Upgrade - 377: Most Importantly, Compressor

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

The new MacBook Pros are here! Jason and Myke break down what's new with Apple's pro laptops, welcome the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, and even devote a little time to new AirPods and colorful HomePods. Also, Myke's wallet is a little bit lighter.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 377 today's show is brought to you by things capital one and set up my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hi jason snow hi mike hurley we just got finished with the big Apple event here, the big October Apple event. Unleashed. We did. Unleashed. It was unleashed.

And it did look more like a Star Trek Warped Field than a Star Wars hyperspace. And in fact, there is a shot in the event where the Enterprise goes into warp. So I guess that's what it was. So that is my hashtag snell talk question for you comes from me again and it's follow up from the last one that we did on the draft episode jason do you feel that apple have been unleashed yes okay yes it's all the reasons that we said

right it's uh it's the the processor power of the pro chips and it's the magsafe thing which i thought it was well i mean we'll get to it but i i guess it shows you something about how much they wanted to hammer home about performance that they didn't make a bigger thing about magsafe but we're gonna make a big thing about magsafe that's what's gonna happen we're gonna do that job for them because i think it's a big deal before we get into anything today we have a very quick announcement at the top of the show merch is back merch is back we are doing our promised uh fall or at least fall in this particular hemisphere hoodie return we also have a an upgrade t-shirt return so if you want to get yourself something nice for the

holidays or whatever um we we got you covered yeah so we haven't brought these hoodies and shirts uh back since like 2019 so we have a white gray and black version of the upgrade logo team of a great red upgrade logo and for the first time we're bringing new colors to the much-loved Upgrade hoodie. So it's previously only been in black, but we now have a red and heather gray option with a new pro black and white Upgrade logo embroidered onto the chest with, as always, a very special message for only the true Upgradians on the inside of said hoodie. message for only the true upgradians on the inside of said hoodie uh this these these uh wonderful upgrade logo merchandise products are only going to be around uh for a couple of weeks i think the

second of november so you go about two weeks uh to get these things first or second of november you go to upgradeyourwardrobe.com and you can pick them up or you can uh check the link in the show notes and you can get some wonderful upgrade merch can uh check the link in the show notes and you can get some wonderful upgrade merch and help support the show and just to be clear these are uh the hoodie as always is in my favorite hoodie um and the i i said please independent training company hoodie which is my favorite super good hoodie and uh new color options for the the logo is is white and black and so that gave us the options to do the gray and the red yeah and they both look great and it's the first time we've done the upgrade logo t

with the logo in red instead of black so it looks pretty cool too yeah so we've got some some new options there colorways as they say colorways yeah the colors are as infected are the colors are oh yes he got all up in there and changed and fiddled with the merchandise. Should we do the draft results, Jason Snell? Yes, let's do the draft results. We conferred before the show and I am the winner. Yes. Congratulations.

You now win the year. I can finally put this horrible year behind me. Yeah, we'll just move on. That's right. I'm glad we don't have any Twitter accounts or anything. It's just, yes, we acknowledge it and let's move on. However, I will say, I think we did really well. In our MacBook Pro section, I went five for five and you went four for five. Yeah.

The only thing that separated us there is that you made the, I would say, extremely logical suggestion that they put an Ethernet jack in the power adapter if they're going to do MagSafe, like on the iMac. And they didn't do that. I kind of can't believe they haven't done this. I assume there must be a data transfer issue with this MagSafe connector they're putting on the laptops. So here's what I think.

And I think maybe if you think of it this way, they made the right decision. Although I would love for them to offer this down the road but the big change with magsafe as opposed to all previous magsafes is it used to be magsafe with one and two of magsafe this is magsafe three you had a magsafe cable that ran to the power block and it was hardwired into the power block which meant you could only ever use MagSafe with the Apple power block. Theoretically, there were licensees and there were people who did it kind of on the sly. But it was, you had to use their block, which means that if you wanted to attach to just a plug in your car or a plug in an airplane USB plug or whatever, no, you couldn't do any of that.

You just had to use the Apple power cable. And this MagSafe 3 is a MagSafe 3 to USB-C plug. That's all it is. And as a result, they would have to also build a new power block, a new USB-C thing that also had an Ethernet jack in it. It was like a little hub. And so I can see why they maybe opted for the simpler solution of, we're just going to USB-C all the things, rather than create some sort of proprietary, only works with our laptops,

adds, piggybacks Ethernet kind of thing. So if they had to choose, maybe this is the right choice, but it is a cool idea to get that Ethernet plug off the table and not have to use a dongle for it. But that was not the case. The colors our draft was very innovative. It went the way we expected, really. It went essentially with our two picks, our first two picks, which were silver and space gray. We really bet on the fact that they were going to.

two picks our first two picks which were silver and space gray we really bet on the fact that they were going to these also these laptops predate some of apple's other color moves because they were supposed to be all the rumors suggest june release and that was the era of silver and space gray before we entered the weird starlight midnight zone that we now reside in at least temporarily so we'll see what they do in the long run with uh with their pro laptops and really with all the macs uh pro and not and what color changes they make they're having only really seen these and those imax that are colorful uh where they're going to go but in the end we split that so basically say no points for that and then our other picks round we split i you and i both had airpods versions of airpods details that we got right uh you called out john turnus being introducing a product he absolutely

did that he was the kind of guiding force he was one level of parentheses in from tim is it fair to say john turnus is mac daddy now i'm pretty sure he is right he has to share custody with with craig federighi though right like because yeah but craig is software daddy craig he you know that's fair all right okay um and then the other one i got right in here was i said that they would mention a new version of an apple pro app figuring that they would have some update that would enable something and mike they mentioned three they mentioned logic they mentioned final cut pro but most importantly compressor everyone's favorite everybody's favorite compressor uh somebody who's compressed video with compressor

i'm like okay you were spot on with uh logic like you said in the show that they would talk about spatial audio and they did i would love them to actually release that because i think it's the third time they've spoken about this they've spoken about i knew they'd bring it up uh but they also mentioned that they're doing a motion tracking feature so you can do those things where the camera pans, but the titles pan with it like they're actually in the shot and stuff. They've got that feature in an update to Final Cut and it'll use the neural engine and blah, blah, blah, all those things. But they definitely use that. So I got that one right. use that so i got that one right however i missed on the silicon apple silicon mac mini which i still feel like they could introduce at any point with these new chips and just say oh yeah we also did a new mac mini but they didn't do it in the show and they haven't done it today

um you called out the affordable external display we also didn't get that how many times did they mention displays in this presentation like so many so many you hey you can have four displays, however many displays it is now. But obviously you have to spend like $700,000 if you want them to be Apple-branded displays. Yeah, that was frustrating. Yeah, but there are so many. Yeah, I know. It's still a pain point, and I hope they address it. I got the Jon Stewart comedy bit right.

They instead did a garage band thing where you remixed all the sounds that I think Stephen Hackett and I both looked at and were amazed by. I appreciated that it was in a garage. You didn't get the Jon Stewart comedy bit right. I did not get the Jon Stewart comedy bit right. No Jon Stewart. No, I didn't get Jon Stewart.

