 pounds. Moving it around is really easy. Like carrying it around to different locations in your house is also really easy. I think it's the right thing to do and it's the right kind of shape. I appreciate the fact that it could be any size and they could just make it thicker and heavier and bigger. Like, heck, they could just make it the size of the original iMac if they really wanted to. Just have it be enormous and weigh 40 pounds. But I think in general, having it be thin and light and having that consistent, the sees the back because it's facing against a cube wall or something. Well, yeah, you're not really taking advantage of what this thing is, but you're not who this design is for. This design is for people seeing it from the back and people seeing it from the side and it being in environments. That's why the colorful stuff is on the backside too. That's the whole idea here. So I think it's, I like that they did this. I think that this

is what the iMac should be. This is like the ideal. They're trying to get closer to that little floating monitor that was on top of the G4 iMac back in the day that had the giant heavy computer beneath it. Like the ideal of the iMac is that the computer starts to disappear. And I think that this one gets closer to that ideal in a lot of delightful ways. 24-inch screen, I think, is fine for me. I would say that going from 21 to 24, that's a big difference. And I think that 24 is fine.

I set the resolution to give me more space, and that gave me kind of just enough real estate to work with from what I'm used to on say 27 inch monitors or whatever. One thing that I immediately noticed which I didn't think I would notice but did is just how much nicer the screen is on this than any third-party monitor that I have. I've been used to recently using third party monitors more than using my iMac. And I have a 27 inch Dell that was on this desk and it was a 4K display. And I was like, oh, this is just as good as my iMac screen or whatever. It was fine. Big difference. It just looks so much better in every possible way like i don't know exactly what it is

that apple does to make their monitors look so good but they do something i know it's like a lot of little things i'm sure but this just is so much nicer it's so much crisper as a display um like i'd be sad to go back now on this on this desk from it i think they don't i mentioned this in my review i think that we don't give enough credit to Apple for its displays because they advance it so much that you end up sort of just taking it for granted. Like they've had the, they've been pushing these iMac displays forward for the last, what, six years since they first came out with a Retina iMac. And they added the wider color gamut and, you know, presumably some point here, there's going to be mini LED in these things and they'll be even more impressive. But like, they're really good displays.

This is the root of why people complain that there isn't a non-expensive 6K Apple external display. It's like the iMac display is just better than any of those third-party displays that are out there. And you have to have an iMac to get it basically, or buy the Pro Display XDR, which is ridiculous. So those are your choices right now because the third-party displays just aren't as good. Apple is really good at this. And that's why it's a little frustrating if you're somebody who wants a Mac Pro or a Mac Mini,

or just an external display for your laptop, the third party choices there aren't great. And Apple is not letting you just buy a, essentially an iMac screen and make it your display because like the iMac, imagine a version of that that was maybe, you know, doesn't have the chin and it's just a display. That would be really good. That would be a really good display. A lot of people would buy it, but Apple doesn't want to make it for some reason. Not yet. Anyway.

So going back to the color, I really like and I very much enjoy, it puts a smile on my face to have this like hint of color in my peripheral vision from the chin, from the foot, just while I'm looking at the Mac. And also the, again, like those, I understand what Apple's saying now about the edges not being white.

It's like white with a mix of light gray. It's almost as if there was something dark behind it and the plastic was semi-translucent. It is a light gray. If you hold a piece of paper next to it, you're like, oh yeah, it's not white, it's light gray. But it is very light, light gray. If you hold a piece of paper next to it, you're like, oh, yeah, it's not white. It's light gray. But it is very light, light gray. But it's a neutral color.

I mean, my experience in using it, which we talked about last week, was that it's almost like a gradient where there's the bright pop from the foot. And then there's the lighter color on the chin. And then there's the gray border. And then there's the screen. And I think that like, as I use it, I was like, oh, I get why they did this. Like you can really focus on the screen and the rest of it just kind of drops away. And yet in your peripheral vision, you still got kind of the color popping there. And if you lean back a little bit and then you're looking at your

iMac, you're like, oh, yellow, right? Or orange. But you're not like trying to focus on the screen and like, look, this yellow is getting in my vision. I to focus on the screen and like i look this yellow is getting in my vision i can't see the screen i feel like it's a good balance where it's not overwhelming you like i think people were worried about and i use my mac in dark mode and i don't feel like it's out of place because dark mode on the mac i mean there's still a lot of color going on there's still a lot of brightness going on maybe if you you know really were aggressive with it like right now i'm looking at google docs window and it's you you know really were aggressive with it like right now i'm looking at google docs window and it's white you know so it's i feel like there's some

differences with dark modes on the mac than on ios devices and stuff like that yeah but i feel like the design the color of this mac it sparks joy for me and i can't remember the last time that hardware gave me that kind of joyous feeling, like it's playfulness. And Apple designs used to do this for me, right? I used to feel like there was a playful joy to the hardware. And it's not that hardware design has been bad. I just think that Apple had a different priority for their design like they

