Upgrade - 378: The Maximum Macintosh

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

Jason's spent the last week with the new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max processor, and we've got his in-depth review. And at last, Jason and Myke both review the new Apple Watch Series 7.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 378 today's show is brought to you by things uni pizza ovens and hpe tech talk my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hi jason snow hi mike hurley got a big show today. There's a lot happening. There's a lot. It's busy, busy, busy time. Busy time in the busy time of the busy time. Jason has had a 14-inch MacBook Pro for a week and we're going to be talking about it in a little bit.

But we have some things we must get to first, including our hashtag Snell Talk question, which this week comes from Mark, who asks, Jason, what do you do when you're not really into a book? Do you persevere and finish it? Do you put it aside and come back to it later? Or do you just choose to give up and stop reading it? A lot of my friends have various policies. I'm not quite sure which one is the most common. There's a 100-page rule. There's a 33% rule, which is good to do in an e-reader. There's a hundred page rule. There's a 33% rule, which is good to do in an e-reader. That's basically my policy too, is that when I get deep in a book, I will often persevere and finish it. But I think the most important thing is that if it's not working for you and you've given it enough of an opportunity, you've given it a hundred pages or you've read the first third of it, I think you do need to give yourself an out where you say if it's if it's not working for me beyond

this point and you know some people are gonna be like oh i do it in the first 10 pages like okay well every everybody's gonna be different i i feel like you need to give a book a little bit of time before you um declare it dead but um i did have that happen fairly recently where I was, yeah, I forget where I was halfway or third of the way through the book. And I just said, this isn't working for me. And I dumped it. It happens. And it's okay because life's too short to force yourself to read a book you're not enjoying. And I notice it most because they're books that are a slog. And then I get to a next book and it just is, I want to read it and I pick it up all the time and I'm reading it avidly. And like, you can tell when you're enjoying a book and when you're not. So I would say, if you don't have this policy, you should make this policy. Set something,

100 pages, 33%, whatever it is, 20%. And if you're not feeling it and you hit that threshold, bail out, get out of there. Don't do it. Because again, I think saying, oh, well, it's a good book after the first 200 pages, which are pretty slow, but then it all comes together. That can be true, but I would argue it's not true very often. And that's the book's fault. If it's slow for 200 pages and then it grabs you later that they

screwed it up and they should have grabbed you sooner so um that's there are exceptions you know dune just came out and my standard review of the book dune was that the first 200 pages are really slow and then it picks up and the rest of it is great. And that's true. And I was really bored when I read Dune. It was the summer. I had nothing to do. And that's the only way I got through it. Because while that is actually a good book, it is one that you get about 150 pages in and you think to yourself, I've made a terrible mistake. So these days I would just, I would just, if it's a random book, book you're not feeling,

just get rid of it. Just move on, find something new, set a threshold. And then when you reach there, say to yourself, do I really want to go on with this? And I would say at any point beyond that threshold, by the way,

if you're just not enjoying a book, you should just can it and move on. Don't, don't. I mean, it's, you're throwing good money after bad. That is a sunk cost. Get't, don't. I mean, it's, you're throwing good money after bad. That is a sunk cost.

Get out while you can. If you'd like to send in a hashtag Snell Talk for us to open an episode of Upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk or use question mark Snell Talk in the RelayFM members Discord. UpgradeYourWardrobe.com. We have been selling brand new upgrade merchandise for the past week. Thank you so much to everybody who has bought either one of our beautiful new upgrade logo tees or wonderful hoodies in brand new colors for this season. Do not forget, you just have one more week to go and buy your merchandise at UpgradeYourWardrobe.com. Do not delay. Do not be sad.

You know, like, don't miss out because once it's gone it's gone who knows when it will come back if ever upgrade your wardrobe.com and this is my independent training company this is my favorite hoodie i own like six or seven different independent training company hoodies unlogoed yeah and a couple with our logo well i only have logoed ones because oh interesting we also use them for the Cortex ones because they're such good hoodies. This was the first hoodie that I ever was like, oh, I like hoodies now. And then I went to their website and literally just bought. I found they sold direct. You could just get them blank. And I was like, yes, send me all your hoodies because

they're so great. And so when we started doing hoodies for upgrade, I said, please, Cotton Bureau, can we use the Independent Trading Company hoodie? And they said yes. By the way, we got a bunch of size questions, and I don't have a great answer other than to say that I wear an XL t-shirt and an XL hoodie. So I feel like the sizes match pretty well, but also it's a hoodie. So I feel like better it be a little bit baggy than it be too tight. I wear large and large, and it fits fine for me. I think it's a pretty good fit.

Maybe that their measurements make people overthink it. And I think maybe don't worry about that part of it so much. Yeah. And all of my hoodies are black. So I'm really excited. We've got the red and the gray ones. I'm going to be getting one of each because I want to mix up my hoodie colors. And I'm very excited.

So that's one last time. UpgradeYourWardrobe.com A couple of product rumory things that are going on right now. I just wanted to get them on the record. So according to display analyst Ross Young via Mac Rumors, Apple is apparently planning to introduce

a 27-inch iMac sometime in early 2022, featuring mini-LED and ProMotion. This has got to be an iMac Pro, right? That is not just iMac. Well, it might be. I mean, I think the high-end iMac is going to be what it's going to be, and I still believe that it's going to be the one model and they're going to choose what to call it. But it could be that they've decided they're going to call it iMac Pro. I think that would be great. I think that's what they should do. In fact, I've been really kind of like back and forth on it. But when I look at what they've announced and now having used the M1 Max and the M1 Pro, I think about what that iMac might look like. And I feel like calling it iMac Pro is probably a good idea.

But really the most important thing is I don't think they're going to make two separate 27-inch displays for iMacs, right? Like I think whatever the big iMac is, there's probably only going to be one display. So, and it will probably be mini LED with ProMotion. So there you go. They can call it Pro or not. That's why I think it will be Pro

because the only places where this product, like this screen, the XDR screen, as they call it, Super Retina XDR, is only in Pro products. It's in the iPad Pros. And they call it super retina xdr is only in pro products it's in the ipad pros and they and they have the 24 inch imac which is an m1 and is a good product it's a very good product and so why not make that bigger imac pro again pro doesn't necessarily mean what you know what it it has to mean for the mac pro it just means that it's better. But looking at these chips, it's very hard for me to not imagine

that the bigger iMac isn't going to have at the very least an M1 Pro. And I expect the Max and Pro chips will only ever exist in Pro branded products. That would be my expectation. I think that's probably right. And in fact, I was listening to some speculation. I think it was on ATP last week, which I loved. I'm not sure I believe it, but I want to believe, which is that you might actually even see the Jade 2C die, which is basically the 20 core where it's two M1 Mac what together in an iMac and I thought that would be awesome uh not sure that'll

happen but that would be awesome I want to see if we can try and standardize here Jason because it's already getting confusing you said m1 max you meant the m1 max chip right I did mean the m1 max processor so what I've decided what I've personally decided you can do what you want but i'm gonna stop meeting everybody upgrade style meeting here we go m1 max chip m1 pro chip m1 max chip and m1 macintoshes so that could just be m1 max is for m1 macintoshes everyone will know what that means m1 max chip and one pro chip and i think that that works fine because it's impossible i didn't know what you meant when you said it is so bad it is it is okay so uh what i'm saying is they speculated that you might have an m how should i put this an imac that has an m1 max chip or potentially the uh the 20 core which is two of them together which has been rumored

that they're gonna do a two of them two m1 max chip configuration and a four m1 max chip configuration and that's what their mac pro solution is going to be but in a desktop you could potentially do that in a desktop if they put four M1 Max chips in one computer, I'm worried that black holes might start forming. Yes, well, it may happen. It may. Imagine if... Is a Macintosh with an M1 Max chip an M1 Mac?