Instead, they did this garage band thing, which was in a garage. There was like laundry and stuff. That was fun, right? It was pretty close. And yeah, they're sampling Apple sounds, including an appearance from the ipod hi-fi who had that in the apple keynote bingo ipod hi-fi would reappear along with the original imac and there's a lot of really great little tidbits in there uh sampled by that guy who's like by his laundry um which

is funny because that's like very much like my setup well what i liked is that person had a pro display xdr just in the middle of their garage somebody said pro display xdr and in the garage uh somebody in a slack that i'm in uh was like that's interesting and i thought well those big holes make it really easy for the spiders to crawl in there oh but the good news is they can crawl right back out because the holes are really big and i guess so xdr do you remember when you had a spider in your computer yes yes i do that's why i mentioned it it's uh and you said mac os monterey shipping in october honestly we could have gone either way we asked steven and he said he thinks you didn't get this but it's arguable

that by the transitive property you did because these new Macs are shipping next week and they are going to have macOS Monterey which means presumably that they won't just ship on that and I know Apple actually has announced that macOS Monterey is shipping on Monday Monday? A week from today as we record it will be shipping on the

25th of October they didn't really mention in the keynote you kind of have to do some logic work to get there, not logic pro, but actually like Mr. Spock kind of logic. Yeah. But it doesn't matter because that made the score seven,

six. If we had tied at seven, the over under set at 60 minutes, the show 50 minutes long. I, I chose the under or rather you chose the over and I got the under. So whether it, whether it tied seven, seven, or I think we're officially going to rule at 7-6, but even if we tied, I would have won.

So it doesn't matter to litigate it because I got the under, and that's the draft. So now we can never speak of this year's drafts again. Yeah, the drafts are done. Congratulations, Jason, on your win on this draft and your win for the year. Hard fought year. This is the first and your win for the year hard fought year this is the first non-drawer of the year indeed so i sort of won by one one point in the end uh so there's obviously as we record there's always things going on right so like people are digging through web pages and the wonderful relay fm members discord is always throwing things in

there as we're gone which is very helpful because there's some stuff that's pertinent to discussion and i just think a bit real-time follow-up before we begin so our good friend mac os monterey which is shipping on monday apparently which i'm i'm intrigued about uh found out that uh steve trout smith friends of the show tweeted this that safari is going to clearly be redesigned again. Old tabs appear to be back in one of the images on the macOS 12. Yeah, well, I mean, something that I wrote about last week when they changed it a little bit is that I got the distinct impression that they weren't done.

And so, yes, I'm sure they're not. And I would imagine that there would be more changes probably rolled out. There'll probably be a beta this week that is the final for next week and that has more tab changes in it. That feels like a real coming in hot on that one, right? It's, what is it, Monday today, Monday next week. Apparently, there's going to be a new design. Nobody has it installed.

Maybe by the end of the day today, people will start having it installed. I wouldn't be surprised if they released a beta at some point, but, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's happening again. They're changing it again. Um, I think it's going to be looking at this image. This kind of seems like best of all worlds kind of thing for Safari, but, uh, we, I guess we could talk about that maybe in the coming weeks. Uh, just real quick on Monterey before we move on to everything else today. What do you think about stability and stuff? I keep seeing people say it's shaky. I don't agree.

I think Monterey works fine. Cool. I think it's not hard to use it. I've been using it for a little while now as my main system. It works fine. I don't, I'm not running into any big problems, uh, any weirdnesses. I, I think there are issues with some of the features, but they're mostly like, yeah, shortcuts doesn't work very well because it's kind of a beta, uh, and, and is not really in a great state. Like it is on iOS in fact. But as just day-to-day use,

I basically haven't even noticed. I have to remind myself sometimes that Monterey is what I'm using now because it's basically, it feels just the same as Big Sur. It's just the same. The release candidate is out now, says Zach in the Discord.

Yeah, see, there you go. Probably with tabs. Probably with tabs. Probably with tabs. This episode is brought to you by Things, the award-winning to-do app. Today I want to tell you about a fantastic feature that's just been added to Things. Things now supports Markdown inside

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Oh, yes, my. My good friend. Love Siri. That's what we learned today. I was not expecting music. Like I expected AirPods, right? But I did not expect music as like a part of the presentation today. It was interesting. I didn't either.

I think it's a good example of storytelling on Apple's part. They wanted to tell something a little bit broader, tell a little bit broader story than just we have some new AirPods. And so putting it in kind of a context, and they had some other product revisions that they wanted to do, HomePod mini revision of a sort, and a new service that they wanted to offer. And so they rolled those together and told a little bit broader story about it rather than just dropping the AirPods. And that makes sense. Like if you've got these things floating around there,

why not unify them and tell a single story about audio? And in terms of what Zane introduced with his good friend Siri, it's this Apple Music Voice Plan, which is $5 a month and in 17 countries later this fall. And I saw a lot of people sort of baffled by this, like, this is a weird thing.

Why are they doing this? But my recollection, when I got an Amazon Echo, one of the first things that Amazon offered me was a cheap Amazon Music version that only worked on my Amazon Echo.

Yeah. And I used that for a little while. And then they added out Apple Music support or whatever. I decided to dump it. But this is that essentially, which is there's no, you can't make playlists. There's no support for

spatial audio. It's literally a super limited access to the playlist that Apple curates and access to the library. And you've got to use Siri to do it. And there's probably a reason in terms of how they negotiate these plans, but there's a precedent, right? Like there are precedents for these kinds of super limited things. And so the idea here is you buy a couple of home pods and pay $5 a month and they have access to all the music in the world. And that's, you know, it's not for everybody, but as somebody who did at least for a little while use one of those similar plans on the amazon echo i kind of get it i i see why it's available it's not for everybody but it's like a way in if you and it's and it's actually less uh limited than those are because i think

this is on any apple device you just have to use siri in order to to kick it off yeah i was like it was surprising at first because they were like hey we've got loads of new playlists for different moods and activities you can just ask for them i'm like why what is that like you know like you can say like i want to go hiking give me some music and they've put some playlists together but it turns out if now all you can do on the Apple Music voice plan, which is $4.99 a month, is just use your voice, then you need more options

for if you want specific playlists, right? You can't necessarily think like, hey, I would like to listen to Apple alternative hits, right? Because if you can't see it, how would you know that they even have that, right? So by saying like, hey, I want some music for the afternoon, or it's, you know, I want some music for a sunny day, like maybe they can use more contextual stuff to try and find music that way. I was surprised, and I think pleased by that, when they were talking about Apple Music Voice Plan,

I thought it was going to be something like a Pandora, right? Where it's like, you can only say, hey, play me the radio or whatever. But they said you can play everything, but just only by your voice. When they started introducing it, I actually had a thought that maybe it would be a free tier with ads or something. But Apple's not going to do that. Instead, this is the free tier. It's $5 a month. But this is their low-cost entry, compromised, but still gives you access to the library. And I totally see there being use cases for this. It's the kind of thing where, yeah, you buy a couple of these devices and you want to do that. Now, if you've got Spotify or something like that, then you can do that too. But, but if you've got nothing and you just want to set up a couple of speakers and have it play music, this will, this will give you that, that little tiny chunk of Apple music. So yeah. And that playlist thing, that was actually,

I think that the beats service was really good at was the sort of like mood based playlists where it's like, I'm cooking or whatever. And I'm feeling, you know, they had that, like the little two, two input thing where you'd be like, I'm cooking and I want to, you know, they had that like the little two input thing where you'd be like, I'm cooking and I want the mood to be fun. And then it would be like, here is a playlist for you. And those were all, I don't think those were all algorithmically generated. I think somebody built a bunch of different playlists. They said they got their people to come and like choose the songs, you know? Yeah. So more like that is good. And so I'm glad that Apple, you know, made the point of saying we're adding a bunch of new playlists for context because I think that's super important whether you've got the voice plan or not, especially if you are just – sometimes you're just in the mood.