wanted to create premium sleek stylish looking devices and whilst this machine is still premium and sleek it's also in big bright colors and that kind of makes it more joyous like my system tint is yellow and that also makes me smile because it's like oh even safari knows that this is a yellow computer right like i love that little stuff like it these are like frequent reminders that i am using a computer that i find fun whilst also it is incredibly powerful like i've not even really spoken because there isn't really much to say i think about the m1 that you haven't heard before but it has made me realize something and using this machine for editing and stuff like that. One I noticed about the MacBook Pro compared to my iMac Pro, where the M1 right now is

not as fast in some tasks as my iMac Pro is, like exporting a project from Logic. But during the actual editing process everything is much more smooth right the m1 in logic is a much nicer experience and i actually think for me that is more important than a few seconds on the export because i'm less frustrated and have more of an enjoyable experience actually doing the hard part of the work. So I think this machine right now is more tuned to what I need. But what I expect from M1X or M2 or whatever it's going to be,

it's both of those things. All of the performance gains that I see in these Pro applications because of Apple Silicon, plus the power to export more fast than the iMac Pro would. Go back to the design. I know that a lot of people are like, why is the chin here?

Get rid of the chin. I just want no bezels. I say no. I don't want them to get rid of the chin on the iMac. I think that it adds personality to this computer. If it had no chin, it would look like a monitor. And I don't want my computer to look like a monitor. I want my computer to look like a computer.

And maybe this is like a nostalgia thing for me, or there's like some kind of blinkered vision. I don't know. But for me, this looks like a computer. And it looks like a fun, beautiful computer with my phone, with my iPad. I want no bezels. Do you know why? Because I have to hold it spaces of a premium in my hands. I don't have that concern with my computer. Like it's not a problem for me to have no bezels. For 17 years, the iMac's look from the front has been a screen with a

chin below it. Like that's what an iMac looks like, right? And although they took the logo off of it, they have the color accent there. This is their decision, right? Is to do it this way because of course they could have put it behind. It would have been a little bit thicker, but they could have put it behind the screen and had, like, a thicker iMac that didn't have it. But I think you're exactly right. Like, the chin, and we mentioned this when we interviewed them, but, like, the chin is part of the design language of the iMac. It has been for a long time. You could get rid of it, but, like, I don't view the last 17 years of the imac as an the eternal struggle to get rid of the chin like the chin it's it's part of the imac like you could

yeah fine you're right you could take it off it would look like a monitor at that point more than a computer and i think that that chin almost signals like oh you're looking at an imac yeah and i think it's just like one of the it's just whatever your tastes are for the design. Because if you got rid of the chin, it would look more sleek. But as I said earlier, I kind of want it to be fun. Like this iMac feels iconic in its design to me, right?

Because it is building on all of the design language of iMacs before, but the color and the thinness, I think makes it a design that we will look back on, I feel, maybe as fondly as we look back on the G3. Because my hope and my feeling is right now, this is the beginning of Apple computers with more personality and fun again, in a way that they haven't for a

while you know this is something you touched on so much during 20 max in 2020 that the design of a lot of the computers have been very similar for a long period of time yeah i said a whole rant in in that podcast series about how apple should put color on the mac again so i'm very happy that we've been asking for this for ages right like starting with the iPhone and we want colors on our iPads and colors on our Macs like we it's been great for a long time been very happy with the design Apple have made beautiful products but you gotta change every now and then and I think that all this bright and beautiful color that is a great change and yeah I don't think I'm going to get these wonderful pastel colors on pro machines but i'm expecting like midnight green pacific blue like you know that kind of stuff like so i can still

have something different um right i actually want to wrap up my thoughts here by talking about the speakers because i had a revelation with the speakers so So I just put some music on. So I was like, oh, yeah, this has speakers in it. Apple talk about the speakers being good. And I didn't expect the speakers on this machine to sound as good as they do, considering the kind of limited space that they're dealing with.

And to my ears, they sounded really great for music. It just sounded like there was some separation and the bass was good and everything was clear. And I thought just sounded like there was some separation, and the bass was good, and everything was clear, and I thought it sounded really great. And it made me think that, like, I could imagine someone very happily having this computer in their living room and using it to play music, like a HomePod, as well as you might do other computer-style stuff on it. And then I thought, well, I think that this is kind of what this iMac is, like it's where it shines. It is a computer that becomes a part of your home

in a way that computers, I think for a long time, they've been like, you put them in the office or like you get them out of the way. And I think that this one has more going for it to be a part of the living room or the family room than maybe a lot of computers have in a while like it doesn't take up a lot of space there's a great screen which is big the touch id makes it super easy to switch between family members which this is super cool like anybody if like if me and jason are on both registered to the computer if i'm logged in and j Jason puts his finger on the Touch ID sensor, it will switch to his account. It has great speakers.