Or is it an M1 Max Mac? It's Max M1 Mac. If somebody called Mac... Who's Mac. If somebody called Mac... Who's Mac? If somebody called Mac has a Mac, is it Max M1 Max Max? That's plural. So it would be if Mac has more than one Mac,

M1 Macintosh. It's very confusing. Mark Gurman reports that he expects no more events this year which i i just feel that in my bones you know like i just feel like we're done um yes and but also that there will be an m2 macbook air with new design it will be expected sometime in 2022 uh german says within six to eight months of now so kind of like first half of 2022 along with new mac mini and an iphone se expected as well as that 27 inch imac i think that there is a possibility right that there could be like an event in maybe march april where just all of this stuff comes yeah yeah i i also

anticipate that we'll be getting this stuff although again with with the supply chain everything could get pushed back but you know what german reports is really sort of like that these are what are coming we know what's in the pipeline but we don't know when the they'll get out of the pipeline and into people's hands it does seem like the like a new mac mini that's using these chips it's probably on the way but um my guess is that they wanted to have all the chips for the laptops that they'll worry about the mac mini later i hadn't thought of that but yeah maybe they were just like we're gonna prioritize here because we're struggling you know all of the there are reports saying that basically apple's struggling with everything uh over the holiday season so they may have just wanted to prioritize what will be a better selling product and a product people are more excited about

than if they just then had you know a bunch of they're putting in the m1 they're just splitting what they have amongst their product line and they're surely you know i would expect make more money from the laptops and they would the Mac Mini anyway. Yeah, exactly right. So I think that now that we've seen the new chips here, it is fascinating to think of like the details

of where they're all going to go. And especially about that Mac Pro out there, if they really do just have the ability to take two or four M1 Max chips and put them in a configuration together, like you can imagine what that performance would be like. It would be pretty amazing. So both iOS 15.1 and macOS Monterey are expected to be out today. We're not really going to spend any time talking about them on this episode. Can't wait to use that universal control.

SharePlay? Maybe not. And SharePlay to use that universal control. Share play? Maybe not. And share play. Yep. Not yet. Not yet. Next week, we're going to be talking about Apple's earnings because that's happening this week on the 28th.

Yeah. So that's going to be a part of what I expect is going to be a pretty bumper episode next week because we are also going to be joined by friends of the show, Tim Millay and Tom boga from apple and we're going to be talking about the m1 pro and m1 max chips uh so we've had tim and tom on a couple of times now and we always really enjoy talking to them and uh about we always talk about apple silicon we've had them on before um we had a really great chat a couple of months oh it's in oh man a couple of months ago i was gonna say a year ago it was in november 2020 oh my word what just happened to

my brain uh so they're gonna be coming back on and we're gonna be talking about all of the new apple silicon and what it took uh to to build these incredibly powerful new chips so that's gonna be next week's episode chip talk with tim and tom next week oh i love it i love it i got three little pieces of upstream headlines for you jason okay mythic quest has been renewed for two more seasons yeah there was a question about like they didn't announce what they were doing no after they released season two and season two ends in with the feeling that it could be the end of the show yeah yeah um and uh they made no announcements about it and people were speculating if it was canceled or not and and the people who make it have been busy doing other stuff too yep uh but it is uh renewed for two more seasons and they

and they put out a fantastic video to announce the renewal i put a link in the show notes to a vulture article that has this uh embedded you gotta go watch the video it is weird and excellent um it must i mean i see this and it's like rob mcclennan come up with this like there's no way anybody else came up with this video it's really worth watching if you haven't seen it yep and i was also told about this information during the ted lasso season two recap episode of the incomparable that i joined you and a wonderful panel on which people can go check out uh that jason siegel brett and brett goldstein teaming up with bill lawrence for a new comedy show on apple tv plus um and it's it's about it's called shrinking and this is a quote it revolves around a grieving therapist played by siegel who begins to break the rules and tell his clients exactly what he

thinks ignoring his training and ethics he finds himself making huge changes to people's lives including his own so uh it seems like apple is on the law Goldstein train. Yeah, so this is Brett Goldstein and Bill Lawrence writing and Jason Segel starring in this comedy on Apple TV+. So for those who thought that Brett Goldstein was having a moment, yeah. Big moment. He just became a show creator. It's a big moment. Just on the side.

That's a good thing, yeah. Now I make my own shows. Incredible. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you in part by our friends over at Ooni Pizza Ovens. They are the world's number one pizza oven company because they make surprisingly small ovens powered by your choice of either wood, charcoal, or gas, letting you make restaurant quality pizza in your own backyard. Like the Snell backyard, right?

That's what pizza's made in the Snell backyard of an Uni Pizza oven. It is. It is. Although we had a lot of rain, so I had to hide the Uni Pizza oven so it wouldn't be washed away in the floods. Because that would be very upsetting. Lives in the backyard, yeah. Came out, it was just gone. You know, I can imagine you falling down to your knees like, no.

Because you love your Uni Pizzas, right? You know, it's nice to be able to make a pizza and get that temperature that's way higher than you can get in the oven in your house. It's like 500 degrees in my house and it's like 750 degrees outside there in the Uni pizza oven. You can actually get it up to 900 if you really want to. You can. I'm not that patient. I get it to about 750, 770 and then it goes. Pizza's going in.

I can't wait anymore. Yeah, I can't that patient. I get it to about 750, 770, and then it goes. I can't wait anymore. 900 degrees Fahrenheit, 500 degrees Celsius. That's what you can get an Uni Pizza oven up to. This enables you to cook that restaurant quality pizza in as little as 60 seconds. That high temperature really sets it apart from what you can make in a home oven. But these Uni Pizza ovens are really easy to use and incredibly portable. They'll fit into any outside space. They have a couple of models that people really love. One is the Uni Coda 16. This will let you cook up to 16-inch pizzas with an innovative L-shaped burner

to give you even heat distribution. And the multi-fueled Uni Karu, which you can choose to use wood, charcoal, or gas. Uni Pizza ovens start at just $299 for free shipping to the US, the UK and the EU and Uni also make a great app to help you perfect your dough recipe and give you loads of pizza making tips as well listeners of Upgrade can get 10% off their purchase of an Uni Pizza Oven

which could be up to $50 off an Uni Coda 16 just go to uni.com that's O-O-N-I.com and use the code UPGRADEFM21 at checkout. When you're there, you'll find a great range of accessories from peels to cutters to oven tables. These things are always incredibly popular in high demand, so make sure you go and check it out right now. Don't miss out. Ooni Pizza ovens are the best way to bring restaurant-quality pizza to your own backyard. Just go to Ooni.com and use the code upgradefm21 to get that

10% off. Our thanks to Uni Pizza Ovens for their support of this show and RelayFM. So, Jason Snell, you published a wonderful review, six colors, about the 14-inch MacBook Pro. Could you just tell me the specs of the machine

that you have, just for context? It's the maximum Macintosh, Mike. The Maximum Macintosh with the M1 Macintosh Maximum chip. Yes, exactly. So it's a 14-inch M1 Max chip, 64 gigs of memory, 32 GPU cores. So all of the things. Yeah. A couple of little quotes from the article in the beginning that I really like.

You call this a new era and say that Apple has undone its mistakes of the past few years and created a laptop. And this is my favorite part. That's essentially a Mac Pro you can slide into a backpack. Such a, so good, Jason. I know exactly what you mean. And it makes me so excited. I kept looking at the test results

and thinking of how to put it in. Because like there's the perspective versus a, like I have an iMac Pro. So that's sort of a proxy for the Mac Pro. Mac Pro is more than the iMac Pro, but I don't have a Mac Pro. I have an M1 MacBook Air, right? And so I'm trying to think of the performance, but the truth is, it is essentially Mac Pro level

performance. And we can debate, is it like the 8, 10, 12, 14, 16? I don't know how many cores. There are lots of different core options in the mac pro but like this is in the ballpark of mac pro speed in the intel mac pro and obviously mac pro speed is going to be redefined when they do an apple silicon mac pro there's no doubt about it if you imagine that it could potentially be as much as four times faster than this laptop but it is um the the for, the equivalent of basically a Mac Pro that you, and a small Pro Display XDR that you can just close up and put in a bag and walk around and use anywhere on a battery. And that's really what it is.

And it's incredible. I mean, look, I don't think it matters which Mac Pro you're comparing it to. It doesn't matter in my eyes, right? Like if it gets to any Mac Pro, that is a huge deal. This is a laptop. This is a 14 inch laptop. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll point out too, for those who, I think we mentioned it last time, but like you, the specs in my 14 inch in front of me are the same as the max specs in the, sorry, that's maximum specs in the 16 inch laptop. There isn't a bigger configuration that's only in the larger, which I love because not everybody wants a larger laptop, even if they want more power.

So there is no difference there, but you're right. Once you're in the zone where Mac pros live, you are bringing Mac Pro performance. And no, not for everything and not in every way and not if you've got a high-end configuration of the Intel Mac Pro. Like, there are some footnotes that you could put in here. But in the broadest sense, this is basically what we think of now as mac pro performance in this laptop that's what it is yeah i wonder if like this is just a curiosity if the 16 may bench higher on sustained loads of cooling stuff it may may. It's got more power coming in, although I think that's more for the battery.