You're like, I'm not going to pick up my phone and pick a playlist. I'm like, just play me something for this. And so the more you can get into every little context and have it be good, the better, I would say. I'm intrigued to see what the like, there has to be some form of explanation UI, right? Like if you sign up for this, there's got to be some kind of like, here's what you do, right? Like, you know what I mean? My guess is that it would be in in voice right i mean you can even sign up in voice it's very much like what amazon does you can actually

just say i forget what the wording is but apparently you just say i want to try the the siri music plan and um what is it users can subscribe to the apple music voice plan through siri by saying ahoy just say it, Jason. Come on. Start. Well, no, I especially don't want to do this. Say it. Ahoy telephone, start my Apple Music Voice trial, right? Which is very much what Amazon does. They want you to sign up on device. And then I'm sure there's some sort of like, would you like to know more about how to do this? You can say things like play a cooking playlist or play a hiking playlist

and that they'll do it that way is my guess this is part like i think you got that from the website i think they have a new thing called only on apple this is this is like the angela aaron's thing right me at apple only on apple the best experience is only on Apple. What does that mean? Apple's not like a thing. It's like a collection. There's not enough time today for me to start getting into that. Let's talk about some... They did some hardware stuff. So they resurrected the Home Set again for the HomePod Mini.

And they now... The colors are... Has found their way to the HomePod Mini and done a good job. Yeah, so the colors are zipped on over from the iMac and bestowed upon the HomePod Mini some colors. Not all the colors, but some colors. Yellow, blue, and orange. And the little wrapped cables and all that. Which I think I would bet you

they're the exact same color as the IMAX. Oh, it's 100% the same cable, like with our shadow over down, they're the same cables. Yeah, it looks very much like the exact same cable. They look just like the power cable. So yeah, I mean, look, yellow, orange, and blue, why not, right?

Like, why not? I think this is a good idea. Just add some color to it. They could be fun. I'm super tempted to get a yellow one for my desk to match my iMac, but I'm not going to do that because I don't really use my HomePod Mini very much other than just what I use my HomePod Mini for the most

here at the studio is being the hub for HomeKit. But I have kind of everything turns on and off through automations, but it's here being the permanently always on hub. These new colors will be joining the space gray, which I would have just naturally assumed was black, but space gray and white versions of the HomePod mini, all $99 on sale in November. And then I think the last part of the music portion of this presentation

was focused around the AirPods. So the presenter was first kind of showing off spatial audio, and they did a really cool promo thing in the Steve Jobs Theater with like the graphics and the screens and stuff. It looked really good. And they were like really hammering home the Dolby Atmos, which by the way, so they've been adding tons of new music with the Dolby Atmos support, the special audio support. They just added the Hamilton soundtrack. Oh my God, Jason.

Oh, in Dolby Atmos, wow. Yeah. I listened to the opening track yesterday and it moved me. Like I had tears in my eyes because like, you know, Hamilton goes, the moment when like, you know, like basically the entire chorus starts, like it's very enveloping. If you know, Hamilton goes. The moment when, like, you know, basically the entire chorus starts,

like, and everybody, it's very enveloping. If you're a Hamilton fan, I really recommend it because it sounds incredible. There's also, there's a new mix of Let It Be, like the album, right?

Of the Beatles. Yes. And Let It Be, the title track in Atmos, is also amazing. So there's a lot, if you haven't checked it out in a while, there's lots of new music being added to Spatial Audio.

And what's happening is kind of, I think, what we hoped would happen is once it was out and available, the mixes will just get better as people know more what they're doing with it. So I think some of the more recent stuff I've been even more impressed with because it feels like the mixes, they're kind of really finding their place. I recommend it if you haven't checked it out um so they were talking

about Dolby Atmos and they're like hey you know the Max and the Pro AirPods they support it and now what about the regular AirPods so third gen what about the regular AirPods yeah third generation which as you got the draft point for are are a shape inspired by the AirPods Pro. They look very much like AirPods Pro, but without the custom ear tips, without the little interchangeable ear tips. It's just hard plastic. But otherwise, they look like an AirPods Pro, and the case looks like an AirPods Pro case. It may be the AirPods Pro case.

Honestly, I don't know if it's any different. It may be the AirPods Pro case. Honestly, I don't know if it's any different. But what they've rolled in here then is spatial audio support i i read it and in true true modern apple fashion they're still selling the second generation airpods for 129 these new ones will be 179 so they so i don't remember the prices previously um i always previously. I should always write this down before the event begins. Do you remember how much

the regular AirPods were? I feel like they were somewhere in that region. My expectation is AirPods 3 have taken that price point and then AirPods 2 have gone down in price. So Zach, love this.

Zach in the chat was $159 or $199 because you could get them with or without the wireless charging case. So they're basically bang in the middle. Because the new case has MagSafe and wireless charging support. Right. Which is the same as the AirPods Pro, by the way. I think in the presentation,

they kind of made it seem like there was some kind of special MagSafe, but AirPods Pro do charge on MagSafe because MagSafe is just a Qi charger at the end of the day. So the overall shape of them, they, you know, they look more like AirPods Pro. I'm going to be really keen to know, like some of the people, like we have friends, like Stephen Hackett, for example, doesn't like AirPods Pro shape-wise, but likes regular AirPods. Like people, I know that there are a bunch of people in this camp that couldn't really take the AirPods Pro shape or the in-ear part, and I'm intrigued to see how they find AirPods 3 from a comfort perspective. That's going to be really intriguing to find out.

Yeah, it's got the little sensor now in the smaller stem, so no more tapping the side of your head. They've added a new low distortion driver and longer battery life. So I don't remember if the regular AirPods were in the Find My network, but I saw that these ones were as well. So, you know, basically this is exactly what you'd expect from AirPods.

Apple mentioned they're the best selling headphones or earphones in the world, which obviously they are. This seems like a really solid update that will probably last the next few years right i think airpods is something that they know what they've got they can produce them a massive scale for a good price i will say i know it's true apple fashion thing but i actually do think this is a product where it's it is a good idea to still keep the old version around

the old version is great and if you can just make it cheaper and cheaper to get into the AirPods lifestyle, I think that's a good thing. Yeah, the one that I thought about for this is a parts thing, which is just, this feels like Apple also optimizing for AirPods now and saying, let's use a bunch of the stuff we use for AirPods Pro in AirPods,

not just to make a better AirPod product, but also to sort of like we almost like they built a framework with a foundation, let's say, with AirPods Pro, and they want to use some of those same pieces in AirPods, whereas the original AirPods were their own thing, and then they kind of re-engineered it for AirPods Pro. This feels like more like, can we simplify the stuff we need to make?

And eventually the second generation AirPods will go away. And then AirPods will be kind of like, they'll have more in common and that'll make it easier for Apple to manufacture these things. And that struck me that that was something that they were doing in here too. By the way, I've heard from people

who don't like the little squeeze control on the AirPods Pro. And I don't understand them, but they're out there. I think this is a big boost for AirPods because I hate the tapping on the ears thing. And I much prefer squeezing the stems to do control. This episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Setapp. Getting things done is a challenge that everyone struggles with. One way to tackle it is to make sure that you have the right tools for you and your computer. And that means having the right apps. Setapp is on a mission to help users get

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If you like it, you pay just $9.99 per month. That's Setapp.com to try Setapp free for a week. If you like it, you pay just $9.99 per month. That's setapp.com. Our thanks to Setapp for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right, we should start getting into the two-part main event, the double bill, as it were, of this event. The first part being Apple Silicon. So Tim Cook mentioned that Apple is one year into a two-year transition. I was surprised that he mentioned that. They must still be confident they're going to have this done by the end of next year. Or was it midway through next year? One of the two, right? Two years. It depends on how you define what a two-year transition is. Did it start in June?