It has a good camera and mics for video calling and stuff. It feels like it has this vibe of a kind of general purpose home family computer in a way that I don't remember for a while. And I think all of the colors and stuff really accentuate that. remember for a while and I think all of the colors and stuff really accentuate that. I think this, for what this machine is and what it is expected to be used for, I think it's a slam dunk. Like, I adore it. I think it's a fantastic computer and I didn't think that I would feel so excited about the 21-inch iMac replacement because I feel like I knew what that computer was going to be, but I was wrong.

It's a way cooler computer than that one that was in my mind. I think it's great. I love it. Yeah, I more or less agree. I'm disappointed by the webcam, even though it's the best Mac webcam ever, because having seen Center Stage, they should have done that on the iMac, and maybe they will do that

in the future in fact I think it's almost certain that they will um but yeah I I think I agree with you that it's fun and most of the criticism I've seen honestly is from people for whom this is not the Mac that they want right like this isn't for you and and also it's just funny a lot of the criticism is is very much sort of stuff that's not an issue. Like people don't like the colors. It's like, well, that's why there's the silver one. So stop talking about the colors. If we like the colors, we're not telling you you have to get the colors.

Get the silver one. They make the silver one for a reason, but we're excited about the colors. And similarly, it's a low-end iMac. It is the 24-inch, formerly the 21.5-inch iMac. There will be more, and it's on an M1. There will be more powerful, bigger, probably iMacs in the relatively near future. But for what this is, and Apple trying to find a place for it, where does it belong? Why do you need a desktop computer at your house now?

Something like this, that's Apple's argument of like, this is pleasant to reside in a house and you can move it around and different people can use it. And it's got the big screen, which is a lot bigger than any mobile device you're using for when you want to use that big screen. And yeah. Yeah. Also, I agree about the speakers. I didn't write about it, but I did write my article with music playing on the speakers. And it's good enough that I don't think that I would need a separate external speaker most of the time when I'm working if I was just editing podcasts

and listening to music when I'm writing. Yeah, I've been choosing to listen to music on the speakers where typically, even with my iMac Pro, I would use my headphones instead. I was, I've been quite surprised at how good they sound. I just wanted to dovetail from the beginning of our conversation and just

say that like for a memory for me is like my first experience with pre-release hardware. I'm kind of, I'm really pleased it was this computer because I think I'm going to, I think this is just going to be a memorable computer anyway. And so, yeah, it's been a fun experience for me. Yeah.

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Wow. So I love this. I feel like we could sum it up with this one line from your review. This is in your introduction. A Hall of Fame device that just can't fulfill its remarkable potential. It's really great. We got one on Friday. I got one for Idina. I've been poking around with it very much, but I haven't spent anywhere near as much time as you. I've just been doing the kind of things you would do, right? I looked at how dark some UI is in some images, and we played around the center stage.

But I haven't done any of the testing that you will have done on yours. Overall, how do you feel about this? Does iPad excite you? Are you going to get one for yourself? Well, it doesn't excite me. It is very impressive in a lot of ways, but this is the theme of the whole thing, which is it's impressive in a lot of ways,

and I'm sure that I could use some of the power doing some of the stuff I do, like editing. But it still feels like I would like there to be more here. That you could really argue that if you bought an iPad Pro in 2018, you have no reason to update to this. Unless you really want that screen. You have no reason to update to this unless you really want that screen. I'm like everybody else hoping that at the developer conference, we're going to get iPad OS 15 and it's going to legitimately use the features of this thing in a way that older devices don't. And it's going to make you want to get it. And I have some theories about that. I actually wrote about that Six Colors members post last week about that.

I have a theory that one of the reasons that they come with 8 and 16 gigs of RAM, in addition to it just sort of being M1 standard, is if you're going to rethink multitasking on the iPad and potentially allow apps to run in Windows and have multiple apps running and viewable at the same time, they need to be in memory. There's much more memory pressure if you expand multitasking on iPadOS than there used to be. And it's one of those things where having eight or 16 gigs of RAM suddenly becomes really convenient and not just I can have a lot of browser tabs

or I can launch a bunch of browser tabs or i can i can launch a bunch of apps and they instantly launch instead of having to relaunch because they quit in the background because of memory pressure like i feel like you can definitely invent all sorts of ways where the the specs of this thing are suddenly made much more necessary by the OS. But today, you know, for 99% of the people who use the iPad Pro, you could just, if you're using the 2018 model, you know, you just go on using it and it's not going to be appreciably different. Yes, the screen is amazing.