They've talked about how there's going to be a high energy mode on the 16. High performance mode. Sure. Okay. Something like that. Whatever. It's the max power.

Maximum power. Maximum power for the maximum max. For the maximum Macintosh max chip. Maximum power. Maximum power for the Maximum Max. For the Maximum Macintosh Max chip. So, yes. I wonder if there will be a little bit of that. So that the absolute, like, highest sustained performance or something like that is in the 16. But it's, you know, we're splitting hairs at that point. And if you care enough, then you'll care enough about that.

You'll care enough to do a 16-inch. I mean, I'll tell you, using Final Cut Pro on a 14-inch display when I'm used to using it on a 27-inch display, I could see how you might want the 16-inch display, right? Like 14-inch Final Cut Pro, you're looking at the pixels of the video and you're like, I don't know if I can. You really kind of want to attach that to an external monitor so that you can do a full preview of the video and like it is still a laptop screen it's an amazing laptop screen but it's still 14 inches so if you're the kind of person who needs that level of power you may also really want the and prefer the 16 inch and again even though that's a bigger and heavier laptop you're getting um you're getting a mac pro that you can carry around so that's pretty good while we're on this before we get into anything else

we should probably i think we should just continue talking about benchmarks and stuff you did a selection of benchmarks uh geekbench benchmarks xcode final cut um an isotope denoising and some disk read and write the disk read and write was the one that surprised me the most well apple mentioned it and then they kind of go on and and the way i put it was in this even in this era of ssds right like we had that moment where we all transitioned from spinning disk to solid state and it's that moment where for me at least it was the never go back moment it was when i got a macbook air with an ssd in it was like you know oh and you know the truth is having covered computers for 20 years or more it's more now uh it has always been the case in if not all the time most of the time and the eras

come and go where we get so focused on the computer chips and we forget about the storage. And so often the storage is the thing that slows us down, not the CPU. It's not that you're waiting for your CPU to grind through calculations. It's that you're waiting for the result of the calculations to get saved to the disk and you wait and wait and wait. And that was true in the spinning disk era. But the truth is, we got lots of data. SSD speed is now also a thing that you can think about. And SSDs in general are amazing. on this MacBook Pro was breathtaking because the write speed was three times almost as fast as either my MacBook Air or my iMac Pro SSD. And that's because this is a new generation of SSDs

and it's a lot faster. And you can tell, like there are moments, right? I mean, like there are moments that are constrained by the processor where you click a certain thing or you do a certain thing from menu when you're like, okay, now the processor is going to chunk chug for a while. And then there are those things you do. And it's usually like save, like, I'm going to save this audio file and it's a three hour long uncompressed audio file. And what it needs to do is it needs to write out the new file while reading the data from either memory or from disc. And it's like a disc based thing. And you do that on the MacBook pro and you go, Oh, that, that, that progress bar moved way faster than I expected it to. And that happened a lot.

So like my test in here of iZotope denoise, which is interesting because it's an Intel test, it's running in Rosetta, and it matched to the second, the score of my iMac Pro, which I'll point out in Rosetta, it matched the score of my iMac Pro. What I didn't mention is the amount of time when I

pressed save and I should have measured it because that wasn't close at all. Oh wow. I pressed save and the iMac's like okay all right I guess I'll save this now and the Mac Pro's like saved. Amazing. I have a theory about that iZotope thing. I wonder if that's just the maximum speed the app can work at. Because it's too weird to me. No faster. I can't go any faster than this. It doesn't really make sense

why it would be exactly the same result as the iMac Pro. I think it's just luck. Honestly, I think it's just luck. But it is remarkable that it's getting that speed in Rosetta because of course isotope uh still hasn't done a native version but um it is this is why by the way that that little

chart is why i still use an imac pro and haven't switched to an m1 mac to do my job is that you can see that the m1 takes twice as long to do that job as my as my iMac Pro because of Rosetta but the MacBook Pro basically has caught up even though it's emulating and translating that code but yeah some of the other like the the disk writes and reads are all faster I did a Final Cut Pro export where I set a project to Stephen Hackett on his 12-core Mac Pro, and it was faster, but not a lot faster, but faster, like 30 seconds faster at doing that export, and a lot faster than the computers

that I had here to test. And James Thompson sent me his, he actually sent me last November, and I've kept it, but I forgot the password, so he had to tell me the password again. The crown jewels of the Dice by p calc 2.0 source code and um uh that was 18 seconds to build it versus 30 seconds on the m1 air and 36 seconds on the imac pro so a lot fast for i know the developers out there basically going from an eight core imac pro to this macbook pro uh half the time to do a build in Xcode there's nothing in this list that I'm not surprised about

like every single one of these it's like I expected it all to be really really good but like the the GPU score 66,688 just like crushing the iMac Pro. Yeah. And again, I don't have a Mac Pro with the highest test GPU. I should call up John Syracuse and say, run the metal test in Geekbench and tell me what you get. And it may be better. But again, this is a laptop.

This is a laptop. Yeah. This is a machine that can produce those scores on battery. Yeah, that's really the thing here is that I'm sure we're going to get those stories. You know how sometimes I predict the stories that we're going to get? It was clear that the M1 was going to have the backlash where people were like, well, yeah, but it isn't as good as this professional system. It's like, it's not a professional system. We're going to get the, well, yeah, but it's not as good as this high-end desktop computer. And we're going to say, well, yeah, but it's a laptop. And that's the point. Apple still hasn't done their high-end desktop computers, right? They still haven't gone there yet, but we now have the high-end laptop and we can see that the high-end laptop is as functional basically as their old high-end desktops were, which is a pretty good trick. I just feel like we are in

like a once-in-a-generation kind of leap at the moment. Like it really, like this doesn't come along very often kind of. Yeah. No, this is that processor transition thing where everything is going to,

the M1 did it, now we're still in that and we're going to be in it again when they do these rumored, you know, 20 and 40 core things. That's going to be the era where if you compare like to like, previous generation to current generation, where you're going to see these enormous jumps. And also, it's not all performance because some of it is the power thing and Apple likes its power efficiency charts and all that. But it's true.

That's part of it, too, is that they either can fit inside the envelope of a laptop with that kind of power because they are not using as much energy and throwing off as much heat. That's part of the story, too. And then the battery life ends up being extended because of that. You said in the review that in most instances, you were just using the efficiency cores though, right? Which I found really interesting. Well, when you're doing like computer stuff and not pro work, right? Where I'm hammering the GPU, I'm exporting video,

I'm processing multiple audio streams, all of those things. When I'm just looking at the web and checking email, Activity Monitor showed that basically, because remember, it only has two efficiency cores, it doesn't have four. So there's this concern that maybe that means that it's going to have to use those performance cores and it's going to be a hit to battery life. The truth is, Apple, I think, profiled regular use and figured that for this chip, they could get away with two efficiency cores and then they spike a performance core kind of when they need to. And maybe we'll talk about this with Tim and Tom next week. Yes, we're going to bring it up because I'm really interested about that. In my kind of regular use, those performance cores would light up every now and then briefly, and then they would stop.

But most of the work was happening on the efficiency cores. And I think Apple would make the point that the performance cores are still pretty efficient and the efficiency cores have a lot of performance so they can get away with it. And in practical terms, the battery life, I didn't do any battery testing in part because I had a limited amount of time to do everything that I needed to do for these systems. And also to do a battery test, you basically have to run it constantly

for a very long time. And I had a hard time draining this battery at all. Like it was really hard because you really need to like use it extensively and push it all day to really make a dent on it. And I was not able to do that amount of work. So the battery life is going to be pretty good. And a bunch of people asked about the fans. Fan sound is going to be different for everybody, sensitivity for fan sound. I used to use MacBook Airs that blew those fans whenever you did anything and it was unpleasant.