Did it start in the fall? I would say it probably started in November of last year when they introduced the first M1 Macs. And so they've got until November of next year to complete the two-year transition. Yeah, which I think is still, I'm pleased to hear that. So maybe by the end of next year, we should have everything that will, I guess, include the Mac Pro,

at least information about it, if not its release. And they were tooting the horn of Apple Silicon that the response has been off the charts mac had the best year ever because of it blah blah blah but then we get into the new m1 chips m1 pro and m1 max yeah i guess they really like pro and max not pro max though just max yeah that's gonna i know i'm gonna get that wrong a lot um i am on board with this personally i think that this is much better naming than adding letters to things yeah i mean m1x was a good

way of referring to this thing i was looking back it's been helpful it's been a good shorthand for us for yeah i was looking at my um speculative charts that i made and i kept putting them in quotes right because it's who knows what it's actually going to be called. It was just a useful thing, but this is for, so something we've talked about briefly as this transition has been going on, which is how do you market different versions of a chip? If you're Apple, we know that Intel has ways of doing it and other chip makers have different ways of doing it, describing what generation this is and what's different about it. But how is Apple going to handle it? And this seems like a pretty reasonable thing, which is they've got M number and then they'll have M number pro and M number max.

And who knows? Maybe there will be M number pro max at some point. Who knows? I'll also say these are chip families themselves. They all have the 10 cores, the eight performance cores. Oh, yeah. Right, so it's twice

as many performance cores as the M1. They both have that. But on the GPUs, it's not just 16 and 32. There's also a 24 variant that you can get on the 14-inch MacBook Pro.

And, of course, the RAM that you have to configure as you build this system on a chip varies as well. So there's even some variance within the chips in terms of what's available. Do you think that's binning? It might be. I don't know enough about chip stuff, but it wouldn't shock me if the M1 Max 24 is a Bind 32.

But either way, they're differentiating. It's not like every config has its own name. And that means that they're more expansive. They can have an M1 or an M2 Max driving a Mac Pro that is beyond, or maybe that's the Pro Max. Who knows how they want to do it, but this gives them some flexibility to talk about their chips while also, I think, answer to another question that we got, also keeping the clarity of the chip line that this is the M1. So just in the 14,

you can get the M1 Pro with an 8-core CPU and 14-core GPU, 10-core and 14-core, 10-core and 16-core, then you can get the M1 Max with a 10-core CPU, 24-core GPU, and a 10-core CPU and 32-core GPU. So they've got a spread. Speaking of binning, the 14, yeah, the 14 base model is an 8-core, which means it's six performance cores, which is really interesting, right? So that's, and that's, that's binning, right? That's clearly binning. So anyway, these things have room to spread.

They're not, just as with the M1, they're not like the specs are the same for every model. There's variance inside the names too, but it gives them a couple of big baskets from marketing purposes to explain. And people roll their eyes at like the word marketing but like marketing also that's good encompasses explaining your product to customers right you're going it's not just explaining it to the press it and doing ads it's explaining to customers what the difference is between this chip this chip and this chip and so now they can say

m1 m1 pro m1 max and yes there's variation inside there on all three of those. But it gives you something to hold on to, like the good, better, best, basically, is what's going on here. Yeah. And, you know, you can have, there's up to 64 gigabytes of RAM now, but that requires the M1 Max. On the Max, right. Yeah. that requires the m1 max on the max right yeah the 32 so it's 16 on the m1 32 on the m1 pro and 64 on the m1 max and and the the memory bandwidth goes up as well like there's like the m1 max is not just a little bit bigger m1 pro it's got a lot of other like the memory bandwidth

and all of that there's a lot going on in there so it's it's gonna be interesting to see at when they ship sort of like what all the breakdowns really are i i liked um johnny sruji's charts which are you know they they actually referred to like what what the pete mystery pc they were comparing themselves to there was a little like text at the bottom that said what it was. I thought that was nice. Oh, really? And they're making the same case. Yeah, yeah.

I missed that. It said the performance PC. It had down there what Alienware or whatever the performance PC laptop was. I would be really keen to see what that is and cannot wait for all of the tech YouTubers who actually do the comparison now. For sure. Because I want to see that.

I want to see that. I want to see, like, show me, right? And so obviously Apple is very... Razor Blade, one of the Razor Blades. It was the Razor Blade, yeah. Okay, that's a good one. And I think, again, Apple is always going to do whatever makes them look the best, right?

It is marketing. This is what's happening here. That said, it seemed to me, at least at a glance during the event, not knowing about this category, and I agree, I look forward to the people who really care about performance PC laptops to talk about how this really compares in the real world. But the idea that when they said, look, on this chart where we're looking at power and performance, we're faster and we use way less power. And then they'd had that one example where they said, we're in the ballpark, essentially.

They weren't as fast, like as the fastest, fastest. But they said, but we use way less power. And then you run on battery and they drop way down because they just can't do it when they're not plugged in. But I liked that moment only because it was Apple, I will admit begrudgingly, and they put a little bow on it to make it seem like we're in the ballpark, right? It's like, that means you're slower. But it made me get, I think, a pretty clear idea of how Apple views where they are with the competition. And then yes, it will now need to be proved out by, like Apple doesn't make up those numbers. Apple has a whole team called the Performance

Marketing Group that includes a bunch of people I used to work with at Macworld and Macuser. They do those tests, but obviously the ones that they're going to show in the charts they're going to show are the ones that make Apple look the best. And other people may make different judgments that they think are a better reflection of reality of how people use this stuff. And so that's going to be really interesting to dig into those highly technical people who are doing that stuff. But at a glance, it looks really good. But it's not surprising because we know the legacy of Apple's chip development for the iPhone and the iPad over the years. We're just seeing more cores and way more GPU cores than we've ever seen before. So I don't know if we detailed it, but the 10 core CPU, so it's a 10

core CPU maximum across both with eight high performance and two efficiency cores. Right. And they say 70% faster than the M1, but really when it comes down to is that it's uh the m1 is uh what four high performance is that right and too high efficiency let's just say yeah let's say yes let's just say yes the exact so really it's scaling the high performance cores that matters that's the thing that matters the most and so you're getting up to 10 core and that's across so basically all of the m1 max and pro just have a double the the high performance core count from the m1 just straight up and then the variance comes in in memory bandwidth and in graphics and in some little pieces too so it's so memory bandwidth is a double the pro on the max the gpu cores up, up all the way to potentially 32 from the 16 Max GPU on the Pro model.

And then the other things that I thought were like little tidbits that you might have missed. The M1 Max has two video encode engines. So it's going to be faster at encoding video because it's got two engines to throw the work at. It's got two of those pro res engines so that there's a pro res encode decode engine in the chip in the pro which for people who use apple's pro res uh video codec like you're going to benefit from having it be built into the silicon that's going to be a big deal and then there's two of those on the max i think they said later on if it's truthy who was a previous guest on the show yes some time ago two years ago talking about the 16 macbook pro back then yeah sruthi said that the i think the 16 inch could like encode video like faster than a mac pro with an after with the

afterburner card because the afterburner is also doing that pro res thing the afterburner card specifically made for pro res right yeah they basically it basically built in again this is a simplification i'm sure a pro video person will tell me something very specific about it but philosophically it's like they wanted to build the afterburner into the chip or at least the parts they needed right like just like the small as much as you could but essentially they have put into the system on a chip something specific right to actually make the video work right and i i love to see it like i think this is fantastic i i'm not worried about that myself but if i was like oh on the occasion when i like encode something from uh final cut well now i'll get that benefit, rather than being like, oh, you know,

if I want to shoot in ProRes one day, am I going to want one of these Afterburner cards for gosh knows how much money? It's like, no, the MacBook Pro can just handle it. You know, and again, we'll look to the future in the coming weeks for sure, but what is a Mac Pro going to do, Jason? My God.