It is beautiful. I imagine that every Apple display that is currently using backlight LCD is going to go to this mini LED backlight. And, you know, that's going to roll out over the next few years and it's going to dramatically improve everybody's displays.

And that's really exciting because it's gorgeous. It is a fantastic display. I so desperately want it in an 11 inch because just you know i was trying to play around i was like okay let me let me feel this and i was reading some stuff or whatever and for what i am using my ipad for most these days which is like a lot of reading and entertainment stuff and just taking some basic notes i am using it in my hands more than i'm using it in the magic keyboard and it's too big

and heavy compared to the 11 like the 12.9 this is too big and heavy i mean and i'm a 12.9 user and have been and this one is just a little bit bigger a little bit heavier and as federico said and last week on connected and as i said in my review and he wrote in his review like you can tell it's one of those moments i sent him a text. I basically said, I like it when, you know, we're working on these things in parallel and not talking to each other. And then I read your review and I think, oh, he said the same thing I did. And one of them is, yeah, it's noticeably heavier. Like it's not a lot heavier, but it's already a device that's kind of pushing it in terms of how big this thing is and how heavy it is. And it's

now a little bit heavier. So what am I going to get out of this? What am I going to get out of it? Well, the screen is beautiful. No doubt about it. Center stage is amazing. No doubt about it. Yes. 11 inch iPads with this technology that will come at some point here will bring this to a lot more people and they'll love it too. Center stage is going to go everywhere. I feel like it's only a matter of time before every Apple device has center stage. It's so cool. The whole idea that you'd put an ultra wide camera in the front facing camera. And so yeah, the selfies aren't quite as good because the selfies by default, they're basically like cropped

and de-skewing the ultra wide camera to make it look like the same frame of view, field of view, as it was before. But if you tap or pinch, you can get the ultra-wide view, which is very, very wide and kind of weird. de-skew and create that effect of you having your own personal cameraman tracking you as you move around and somebody comes into frame. There's in my story, there's a, there's a GIF of, of an actual family zoom that we did. And my son and I sit down next to my wife and my daughter and the camera pulls out so that all four of us are in the frame. And when we leave, it's not in the story, but like when we leave, I left and it goes down to three and then my son leaves and it goes down to two. And it's just, it's magical.

It really does feel magical. It is a wonderful thing. So I can't see how Apple isn't gonna be putting ultra wide forward facing cameras and center stage into every product that it makes. At some point, especially any product that is likely to be set down somewhere and not held in a hand, so maybe the iPhone.

Maybe not the iPhone, although maybe the iPhone, but maybe not the iPhone. But every Mac and all the iPads. It's such a great feature. We use this stuff all the time. It's so natural. I'm at the point now where if I can do a video anything on that iPad Pro, that's where I choose to do it because it's so nice. They should put it on the iPhone. I mean, the iPhone already has

an ultra-wide front facing. I think the only issue with the iPhone is that if it's in your hand, it's got to fight your own hand movement. And I wonder if there's stabilization and issues there where it's trying to focus on your face and then you're moving it around and how does that work? And I don't know. So that's the caveat I'll give there. But otherwise, yeah, I mean, it's great. I hate to do the thing that everybody is doing, but this is what it is, which is it's center stage is great. The screen is great. It's an M1. It's just as fast as all those M one max. I did the tests. It's just as fast. Uh, it doesn't boost the speed over the 2020 and 2018 iPad pros as much because they already were using Apple Silicon, right?

So it's not, it doesn't have to, they don't get the leg up on Intel effect, but it's faster. But again, how often are you pushing against the speed of the A12 in those models? How much do you hit the RAM limit, especially on the 2020 model that was all at six gigs of RAM? whole bunch of devices, probably including a monitor off of it, then what, you know, you're not going to see it because USB three is the USB that's on the previous models is faster than any, you know, regular hard drive that you would plug in is going to be. So Thunderbolt, it's like, it's overkill. It's all overkill. And that's great because you could buy this thing and it's probably going to work great at full capacity for a long time because it's such overkill. But at the same time, first off, you

may already have one that works fine. So you should wait if it works fine for you because this doesn't really enable that much that's new. And two, it's frustrating because I want it, you know, I want this hardware that's so amazing to allow me to do more. And it doesn't because there are missing apps, Apple's pro apps aren't there. And I know there are alternatives, but, um, you know, if you're like Luma fusion is great, but Luma fusion is not final cut pro. Pro. And so you have to learn a different app that behaves differently. And then if I want to work on a project on Final Cut Pro and then take it to LumaFusion or vice versa, it's either you can't do it or it's hard to do it. And this could be better. Apple could have its own pro apps. Apple could rethink multitasking. Apple could do