I think Apple's fan design has gotten better lately. The fans in my iMac Pro are silent. I cannot tell that they're blowing. I have to stick, I literally stick my hand back behind my iMac to the vent and I'm like, oh yeah, warm air is coming out now. That's it. Like, I can't tell. This, you can hear the fan. It was hard for me to get the fans to be audible. I had to really work at it. I had to do like a GPU benchmark that pushed the GPU as far

as it could go. So it's sort of like, you know, it's a laptop. The bottom gets a little bit warm and then the fan comes on. I'd say the fan is very slow or not very slow. The fan is very quiet and it was hard for me to get it on at all, but everybody's going to be different in terms of their sensitivity and in terms of what they do for their job. But I don't think fan noise is going to be an issue. I don't think this is going to be like one of those latter day iMacs with the bad cooling system where they would stick an i9 in there but they didn't have the imac pro cooling system and so the fans would just be in order to cool it all down i i think we're in a different era in terms of cooling and that apple's fan game is much better than that so it was not audible i would say but not annoying and even when it was audible was

super rare i've only ever heard the fans on my imac my m1 imac like once and it surprised me because i didn't know what the noise was ah because i hadn't heard it because i never hear them this is i mean it is a podcast but i'll just say if I can do this myself, I would say I feel like the difference is between a and a. That's sort of, that's my little ASMR for today. Very nice. It's not, Apple has done a lot of work on making the fans seem less annoying. But again, it was also hard for me to kick them in at all.

So I think they did a pretty good job with it. And keep in mind, I have the highest, the maximum. Maximum chip. Maximum max chip. Yes. How does it feel to hold? How does it feel when you're using it? What do you think of the looks of this machine?

I'm intrigued. It's different. It reminds me of the titanium from 20 years ago in that the back of the screen is flat. The aluminum laptops have had this little bit of a curve to them that is more pronounced at the edges, but it's like a little domey. And this is not like that. This is a flat edge or a flat side. And then at the edge at the back of the screen,

a very tight curve. And then of course, it's got the rounded edges. When you look at it from top down, the corners are rounded, but the actual edges are much kind of like tighter the curves are pulled in much tighter they're not like 90 degree angles right where it's gonna you're gonna cut yourself um on the on the outside on the inside they are more 90 degree angle ish although they're not sharp and it's not gonna bother me uh but on the on the outside they're uh they're tighter i would say um and so it definitely feels different also when you when you pick it up you will will feel, as you pick it up, you will feel, I didn't mention this in the review, but you can feel the slots because the cooling vents are right there on the sides at the bottom. And so when you pick it up, you will actually feel the vents. They're right there.

That's not been a thing for a while, right? I didn't even really think about those vents. Yeah. Well, they're right there. That's not been a thing for a while, right? I didn't even really think about those vents. Yeah, well, they're right there. You can feel them. They're noticeable when you pick it up. I mean, you get used to it, but it's a different kind of feel. And I think it looks great.

It is different, not too different. I think Apple still struggles with the fact that they feel that basically they nailed it and they know what a laptop should look like and they don't want to change just for novelty they're like they kind of they figure they kind of got it and when I did 20 max for 2020 last year one of the things I said was that the titanium was sort of like Apple's first moment of like oh yeah silver metallic laptop this is what we need to do and then they've iterated on that somewhat this is the biggest change I think in quite a while it It's not that big a change, but I think

it's the biggest change in quite a while in that they've changed those curves and those edges and made something that like for years now, you've been able to look at a Mac laptop closed on a table somewhere and not really been able to detect, unless you look at the ports or something, what year it's from. Or if it's space gray and you know that they used to not make space gray, whatever it is, right? But my point is that in the last 10 years, a random Apple laptop, especially a random MacBook Pro, would just, they all look kind of the same, right? And that's what I will say about this one is you could pick it out. Like in a crowd of Mac laptops from the last 10 years, you see this one,

you're like, oh, that's different. That's not like these others. It is absolutely noticeable that it's not the same. And to me, closed, it's because of that flatness of the top. It is striking when you see it. Now, whether people like it or not, I don't know. It's different. I think it's fun because it's different

and therefore novel. In the long run, you know, I guess everybody's going to make up their own mind about how they feel about how they look. If you think about the weight and size of the machine, it is significantly heavier than the machine that replaces the 14. I know you don't have a 13-inch MacBook Pro there. I would say as a MacBook Air user, I did not feel like I was super burdened by using it.

It's a bigger laptop than my Air, obviously, but it's also a Mac Pro, right? And the screen is amazing. So I'm going to, again, I can't say if somebody is carrying a 13-inch MacBook Pro with four ports around now and they replace it with this, I can't make a judgment on how they're going to feel. how they're going to feel. Um, my guess is that it's not going to matter because even if it's a little bit heavier, it's, um,

got that great performance and the great battery life. And so it doesn't matter. But for me, I was surprised that I didn't have as much of the, uh, these big laptops kind of feel as I did. Like, like when,

when I, I, uh, we did our thing where I went to New York and I got the 16 inch MacBook Pro two years ago. Yeah. That, that, that's a beast. Like I was like, Oh, this giant laptop. Uh, our thing where i went to new york and i got the 16 inch macbook pro two years ago yeah that that

that's a a beast like i was like oh this giant laptop and i i had to like put it in my bag to carry it home on the plane and like it was like this is so huge i don't feel that way about the about the 14 inch it's uh it's it's good you mentioned the screen let's talk about the screen what has been your impression so far with the new display? You know, in another device, the screen would be the story, right? Like the keyboard used to be the story. The keyboard's not the story anymore. The keyboard is, we haven't talked about it yet.

We'll talk about it. It's kind of boring, which in a good way, in the best way. The screen would be the story if it weren't for those chips, right? Because the screen, screen okay first off it is extended dynamic range uh mini led backlight it is a beautiful screen it looks great it looks great in the dark it looks great in dark mode it looks great with photos um it is a like there are moments where i would i would be using the laptop and i would get a glimpse of my desktop background i'd be like oh right like oh this is a

a much better screen than the one i'm used to using very impressive um the pro motion is a mixed bag now you and i have gone back and forth about pro motion on the on the iphone you enjoy it on the lap on the ipad right so like you know you you say you notice it there so in theory you're more primed for this one than me even and the on the iphone i mean my feeling is more just that i i prefer the smaller phone to pro motion if i have to choose which i do so i did um but it's a nice feature. On the Mac, what I would say is it's a mixed bag, mostly because the software support isn't there. It feels to me like a lot of software support, third-party apps, but also some system stuff

is still not there. I was trying to take for our friend, friend of the show, James Thompson, wanted me to do a capture of his Dice app running at 120 frames per second on the Mac. And I used, you know, command shift five to do that. And it gave me a movie that ran at less than 60 frames per second. I was like, what are you doing? I'm at 120 now. It's like, well, that system image capture thing doesn't want to do that. Okay, probably should look at that, Apple. But this is true throughout where there are apps and all the Catalyst apps get it, right?

Because all the Catalyst apps already had to do this for the iPad. So that's the difference, right? Like this is all much better handled if you're using the iOS set of technologies than the macOS set of technologies. Right. And it's not that you can't do it on the Mac. It's that the Mac stuff hasn't had to be adapted for it yet.

And the iPad stuff has. And so you open a Catalyst app and you scroll and it's this super smooth scroll. You open some Mac apps and you scroll and it's just like, right? Because they have made no effort to use the enhanced frame rate. And you can argue like, do you need the buttery scrolling? When the answer is you got 120 hertz display. So yes, the buttery scrolling, you should do that. And it's not that it's worse, right? Like it hasn't made it worse.

It's just you're not getting the great benefit. The truth is just in some apps, it's super smooth scrolling and stuff. And in other apps, it's just you're not getting the great benefit no the truth is just in some apps it's super smooth scrolling and stuff and in other apps it's not it's like every other mac that's ever existed before now and um so what i'm really saying is it's going to take a little bit of time for mac software to get to wrap its head around the idea that it now has 120 hertz display built into a computer it's not like the mac couldn't output it 120 hertz before but it it matters more now that you're just selling laptops that have that and it is nicer like again is it a big deal that in bb edit when i scroll it's a

little chunky and that in this you you know, random catalyst text editor that comes from iOS, that it is smooth in the end. It doesn't matter, but it's like, it's, it's now so fundamentally part of, I think as of today, part of the Mac experience that, and every pro laptop probably from here on out will always have this feature that you, if you make a pro app or really an app on the mac you should do whatever work needs to be done um to take advantage of that frame rate what do you think about the notch you know the notch everybody when that rumor came out that was right that was like oh it's gonna have a notch uh at the last minute, everybody was like, oh my God, I can't believe it.