Yeah, I do wonder what a Mac Pro will look like. And I think we've seen the start of what their ambition is with the Macs, which is building in a bunch of stuff that they feel like they know that the pros want. I think the open question is still, does Apple feel like there's a place in its world for any graphics system that isn't Apple's own graphics system? And will that be necessary? Are there customers for the Mac Pro who just, you know, I know your graphics are great, Apple, but I really need to put in a card that does this. I don't know the answers to that. And I'm also not that customer. So I don't even know the questions that they would be asking.

But I think that's a question, right? Is that Apple's never done support on their Silicon for an external discrete GPU. So that's like up in the air for the Mac Pro. But you can see in terms of like base performance that they would be able to offer Pros, that here it is in a chip that's designed for a Pro laptop, although,

by the way, these chips are totally also going to run on the big iMac, at least optionally, and maybe on a Mac Mini at some point. We will see more use for the M1 Pro and the M1 Max than just in laptops, but they seem like they were use for the M1 Pro and the M1 Max than just in laptops,

but they seem like they were designed for the laptops. Like I'm starting to really wonder if for the typical Pro Mac user, if they're going to need discrete, like external graphics cards, because they could just keep putting more GPUs in it. Just keep putting them in there. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is there. And it's very technical and it has to

do with Apple's perception of that market. Because if Apple can get close to, so like the specs of some of those laptops, right? So it's like the laptop version of a 3080. And 3080 is like, you know, Nvidia's close to top of the line laptop chip for graphics right now. They don't hit it, but they get close to it, right? And if they can get close to what is considered to be

an incredibly powerful GPU in a laptop without all of the aggressive cooling that's going on in some of these things, like I've got to wonder, like, can they just do what they need to with a Mac Pro? Like, when I say for, like, this is not going to make people happy that we're using Boot Camp to play video games, right? But that's why I asked of, like, a Pro Mac user. Like, if Pro Mac users are using, like, After Effects and Final Cut, maybe Premiere premiere or whatever as long as they can make

those specific things work really great can't apple just do it all on their own like i i'm going to be intrigued as you were saying to find out people that really know this stuff really like are in it right and i think a lot of this, I'm intrigued to see all the tech YouTubers talk about this more as we continue to go forward and see again

what Apple are doing again and again to start to realize can they just handle it all themselves now? Do they not need to go to AMD anymore to get what they need

out of GPUs in the same way that they don't need to go to Intel anymore to get what they need from CPUs? Yeah. same way that they don't need to go to Intel anymore to get what they need from CPUs. Yeah. Well, we'll have to talk about this a lot more. We'll probably have a year to talk about it.

But the idea of what's a Mac Pro for, and everybody's got a different vision of it. And I will say, the thing to watch for is, if somebody says, well, of course Apple will do the Mac Pro this way because you need to support this. I would say, examine carefully what this is that they need to support because somebody wants it. Because if we know anything about Apple, it's that Apple makes decisions about what it's going to do with its products. And sometimes it's going to leave some of the wants or needs of some kinds of customers on the outside. And that can be a dangerous game, because if you leave too many of your customers on the outside, your product is going to be a failure. At the same time, it's also the sign of being a good product person and a good editor of your product

that you can't support everybody's use case. You need to pick the best use case for the most people that makes the best product. And so I'd just say, I'd watch that because some people are going to say the Mac Pro is going to be a system that like one of the things that defines it is that four years after you bought it,

you can swap in a new card and you can make it you know have better graphics performance and that's something that like is part of the legacy of traditional computers but apple may not see that as a thing right like apple apple doesn't sell upgrades you know processor upgrades for four year old computers they just don't do that anymore at the same time the mac mac pro will cost a fortune um how do they feel about that like we don't know that anymore. At the same time, the Mac Pro will cost a fortune. How do they feel about that? We don't know the answer, but I'm just saying we are going to all need, when we're thinking about this, to calibrate individually every single one of those. Well, obviously it will have this feature because somebody needs it. Because some of those features, Apple may say it's not worth it to do that. And I don't know where

Apple's going to draw the line. Man, I'm so excited, Jason. Like, I remember what it was like last year when the feelings started to dawn on us when using the M1 chips for the first time, just how powerful it was, you know, like running benchmarks from device to device and kind of seeing what was oh hang on a minute this laptop this macbook air is as fast as my iMac pro in some things right and I'm just I'm so excited to find to like to find out what are these gonna feel like you know yeah and and, and we should talk about you can't really just use a chip, right? You've got to put it in a computer.

So we're going to talk about that. But before we do, let's thank our final sponsor of this week's episode and that is Capital One. Have you ever hit a technical glitch when shopping online, maybe filling out extensive payment fields enough to give you a headache, or your mobile banking app was down

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models and running inference in the browser and identifies payment fields, which help make using virtual card numbers easier and faster. All of this stuff just sounds super awesome to me. You know, I think over maybe the last few years, I've been kind of trying to wonder, like, what can machine learning actually do for me? You know, there's a bunch of fun things, a bunch of demos you can do. But all of this stuff sounds awesome. By the way, I have no idea what a random forest is,

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That's CapitalOne.com.ml. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Our thanks to Capital One for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right, this is the big, big main event. It is. I had to keep holding myself back from referencing stuff when we were talking about the chips.

If either of us would have picked one of the two following, I think it would have been a big surprise in the draft. The MacBook Pro has a notch. The MacBook Pro has feet. Yes. Both of these things, quite surprising. They always have had feet.

These are quite pronounced feet. These are more pronounced feet. Yes more pronounced feet yes the feet the bumps are bigger the bumps are bigger this time around these are clearly their airflow feet which yeah makes a lot of sense where before i think it was just like stop the laptop sliding away kind of kind of feet those little rubber rubber guys now they've got like these things are made out of aluminium on the bottom and then they go to the rubber yeah yeah let's just talk about the notch can we just talk about the notch let's just start yes we got we got to do it so i like how they they described it as being like oh and we added the and like

we're not we're not putting a notch intruding into your screen we've expanded the screen around where the camera is that was a nice little bit of uh of I don't know, counterintuitive marketing of that. It is described as being using the menu bar. So they basically raised the menu bar height and the menu bar goes, the notch area is the menu bar area, which means they showed, of course, some apps with very few menus. Apps with more menus, I assume that they've got some menu bar code that detects the notch and wraps the menu items around the notch. And that's just how that works.

It's really weird. Like on Apple's website, they're all just showing all of the screenshots. They have no menu bars on them. So it makes it look smaller. Here's what I was going to say is what they've done is the menu bar lives with the notch. The notch is essentially part of your menu bar now, and it goes around that. If you think of it that way, the notch is the menu bar. The notch lives in the menu bar.