proper external device support or external display support there are lots of things that that would make this uh new ipad pro be like oh yes look what it enables for me but instead i worry that it ends up being an exercise of counting specs and saying look at all the specs that are big. And a number without any context, a feature without any way to really use it is pointless. So that's where we are with the iPad Pro. And I'm somebody who loves the iPad, and I use the iPad a lot. But I look at this thing, and I just think, where's the rest of it? And I apologize for that not being an original take, because it's literally every iPad Pro take for the last three years. But that,

you know, we're kind of there again, which is this is an amazing piece of hardware with some really remarkable technology on it. And now what? At least we can say it is a better buy than the 2020 iPad Pro because this one got some real great quality of life features like center stage like the display the 2020 ipad pro had essentially nothing it had the lidar scanner and the one extra gpu core i had somebody ask me like i would have liked you to run your benchmark test against the 2018 ipad pro as well and i'm like it's the same like except the gpu score would be slightly less because it would be seven eighths instead of you% of the GPU cores of the Z model. But they didn't change it.

It was so far ahead that they basically didn't change it and they just added a LiDAR scanner. And this is more than that. This is appreciably faster. But again, I was talking to the developer of Ferrite and he said MP3 exports are a lot faster because that's multi-threaded and they're a lot faster on the M1. And I edited a podcast this weekend on it. And yeah, that's great. That's an example where it's good.

And I'm sure video editing is more responsive. I exported a two hour almost long video from LumaFusion over the weekend. And, you know, it And it's pretty much the same performance as my MacBook Air, right? Or the 24-inch iMac. It's an M1. It does what you'd expect. It's just that in an iPad context, I just feel all of the... By calling it an M1, Apple is drawing attention to the fact that it's just as powerful as the Mac in terms of the hardware. And then you start looking around and say, well, yeah, but all of these things that I do on my Mac that I can't do on my iPad. I was seeing, I think it was Matt Cassinelli today on Twitter was saying that potentially Apple do a disservice by releasing the hardware before the software.

And I wonder what you thought about that. Would it be better to have at least waited until WWDC to show off the hardware and put the hardware on sale? Because then you could at least say, we've seen what iOS 15 can do and we know how that's going to take advantage of this. Especially with being so close, like a few weeks really difference.

I understand the argument of like, if you've got the hardware, release the hardware. Release the hardware. But the hardware development is going, it's in its pipeline and you're replacing the old model with a new model. And I don't think that the new model is harmed in some way by the fact that the software hasn't changed. It's more a frustration about the platform.

It's more a frustration about the platform, like holding off on it and not releasing a thing that you designed, you know, two years ago and built a year ago and now is ready for production. And then holding it for nine months or six months or even a month or two in order to reveal your plan for your next operating system release. It seems like a silly thing to ask. It's like you should just release the hardware when you release the hardware. If honestly, part of my, what my heart tells me is, if this was the case, we'd still be waiting for the 2018 iPad Pro to come out. Like, right? I mean, not really, but like they could have held that for a while and they could have held this.

Holding the hardware that already exists and could be mass produced because the software isn't ready is not only kind of a ridiculous suggestion, but it shows you just how broken this situation is. That's the solution is don't make the software look bad. Just wait with the hardware. We know you're way ahead in hardware. Just sit on your hardware for a year until the software can catch up. And that's the truth of it. So it's an amazing product. And if you're in the market for an iPad Pro, if you want that screen, if you want center stage, there's lots of reasons to get it. But yeah, we are put back in the position where we're hoping that the platform advances to make the more impressive hardware more useful. And I talk

about the screen a lot. Yes, the 11 is going to give you the M1 in center stage. It's just not going to give you the screen. So this goes for the 11-inch model as well. Yeah, I think that screen, though, it's a big feature of this device. It's huge. It's a huge feature. And it's the future of Apple displays. It very clearly is that this is where they're going next.

And I would be, I'd actually be surprised if you don't see it in Apple's next round of laptops. And probably if they do that higher end iMac, that it would be there too. Because this really feels like

it's a tech intro of something and center stage, actually. Those are tech intros of things that are going to go across the platform. They just happen to be in the iPad Pro first. This episode is brought to you by Public Sector Future. Public Sector Future

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And then the episode that I listened to is about mixed reality. And it was super interesting to hear some of the stuff that Mark was saying about AR on our phones right now and how that's kind of just really a tiny step into the overall future of what mixed reality technology can be because it's really just a small window and you're holding it and it's not in our vision and it was really intriguing to hear how mixed reality devices could be utilized to help us undertake specific tasks with things like instructions overlaid in front of your eyes and how they've actually been doing this stuff. And there was

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and go and check it out right now. Our thanks to Public Sector Future for their support of this show and RelayFM. So usually we would say right now in the show, it's time for hashtag ask upgrade, but we have more because there was a report we just couldn't let go because that's the laces powering down they

were so ready to go mark gorman released a report kind of detailing the future of apple's mac hardware last week and i wanted to touch on it we can go through all these things we can stop where we want to but there was a lot of interesting detail in here that I was afraid otherwise we wouldn't talk about for weeks. And I didn't want that to be the case, in case we see some of it before now. MacBook Pro will debut as soon

as early summer. Fingers crossed for WWDC. So stuff we know. 14 and 16 inches. MagSafe HDMI SD card. But it will feature new Apple silicon chips. These chips will feature eight high performance cores and two energy efficient cores, 16 or 32 graphics cores and up to 64 gigabytes of memory. Now, just to put this into perspective, the current M1, it's for high performance, for energy efficiency.