And I will tell you after using it for a week, the Mac having a menu bar from day one in 1984 is the best thing ever for the people at Apple who had to figure out this display notch thing. Because the display notch and the menu bar, they go together. The whole way it's built is that there's a menu bar area and the notch is in it. And yes, that means that if you've got a lot of menus in your app, they will wrap around. And in fact, the lead screenshot in my review, if you look carefully, it's a very pretty picture of a MacBook Pro with a satellite picture on the desktop. And if you look up in the menu bar, though, you'll see BB Edit and you will see a couple of the menu items on the right side of the notch because they didn't fit on the left side. So

that will happen. I think Apple's got a little bit of like, it makes some attempts to fit things in and shrink things up a little bit to fit them on the left side. But if they can't do it, they pop them over to the right side. It's not great. But in general, all the content is down below the menu bar area. And that is a 16 by 10 rectangle screen, you go into full screen mode, your app goes into that space. The menu bar, whether it's visible or not by default, is up in the menu bar space. So what they've really done is not, the way I would put it is Apple hasn't made a notch that's intruding in your screen. Apple has extended the screen with a special menu bar place up above so that you've got more content

without the menu bar being in the way, if that makes any sense. So the menu bar, the bezel that they've eaten up by extending the screen everywhere except around the notch is the menu bar. So you're basically creating special screen space for the menu bar it works fine most of the time you don't notice it when it's got a black background up there you really don't notice it at all unless you move your cursor because the cursor doesn't like bump up against it the cursor just passes into it you take a screenshot by the way you can't see the screenshots are really funny like with them when you're trying to take a screenshot by the way you can't see the screenshots are really funny like with them when you're trying to show a screenshot of the menu bar separating it's like

hey what are you doing over there yeah i i had to take a photo of the notch in order to show the notch in my review but um but there is this moment the ghostly moment where you take the the cursor the pointer and you just sort of slide it in and it's like it's entered a black hole and it's disappeared but if you keep sliding it comes back out the other side. I kind of like that. It's somewhere to hide it, you know, just a designated cursor resting area. Yeah. Somebody needs to make a utility that just looks to see if the cursor is behind the notch and puts like a glow around the notch to let you know that the cursor is there. I would love that. That would be hilarious. So other than that, like when you're using, um,

uh, light background, and so you can see the notch, you get used to it. It's, it's really not that big a deal. Um, and again, I think it goes back to the fact that although apps can choose to take control of that whole area by default, all the apps live down below the notch, even in full screen, they live below the notch. And what you've really got is this extra space that is essentially reserved for the menu bar. And by doing that, by spacing out the menu bar, all the things they've done the last couple of Mac OS revisions, they made the menu bar taller, they spaced it out, they made these little rounded highlights that go behind each one of the menu bar items when you click on them.

All of that was really to set this notch up. And it works. It works really well. So, you know, try it for yourself. See how you feel. But I will tell you, the notch is a non-issue because of the menu bar. Because the menu bar exists, the notch is a non-issue. And it's not even like the

iPhone where they put menu bar-ish things, right? Status bar up there, but then you get into an app and the app kind of like, you know, expands to fill the space with a background color and all of that. Well, on the Mac instead, it's just always the menu bar. And you're a Mac user. You have a menu bar, right? Like that's where it goes. It's fine. It really is just not a big deal. So unless you've got an app, I'm sure we're going to hear stories of apps that have ridiculously long sets of different menu items and that we're going to get hilarious screenshots of how they jump over the divide and all of that. I would say another thing, if I'm a Mac developer to put on my agenda is do a little window,

little menu bar analysis and say maybe I don't need as many individual items. But if you have lots, it works. It works fine. It just jumps the divide and it's not that big a deal. Because they could, you know, like they could put a notch on the iMac.

This might not be the only machine that gets a notch on the iMac like this might not be the only machine that gets a notch they could they could and if it was and if it was menu bar sized it would not be a big deal that that's yeah that's the bottom line here is it as a long-time Mac user I got used to the taller menu bar uh in no time it's not a big deal it is the menu bar because this one is it's a little bit taller still right it's like a little bit taller than the taller one but because they put like the screen is 16 by 10 is it 16 by 10 underneath underneath the menu bar it's 16 by 10 so it's basically if you imagine it it is a full max screen and then there's a menu bar little menu bar and status bar

bonus bit above it on the left and the right. You could think of it that way because that's basically how it's built. And so I think in the long run, most apps will never, ever, ever, ever go up there. It's menu bar space. And that's the perfect space to hide a little cutout because it's just the Mac menu bar. It's fine. It's, and so, yeah, again, I've seen so much anger about this. It's so weird. And if you use it, maybe you'll still be angry. I don't know, but I use it for a week and it's just, it's, I think it's very clever. I think it doesn't get in the way at all. Um, and it's all because that menu bar exists. If the menu bar didn't exist, things would get really complicated really fast. But the menu bar is already kind of a locked off area.

Now, if you're somebody who does the hide menu bar thing, then it is going to be a little bit weird because the hide menu bar option still works when you're not in full screen to hide the menu bar. And what you end up with is, you know, your desktop picture still extends up there and you can move your mouse up there and if you try to drag like a narrow window like over up into the upper left hand corner it goes and it pushes it back down below the menu bar space could I hide a secret file of secrets underneath

the notch on the desktop you know probably not probably not that's a shame now that would be fun someone should make that as a utility too you know I put my cursor in there and it opens up a secret folder or like a little uh some sort of ui that you know how you've got the ui that uh in a menu bar extra that drops down like fantastical drops down oh yeah the option to have it drop down on a hotkey it drops down from behind the notch yes i love it there it is anyway i'm sure clever people will do stuff like that it'll be fun so the notch has within it the webcam any thoughts sure it is the

what what's the wording that lost you a point on uh on the rickies it is the best webcam ever in a mac laptop laptop right it's the same as the iMac one it's the same it's it's a 1080 uh with the image processing and it's it is it is as good it's a little bit better than the one in my iMac pro because my iMac pro doesn't have the uh image processor wired up i don't think the t2 does that um but it's essentially the same hardware um it is fine i i i uh i this is one of those categories where i don't want to give apple credit for making an improvement to something that should be way better than it is because the bottom line is it's a pro laptop the imac the ip iPad mini the iPad mini has center stage and the MacBook Pro does not it's dumb I like I get it maybe they can't make it thin enough maybe they couldn't fit it in this time whatever but if I'm gonna judge it I'm gonna say it's the best webcam ever in a Mac

notebook and it should still be way better than it is. The iPad, not even just the iPad mini, the $300 iPad. Oh yeah, yeah, you're right. I mean, so center stage, it's right there. It needs to be on the Mac. It's disappointing that it's not. This is fine. It is the best that they've done so far, but they don't deserve applause for this upgrade.

It is literally the least they could do and the least they have done. And I hope that they get over it pretty soon and start putting a, like, again, again, 12 megapixel in the iPads, 12 megapixel widescreen with auto panning center stage. Like that should be on every Mac. And so I'm not going to give them credit for going to 1080 with their webcam, with processing. It's nice, but they get no cookie for that. I'm sorry, they just don't. And same with the SD card, like the SD card, I'm glad it's back. The HDMI slot port, I'm glad it's back. Did they put those make those cutting edge? Or are they kind of second class? They're kind of

second class. I'm glad they're there. but they're not doing the HDMI 2.1. They're not doing the faster SD card specs. They're fine. And probably all that anybody who uses that ports really needs, which is probably why they made that decision. But at the same time, no cookie for that.

Like I'm glad they're back. So they get an award for rectifying their error, but they could have made them more cutting edge than they did. Same thing with the charging ports on the 16 inch. Like it's, those ports are also lesser, right? Cause they've got this new power delivery spec and their,

their brick on the 16 inch supports it. And the mag safe on the 16 inch supports it, but the ports on the 16 inch don't so they don't do fast charging and it feels like all of apple's ports and the webcam are like left over from three or four years ago and right now they're giving water to somebody dying of thirst so we'll take it all but i look at those areas as all the areas that probably need to be improved the next time they do a version of this product because they're all still kind of not like for for such a cutting

edge project or product uh there are um several things on this product that are very much not cutting edge that's okay it's okay but there's room for improvement there yeah definitely you know i'm still gonna, I haven't tried it out yet, but considering it's the same webcam, I'm sure I'm gonna continue to have the same issues with the camera being completely unusable to me in my studio because of the way that, like the overhead lighting I have interferes,

which is a thing that other devices don't have. Like iPhones, iPads, they handle it fine. I don't know if it's like a focusing thing. So it's able to not be affected by the light so much. But it, you know, continues to be a frustration of mine. I have no doubt will continue to be a frustration of mine. When I get it, I'll actually record some videos so you can see what it looks like. Very frustrating. Oh, boy. You know, when you were when I was looking at the keyboard images in your review, and you were talking about the full height function keys, I had this like alternate world kind of thought,

which I think I would have liked, which is half height function keys and a touch bar. But obviously this is only in a world where the touch bar got more functionality than just glorified function keys. But I think I would like that. Yeah, I mean, the Touch Bar, they tried it, and obviously they didn't think it worked. And I think pretty long ago, they decided it didn't work.