And then when you're in a full-screen mode or something like that, what all their screenshots show is full screen mode doesn't go up through the notch at least not by default maybe it does i mean we don't know the details here but it looks like what they what they're viewing is the ideal is when you are in a full screen it just stops at the notch and the, and it's blank. Which makes perfect sense because then you can like go up to the top and the menu bar will come down. But I'm just not sure why Apple is showing like most of the product photos on the website with just the black bar on the top. Because I'll just say like,

it's because they're ashamed of the notch. I don't even know. Like I've been seeing a lot of people over the last couple of days because this started to like be a potential rumor in the days leading up to the event. I don't know know. I've been seeing a lot of people over the last couple of days because this started to be a potential rumor in the days leading up to the event. I don't know why this bothers people. Like, that is a part of the screen you can't do anything with anyway. Yeah, I like that. That's the other way to view it here is that what they've done is

they've used that extra space at the top around the notch, which you might view as useless space on the iPhone. It's kind of useless. But they put Control Center up there, and you can see stuff up there. And they're using it for the menu bar. It's kind of useless. But they put control center up there and you can see stuff up there and they're using it for the menu bar. It's the same thing. And so the menu bar lives up there. And the only thing that's going to be janky about it is that the menu bar, like I said, the menu bar has to move around it. And so you're going to get apps with lots of menus that, you know, you're going to have some of the menus to the left of the notch and some to the right of the notch

and you're just going to have to deal with it. But I think it's clever how they've done it and it's not as big a deal. It makes it look more like the notch on the phones. It makes the screen look more expansive. You're getting into space that otherwise would have to be blank if you if you aren't capable of cramming your your camera in in the little tiny bezel space which they're not clearly yeah then you could either have emptiness up there or you could use

it for something and clearly they looked at it and said well we could just put the menu bar up there like most mac users most of the time have a bar, and it doesn't need all the... It can work around the notch, and so here we are. Notch. Notch is here on the Mac. I've got to say, though, I would like to know why the notch is as big as it is, because it seems pretty big, and they don't have a... Like, there's no Face ID up there.

No. So what's going on up there? No. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's a microphone up there, and there's the camera up there. So what's going on up there? No, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's a microphone up there and there's the camera up there. I know there's some kind of light sensors, right? Because it's doing like, what do you call it? The true tone and when it dims the light. Yeah. All that stuff is probably in there. I don't understand apple sensor thing on the mac anyway this is a 1080

uh we we i think accurately predicted exactly what they would say yeah by the way on our draft episode which was this is the best webcam ever in a mac laptop yep um because that's all they can really say it's a 1080p with a special new layered lens or something like that. And that's all nice, but still, it's not a 4K or anything. It doesn't do center stage or anything. It's just a little bit better. I get that the depth of it is limited, yet somehow they put mini LED in there,

but they couldn't put a better camera system in there. Well, this is where we are right now. But notch, I think, is something that people will get used to very quickly. Maybe the mini LED is one of the things that precluded them from putting a better camera in there. Entirely possible. Entirely possible.

But everything's cramped up there. I would say that is a perfectly fine trade-off. A 1080p camera is fine. It's fine. All right, it's going to do the job that screen oh my god 120 frames per second promotion yeah i didn't think you get your promotion neither did i i was i was really nervous this morning when i looked at i was like why did i pick that like i have that feeling i don't know if you ever have that feeling sometimes i look at

the draft scorecard and i'm like, why did I do that? And this was one of those things. That screen is going to be very nice. And they are bigger as well. 16.2 inches on the 16-inch and 14.2 inches on the 14-inch. And the 14-inch model has more pixels than the previous 16 inch did so i know there's a lot of talk about about 2x retina is that a thing i don't know somebody can tell the resolution is very very very high on these on these screens uh which looks super cool and a thousand nits

of sustained brightness 1600 peak brightness uh it's going to look great with hdr as you expected it would um and they've made the bezels way smaller so i'm oh man this screen is going to be i just as i had that thought i was like oh yeah but mike uses his laptop in dock mode so yeah the screen's gonna be great right because it is essentially like that ipad pro screen put on a mac laptop yeah and this is and this feels like you know apple puts a lot of pro display technology in places that are not like super pro uses like an iphone or you know yeah an ipad pro too but like this one like the pro display xdr this one feels like the Pro Display XDR, this one feels like, oh, this is a computer for people who actually really need something like extended dynamic range. Like I can see exactly why they would put this in this product, right?

It makes sense. This is the Pro laptop. This is how you differentiate the Pro laptop from your non-Pro laptop. Makes sense to me. The performance, though is is bananas on this uh the 16 inch is two times faster in cpu than the previous model between two to four times faster gpu than the previous model the 13 inch is 3.7 percent up to 3.7 percent faster cpu 9 to 13 times faster gpu that is just, wow.

Yeah. I mean, all the things we said about chips, that's what we're talking about here. Most powerful Mac notebooks ever, obviously. Yeah, absolutely. This is those chips we just talked about. There's a lot going on here. A lot of ports too.

A lot of ports. Did you see? Yeah, that was one of the things I forgot to mention with the M1 Max and M1 Pro when we're talking about those is they did say that it increases the amount of IO available with these chips over the M1. So they've got HDMI. What I really liked, actually, because we've also not spoken about Touch Bar. We'll come back to it in a second.

You know, Strucy said, we're adding ports. Ruthie said, we're adding ports, HDMI, three Thunderbolt 4, SD card, headphone jack, MagSafe 3, which is a high power, can still charge via the Thunderbolt ports as well. That's a lot of ports, man. Yeah, and it's what people wanted, right? There is this whole sense here that this is Apple taking all the criticism that it's been given for the last five years, essentially on its laptops and saying, okay, we hear you. This seems like it's the abandonment of the less is more philosophy when it comes to

pro laptops that they actually need to do work. This seems like it's the laptop version essentially of what happened when they said, all right, we're going to make a new Mac Pro because we understand what you care about. And so that's why you see an SD card slot. And that's why you see HDMI. And like HDMI, I know a lot of people aren't going to use it. But like HDMI is the thing where you walk into any conference room and you've got to have your dongle with you because you need to adapt to whatever that is. Like, HDMI is the standard. Every monitor in every conference room

probably has, or at least has an option of HDMI. You're going to be able to get to HDMI. There will be an HDMI cable connected to that device, probably. Like, it's... I think it absolutely is a port that needs to exist on a laptop. And so here it is.

And then, you know, the SD card. Again, we've talked about this for years now, but like, it's not for everybody. But there are lots of workflows where you've got a device somewhere that's recording onto an SD card and you want to get it off. And you could attach that device via USB or or something or maybe there's a wireless transfer but you know what's even easier and faster is just to stick in the card and to your computer and have it work and so this gets for all media professionals who've got whether it's photos or audio or video loaded on a card they can just jam that card into the laptop and pull that stuff off fast that is easier no dongle required it's i saw someone on twitter

said as today i think like and it's not really something i considered but an sd card slot also allows you to expand the storage available on your laptop if you need that i suppose that's true right right like if you're going to be as fast yeah but it's available to you like if all you just need is you know you have a one terabyte ssd but you need two terabytes for something well you get a one terabyte sd card which is i believe is possible and now you have two terabytes if you wanted it i mean it's not as uh it's to say not as fast not as maybe as easy to back up but it's expandable storage i never really considered that you know in my mind the sd card slot is always just like hey i took some photos you know and but there is the possibility there of just having it available to you at all

times you know if not necessarily critical stuff stuff you've got a backup of course but that's something that's there that couldn't have been otherwise i just thought that was kind of a cool cool usage for it so touch bar they literally said the touch bar is gone i could not believe that they did they did they replaced the touch bar with this uh full height which is interesting they haven't had that in a long time they likened it i thought there was again a little bit of a misdirection where they talked about how um people really like this keyboard we made so we're gonna do it like like that. But then they did say, replacing the touch bar with this full height F key thing that they're doing in an anodized black kind of keyboard well. So it's like a black rectangle with the black keys in it.

It looks like a black, just a black magic keyboard on top of a laptop. Which is interesting. And they said about the, and they've got it on the website too, with the tactile feel of mechanical keys that pros love. Well, Apple, let me. Whatever. Let me talk to you. Let me talk to you about that, you know?

I mean, like technically sure, but I mean, I have some nicer feeling keyboards if you'd like to see those too. Yeah, but again, they're're not like it's not the butterfly keyboard they're just sort of saying look it's we know it's actually a good keyboard that people are going to use. And the touch ID button is a key it's like it's an actual key on the keyboard.

It's just yeah it's just it's what we've seen before and but you remove the touch bar and this is what you get I think it's all fine RIP to the touch bar everybody out there who like the touch bar I guess it what you get. I think it's all fine. RIP to the touch bar. Everybody out there who liked the touch bar, it's still on that low end model for now, but come on, it's not going to be there for very long.

The next time they rev it, it'll be gone there too. It was an experiment that was interesting, but the bottom line is it was an interesting experiment that needed some work and they never did the work. So either they decided it was dead on arrival um or they rapidly discovered that it was dead but um they shipped it and then it sat there for several years but the fact and again if you've got something out of the touch bar that's great but i all i have to do is point you to the fact that they never improved it in any

substantial way across multiple os revisions like they never even when it was new ish they didn't ever really add anything to it and all the stuff that you could do that was interesting with it was by a third sort of hacky third-party software and that's that was the the truest sign and it's like did did that kill it or was that just a sign the the truest sign and it's like did did that kill it or was that just a sign that it was dead i think it's probably the latter that within apple very quickly there was no support to do any extra work on touch bar and so it was going to go away and in a sign of true 2021 apple uh these laptops are in most dimensions bigger and heavier than the ones they replace yeah not by a lot but they are bigger and heavier than the ones they replace. Yeah.

Not by a lot, but they are bigger and heavier than the ones they replace. And this is probably due to the screen. They were talking about they've done a lot of work to really make the thermals work for this machine. I think this is like 50% better capacity for airflow. And they really don't want the fans ever to come on. But when they do, they want it to be, you know, it's going to work great.

I think Apple's, you know, rightly so, scared itself with some thermal stuff in the past, doesn't want to be in that realm again. So they've done something about it and they've designed these laptops to really do a good job with it. Yeah, and that's fine. Like the battery is weight, right?

That's part of the trade-off there. And they, I mean, let's talk about the battery for a second. The battery life. So listeners to Upgrade Plus will have heard among our rejected items that we could have picked in the draft last week was one that I put in there that I thought had a chance of happening, but I didn't pick it. So obviously not that strong a chance, which was a claim of 20 or more hours of battery life for something is made. made. And I laughed and laughed when they pointed out that the 16 inch model has 21 hours of video playback. And on their website, they've got a 20 plus at some points, like as much as 20, 20 plus hours of battery life. There it is. But you can see that when you've got big, beefy laptops that are also, you know, they've got battery life and the power to energy ratio is good. And then you do things like have the video codecs and put those in the chips.

So you can make a video playback test that's super, just like with the iPhones, that's super good because it's just doing it all on the chip. And that's power consumption wise much lower. And so you can fit it in there. They had a fast charge. Did you see that? Fast charge, 50% in 30 minutes. Yeah, in 30 minutes. Yeah, these are big battery stories

that I think will hit a lot of pros, especially developers, that they had four times as many code compiles on a single charge in Xcode, which I thought a nice little shout out to the developers out there. So we'll see in regular use, but it's a Apple Silicon Mac.

So I think we all suspected it would have dramatically better battery life. And it seems to. So that's fantastic. And we'll just have to see, it's all down to the details because battery life is something that really, you encounter in the real world and tests are not the real world so we're gonna have to you know people are gonna take this and use it on battery and see what

happens and we're gonna hear those stories but it look it's looking really good there are three power adapters that can be included depending on the chip that you get. There's a 67 watt, a 96 watt, and a 140 watt. So the 14 gets either 67 or 96 depending on what your CPU count is. And then the 16 inch just gets a 140 watt. The big one. The 16 inch has a 100 watt hour battery and the 14 has a 70 watt hour battery. There's a lot, you know, they're pro laptops. There's a lot going on here.

But that's also another example of why having MagSafe in a cable is a simplification because the cable is the cable. And then it's just the matter of what the USB-C adapter is that's providing it with power. And I want to stop for a second and talk about MagSafe, actually, because MagSafe 3, first off, they did call it MagSafe. And I think that wasn't a certainty just because they did take that name and use it for the iPhone. But here it is, too. And they're acknowledging that

there was a MagSafe 2 and this is a MagSafe 3. And I want to think about how MagSafe was a victim of USB-C, basically, that Apple said at some point, well, we want to do USB-C charging. And so MagSafe is going to go away. And now you're going to have to plug these things in, which seemed weird, right? Because Apple had been extolling the virtues of the magnetic connection, saving your laptop from getting knocked off the table for years. And then in like 2016, they basically said,

well, forget about that. You just plug it in now. And it always seemed a little bit strange that they just kind of abandoned it, whether they did it for technical reasons or whether they did it for aesthetic reasons. I don't know. I'm very happy to have it back. And I know I've said this before, but I just, I'm doing, actually it's recommended by John Syracuse. So he's doing it too. Like I have a USB-C thing that plugs into one of the ports on my MacBook Air that is MagSafe essentially and has a magnet cable that I use to charge it. Because even on a USB-C laptop, I wanted MagSafe essentially. So I'm very happy that MagSafe 3 is here. I imagine that in a year, it will be on every single Apple laptop that this is going to come back. I'm also very happy that USB-C charging is also supported

direct in all those cables or in all those ports. And that's for something we mentioned last week as well, which is sometimes you got like a hub or a monitor and it needs a direct USB-C or Thunderbolt connection in order to do its job. And you want the one plug thing. And the last thing you want is to have to plug in your laptop with the one plug and then also do MagSafe

because you know USB-C can do power. So now you can do MagSafe if you want to, but if you've got that hub lifestyle, it's fine. It will still work. They're not making that broken by adding in MagSafe, and I think that's great too. They did their audio thing again, Mike.

You and I have been talking about this since they've been this next generation, starting with that 16-inch that they did in the fall of 19. They've been talking about their studio quality mics, which are apparently better with a 60% lower noise floor. So now you can record things that are happening down at your shoes, I guess. Lower the floor, right? Is that how that works? No, that's a technical term. Oh, is it? Okay. It's not about like the height at which you record? No, that's the technical term. It's about not picking up the sound of your shoes. Your shoes on the noise floor. I see.

We're professionals. You must take what we're saying. You should have a quiet floor, not a noise floor. That was your mistake is don't have your floor be noisy. The 60% lower noise floor is by adding a rug. They basically added a virtual rug to the microphone. So we'll see how these are i am uh i think apple calling them studio quality is kind of ridiculous i guess it

depends on what studio you're in they don't sound that great unless you're right up against them um but they say that it's better and then they also said they seem to have devoted a large portion of the space of the laptop to the four woofers and two tweeters in the six speaker sound system that also supports spatial audio with 80% more bass. You know, we'll have to hear it to see. It is an interesting choice. I assume they talked to pro customers about the importance of getting good audio out of their laptops. I would think that most pro customers would probably use headphones but i don't know i mean apple seems to have taken a lot of pride in in upgrading the sound system on all of their devices and so i'm not surprised to see that here i'm really excited about these but they get really

expensive jason have you if you poked around so they start starts at $19.99 for the 14-inch, $24.99 for the 16-inch. Right. So it's more expensive even at the base price than the old 13-inch high-end was. And then it just goes up from there. And these things get up to like $3,000, $4,000, $6,000 pretty easily. Yeah. Pretty easily. It's not hard. 6,000 pretty easily pretty easily it's not hard