So, you know, so this will be more high performance cores, fewer energy efficiency cores, with the ability to now have up to 64 gigabytes of RAM. Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Yeah, so I, again, it's a mystery of how they're going to brand this, but my guess is that this is the m1x right essentially that this is not because it's coming as soon as early summer i'll have the as soon as it could be five years from now but it could be this summer early summer so it'd be midsummer late summer fall

those are all but as soon as early summer anyway spring no No way. So if you think about the A14 core that is in the iPad Air and then the iPhone, because they had the weird sequencing thing there. The way I generally view how Apple does their silicon advancement is they build a new base core every year. And we're in the A14 year. And the M1 is based on that A14 core. That's the chip generation, for lack of a better word, that we're on right now.

And so if there's going to be a new Apple Silicon chip this summer, it strikes me that it's more likely that it's based on that A14 core. And they've built a new model that's got a different set of characteristics but it's still based on that kind of fundamental um system and so you could see a scenario where m1 is essentially you know the a number the m processors are the a number minus 13 uh and they advance together every year. So this is, we're in M1 year. Year one of Apple Silicon is M1.

And this would be eight high-performance cores and two energy-efficient cores. Those would still be A14 cores, essentially, or M1 cores, but there are more of them. And so it's M1X. Or they could call it something else, but like, let's call it M1X, at least for now. It's that idea that it's more of the same. And if that disappoints you, it shouldn't.

Performance of Apple's processors historically has scaled basically with the number of high performance cores. Energy efficient cores are really nice, but obviously if you're measuring peak performance, it all comes out of the high performance cores. This rumored processor would mean that these rumored Macs would be literally twice as fast as the previous M1 Macs, which were already pretty fast. So that's pretty great. I hadn't thought of it that way. And then you throw in 16 or 32 graphics cores instead of eight. So you're going to double or triple your graphics performance.

And now you've got the memory to go up to 64 gigs of RAM. So yeah, it's a big step up. Apparently there's also going to be potentially a new Mac Mini with these same chips and 4 ports on them, which, okay. Fine.

Mark also details the potential for a new MacBook Air. Now this, Mark labels it to be a direct successor to the M1 chip. So let's imagine M2. And it would have the same CPU core count but would run faster. So this is all kind of tying into what you were saying, right? That this would be based on the A15 core. And there would be the same amount,

but they would run quicker because it's the new generation. And apparently they would also look to potentially increase graphics a little bit. And this new MacBook Air will probably be what we were talking about over the last couple of weeks of this new design with new colors. And, you know, we can expect this maybe towards the end of the year, maybe, or maybe next year. So that's your A15 generation and it would be the M2 and it would be, yeah, it would be the same CPU count as you said, and it will be faster because it's an A15 instead of an A14. It's an M2 instead of an M1, but not as fast as the, let's call it M1X. And then of course, this sets them up to then do another wave of high-end updates next year that are M2X, that are lots of cores of the new hot

thing. And they don't have to do it this way. And this may not be how they do it. But if you look at it from this perspective, it's like exactly their playbook for the iPad and the iPhone. And I think that although they can do whatever they want, the most likely scenario is that they're going to look what they did with the iPad and the iPhone and say, yeah, that works. Let's do that. scenario is that they're going to look what they did with the iPad and the iPhone and say, yeah,

that works. Let's do that. And make an M1 and an M1X and then an M2 and an M2X and have the, you know, and have it essentially be kind of consumer and pro of chip variants. And then that leads to the bigger question, which is, is Apple going to revise their computers every year? Maybe. Yeah, I don't maybe yeah now that they control the chips i mean would you just do refresh them every year because you control the chips you just drop in the new chip and and move along they could they could it'll be interesting to watch that if there are if like the mac mini is a great example where mark german says maybe or maybe not that i think that's like a great question of like what is is apple going to refresh all these models on a regular basis are they going to be like yeah maybe every two years

or every 18 months or something we'll see i think maybe the difference will be they can if they want to right where maybe they haven't been able to in the recent in recent memory if they want to just bump the chip every year with no change, they can do that. Sure, they can. And the iPad did go, as was just pointed out in the member discord, Apple sometimes goes, the iPad chip only gets updated every couple of years. Well, it's like, that's true. Although now it's the iPad and the Mac, right? So there's a little more weight behind doing it on a regular basis. But yeah, there's nothing that forces Apple to refresh their product line except when they want to. I just wonder if they get on a regular basis. But yeah, there's nothing that forces Apple to refresh their product line, except when they want to.