And it just took them a while to get to the point of ripping it out because it's the only thing, as detailed in many episodes of Upgrade over the years, they never really updated the software for the Touch Bar, which suggests to me that very quickly after the Touch Bar came out, Apple had basically decided that it was not going to make it and that they were just going to keep it alive

with minimal effort until they could rip it out. And then they finally have ripped it out now. I don't know. I had a section that I took out because I feel like it's another article. And I know Gruber mentioned this on the talk show a couple weeks ago. The idea that Apple could still try some innovation in keyboards. I just feel like they are so bitten. Like every attempt they've done to innovate in keyboards has been met with rejection and people saying, why are you doing this you're a monster and so they've gotten praise for not innovating in keyboards like is and could keyboards be innovated on i think they could and i think maybe apple's innovations were just the wrong ones for the wrong reasons

the best one that i've come up with is as somebody who uses the stream deck right is I would be curious about replacing the function keys with programmable keys that were still keys right but that had an apple I know at one point they filed for a patent for this right and I know some other keyboards do this it's the idea that you've got the keys actually change based on context and you can program them. But there's still keys because I think one of the important points is being able to get to them by feel. That would be an interesting thing for Apple to pursue, I guess. But honestly, it has been such a nightmare the last five years that I don't blame Apple for basically saying, you know, we're going to stick to the classics. This is what everybody really wants. We're going to stick to the classics. This is what everybody really wants.

We're going to innovate in other areas. And, you know, truth be told, I would much rather them think about how you could put touch on a Mac display than I would have them monkey around with the keyboard some more. And so do you have any final thoughts? Is this a computer that Jason Snell wants?

Well, no, because of my use case, like I'm not a laptop user so much anymore. And the MacBook Air is fine for travel. If this was going to be, if I was not going to use my desktop, or if I decided I was going to buy a beautiful display that isn't available, and then use a docked laptop, I would get this. But I'm kind of holding out. Personally, what I want is a big screen desktop iMac, essentially, for my desk. And then I've got my little M1 MacBook Air for when I need to travel. And that's all I need. So it's not for me.

But the thing is, laptops are for most people, right? Most people are laptops. And although the majority of those laptops that Apple sells are MacBook Airs, even in the pro space, I believe it is true. It's probably not as great, but I'm sure that more than half of the pro people are buying laptops, probably even more than that, two thirds, three quarters. so it doesn't matter that it's not for me laptops are computers now that's what a computer is it's yeah it's a laptop yeah and honestly what is a desktop it is essentially just um you know you you would prefer

to be in a uh sitting at a desk with a big screen context, which is why, yeah, you could easily buy one of these. And I think that's why we hear the clamor for a big external display from Apple that doesn't cost $5,000, is that what so many people really want is a MacBook Pro like this one, and they want to be able to dock it at their desk to a big, beautiful display.

And the displays that are out there right now are not great or cost $5,000, and that's not great. Well, just frankly, at any price, don't have the features that the laptop display has. Sure. Well, that's also true. I could give Apple six grand, and I'm not going to get promotion. That's true. You're not.

You'll get XDR, but you're not going to get promotion. So, yeah, it's a funny it's a funny time and and for me personally i'm looking forward to seeing these chips in uh an iMac something with a very very very big screen if i was in uh you know if they made a 27 inch mini led display um i would think about getting one of these and not having to have my MacBook Air, but I already have my MacBook Air and it's going to be fine. And what I really want is the, ideally, even better performance that it would be in a desktop. And my desktop, I've had a desktop for a while now. I started when I started out on my own with a laptop that was docked. And then I got that first 5k iMac and I'm very happy with that kind of iMac lifestyle. Um, but, uh, but the truth is that these are, yes, these are the mainstream. This

is what a computer is. And this is a Mac pro that will go with you anywhere you want to go and do your work. And that's pretty great. And also I would say, a lot of times I wrote a piece about this, where I was making fun of Stephen Hackett, basically, about you don't need a Mac Pro, right? Don't buy a Mac Pro just because it's cool. Unless you want to, unless it makes you feel good,

which it makes Stephen feel good. So that's fine. But I would say the same here. I don't think it makes me feel so good anymore. Well, no. so that's fine but i would say the same here i don't think it makes me feel so good anymore well no the beauty of of the 1999 1999 i think base model macbook pro is these you know you may not need the kind of power that's at the high end of these things and so by doing the chip binning so they've got the reduced core count and they've got the reduced GPU count. And I know that means that they're raising the price and yet having their lesser processors,

you know, just not in terms of the processor itself so much as that cores and GPUs are turned off like in that base model. So you have to spend even more to get up to the like full chip. But I think the truth is some people just like pro laptops and they want more than the MacBook Air. And beyond that, they don't really need a Mac Pro, right? And so that's the advantage of Apple making those binned chips available down at lower prices is I think a lot of people just get that 1999 model and be happy, right? And no, it's not going to be as fast as the max chip with 32 GPUs and 64 gigs of RAM. Like, no, but a lot of people don't need that. And so I think that that is something we should pay attention to, is that people are going to buy lower-end configurations

of these things, and they're still going to be great. This episode is brought to you by Things, the award-winning to-do app. I want to tell you about a fantastic feature that's recently been added to Things. Things now supports Markdown inside of your notes. This is real, true, honest to goodness Markdown as well. Not some small subset of it. It's the real thing. Headings, bold, italics, highlights, code, code blocks, small subset of it it's the real thing headings bold italics highlights code code blocks you name it it's there all the syntax is detected and rendered in a beautiful style inside your to-dos and project notes you may wonder why would you want like markdown as a feature inside of your to-do app well because in most to-do apps the note field

is kind of treated you know it's forgotten about it about. It's like, hey, it's this thing, we have it, whatever. But, you know, maybe it's displayed in a super small font or it's like you have to tap three times to get it. It's tucked away, but not in things. Your notes take center stage. When you open a to-do, you're given plenty of room to write in. It's super easy to add details you need to get a task done. Detailed plans, reference materials, brainstorms, or just like little bullet points. Like so sometimes you, you know, I can sometimes end up like three to-dos for something when I could actually just put them all in one to-do. It's like here's my to-do and then I write some notes in there. Nice and easy, makes things really nice and beautiful and good to look at. Not every to-do needs long notes,

but for the ones that do, it's great to know that you can now keep it right where you need it inside of things. And thanks to Markdown, even your longest notes look and feel fantastic. So if you haven't tried out Things, you should check out this new version. Just search for Things in the App Store

or head over to their website at thingsapp.com. That's T-H-I-N-G-S-A-P-P.com. And you can download a free trial for your Mac and try out the new Markdown feature for yourself and really kind of give it a good go. It's a beautiful application with tons of wonderful features. Whatever it is you want to accomplish in life, Things can help you get there. Go to thingsapp.com and try it out today. Our thanks to Things for their support of

this episode and RelayFM. Let's finally, Jason, finally talk about the Apple Watch Series 7. Okay. We can finally talk about it. We've been meaning to get to it for a while. Can you remind me and the upgradians what Apple Watch you are upgrading from and what model you have? Okay. And keep in mind that I haven't thought about the Apple Watch in a week. the upgradians uh what apple watch you were upgrading from and what model you have okay and keep in mind that i haven't thought about the apple watch in a week because i've been thinking about a laptop so it's on my to-do list uh i had a series 5 i bought a series 7 titanium it's not here yet i have an Apple review unit of a Series 7 aluminum,

and that's the big one again. Right. Okay. So, I mean, I have the Series 7 stainless steel. It's 45 millimeters is the big one, right? And I was upgrading from the 44 millimeter ceramic series five watch. And I'd never used a series six. So I have kind of not really, I didn't really have much of a comparison

because some of the stuff that's there, which I quite like is, you know, like the brighter always on display and all that kind of stuff. Like I've benefited from that. I took one blood oxygen reading and that's probably the last time i'll ever do that but i've done it now oh congratulations what do you think of the like change size the screen size and stuff like that do you notice it do you do you like it okay yeah i do i do and i do that that's the thing about it that really was what motivated me to update and i feel very impressed by it in general like it and a screen this small pushing that screen larger makes a huge difference and i

like tapping my code in to unlock it it's like oh look these buttons are so much more tappable and there's so much more space for individual apps. It's, I think it's very impressive. That said, there are still, I can't believe I'm saying this, but like, so they, they updated some of the watch faces for the larger display. So like they must've decided finally that utility, uh, bless utility original watch face, and it's still my favorite. They're like, oh, yeah, we kind of got away with not doing anything on it before, but we really need to do it now. So what did they do? They pushed it out to the edges and didn't change anything else about it. So even though there's plenty of room for corner complications in Utility, because the face design dates from before there were those corner complications that that that are bigger.

They just never, ever updated them. So you still have this limited number of complications. That's what frustrates me the most about the Apple Watch is it feels very much like the they put a lot of effort into the new stuff and the old stuff just sits there and never gets an update. And they feel like it's solved the problem, but it hasn't. And so I was really hoping that I would have some new watch face abilities with this watch. And the truth is it's the exact same state of affairs as on the 5, where my primary watch face is probably going to

be California, which I don't like as much as utility, but I can get it to be close to what utility looks like and have four corner complications, which the other one doesn't have mostly, again, because it predates that. and even with this update they didn't make any changes there it's just so frustrating to me and maybe it has to do with the primitive nature of watch os where if they update a watch face to be different on some models it gets confused because other models don't have that and so they're like how does the watch app work and how do apps you know affect those complications like i get that it's hard but it is kind of ridiculous that they could find a way like right i mean like i get i get that it might be complicated but why are you making watch faces for the original apple

watch and then just not adding anything that you've added to the OS. Only the new, so basically only the new watch faces get new features that were introduced at that point, right? So if you get a new watch face that was introduced when the new feature was there, they will take advantage of it. But like the old watch faces are sort of like, nah, we're not going to do that. We're back here in the olden times.

And I am frustrated by that but i do love the screen and as somebody who uses my watch a lot uh with cellular and you know it's faster i can tell because faster than the five it feels faster and the screen is nice and that's you know this is what i was looking for i wish that they would really walk through the entire OS and update everything. And if that means breaking compatibility with old models, like I know they still sell the Series 3, but this is the problem, right? Just like it still feels like I'm inheriting really dusty old stuff from the original Apple Watch, which was a long time ago now.

And that stuff all needs a brush up. I, at first I didn't notice the screen. I couldn't tell it was bigger. And then as soon as I saw the passcode screen, I was like, oh, there it is. Oh yeah. It's like almost the metrics on the buttons, just knowing that they're larger and it's like, oh yes. I love the notification button sizes. There's so much easier to tap now um i like that a lot and i would say as well you know whilst it looks ridiculous the keyboard is the best way to send messages now that little swipe keyboard it works great so much better than dictating um and it's way better than individually drawing every letter which is absurd like that's always been absurd uh i like the

little keyboard um it i think it does a good job uh the design of the watch itself i i'm pretty into i got remember i got the gold one and i really love the gold one um i think it looks really nice i'm very happy with the the overall feel of it, which I'm really pleased about because I was very begrudging in getting rid of the addition, the white ceramic. I enjoyed that. I actually think I prefer the design now

of the watch that I have now. I actually think it looks more like a watch, which is something I've always wanted, especially with the bands that I'm using. So on a daily basis, I'm wearing the Leather Link band. I got the Midnight one, and I really like that pairing. And I got the, as I mentioned before, I did get the gold Milanese,

which I decided to wear on occasions, going out to dinner or something, I'll put it on. And it helps me feel like I'm dressing the watch up a little bit, which is, I think, something that's important to me because it was something that I would find frustrating with the Apple Watch before, is that it always felt like I was wearing a computer. And it still does. But now at least I think it has something that looks a little bit more special about it. I don't know when Apple changed this, but I'm happy that the digital

crown is not black in the middle anymore. I don't know if that was maybe a thing that was held over longer on the edition, but I had the white watch and it had a black crown. Still black on the aluminum watch, Mike. Oh, really? Still black with a red circle around it on the aluminum watch. Yeah. I've got the blue and it's still got a... The crown is blue, but the flat part is the red outline and then a black circle. Still had the red outline and then a black circle still had the red outline which at this point i think on the stainless steel is is pointless because i think you can only get the cello maybe um so i don't know why that's needed pointless uh but i am i'm very happy that they have uh at least on this on some of the models now they got rid of the black

on the inside but yeah i don't need. It doesn't need to be here. I don't like it. I wish they'd get rid of it. But they're getting better a little bit at a time. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's fast like I was expecting that. I'm happy with it. Oh, I mean, I'll talk about the look. The blue, all

of the Apple Watches that I've bought have been black. Right. But I had them send me, for for review a blue with a blue band. It's really pretty. I'm very impressed with it. It is not super bright, but it's also not one of those Apple, we call it blue, but you really can't tell blues. It's a really nice blue. The bands are, are basically match it, uh, which is also nice. And yeah, you're, then you're walking around with

a blue watch and you gotta like embrace it. And like I said, I think my preference is to keep it, keep it black, keep it dark, just keep it that way. That's my preference for a watch. But, but I really enjoyed wearing the blue for the last couple of weeks. It's, it's fun. And so I can endorse the blue watch color for the aluminum watch. It's, it's a lot of fun. I imagine the red is quite similar. If you're a fan of red in this this house red is bad and blue is good so we will always be on the blue train but overall it's kind of what i expected it to be apple watch wise uh but i think i am actually more pleased with it than i was expecting so that's a big win for me yeah yeah i agree i um i think that big screen is the story, right? And that's the reason, if you're thinking of upgrading from a previous model, and I think Series 6, you probably don't need to. Series 5, I felt like I had refrained from buying an Apple Watch last year. And I thought, maybe this year. And with the bigger screen, I thought, that's what I want. And having seen it now, I think I was right in saying that that was enough. Certainly, if you're using a watch older

than a Series 5, I think that the benefit is clear. One of the things I haven't done that I need to test before I write my article is I'm really looking forward to seeing about the text size. Because you can adjust the text size much more than you could. And this I felt was an accessibility problem on the Apple Watch is unlike on like the iPhone and the Mac, you could not go crank the system text up beyond a certain point. And that was a very small point. And, you know, older people end up having a problem with their near vision. And an Apple Watch is really nice. But if you can't read your Apple Watch without putting on your reading glasses, it's kind of not doing its job.

And I don't have that problem, but I know people who do. And this is an issue. So I'm looking forward to checking that out. But I haven't done it yet because everything else. But I will get to that before I write my review. And I'm looking forward to trying that out, but I haven't done it yet because everything else. But I will get to that before I write my review and I'm looking forward to trying that out. I remain consistently frustrated at their ability to create watch faces though. I think I'm always going to be this way. So somebody, I think it was Steve Troughton Smith, but somebody pointed out,

and I think this is kind of brilliant, is what if Apple made a watch face that was hands and made a complication type that was behind the hands? And I thought, I kind of like this idea of like all right apple it's it is bargaining but like all right apple you're not gonna let maybe maybe they will i mean stranger things have happened you're not gonna let us do third-party watch faces

how about mega complications right how about we do we do, you draw the hands, you do all of that, but we get more control over some other stuff. Like, could they put themselves in, I mean, it doesn't solve every problem, but it solves some problems. If Apple sort of says, you know, we have a few different hand styles, and then beyond that, we can't wait to see what you do with it. And give third parties the ability to do more interesting stuff behind. But I agree with you. I think the problem with the faces as it currently stands is it is very hard to look at the Apple Watch faces and feel like there's any prioritization at Apple for it. And I'm not saying that the faces that they're doing as new faces aren't nice. I think the portrait face is really nice.

And that the fact that they're using portrait phone picture data to do cutouts and like layer your watch data in with the pictures, which if you haven't seen it, it's amazing. Like you've got a person in the foreground and the time is in the background and it's slightly masked by the person in the foreground. Like when it works, it's amazing. It's like a fun thing, but it really feels like the watch face team needs three times as many people as are working on it now because the, the, they should be better. There should be more complication options.

And I don't know, watch faces matter. I know they're silly, but they're also important and personalize your watch. And it's an important part of being an Apple Watch user and owner is the face. And yet it seems like it's never really a priority for Apple, even now. So I agree. They're fine, but boy, they should be better than fine. This episode of Upgrade is also brought to you by HPE Tech Talk, a podcast from the folks at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. I love finding new podcasts to listen to. I know that you obviously do too,

right? We all love podcasts here. You find something new, you can go back and listen to a bunch of past episodes. I always find that such a treat. Tech Talk is a show that talks through HPE news, tech insights, world-class innovations with tons of really interesting topics. Like for example, what about applying tech for the good of the people, planet, and communities that surround us, which seems like something that's only more important these days or how Walt Disney Studios experimenting of AI and machine learning to help creators with the filmmaking process or even how the chief technology officer of Tottenham Hotspur to the football club their state-of-the-art stadium and how it's utilizing technology and connectivity to help keep players

and fans safe amid COVID-19 restrictions. All of these types of topics are available to you with HPE Tech Talk. I listened to an episode recently focused on how companies can integrate the power of cloud technologies into every part of their business setup. This is something called moving to a hybrid model. And it really talks about how companies can work through that and some of the things they might want to think about. So if this is something of interest to you,

you might want to check it out. Previous episodes have also had tons of great guests. This is something that they really believe in on the show, taking you straight to the source and interviewing some really impressive tech leaders like Sanjeev Khatwa,

the CTO of Tottenham Hotspur FC, talking about the stuff I was mentioning a minute ago about how they're using technology and connectivity at their new stadium. Emily Christensen, a master candidate in applied data science at USC. Monica Livingston from Intel and many, many more. Listen to brand new episodes of HPE's Tech Talk everywhere you get your podcasts like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and everywhere else. Search for Tech Talk right now or click the link in the show notes and go

and check it out today. Our thanks to HPE Tech Talk for their support of this show and RelayFM. Let's finish out today's episode with some hashtag ask upgrade questions. The first comes from Millennial Falcon, which is a great username what technology product do you think you may have more nostalgia for than most people would wow this is a great question i've got a bunch okay a bunch of unloved unloved tech products that i i love so the first is a thing called video guide which i'm sure i've mentioned before. It was basically a, you know, how every DVR and cable box and everything now has like a grid that you call up that shows where all the shows are and you can set your shows to record or record the same show every time and all of that

video guide was that before any DVR technology existed. So it was like a little box that you attach to your TV and it did an IR blaster to your VCR. And it had a, it had a guide when back in the day where you didn't have a cable box with a guide, if you even had a cable box and you could set to like record shows. And at the time the show was recording, it would turn on your VCR with the IR blaster, switch to that channel and press record. And then when the show was over, it would turn on your VCR with the IR blaster, switch to that channel and press record. And then when the show was over, it would use the IR blaster to press stop. It was amazing.

Man, I have found an incredible review website thing of this from the 90s. I'm going to put it in the show notes. I've linked to it before. It's the one, that and a Tidbits article are the only traces of video guide out there other than maybe my Six Col colors article where I mentioned it. So it was a TiVo except it wasn't,

it was just the guide part, but it was mind blowing. And we bought a second VCR so that we could have the one VCR that was just recording stuff. And then the other one where we played it back, um, again, and then like five years later the tivo came out but

um it was amazing so huge nostalgia for the video guide um ipod hi-fi yeah you kept that thing around for a long time i mean it's right here i'm not using it right now but it is right here and uh not so bad um the you know everybody's got nostalgia for the iPod, which turned 20. I have nostalgia for it too, but it's not quite the same. But for weird tech products that I have nostalgia for, that video guide was incredible. And then, of course, went out of business one morning. That's my favorite thing. Whenever people talk about like subscriptions to software or not owning something or relying on something that's being done by a fly-by-night company, I think a video guide. Because one day we came out and turned on the TV and pressed the button on the video

guide and a screen came up that said, video guide has been discontinued. Please send your video guide back, and we'll give you some money back. And that was it. It was over. Did you get money back? I don't think we did. I think we did send it back.

Maybe they sent us a check for like $4 or something. It was literally nothing. And I thought that was a really good lesson too. And then obviously, like TiVo came along and it solved everything. Mine, I think, is the very first video ipod so was it like fifth ipod fifth gen with video or whatever it was called you know like the one where they they demoed it and they showed off the office right that was their whole thing hey look you can watch the office on your ipod

this was just i mean i've had iPods before and stuff but this one was just so good for me like I remember it was a Christmas gift and I remember convincing my mum I must have been like maybe like 17 or 18 at the time I convinced her that like

really the only way for me to benefit from this for Christmas is like I should put some video on it in advance because we weren't going to be at home that Christmas so I got like an extra few days of just playing with the device before Christmas which I always think back fondly to that and then also I was working in a supermarket now like my first job and I would take my video iPod to work with me and during break I would uh i would watch like video podcasts or video shows or maybe even like movies on the video ipod on my break and i had this like weird deal i would work on a saturday i was working in a supermarket and i would get like an a 90 minute

break because i was 18 it was like a thing that they had everybody else just got like an hour but because of the amount of hours i was working child labor loss yeah it may have been like 17 actually i think i was 17 then yeah i think that was what it was it was like because you couldn't get a job here from the age of 16 because the the english had some problems with child labor you know so they put in some child labor all right didn't know that uh thanks let me know between 16 and 18 you get longer breaks and so uh it was kind of funny. I worked there until maybe I was 19, but nobody really paid attention. So I always got those long breaks, which is pretty great. And so I would take my 90 minute break. I'd have something to eat and then I'd go watch like a video or two for like an

hour or so in the break room. So I love my my video ipod that was such a great thing and and with steven's help i'm rebuilding one uh we i got one uh bought one online and i've replaced the internals of it and now i got a new click wheel because the click wheel doesn't work i got a blue click wheel so i'm now making a weird wonderful frankenstein version of it fantastic cameron asks who calls who on skype prior to recording is it awkward before starting to record a couple of things on this we don't use skype anymore nope we use zoom and so the so now nobody calls anyone yeah zoom has a link you just go to the link sometimes i'm there first mostly mike's there first uh because mostly my son is now

um going to school on mondays just it's five minutes after we normally start recording so we i'm starting a little bit later so that we don't have like the sound of a garage door opening during the podcast uh that's we do this for you everybody uh and so i'm on there usually after mike but not always and then uh there's always a ghost it's not awkward because a ghost we make a ghost noise yeah because the second person comes in silently yes so you're sitting there with you're in the you're in the zoom room and you're sitting there doing your work and then suddenly somebody else appears and it can be startling so instead we do a uh haunted zoom room this started because i think once we switched over to zoom uh jason appeared once and scared the bejesus i scared you yeah yeah uh because i wasn't aware

of the fact that i would not be told that jason was joining the call yeah uh and so now we do a little ghost noise and there's never any awkwardness because we're really good friends. So we always take a few minutes to chat. I can imagine if we were just work colleagues. Hello, Mike. How was your weekend? How was your weekend? Mondays, am I right? I've got a big case of Mondays.

Oh, man, I hate Mondays. Did you see the cake in the break room today? Whose birthday is it? I hope it's not Sandra. I don't like Sandra. That's what it would be like if we were colleagues but we're not we're friends so we just hang out i prefer bagels anyway hey how about the weather in this in this economy uh paul asks final question today

would you consider putting a pop socket directly onto your ipad mini and using it without a case it would be uh more comfortable potentially but not have a stand on it well let me tell you paul no seriously this question is for you mike i mean so here's the funny thing jason originally this question was directed at you and i removed you from the question because i knew you would have no answer paul i will never use a pop socket for anything ever my love pop sockets on my phone i don't want to to put one on my iPad. The iPad is just easy to hold the way it is. And I like the case on it. I like the, and I would not like not having the really easy way to stand it up.

Maybe you could put a pop socket on the iPad in such a way you could stand it, but then it's probably not going to be in a good place for holding it. This isn't something I've really thought of. I like the case unless someone can convince me otherwise, but that's where I am right now. I'm going to get a lot of questions now about why I don't like popsockets, and generally the answer is I don't want to stick something on my devices. I just don't.

You can get MagSafe ones now. Don't want it. If you'd like to send in a question for our episode of Upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord, which you can get access to. If you sign up for Upgrade Plus,

go to getupgradeplus.com and you'll also get longer ad-free episodes of every single Upgrade release every week. And even if there's extra ones, you get longer episodes of Upgrade with bonus content. Go to upgradeyourardrobe.com where you can go and pick up some wonderful Upgrade merchandise available for just one more week.

And before we go, today let me tell you about another show here on RelayFM called Roboism, hosted by Alex Cox and Kathy Campbell. It explores how artificial intelligence, machine learning, and digital assistants affect our culture. Explore the humanity behind the bots that are quickly becoming a part of our everyday life at relay.fm slash roboism or search for roboism wherever you get your podcasts.

I would like to thank HPE Tech Talk Things and Uni Pizza Ovens for their support of this week's episode. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Heads! Oh, nice. Some people will get that.