to take a 64 gig with the max chip and let's put 8 terabytes of storage in there that gets me to 6 grand even with 2 terabytes that's 4,200 1 terabyte it's 38.99

take it back down to 32 it's 34.99 but like that's yeah these are these start high and then go up from there but yeah start high go higher yeah but if you look at the power you're like okay i mean it sort of makes sense yeah in terms of what power is involved and the specs involved but it is a very classic kind of apple thing and the fact that they they moved the base price up even so is also kind of interesting right like these are pro laptops i'm not surprised that the base price has gone up because there's more in it you know like the screens and all that kind of stuff it is better technology and they're keeping some of the older ones around right i don't think the 16 the 16 is just more expensive now but i think if you want a 16 inch laptop you're probably happy

to pay what apple will charge you because you want a 16 inch laptop right like it's already a niche thing it's kind of like yeah i'll get it the 14 is more expensive than the 13, but the 13 is still there for the time being. Yeah, that's maybe a problem to solve later, but I look at that 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro and I think, what are you? Why are you here? And if I had to guess- Well, let me tell you, Jason, it's a fantastic laptop, right? Sure. I've been using one for a year and it's just a superb computer but yes it is now easy to look at and be like shouldn't you just be the macbook air like is this just for touch bar lovers like yeah i i understand what you mean i don't know where they're going and i know that it gives them a

a low price to get into macbook pro but is it a macbook pro it's now defined? Like it doesn't have the screen. It has the touch bar. It doesn't have the ports. It doesn't have MagSafe. It's like this poor product has been, ever since it was the MacBook Escape back in the day, this poor in-between MacBook Pro has been a weird product. And I hope that the next time it gets revised, it turns into something different. I'm not quite sure what that is. Is there a place for a, maybe just call it a MacBook at $1,299 that's a little more modern than this one, but not quite up to the Pro? My problem with it primarily at this point is that these new 14 and 16 inch macbook pros have defined what the macbook pro is yeah and this even though it's got an m1 in it

it feels otherwise like a uh you know escapee from the previous generation of macbook pro and i wonder where they're going to go with it because what you don't want to do i would argue is pack like The display is what it is. That's one of the ways you save money. You're not going to pack the new display in there. That's the 14. Maybe you could put an M1 Pro chip in it. Maybe you can't. I don't know. But you don't want to raise the price too much. You don't want to make it 15 or 14.99 because they want to hold down the low end. So I'm curious what they're going to do there because that product continues to feel

like a weird outlier that doesn't belong in either camp. And I don't know what they're going to do, but it does continue to exist. And if you need a touch bar, there it is. Yeah, it's there for you. So these Macs,

I think quite surprisingly, you can order them right now and they start shipping next week. Yeah, that's it. That was a surprise. That was the most optimistic. You and I talked about it. Is it going to be October or November?

And the answer is October. They're going to hit October 29th. And so they obviously, by all these stories, were delayed. But when it came time to announce them, it was Apple knowing that they have them now and they can ship them. And that macOS Monterey is going to wrap up. And they're going to push it all out the door next week. Although, of course, if you're hearing this, it's too late for next week.

Oh, yeah, because everybody's already ordered them. Yes, they've been ordered. If you haven't ordered them yet, yes. On this. I'm sure. There may be some at your local Apple store you should check on launch day and go in there. I ordered one, Jason.

Did you now? Yeah. Did you now? Is your wallet feeling a little bit lighter today? Quite a lot a bit lighter, Jason. I'm not going to lie to you, my friend. It's a a very expensive computer what i'm asking is what's in your wallet and the answer is not as much as it used to be you want to know what i got yeah 14 inch macbook pro in space gray um i realize now that i didn't even think to choose a color but space gray is what i

would have gone with i got the apple you get very distracted when you're buying these things because i have such a limit in space time like you were waiting for me right and it's like if i want to get my order in i gotta get it in fast okay i went with the max cpu oh well the system on a chip so 10 core cpu i went with the 24 course gpu option I don't need more than that. 64 gigabytes of memory. Yep. Just to see. 2 terabytes of SSD storage. I got 1 terabyte on my current MacBook Pro and I

wished I wouldn't have done that. Ah. Yeah, and that's it. So that was very expensive. $38.99 in dollars. Yep. It's $37.99 in pounds. I don't want to know what the conversion is for that in dollars. Yep. It's $37.99 in pounds. I don't want to know what the conversion is for that in dollars. No. So I have a MacBook Pro that I'm going to be selling to help fund it.

But my MacBook Pro is my main machine now and has been for the last year or so. And I'm especially looking at this machine as travel is starting to become a thing again in my not too distant future. And me and that thing are going to get on real fine. And honestly, I really wished Apple would just release a frigging display because that machine, like this machine is going to be

so much more powerful than my iMac. I just wish they would release a display and then I could just use it. That isn't a $5,000 display. I just wish they would release a display and then I could just use it. That isn't a $5,000 display. Yeah. Right.

Just give me a display and then me and this MacBook Pro, we could just do everything together. We'll be the best of friends, you know? So overall, this is

pretty great, man. This is pretty great, right? It's pretty good. Hanging out there. I know we we you know talked about the chips earlier i i think i would expect that at some point in the next few months we'll see some other products with these chips um i i really think that there's a possibility

the 24 inch imac will get uh an m1 pro option but it may wait until they have a larger iMac so that they can do those at the same time I think so I think it's iMac pro like basically I think the argument would be I don't want to I don't want to tempt people into buying this small iMac with the pro chip when I know as if I'm Apple that the that there's the bigger iMac coming, I might hold off, but it's right there, as is the Mac Mini, honestly. Like the Mac Mini, it seems like they could do that fairly simply with an announcement that they're gonna put the Pro, M1 Pro as an option

and the Mac Mini with more ports. And that doesn't require an event for them to do that. They could do that at any time. And I imagine they will do that at some point, event or not. Maybe they hold all this off and there's a Mac event in the spring where there's a new iMac and that there are other updates that happen then. They could also just in the next few months just say, oh, yes, here it is in a press release and that would be fine. But I'm excited by that because now you can see it doesn't just stop at the M1. And that's the, for me, I mean, if you bought a MacBook Pro like Mike did, then this is a big announcement because of the MacBook Pro. For the rest of us,

it's still a big day because we now have a spread of Apple Silicon products and we have a much better idea of sort of where Apple is headed with the rest of the Mac product line during the rest of this transition. And as somebody who is waiting anxiously for a big iMac, this is great news because now essentially I know what's going to be in my next computer, right? I know what chip is going to be in it. It's going to be an M1 Pro or an M1 Max. That's what's going to be in my iMac. Go to upgradeyourwardrobe.com and you can find some wonderful upgrade merchandise. You can get

yourself the upgrade logo tee or the upgrade hoodie. Go to upgradeyourwardrobe.com and you can pick those up. I'd like to thank our sponsors for this week's episode, Things, Setapp, and Capital One. And also thanks to everybody who supports the show directly. You can go to GetUpgradePlus.com, go to GetUpgradePlus.com, and you can sign up and you'll get longer ad-free versions of the show. I have no doubt Jason will have many more words to write

over at SixColors.com in the upcoming days, especially with Monterey on the horizon. Man. I'm sure you're going to be working hard. I got a lot of words already socked away for that one. I got to finish up, and it's going to be a busy week. Big week. Good week.

Very excited. And let's hope, by the way, that this is it for this year, but we'll see. We'll see. Jason is at jasonnell on Twitter. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. And we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

Goodbye, Jason Snell.