I just wonder like if they get on a cycle where they're rolling out a couple of chip variations every year, would they want to keep the old ones around or would they rather refresh everything? Because keeping in mind here that most of these updates won't be redesigns of the products. It'll be the same product that it looked like before with a different

chip inside. So it's still an update. It still has cost, but it's not quite the same as a complete rethink. And it would make sense that we would get a new MacBook Air a year after the first one, because the current M1 MacBook Air air is just the same macbook air as before and if they're going to redesign all of the machines potentially by that point or at least you know like we'll have say maybe another new iMac at some point and we'll have new mac pros and maybe there's a new mac pro you know you want to want a new macbook air in there you don't want like the most popular computer to be the only one that hasn't got a new design could be a bit strange now one of the things that actually the main thing i don't understand from

this report or at least the thing that i wouldn't have expected is a new low-end macbook pro which has the same chip as the macbook air and that's all it says now i expect here this is like a it looks like the current one but like how long are they going to keep that around and why? Yeah, that's like, is that not the existing 13-inch MacBook Pro? So would they do like an M2 13-inch MacBook Pro and keep it around? I mean, they may because I don't know why. It would make more sense for them not to do it that way. But if the rumors are true that there's going to be a 14-inch MacBook Pro, then they would have 13, 14, 16.

But, like, why is it a MacBook Pro if it's basically a MacBook Air? Like, why? How is that a MacBook Pro? I don't understand it. And would that be with a touch bar then? No. Right? Like, what is this computer?

Like, I don't understand this one. As I think of everything in the report, the thing that has the least information, and that might be for a reason, but like it was just like a really weird addition to me. Another weird thing, larger iMac, new processor, but put on hold for Apple to focus on the 24 inch. Yeah, I mentioned this earlier.

It is a mysterious bit of the report and it's unclear whether this is, again, who's the source? What were they working on? Yeah, was it really put on hold? Or did they have to pull some people off in order to ship the 24 and now they're going back to the other one?

But it is a little, has a little chilling effect right which is like oh maybe that larger iMac isn't coming right you know yeah but for all we know that was further along and they put it on you know and like we don't we don't have detail right on that it's true maybe they made some decisions about it I would say I'd still bet on it being done by this fall because i think apple wants this transition to happen quickly and now that they've got the 24 inch iMac out there having that intel that big intel iMac out there is just not like no gotta get rid of it gotta get rid of it

and then the new Mac Pro how about 20 or 40 cores. 16 or 32 high performance cores with 4 or 8 high efficiency cores, depending on whether you go for the 20 or 40 core option. 64 or 128 core GPU as an option. On paper being, I guess,

2 to 4 times more powerful than the Intel Mac Pro. Smaller physical design, but with a similar look i can't even fathom this computer jason i can't i can't imagine what this would be like to use like the 40 core version with 128 graphics cores like i can't even imagine what that sounds like a mac pro doesn't it it sounds like a very much a mac pro this this sounds like more like what i imagine in my mind the mac pro of old you know like when you would go to the configurator and you'd bump it all the

way to the top and it would be like so bananas compared to everything else like yeah i really i i'm super intrigued by this machine i don't really it's just like everything about it right like what is it going to be like on the inside what will it keep of the old one how expandable will it be right are apple's gpus the only gpus german still believes that it's actually going to be kind of like a mini version of the existing tower that they're gonna they're gonna shrink it down a little bit but still like the idea of an apple silicon based mac that's got expansion cards or internal storage or you know there's there's stuff that the mac pro has to deal with beyond just having lots of cores that are kind of part of what having a big tower computer means and what do they have to do? Because I do think that they're committed to building this computer, but what do they have to do to rethink how Apple

Silicon works? Because they've already had to come from iPhone and iPad to the Mac and that necessitated changes. And now they're going to have to make more changes in order to handle a sort of Mac Pro kind of architecture. But what is interesting here is we had a thought for a long time, which is like, well, what does a Mac Pro running Apple's ARM processors even look like? Like, what would that even be? And what Mark Gurman is saying is they're going to take their A14 or A15, probably the A15, and they're just going to put 40, a 15 cores and, uh, uh, 128 GPU cores in this thing and, uh, go to town. It's like, okay, well, that's one way to do it.

Right. It's just like, just all the course because pro pro workflows are mostly multi-core enabled, right? Like I'm trying to imagine, um, one of my multi-core enabled, right? Like I'm trying to imagine one of my multi-core plugins, audio plugins running on 40 cores. Like, yeah, that would be pretty good. That'd be pretty good. Pretty fast. Yeah, super wild. And there was a good story that we didn't,

maybe we can find and put in the show notes. There's a good story about last week that I read that was basically an ode to the efficiency cores. And the article essentially said one of the reasons that the M1 Macs feel faster is because now that they've got the efficiency cores and the performance cores, what it does is it allows Apple to do a level of scheduling of tasks that forces your kind of like regular stuff onto the efficiency cores. And so that's always going on, but it doesn't slow down your need for bursts of performance, which go to the performance cores.

And the idea that this architecture makes your Mac feel faster because it can prioritize all those different tasks. And I thought that was really smart. And I think that that is when I think of a Mac Pro with eight efficiency cores and 32 performance cores, I think, okay,, I can see that, right? Where it's like you expect a lot of good Mac Pro performance happening on a baseline, and then you want the enormous performance when you really need it. And so having four or eight

efficiency cores, it's going to feel like a really fast computer. But then when you give it a job, it's going to crank up those high performance cores and spin the fans and it's going to be very impressive jason i've realized if we don't do ask upgrade today we're probably going to do it for like two or three weeks because of the next few episodes let's do a few today i'm going to warm up the lasers hashtag ask upgrade question first one from rajiv would you ever consider releasing a podcast episode that supported spatial audio? Okay.

Total Party Kill is done in stereo with panning. Incomparable Radio Theater has done that. I've done stereo podcasts before. We had some stereo effects in the Outgrade episode last year for some of our fun. A lot of people listen with one headphone and they have to turn it to mono because they don't want any effects. Any attempts to do stereo panned episodes. Uh, people don't, a lot of people don't like it and I'm not sure you would like it if you heard it. Uh, would we consider it maybe, but it would probably be as a joke and we'd probably need to release a version that didn't have it. I think most people just don't, they think that this sounds cool and then they would not want that but uh but you never know

you never know what what you might do but yeah i mean mostly it's not appropriate oh yeah there's no way i would record say release like a regular episode of upgrade and special audio but we might if if there was a like a as well like i don't even know how you would do it and really take advantage of it right if there was some beyond stereo if we did like a 5.1 episode somehow then i would maybe consider it if i was then making something specifically to take advantage of the fact that we have that available to us right right um and i really don't like the mixing of left and right personally like i've heard it done aggressively and and and i don't like it i made that mistake way back in the day it just doesn't work the truth is that 90 i would say 98 of your listening

audience doesn't want it and wouldn't notice it and is not interested in it. So, yeah. So Aaron asks, after a year of iOS 14 being around, do you find that you're hiding most apps from the home screen or have you kept most of them in folders on the home screen? So using App Library and that kind of stuff. I only have one page that's got apps on it. And so I have gone for no folders and everything beyond page one is in App Library.

Exactly the same. I have an extra widget page, but there's no other app icons on it. Right. Everything's gone now. are no folders and everything beyond page one is an app library exactly the same i haven't i have an extra widget page but there's no other app icons on it everything's gone now i'm either searching for it or app library and i look forward to doing that on my ipad me too hopefully oh my god just i have all these folders they're just like these bins just put apps in like i don't even i never look in there i don't know like i have just one folder called tools and it's like eight pages and it's like i everything just gets put in there i don't know what it's in there and alex asks having seen assistive touch on the apple watch

which we were talking about earlier used to navigate the screen with hand and wrist movements what do you think the chances are that the watch becomes an input or control method for future AR devices? I love this question. I did not consider this. This is very intriguing to me. Like Apple's getting good at sensing hand movements. This could be really interesting for when you're trying to control computer devices

that are in your eyes. Yeah, I don't know if the Apple Watch actually becomes the input because you generally you're also then saying you only have one arm that is doing input and the other one has nothing because you're not wearing a a watch on it but i could see this as being a spin-off technology of them trying to do understanding and stuff yeah like that you would put say two little wristbands on and then that's it right and could be you know and that could be how you could control the mixed reality device at home or something like

that you know it could start sensing how you would type on a magical invisible keyboard like all that kind of stuff right very interesting technology if they can then harness it to do other stuff but in its current like of just helping people who need additional assistance with their devices is also an amazing thing. Alright, we'll be back next week with the draft for WWDC. Yeah, get ready. If you would

like to listen to longer episodes of Upgrade with no ads, you can go to getupgradeplus.com and sign up. Thank you so much to every one of you that does. If you want to find Jason online, you can go to SixColors dot com and he is at Jsnell J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at iMike. I-M-Y-K-E.

Thank you so much to Memberful, Pingdom and Public Sector Future from Microsoft for the support of this episode. And thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody.