Upgrade - 485: Best Witch and Beast Feature

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 485 for november 6 2023 today's show is brought to you by wild grain squarespace and uni pizza ovens my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley how was it november how did that happen isn't that an and Ooni Pizza Ovens. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Hi, Mike Hurley. How was it in November? How did that happen? Isn't that an incredible thing? You know? The holidays will be here before you know it. Yeah, really. Really. The holiday upgrade episode planning has already begun. It has already begun. I actually have some information about something before the holidays a little bit later on in the show, but that's not what we're doing right now right now we're doing snell talk yeah this question comes from paul from

the 508 and they say mr snell talked a bunch about inviting mr cook from apple to a cow football game we never heard if mr cook accepted the offer politely declined or never responded love to your mothers okay he's doing a tv talk machine oh i know downstream bit i kept that all in there he's from massachusetts love to your mothers that's the sign off i know it that goes back to the the old tv talk machine days one of my favorite podcasts of all time um the paul it was a it was a bit i was doing a bit there tim cook doesn't listen to this podcast and apparently his people don't listen or if they do listen they don't care. I don't know. I was just doing a bit because Cal was playing Auburn and I thought that was fun. Oh, we know you were doing a bit. But look, stranger things have happened, right?

just in passing about Tim not being there, but regardless, Tim, Tim, I don't know if Tim was there. I never saw any pictures of Tim attending the game, which is really kind of a bummer. I know it was right before the iPhone event, but you know,

it's his beloved Auburn tigers and they were in the Bay area where he lives now. And maybe if it doesn't matter, he would rather just see them. And, you know, at home because he can just get a, I don't know what a private jet to take him there but they were right

in his backyard basically um so i didn't see any pictures of whether he was there or not but i didn't see the game on tv because i was i was there and it was and it was a game of cal should have won and uh yet they managed to not which is a cal in a nutshell so anyway that's the answer paul from the 508 massachusetts love to to your mothers. It's Cal Lost. Brutal. Just to get all the TVTM stuff in there. It was terrible. That's all.

If you would like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of the show, you can write in over at upgradefeedback.com and submit your own Snow Talk question. Thank you to Paul for doing so. I mentioned the end of the year. One of the things that happens at the end of the year is the Upgradeys. They're coming back. The 10th annual Upgradeys.

If you can believe such a thing. I can't believe it. The 10th annual Upgradeys. Remember when we didn't do the first annual because you don't do a first annual? Well, now we're at the 10th. We did one of us said it the other one refused it but look at us now jason look at us now look at us now the 10th annual upgrade is it is one of those things where i'm like hang on i'm confused how are we at 10 you know like how can that be because you

forget that like we've been going for nine years but you count at one but we started we started very soon we first upgrade is we'd only been doing the show for like three months right so so the 10th annual upgrade is precedes the 10th anniversary of upgrade true true story it seems to me honestly a little bit weird that we or me like had the bravado of an award show for a show that been going for the three months or something i think you were trying to to like make me feel at home in my new world by kind of like harnessing the energy that i used to have over the years for eddie awards and pouring it into the upgrade. That would make sense why I did that. I think so.

But now, you know, Eddie's who, right? It's all about the Upgradies now. Yeah. How long were the Eddies going for? Oh, I mean, forever. No, I'm just wondering, like, how long do we have to go for? Because this is never going to end. I think it's a long time.

I think from the 80s to when I left, so a long time. I mean, even if me and you retire somebody else can pick up the upgradies okay all right we'll get there we'll get there that can be like we there could be a second generation of upgrade you know like sure we could have other people take over one day anyway upgradies.vote you can send in your nominations now until December 5th. We're going to be releasing the episode on December 18th this year for the 10th annual Upgradees. So please go to Upgradees.vote.

You can see previous winners at Upgradees.com if you would like to go and peruse the previous winners of the Upgradees. winners of the upgradees um we are doing the same format as last year where we combined um some nominations and we added in tv last year as i believe because we had favorite movies did we have tv before anyway we have favorite movies favorite tv and we've added a new category so jason uh suggested a best widget, which I thought was a good idea. Which I sent to you from a run using Siri, and so it came across as a witch category. Best witch.

My favorite is Agatha. Agatha's my favorite witch. Oh, I'm going to go with Samantha Stevens from Bewitched. Classic sitcom. Actually, maybe Sabrina the Teenage could potentially be my favorite. Oh, that's a good one. A lot of great nominees for Best Witch this year.

Maybe we'll do Best Witch this year, you know? Maybe we're going to do that. But my concern was that maybe next year there won't be a lot of excitement in widgets, so we're adding a new category. I'm sorry, Jason. I opened the form and I wrote beast feature in the form maybe it could be beast feature so best witch and beast feature

please enjoy the beast beast feature yes so i i wanted it to be a widget and mike said no no no why don't we make it a feature because then then it can be broader, although this year will probably be a widget. Yeah, no. What I have to say, we'll do best feature widgets is going to be the thing that we're asking for this year. And then next year might be something else. Ah, that's right. It's a category. It might be something else, right. Yeah. I've changed it back now to best feature. So we're looking for your favorite widget. And then next year, maybe it will be like a Vision OS kind of thing. Who knows, right?

What we're going to be looking at as our best feature next year. Oh man, yeah, you're right. It could be. So I thought it might be something where we can- Best immersive experience or something. Could be, right? So this is a good addition

because what I like about this is it will allow us to award apps that may have otherwise not been maybe a best overall app or something, but maybe have a really cool new feature. And hey, maybe brings in the ability for some Lifetime Achievement Award winners to get another nod.

Maybe so. So please go to upgradees.vote and cast your vote. If you enjoy this show, by the way, you'd like more of it. Who wouldn't? Go to getupgradeplus.com and you can subscribe for $5 a month or $50 a year. Thank you so much to those of you that do. If you do subscribe to Upgrade Plus, then you will get a longer version

of the show every week and this week Jason I want to talk to you about Audio Hijack's transcription block I just added so I thought we could talk about that a little bit in Upgrade Plus because today is such an action packed episode that we wouldn't have space for it otherwise. No, it's true

it's a big one, big episode Money, money, money, money, money, money money, money, money, money, money it's true. It was a big one. Big episode. Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money. It's that time again. Oh, it is. Apple's Q4 results have some headline numbers, and we'll dig into a few of them. So. Okay. Revenue, $89.5 billion, down 1% year over year.

The iPhone brought in $43.8 billion, up 3%. The Mac, 7.6 billion, down 34%. iPad, 6.4 billion, down 10%. Services, 22.3 billion, up 16%. Wearables and home, wearables and home 9.3 billion dollars down three percent what jumps out at you specifically jason is there anything particular in here that you wanted to touch on well i part of it is expectations which is the idea that like wall street like apple said expectations and wall street had expectations and down one percent which is essentially flat. While that's sort of like another down quarter, I think they've had four or five in a row where the revenue is lower than a year ago quarter. It is sort of in line with expectations. It's a weird year for some things like the iPad didn't get any updates at all. And Apple is coming off of a high in terms of Mac

sales that I want to talk about in a second. And so as a result, you know, you're going to get some things that are down. Services is way up. There's a lot of sort of speculation about that because the services number is up and the services margin seems to be up. And there's a lot of theorizing because Apple didn't actually cite any reason why. And I definitely saw, I think Ben Thompson speculated, is it possible that they renegotiated their deal with Google that's under fire and it's even more profitable than it was before? I mean, you wouldn't want to talk about that if that's the case. So it's unclear about that. But generally, Apple is in one of these kind of flat periods. And the question is, is Apple going to stay flat or is Apple going to

go down or is it going to go up? What's the story from here? Because it's very profitable. It actually is up year over year in profits, which is interesting. But investors don't care about that. It's funny because there are the people who are running the business and the people who are using the products. And then they're sort of like the investors. And it's a publicly held company, so you want to please the investors. But as a user of the products, I don't care about what the investors care about. However, what the investors care about can carry the day in terms of what the goals of the company are. So it's interesting to watch this in the long run. There was a, I would say, asinine story over the weekend in the information that basically said, hey, Tim Cook's in his mid-60s, and Apple's been flat for a year,

so they should get rid of Tim Cook. As if somehow age would equate to that. Well, yes, and he's going to have to wait 10 years until he's in his mid-70s to run for president, I guess. So, zing. Anyway. That one took a little second to simmer on my brain. My point is that is that yes he's

dramatically younger than the people who are president and and who have run for president and who have been president recently like he's dramatically younger but anyway oh yes yeah tim cook a vibrant mid-60s man with gray hair uh yeah i mean get him get him out honestly probably fitter than me i mean yeah oh he's fitter than than most um not not to say i mean they were basically saying succession plan and all that but like come on i think i think there are succession plans and they've been reported on uh that mark german has talked about it it's a little bit silly anyway uh but hey that what i would say is that shows you what happens when one of the world's biggest, most valuable, and most profitable companies has four or five quarters where their revenue is slightly down year over year is the knives start to come out just for that. And that is just the way it works.

So I want to note that in the down 1% and the improvement in profit that Apple, you know, where does it go from here? And is it a growth stock anymore? Is it a growth enterprise? Or is it more maintaining their profitability, and investors will react accordingly? I want to mention iPhone being up because iPhone even being up a little is good, because that's the crown jewels. And if it's down, it really hurts them. But what I want to zero in on the most is Mac. So Mac down 34% year over year, right? And if you look at the transcript, I did the transcript again, of the analyst call, they have lots of reasons why it's down year over year. They have lots of excuses, right? They're like, well, it's a tough compare. They always say that.

We had the shortage like in the two quarters ago, year ago quarter where there were the factory shutdowns and that penned up demand. And then we sold a lot the next two quarters, not just the next one quarter, but the next two quarters, which made it a tougher compare. And also the product didn't come out in the same cycle because they don't tend to come out once every 12 months they

tend to be a little off for that and so that's why the mac is down but don't worry about it the mac will be okay uh it won't be as bad next time it's sort of what they said except no they're wrong i don't agree no no this is he try i mean like there are times when i really do believe the tough compare because when you're comparing against the year ago quarter and things don't align right, it does happen. Right. Where it's like, oh, our big product launch last year was in June and this year it was in September. And so, you know, our June quarter doesn't match because we didn't do the big product launch this year. Like that's reasonable. But to say that the Mac, oh, no, no, no.

It's just those factory shutdowns in the mac like pull the other one uh is that how they say it in in in england pull the other one um something like that so if you look so this also and i'm going to do a story about this this also closed the fiscal year for apple which means you can roll up those fiscal year charts and if you look at apple's last four fiscal years of mac sales, or let's say last five, what you get is in billions, 26 for the whole year, 26, 29, 35, 40, 29. That's not because of factory shutdowns last year, right? What happened is the pandemic happened and Apple Silicon happened and Mac sales shot up. And now they're back down where they were in 2020, which is, I would say, essentially an all-time high for the Mac other than these two

pandemic years. It's the 2023 at 29 billion is, believe it or not, the third biggest year in the Mac's history. Only 21 and 22 were bigger. So the story is probably that Apple pulled a bunch of sales forward and yet still managed to have what before the last two years would have been a banner year, which suggests to me that there's an expansion of the Mac market that went on in that time.

I think it's also fair to say that the introduction of Apple Silicon was the perfect time, too, right? Where then people that were going to buy a new laptop during the pandemic may have more favorably looked at Apple than they would have otherwise, because all of the reports and headlines and reviews were like, these things are incredible, right? So it not only brought, the entire industry was seeing like the bringing forward of purchases, right? And that maybe people would have more favorably looked towards Apple than if they weren't necessarily in one camp or another yeah and it's the um the pulling forward and also expanding the ecosystem i do i do think that probably what happened here because they talk about record numbers in the ecosystem and record numbers for mac install base that that is one of the things that also happened it's not all pull forward

because if it was all pulled forward i would say that number wouldn't be 29 billion and in fy 23 it would be less and the fact that they managed to beat their fy 20 number which is also 29 billion but it was it was less that's i'm rounding here uh so i think two things can be true here right one is i think the mac is down because it's down not because of the weird things in the supply chain last year i think it's down because it's down and not because of the weird things in the supply chain last year. I think it's down because it's down. But it's not down in the way of like, well, people stop buying Macs. That's not it. It's more like you're dealing with an industry or a financial industry that looks at growth rates and you're trying to explain why you're way down year over year but i think if you look at the bigger picture you can see that they seem to have returned to the high point before the spike and i

think that's positive for apple in mac sales because it means that the mac will probably still sales will probably still continue to grow plus they netted that big spike for a couple of years yeah it's like what happened to the iphone right like around iphone six time of like there is a boost you made a bunch of money from that boost and then you're just going to go back down to what would have been a growth that you were on otherwise right and they that that was just like a one-time thing for you that you profit it from and then you have to kind of deal with the hey why is it not like this all the time thing for a little bit right but but if if there were any if investors were out there and again the mac is a small portion of the business but investors are out there saying oh yeah now

like we we had this conversation i think a year or two ago which was okay the mac was in the single digits until the iPhone came out. And then it just started growing. And then it spent most of the 2010s in the twenties, not the teens. The teens were only very briefly, it shot into the 20 billion a year business. And it was in the 20 billion a year business for 10 years in the, in, you know, 2011 to 2020. And then it shot up to 35 and 40. And we all had that conversation,

like, is the Mac a 30s billion a year business? Or is it a 40s billion a year business? Or where is it? And this year at 29 billion, what I would say is the Mac is probably more like a $30 billion a year business, maybe growing into the 30s over the next few years. What it's not is a $40 billion a year business or a $35 billion a year business. And I will say it also didn't go down to in the low 20s because everybody bought a Mac and now they're not going to buy Macs for the next few years. That didn't seem to happen, which is good for the Mac, I think. So anyway, that is, but I do have to call Apple's reasoning out because I know that they're dealing with a lot of financial analysts whose memory only goes back to the year ago quarter, right? Like they don't even think about big picture stuff

because it's all about now, now, now, now, now. But I don't think it's a reasonable explanation for the mac performance because it is the down 34 it really is kind of of a piece with the rest of mac performance over the last year they had a down year compared to those two great years you can think about it in context and it makes a lot more sense it's also like um the if they were to say that the ipad is a tough compare, right? Because the iPad is down 10%. And it's like, well, the tough compare is you didn't release any products. Yeah, no new iPads for a whole year.

So it's down. Guess what? It's down. So really, the tough compare is you didn't do it. And it's not like they didn't sell iPads. They sold $6.4 billion worth of iPads. Which is a lot of iPads. It's a lot of iPads.

But they didn't have, you know, you do a lot of quarter it's a lot of ipads but they didn't have you know you do a new model and there's a sales spike because people are like waiting and then they buy and otherwise it's just people kind of drifting in like a friend of mine just bought an ipad and it was his first ipad in uh in several years and you know he thought about and thought about it and he said jason are they coming i was like don't think they're coming this year and he's like all right i'm gonna go to the apple store and get an ipad and that's that that happens right there is this kind of like underlying kind of sales of of products that are just out there but new products change things and six billion dollars in a quarter where there is still no new products is impressive.

Right. It's pretty good. It's an impressive business. Right. But if you're trying to talk about it in terms of growth, you're like, well, it didn't grow. And the answer is it didn't grow because there was nothing new. It's completely explainable in a way I accept that I don't accept about the Mac. I mean, I don't doubt that it was a tough compare, but it doesn't matter because in the end,

the Mac was down. Like for the whole year, the Mac was down from a peak. And that's just how it was. So I wish they would have owned that and spun that a little differently. That, you know, we saw a bunch of uptake. We think it really expanded our install base. And they didn't. They just went with the sort of laziest kind of like,

oh, well, tough compare, you know. And, you know, it's like they launched a new new mac a mac that's never existed before right the 15 inch macbook air and it seems to have kind of just like been a bit of a wet blanket yeah and so you know and and so the question is well you had a new product that why didn't that do well for you right like there was something new that didn't exist before you should have been able to capture more money and it didn't happen and instead they they were like, oh, but we're really excited about the new products that we introduced a couple of days ago. It was like, okay, all right, that's fine. I think in that MacBook Air, you know, I think we all know the reasons why it maybe hasn't sold as well as they had hoped. It was out of cycle. A lot of the people who were

going to buy a MacBook Air already already bought a macbook air i still think the 15 inch air is going to be a hit over time but a late in the m2 cycle larger version of an existing laptop that had already been out for a year you know it's it's that is not going to spike sales right that's going to sell with people who just wander into the apple store but it was weirdly timed and so i mean we'll watch it maybe it is a uh a not successful product but i i still think it's going to be pretty popular um down the road but it obviously didn't light things on fire because the mac was down 34 and they didn't even highlight it as oh but the macbook air sales were good they didn't say a word so it's, but the MacBook Air sales were good. They didn't say a word. So it's like, hey, Apple, I got an idea for you. You want to sell a bunch of MacBook Airs?

You know that iMac comes in a bunch of colors? MacBook Air, a bunch of colors. Easy, done, job done. Interesting idea. See, someone's got to get me on these analyst calls. Are they still making the iMac, Mike? Are they still making that? They are, Jason.

Oh, okay. We're going to talk about that a little later on in the episode. But yeah, the only other that that stuck out to me was that there was a 16 increase year over year in services and doesn't really seem to be necessarily accounted for you know like on the earnings call yes that's the mystery we have new new games and new content it's like yeah but it wasn't like you had some breakout hit in the quarter um and yeah that we don't know what that is and we probably never yeah what what is it exactly and is it perhaps um the again the google deal you could see why they wouldn't want to talk about that yeah especially right now yeah and he got asked about about ai right and they did they did a version of their

same answer which is we use ai everywhere although he did he did say you know we're still we're still working on stuff we got let me read the quote we got stuff okay tim said in terms of generative ai obviously we have work going on we're investing quite a bit we're going to do it responsibly and you will see product advancements over time where those technologies are at the heart of them what i find interesting about the wording of this quote is it it reeks of you dummy in a way that this kind of stuff tends not to whereas like obviously we have work going on it's like the way i read that which is like i don't know they don't it's just like a different kind of vibe there which is just like well we're not sleeping on our hands here

like we know what the rest of the industry is doing we are also doing things you know it has a different tone i wanted to mention the vision pro quote because i just think it's interesting because they're trying to calibrate vision pro for the financial industry and kind of like talk about where they're going so they talk about they talked up it's nothing new to upgrade listeners right we talked about the developer labs and uh he characterized those as uh like he said they're classic apple speak there's some real blow away kind of things that are coming out of the developer labs. But still what he's saying is,

he's saying, hey, remember, we've got this amazing developer, third-party developer story and app store and all of that. And let me tell you, they're working on Vision Pro and it's great, right? Is that self-serving? Of course it is, right? But like, that's what he's trying to get across there

is we've done these developer things and we're being blown away by what we see there. And then they said, the question was, is this going to ramp up sales like AirPods or Apple Watch? And he said, No, there's never been a product like vision through pro, we also know that they don't have enough of them to sell like that. But he says, we're purposely bringing out in our stores only so we can put a great deal of attention on the last mile of it, we'll be offering demos in the stores and it will be a very different process than a normal grab and go kind of process. And I think you and I talked about last week that like they're getting, they're recruiting people from retail to come and get trained on the Vision Pro kind of like

experience. And they're setting up places and identifying places in the retail stores where they can do that. Like it's gonna be a hands-on process. And while you may be able to finagle one without spending a lot of time in the store, maybe, although they're gonna wanna match your face to the light seal and they're gonna wanna get your information about glasses or things like that.

But the truth is also, they're gonna to want to get your information about glasses or things like that but the truth is also um they're going to be hard to come by and so they're erecting a barrier that's going to create a you know supposedly superior user experience for buying um but they're also it limits how many they can sell which is fine because they there are only so many of them that they can sell anyway this episode is brought to you by Wild Grain, the first ever bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, fresh pastas, and artisanal pastries. Every item bakes from frozen in 25 minutes or less, no thawing required. Jason, I would like to ask you a couple of questions about the Wild Grain box that you received recently. I would like to know what did you bread bread bread bread there is a big bread boy what did you have in the box and how was it to bake uh we had three loaves there was some dessert that we haven't had yet

and then there was some pasta some fresh pasta that was frozen uh and i can mike i can exclusively report on this episode of upgrade that we had our last of the frozen bread loaves, which you just pop in the oven. And so it's always, it's like, it's not dough. It's like baked, but I think it's not baked all the way. So you put it in straight out of the freezer and it obviously warms up and then it browns on the outside. And then you take it out and it is indistinguishable from fresh baked bread from dough so we had that our last one of those really great and uh our pasta last night was uh was the frozen fresh pasta and as opposed to dry pasta fresh pasta just has a a different texture it's really soft and and, and nice. And it, that was really great. We had some spaghetti with the, with our, our preferred red sauce and that we make, uh, and the, the fresh

pasta and they were the wide, they were wide, long noodles, like fettuccine kind of noodles. And then we had, um, and we had, uh, the bread, so it was, it was real great. And, and it's just, it's, it's remarkable because it happens pretty fast. And yeah, you would never know that it wasn't a bread loaf that you had hand crafted yourself from dough, but you don't have to do that. You just take it out of the bag and pop it into the oven. You can fully customize your wild grain box. So you can get any combination of bread, pasta, and pastries that you like if you want a box of all bread or pasta or pastries you can have it plus for a limited time you can get

30 off your first box plus free croissants in every box when you go to wildgrain.com upgrade to start your subscription today yes you heard me. That is free croissants in every box and $30 off your first box. All you need to do is go to wildgrain.com slash upgrade. That is W-I-L-D-G-R-A-I-N.com slash upgrade, or you could use the promo code

upgrade at checkout. Our thanks to Wild Grain for their support of this show and RelayFM. It is reviews day around here over on the Upgrade program and of course over at SixColors.com. We're going to be talking about

two different products. We're going to start with your review of the M3 MacBook Pro. What configuration did you have? it is the big boy a big boy teen inch m3 max that is indeed a big boy yeah the definitive expensive big boy so i should say for people who are wondering uh 16 processor cores of course and cpu cores and 40 gpu cores so yeah you know all of them whatever all of them all the cores you had the 16 before right like i think of the m2 yeah they're trolling me at this point right because they know i think they know that i like little laptops and they're like, send him the largest laptop possible. Because it seems like different outlets

get different computers. Gruber got a 14-inch, but I got a 16-inch one. All right, fine. The Verge got the M3 14-inch MacBook Pro. They got the M3 and apparently they got a Max or a Pro. I don't know. Dan Seifert said he was going to review, but they also got the base model, which I find i got an imac though which we'll talk about later

not everybody got an imac uh so you know it was a it was an assortment so what it also means is i i haven't tried out the the pro chip which is actually the i think in some ways the most interesting of the three although in some ways the max is the most interesting of the three because that's where they really pushed their performance to the limit so uh okay i'm wondering where to start with this do you have any like big takeaways from it beforehand before i kind of dive into some little details like oh and this can be about either the machine or the chip inside of the machine i'd say my let's see my biggest takeaway is probably that if you are running a m an m1 or m2 pro macbook pro you're fine if you're running an m2 max macbook pro you're you're probably fine um if you're running intel or you're running a like an m1 max

like because because and i say that because if like if you're running a pro chip you're probably just going to get the pro chip and the pro chip is going to be fine but i don't think it's going to be it's going to be a little faster but the big leap is what I'm trying to say is the big leap is the M3 Max really is a lot faster than previous Maxes. It's faster in some ways than previous Ultras. It is super fast. So if you're one of those people who spends a lot of money on a very powerful computer, the Mac Pro in your backpack, essentially the one that starts at 3,500 and just goes up from there, right? The most expensive laptop. If you're that person and you've got the M1, you probably are going to want to sell that and get the M3 Max because it is a big leap. And then coming from Intel, again, it's like there's never been a better time other than the

last two times, I guess, to get off of that Intel system. And I've heard from a lot of people who are hanging on to late model Intel MacBook Pros who are obviously looking for that moment to jump. design that they is unchanged really from the m1 macbook pro with that great screen and the extra ports and the nice keyboard and all of that stuff is still uh it's still a great design and unchanged for that reason you said in your review when testing the m3 max a lot of my concerns are alleviated by the fact that it just seems faster in every conceivable dimension than its predecessors usually by quite a lot yeah yeah that's it this is the the way we talked about this last week when we just talked about the chips but like the m3 max is the place where apple poured on the performance that's where they did it they chose to take the pro and differentiate it and make it more of a mid-range chip but the max they did not so the pro is sort of incrementally faster than the previous pro the max is is more than incrementally

faster than the previous max right the max is very impressive which also means that the m3 ultra should it arrive next year will be amazing right in in those high-end systems but uh for a laptop to have this kind of performance it's that was big leap. So again, most people don't need anything approaching that level of performance, but if you are one of those people, and we know those people, right? We know those people. Those are your Marcos, your David Smiths,

maybe your James Thompson, I don't know. Underscore was the first person I text, and I was like, are you going to get one? And he's like, I saw the numbers, I'm gonna get already ordered it yeah so those you know who you are if you're one of those people who's like I will spend money for performance I just want a laptop with performance you should spend the money because if if your work can go 15 faster every year yeah why would you exactly yeah exactly if you're if you are um doing xcode or you're doing 3d renders or you're doing video encodes or you're doing like anything you

know it if it's you and for everyone and this is why that apple has positioned the m3 pro chip where it is it's like you know if it's you and you will pay the premium because it's worth it for you most people won't most people don't need to and the m3 pro is a more appropriate chip for them and we mentioned the m3 pro we mentioned that it doesn't seem to be a lot of them out there um but there have been some benchmarks that leaked out and i think have been confirmed at this point um that they the m2 so the m3 pro is coming in at 14 increased performance in single core over the m2 pro and six percent in multi-core which makes sense right because there are fewer is it fewer performance cores and more efficiency cores right yes in the m3 pro so i i guess it makes sense um i don't really know what to think of all of this about the m3 pro chip realistically um i don't really know where i

land on it myself now like i said i mean we'll see how people react to it but i think the m2 pro the whole idea there is it's a mid-range chip. And there are a lot of people who are not going to want the base model and they're going to want the extra features of the M2 Pro. And it's going to be faster. But what it's not is M2 Max Mini anymore. It was before kind of like M2 Max Mini. It came along for the ride. And they're like, no, like it's really separate now.

The CPU configuration is totally different. Fewer E cores and more P cores. I mean, in the end, the cores are faster and it's still faster. It's just not taking the big leap because what they've decided is this is the super expensive max chip. We will spend the money there on expensive features.

But on the Pro, which is more popular, we're not gonna spend the money on more expensive features and But on the Pro, which is more popular, we're not going to spend the money on more expensive features and make it, because this is a volume chip and most people don't want to spend, right? They want it to be available at $2,000, not $3,500. And that's kind of a big part of the difference there. So we'll see how people react.

But I like the idea of it. And I think it's probably going to be very successful because most people just want the Pro chip. i think this pro chip will be it feels to me looking at the numbers that i've seen that it's it's incremental in the same way the m2 pro is incremental it's faster and it's a very fast chip but if you want the foot to the floor performance that's the max and you'll know if you want it because you're going to pay for it. You're going to pay a lot for it. And really the Pro Chip, more than its raw power, enables functionality that is found to be important by many people, as we keep hearing from about more than one display, more than one external display. So you can power a couple of external displays as well as the

internal um and has different ram and storage options of course right while we broke the the seal on the display i will say one thing that i thought of as i was writing this review and i mentioned it in the review is i like that they start at 1599 with a macbook pro now instead of having that weird 13 inch model you get the best feature, which is the screen. You lose a port, right? You lose the opposite side port because the M3, like the M1 and the M2, just can't support that many ports. It's kind of sad, but it's true. Doesn't have the second external display out, only one external display out, because again, M3, like M2 and M1, Apple has chosen to not make that feature a priority. However, and 8 gigs of RAM, which I will make the argument, I think 8 gigs of RAM for lots of

people is fine. But I think that what Apple's really doing is assuming that a lot of people will configure it up and that corporate buyers are already going to be bulking at it being $1599 and they weren't comfortable with the cut margins if they put 16 gigs at $1599. And they know most people who care are going to configure it up and add $200 to the price immediately to get it to 16 gigs of RAM. And that is a lot of margin for Apple. So that's kind of why they're doing it. I don't love that. I will say this though, after looking at the store options and pondering it a little bit more. I think if you care enough to upgrade the configuration in the Apple online store, you should probably get

the base model M3 Pro instead for $19.99. Because you're adding, you're taking $15.99 up to $17.99 just for the RAM. You're so close to up to 1799 just for the Ram. You're so close to 1999, which comes with 18 gigs of Ram. So unless you've got,

unless the $200 is just not in your price range. Like I think for a lot of discerning buyers that that low end model is still, even though it's doesn't have a touch bar and stuff anymore. Right. And it's, it's a 14 it's got the screen and all of that. It's still not that great. Like it's still sort of design who is it designed for and the answer is corporate buyers who have to have a macbook pro but do not want to spend more money

and do not care that it's got eight gigs of ram uh like people who will only buy a macbook pro just won't buy a macbook air i think that it's still there for that. But if you care at all, if you're discerning at all, I feel like you should really consider still going up to that 1999 base model M2 Pro laptop instead. So it's a peculiar... I mean, so true connoisseurs of computers, which are our audience and a bunch of the people that I see on Mastodon and all of that. I think they're going to turn their nose up at that low-end MacBook Pro, and that's fine, because I think I would really argue it's not made for you. It's made for the people who won't turn their nose up at it and will just say,

$1599, great. And what they'll get is a slower processor and not a lot of RAM, but functional and a beautiful screen. This is a quote from you. The M3 Max is so much faster that it's making me, even me, question my upgrade cycle. Can you dig into that a little more? Well, I'm using, I'm speaking to you from an M1 Max, Max Studio, right? I bought it when the Max Studio came out. And I look at the M3 Max numbers and I think, uh, right? Like, because it is, it is a lot faster. And I had a moment where I was running tests and doing various things. Like I did a whisper transcription. I did a bunch of stuff on the MacBook Pro. And then I came and I was doing something else. I came to my desk and I was working on stuff and I did another thing

that was like another whisper transcription or something like that. And I thought to myself, why is it so slow? Why is it running so slow? It was just running fast. And then I thought, oh, it wasn't running fast on this computer.

It was running fast on the laptop.'s the m3 mac right i just had that moment where i thought oh yeah if i really want the you know heavy duty stuff the um the video encodes the audio uh processing and the transcriptions and other stuff like that. If I, if I wanted to give them a, a real kick, uh, when there's an M three max max studio, that would be an upgrade that I could do. I'm not saying I will do it, but like it's given me pause about it because this is a lot faster than the M one max is that this is where you really see the separation in the Apple Silicon line in a way that I don't know if we've seen this level of separation from a previous Apple Silicon chip. I think this might be the first sort of big spread where you're like, oh, you might even

want to update from Apple Silicon to Apple Silicon, which up to now you sort of haven't needed to do. But from M1 Max to M3 Max, yeah, there's big gains, big gains happening there. max yeah there's there's big gains big gains happening there and i guess and if we're talking like m1 to m3 like a couple of years i think a lot of professionals would make that kind of jump like i think it is kind of good that the year over year uh is good but not like bananas good right for most people so like you're not tempted but although you have started to become tempted and maybe it's just going to be in that max and ultra chip yeah just a little tingle but um but it's coming right the fact is if not this generation then for a lot

of people in the next generation you're going to get that moment where you're like oh i've got an m1 and now they're at m4 yeah we're maybe not there necessarily. Like I have an M2 MacBook Air and upgraded from an M1, but I did that because of the new design of it. And then I handed down the M1. That wasn't because of the chip. It was because of the design. And that's what I'm thinking. Like for this, it's like the chip.

If you are somebody like David Smith, right? Or Marco. If you've somebody like David Smith, right. Um, or Marco, uh, if you've got, especially like an M one and you're one of those max people, you just, you're, you got the max chip, you pay the money, you want the best. This difference is probably enough to make you jump. And you know, if you're that person for everybody else, it's not, I think for everybody else, it's more, this is why Apple keeps talking about Intel, is they know how many people are still using Intel Macs. And it's a lot. And they're trying to get them over.

And this is a great opportunity for them to bring people over. Yeah, I have an M1 Max MacBook Pro. Like, that's what I'm talking to you now from. It's like my recording machine, my editing machine, production machine, as they call it in the biz. And I was wondering what i would do i thought i would go to a mac studio and i was planning on doing it and now i'm going to wait for the m3 max mac studio because that is going to be great for me like that's what i want so

um and now that now i've made my mind up like when that comes that's what i want so um and now i think so now i've made my mind up like when that comes that's what i will buy and i'm gonna wait now until that because i was planning on getting and uh i just hadn't done it yet but i was planning on getting an m2 max max studio but now i'm like no no no no for those who are are uh unclear on the the the spread of processors in apple's product line. The MacBook Pro, well, now it's M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max, but I would say kind of the default is M3 Pro. It's the Pro chip is the default. And then you can spend a lot of money for Max. Max Studio, the default is Max. And then you can spend a lot of money for ultra. So the base model studio presumably will be with this same chip, that max chip, M3 max

chip. And that'll be spectacular because they, you don't need the size of the studio for the, for the, the, the slower chips. So that's what the Mac mini is for. I mean, they really have just differentiated it. Mac mini is M and M pro and max studio is M max and M ultra. So yeah, I would hang on if I were you and wait for that M3 Max Mac Mini because it'll be coming next year and that'll be impressive. What are your thoughts on the finish, the space black finish that you got? finish the space black finish that you got oh yeah um space black is it's what i said last time it is finger is print resistant but not fingerprint proof you can leave fingerprints if you want to i

had somebody was like maybe you should wipe your hands before you use it you filthy animals and i was like guys do you not know that your skin exudes oil you can have the cleanest hands in the world you will will still put oil. I will also say, if, now I'm just going to put this out there, right? Yeah. If you are the kind of person that wipes their hands before they use their laptop for this reason, I don't know what to tell you. I was thinking of what an insight that is. If only all the great murderers and burglars of

history had wiped the grease off their hands before they committed crimes they wouldn't have left fingerprints behind that's not how it works anyway it is better they did a good job they wipe off better too right because it's this in the anodization seal they have put a different chemical process that they say repels liquids. So sure. But can you get smears on it and with your fingerprints? Yeah, you can. They are harder to see and they're easier to wipe off.

And it's hooray. But again, I'm just trying to temper people's responses here. It's not fingerprint proof. It's just better. And then in terms of the color, I put a bunch of pictures in my review. You can see them.

It is absolutely the darkest pro laptop apple has made ever i think um absolutely and in some light it it does look black in contrast to other laptops it's clearly very dark although i would argue that the midnight macbook air looks darker to me um certainly in the vicinity but it it has the dark blue sheen, which this one doesn't have. Although it's got kind of a goldy metallic sheen of its own. It's not pure black. It is a dark gray. So yeah, I'd say the most important thing is, first off, don't get your hopes up that it's super dark gray or super black, because it's not. It's dark gray. or super black, because it's not, it's dark gray. And two, if you're asking, like, if my laptop is hanging around somewhere in an office somewhere,

and you're like, where's my laptop? I have the black one. You will probably be able to spot it, right? It is a lot darker than space gray. And I have the pictures to prove it. But I also have a picture where I put my midnight MacBook Air, the space black MacBook Pro,

and like a Samsung SSD that's actually black anodized aluminum all next to each other. And yeah, one of these objects is black and it's not the space black MacBook. It just isn't. So, you know, it's

dark gray. And that's fine. It is the darkest one they've made in a pro laptop. It absolutely is. It's what Space Gray... In fact, I will say this, Mike. It's what Space Gray Auto have been all along. Because this is the real Space Gray.

But they already had a Space Gray, like dozens of them. And so they've differentiated by calling it Space Black. But it's just a nice dark gray. But if you're one of those people who was like, I want the darkest MacBook Pro on the market. Yeah, get it. Go get it. This will do that. If that's what you're looking for, if that those people who was like i want the darkest macbook pro on the on the market uh yeah get it go get it this will do that if that's what you're looking for if that's the deciding factor for you this is the one that will get you that yeah yeah if you want the darkest macbook on the market um i suggest midnight macbook air but hey you do you there was one

thing i wanted to touch on before we move on to the iMac. You say in your review, Apple's Mac laptop line, which makes up the vast bulk of new Mac sales, offers what might be the best array of options in the history of the Mac. Now, I'm assuming you're adjusting for time and space in this argument, right? Because like, these things are always better if they've been going on you know there's always better now than the previous ones because of the way that time works and performance right like if you put the ibook and the power book next to these things it's like they're being destroyed but you can look at them for like where they are in in their place at that time is that what you're talking about what i'm saying here and you know people can argue with me if you want because

whenever you're talking about in the history but like there are three consumer laptops if you count the m1 macbook air you've got the the excellent m2 mac MacBook Air in both a 13 and a 15. And you've got a pro MacBook Pro with a great screen that now spans three different processor levels and will take you from $1599 all the way up to, you know, three, four or five grand. So you've got a very clear single model MacBook Pro that spans a huge gamut. And then if you just take the M2 Airs, you've got two options for that excellent computer down at the lower price point. And then you've got that M1 Air, which is a fantastic computer even now that's even lower than that. I feel like that is a spread of options and clarity that is rare, if not non-existent,

when you think about Apple laptops. That's my argument, right? Because in the past, you have your PowerBook 160, 180, 140, or you've got an iBook and a PowerBook, or you've got the polycarbonate MacBook with some variations and pay more for black. And then you've got a MacBook Pro up here that comes in some different sizes and shapes and all that. And there may be a sweet spot in there in 2010

or something like that. But like, it feels to me like bottom line here, we can debate the history, but it's like, I feel like the laptop story is clear. And it's been a while since the laptop story has been this clear and that there have been this many good options all the way from the bottom of the product line up to the top. Pretty cool time.

Yeah, it's good. It's good. It's good. And, and, um, I can't wait for the M three MacBook airs cause I love the MacBook air too,

but the Mac, these MacBook pros, it's a good design. These chips are continue to improve the max is going to blow people away at the high end who need that um and we're all still celebrating the 13 inch going away too so even though even though just as i ironically just as i said don't buy that 13 inch macbook pro i would caution people against buying the M3 MacBook Pro just because, again, unless you have to scratch to get to $1599. And even there, I would say maybe you should just get the MacBook Air.

You get the better screen, it's true. But you can save money and get the 13 or the 15 MacBook Air. And if you're going to go up to the MacBook Pro, really try to get to the M3 Pro because it's just a much better computer with much more base RAM, which makes it a less of a stretch to get there if you care about something like RAM or storage. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. With Squarespace, you can stand out from the crowd of a beautiful website. You can engage directly with your audience and sell your products, services, and the content that you create. Squarespace has got everything you need all in one place. I want to touch on each of those things in a little bit

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We now turn our attention to the M3 iMac. That's right. There is a piece of information that we will omit until the end of this conversation because I think it's a whole separate conversation. That's right. There is a piece of information that we will omit until the end of this conversation because I think it's a whole separate conversation. Let's just talk about the 24-inch M3 iMac. Yes. Still a great looking computer, right? You know that M1 iMac that you have? It's like that, except with an M3. Then it looks great and I'm sure it's nice and fast.

It looks great. Exactly, right? M3 is faster than M1. The advantage of not making an M2 iMac is you can say, well, it's way faster than the previous iMac, for sure. Although, again, I don't think people with an M1 iMac need to update. I think it's more for people who have an Intel iMac who want a new iMac. And the iMac, you know, the iMac used to be the center of the Mac universe, and it's not anymore. It's a niche player. We live in a time of laptops and other mobile devices and having an iMac that's a big all-in-one's still a big seller and they need to keep it up to date. And it's great. I mean, every time I try one, I think, where in my life could I fit this? And I can't come up with an answer. Even when I was doing my Studio B project, getting a second workspace, which is where I wrote most of my reviews,

actually, on the iMac, I thought I could get an iMac and put it here, but then I thought, yeah, but I've already got a Mac studio and a MacBook air. Like I don't want a third computer. Right. I don't. Um, and, uh, but you know, every time I use it, I kind of think like, how can I find a way? Is there a way, surely there's a way that I could have one of these in my life because I love the colors and I, i love all the things about it but it's not um yeah yeah it's it's just it doesn't fit but if it fits for you i mean that it's a great computer and now it's faster like that's the bottom line it's a great computer it's a shame they didn't do anything with the stand i think that is the biggest miss for me that they didn't allow for more flexibility

with the stand and also didn't change the fixed stand exactly since the iMac came out they did the studio display which had in addition to the VESA and the fixed stand that just tilts they had the the more expensive tilt and height adjustable studio display and I'm so disappointed that they didn't put that option on the iMac. And maybe they just didn't want to anodize those displays or those stands. And would they sell or not? Or it adds too much to the price and they figured nobody would buy them.

Maybe this would be considered heresy inside of Apple's industrial design lab. But I would have just liked it if they could have made it possible for me to put an iac on the adjustable studio display stand i know it's going to be mixed colors right i'm going to have like yellow on silver but i wished i could just do that it was like only available in silver so you have to buy a silver yeah most of my complaints it's funny most of my complaints about the imac this time are actually just my complaints about the iMac last time. And if, so if I have one overall M3 iMac complaint is that you went to chip generations and you changed nothing. Like they literally, they changed nothing on the outside. They don't want to change it. They already did the work. Why would we alter it? And so you see it in the stand, which like, you know, there should be a, uh, an adjustable stand. If not the default, just let people buy a nice

Apple adjustable stand for this thing. Because I think the stand is too low. I think most people are going to need to put it on a box or a riser or something. And I think it's a mistake. And so that really bugs me. And the webcam bugs me because it's the, yes, it's a 1080 webcam and there's image signal processing in the M3 chip and it looks great and all that. That's true. But like, I really think the iMac is a perfect place for something like center stage. Now, my guess is that they were going to put the studio display camera in it and they got so much criticism for it, they just decided not to bother. But I want them to take another shot at it because center stage is great. Center stage is really appropriate for an iMac. You just need to have a better camera in there. And they decided

that that was too expensive, I guess. And so they're just going to keep the 1080 webcam, but for a brand new model to still not have center stage in it, it's like, come on, like it's the perfect place for center stage. What are you doing here? But they don't. And then I decided to finally have my moment about target display mode. Yes. Which is,

Apple hasn't done target display mode in a long time. This is the mode where you can basically take an iMac and say, I'm now an external display and you plug something else into it. And you don't boot into macOS and run fancy software that is just, you boot into target display mode and it becomes a display. And with retina displays, they took that out because the technology at the time certainly didn't exist to drive a retina display via Thunderbolt cable. So they punted on it.

But I'm at the point now where I kind of come back around to the fact that it's a feature that should exist and here's my approach to it which is i don't think all-in-ones are a good a good buy in general because screens last way longer than computers do in terms of being current you can use a very very old screen and still you know yeah there are newer fancier screens but like old screens are fine they last a long time i am using the same panel with my studio display that was in the second 5k iMac so that was a long time ago now so okay but it's an iMac and therefore that the computer is going to age faster than the display is. There's going to come a time where you're going to get rid of it instead of putting it into use as another display. follow me here counter to apple's stated beliefs against waste and for environmental you know impact being reduced for their products i think target display mode is a

green tech feature and a reduce of waste feature and i think they need to make an effort to bring it back. Because I'll tell you, it would be a lot easier for me to buy an all-in-one down the road if I knew that when I was done with it, I could use it as a display. And I say that as somebody who just bought an Apple Studio display, even though I have a perfectly good 27-inch 5K iMac pro display and I don't want to use that computer anymore but the display is still great and there's no target display mode so I can't so I think that that's another disappointment I have about all in once in general which is this iMac in particular is I think that Apple I don't like how disposable they are in the sense that the displays are great and the computers will age faster than the displays and this has been true of all in ones for a long time but like i feel like

this is an opportunity apple should step up here and and create a mode that allows it to be used as a display how is this different to a laptop though like a laptop is all fixed in one package i'd say it's the necessity of it. Because you can just buy an external display and a computer. Right. But you can't do that with a laptop, right? The display has to come along with, because it's a mobile device. But this is not a mobile device.

It is the same design as an external display, but it also has a computer inside. It's like, yeah, but I want to use it now as an external display. It happens all the time. It's how people save money. It's how it could sell, you know, sell Mac minis to people who have iMacs and it would be less wasteful because you end up having these screens that they get handed down maybe for a little while, but in the end, the screen is great and the computer's not, and that's the end of it. And I just think, I don't know how hard it would be to do this. Perhaps it is so hard to do that. It's just not worth it. But my feeling is that it's probably more that it's just never been a priority.

And it just feels a little wasteful to me on an all-in-one desktop. You're right. Laptops face this issue too. And maybe they should make that for laptops too. But the problem is a laptop, the screen is attached to a whole laptop. You can't buy a separate laptop screen and laptop base and walk off with them like you can with this. So it's a different category. It's a mobile device versus this thing. Just a little thing. I love the iMac. I think it's great. But this is part of

what gives me pause about it. And one of the reasons why I probably will never go back to buying an iMac, even though I love my time with the iMac, because Apple makes a very nice external display and then I can swap out the computers every few years. Someone wrote in, I don't have their name right now, and asked if the high-performance screen sharing mode could be used in place of something like target display mode. Well, it requires not, I think think not because it's about remote control in that scenario right and it requires uh you're controlling the other computer not your computer right so it doesn't go that way i do yes i do wonder if if they could build a mode like that the problem with that is that you're still running, it has only on Apple Silicon, and you're still running in booted into Mac OS

when you do that. But sure, that kind of technology might be the way to do it. Although the best way to do it is to plug a Thunderbolt cable into that Mac and have it be a monitor. That's the best way to do it. And a webcam potentially too.

I wanted to just read something specs wise i just because i just think it's funny for the m3 part so uh in multi-core performance the imac was 37 faster than an m1 system it was also 18 faster than an m2 macbook air in the same tests in single core tests the m3 was about 18 faster than the M2 and 32% faster than the M1, so that's all great. The 10-core GPU iMac was only about 4% faster than a 10-core GPU M2 MacBook Air on a Geekbench 6.1 Metal test, but an eye-watering 234% faster than an 8-core GPU M2 MacBook Air on the new Cinebench 2024 GPU test. What is going on with that statistic? The Cinebench test, my guess is, uses ray tracing and mesh shading.

Ah, yeah, okay. And possibly even fills the GPU cores where they're reclaiming memory. But my guess is that it's a ray tracing and mesh shading thing happening with the Cinebench. That particular test is tailored very nicely to this new GPU architecture. And I've used Cinebench for a long time, but there's a new version of Cinebench, and it is...

Yes, I think it is perfectly designed for these systems. It's not... Right? And so I also ran the Geekbench Metal test, which is a different kind of test, but Cinebench is a rendering test and I am, it is rendering a scene as many times as it can in 10 minutes essentially. And, uh, yeah, it clearly is using like ray tracing and metal shade or mesh shading. And that's why.

Right. Uh, and, and, and so will most cases be 234% faster? No. But sometimes But sometimes. Sometimes. Well, it's also showing gaming too. Like it's showing gaming. Yes.

I read in the Ars Technica review, they were talking about how they played the game that Apple showed off, Baldur's Gate. And they said like, you know, is it incredible? No, but it plays better than other Macs I've tried to play this kind of game on. And that is a good thing, right? Like it is making a comparable gaming machine more than before.

And I'm very happy to hear that. That's really great. Yeah, I think Apple's goal with Apple Silicon is to have all of their M, you know, all their Apple Silicon base chips be good enough that you can play games on them. Yeah. They're not going to be the best gaming whatever, but remember, low-end Macs used to not be good enough to play games on, and they are now. To get games on the systems,

the systems have to first be capable of playing games. It's true. People are like, there's no games on a Mac. You couldn't play them. Or you could only play them on the $5,000 professional Mac that nobody buys, which is like,

well, why would you do that when you could get a PC that plays this game for way cheaper? And you're John Syracuse. The answer presents itself, but otherwise you wouldn't. So, so yeah,

we're at that point now. And now with this, yeah, these, these are, it's funny too, because this is a feature that is a 3D artist and rendering feature. But come on, it's a game feature.

Like they built better game rendering into their chips now, into even the base model. And that's where they're going to get a lot of benefit from, you know, in the games that use ray tracing and mesh shading. in the games that use ray tracing and mesh shading. All right, let's move on to the part that I'm sure Apple would really prefer not to be the story of the iMac, but I think in our circles, it is going to be the story of the iMac today. I'm going to read from your wonderful review again.

Quote, Apple told me that it has no plans to develop a 27-inch iMac again. If the company changes its mind one day and plans to develop a 27 inch iMac again if the company changes its mind one day and decides to make a bigger iMac I'll cheer but I don't think I'd go back to an iMac now that I'm able to work with a studio display in Mac studio so the quote specifically is that there is not going to be a 27 inch iMac right like that's what they told you apple has apple has no plans to develop a 27 inch iMac right right? Like that's what they told you. Apple has, Apple has no plans to develop a 27 inch iMac. Right. And it's, it's funny because Mark Gurman has talked about for a while that they, they have worked on and off on the idea of a larger iMac, but it would be like a 30 or a

32 inch iMac. It would be huge. And I, and, and we scratch our heads a little bit for the reasons discussed earlier and say, well, why would you not just make that as a display? What's the market for a very large pro iMac versus a nice big display that you can attach whatever pro or whatever level of computer you would choose to attach to it. And maybe they think there's a market there. And I'm sure we'll hear from people who are like, I would buy one, but I'm not sure it's necessary to have a computer like that. And if they also made that screen available as a screen, I think a lot of people wouldn't buy it. And it would be frustrating if they made it as an amazing new screen.

And the only way you could get it as an iMac, that's sort of how we got to professional level iMacs in the past. But so Gurman's got all those reports out there. They're not addressed by this statement. This statement is just about the 27 inch iMac. And I'll just say, it's unusual for Apple to make a statement like this.

I know what's happening here. It is a, it's a marketing statement. I would say it's unusual for Apple to make a statement like this. I know what's happening here. It is a, it's a marketing statement. I would say it's completely self-serving because it's a marketing statement. That's what they're for. What it's trying to do is tell people, if you've got a 27 inch iMac on Intel and are waiting for the 27 inch version of the iMac on Apple Silicon to arrive,

stop, stop waiting. And in fact, this is just more explicit to what they said last week in their presentation, which was, It's the perfect size and resolution to replace both the 4K and 5K Intel-based models. Whichever model you're coming from,

you'll appreciate the enormous amount of screen real estate on the new iMac display. And Turner said that in the video. That's what we were told in our briefings, the exact same wording. And it was very clear at that point that they were saying, this is the answer for all previous iMacs. That is what they said. So I thought it was already clear, but apparently Apple feels like they need to make it extra clear. I missed that completely, by the way, that John Turner said that.

Like, it went over my head. I don't know why, but maybe it was too late at night for me, you know? I don't know. Yeah, maybe so. But no, it's basically like this is, it's typical Apple PR. It's like, well, the products that we sell are great choices. The products that we don't sell aren't. Like, that is, that's like sales 101, right?

And so that's what they're doing here is they're saying um they are concerned that there are is a group out there that is like we are gonna wait for the 27 inch iMac to come back and with the M3 iMac Apple has broken enough of just enough of its rule about talking about what it's doing inside the black box to say, no, there's no 27-inch. Stop waiting. But really what they're saying is stop waiting and just buy either the 24-inch iMac or a studio display and a computer. But the solution is, of course, buy a new Apple product because it's marketing. That's what they're trying to do. But they clearly think that there is some sort of an issue out there where people are holding out for that

27-inch model. And I think a lot of us were in that. I don't feel like I'm there now. I mean, I bought a studio display. I moved on. But when the M1 iMac, I read my old M1 iMac review while I was writing the new one. And at the end, I sort of assumed that there would be a bigger iMac and there never was. And I've come around to that now, but like, I think obviously Apple is concerned that they're losing sales from a group that's holding onto the big iMac, hoping for a new one. So they say, no, no, no, there isn't going to be a new one. Either choose the 27 inch studio display or 24 inch iMac. I think for a lot of people, the 24-inch screen is actually enough. It's enough for me for almost everything I do. Video streaming, video editing, there are a few places where it

would be really unfortunate, but I could manage. And in those moments, I would probably go up to show more on a display setting and shrink everything down. But if it's not enough, you know, other larger screens are available and you can attach a laptop or a desktop to them and they work great. So that's what they're trying to do here is like, please leave Intel. Please buy a new something. Don't wait around for this computer that we don't intend to make again. Even if in 2025, like Gurman's reports are like 25, maybe they might do a mega iMac and they might not. And I definitely have heard that like when they were planning the M1 iMac, there was talk about doing a larger iMac and they killed it. And Gurman's reported that too, that they stopped.

So if they're back talking about it, it sounds like it's talk and it may not go anywhere. So while Apple's being a little disingenuous here and saying no plans and 27 inch, right, they could totally have plans to develop a 30 inch iMac. It's not addressed in the statement. decide you want to buy into all of those kind of like conspiracies and hope no no no big iMac it really is going to happen I mean two or three years from now maybe like the the I don't disagree with the point of Apple's statement here which is look if you're holding out hope that there's an iMac around the corner for you there's not maybe someday I, but not now. And if you're like, no, no, I'm going to use this i7 iMac until there's a new one. I'm just going to hold on to this one and I'm going to not do Apple Silicon because it's got to be an iMac. I would encourage those people to let go and either go with the 24-inch iMac or a studio display with an external Apple Silicon Mac of some sort. Mac or a studio display with an external Apple Silicon Mac of some sort.

So I think from hearing this and thinking about it, the iMac Pro is dead. Like the idea of the iMac Pro is dead. Like bigger iMac, Pro iMac. I just don't think it's going to happen. And I was kind of thinking about like, well, why did we want it? Because I was also thinking about this of like when reading your review of like like is there even really a market for all-in-ones in general and then like out of that market what is there left for a professional powerful one and it kind of started making me think about like the imac pro right the the 27 inch imac pro that we all had and i was kind of thinking like why

did we all buy that machine? Why did we buy it? Why did we love it? And it was because it was the only really powerful Mac that existed in a time of bad Macs. It was a bad time. And here was this machine. And with a big retina display.

Yeah, it was like, here's this machine at a time when Apple doesn't make external displays, and there were no good displays. And Apple only made one good professional machine and it was this one because the Mac Pro was really bad. And so we all bought it because it was like, this is like the oasis in the desert at the time when we needed it. So we have such fond memories of this computer. $5,000. It's the most I've ever spent on a computer.

But it was what we needed at the time to be happy with the Mac. And it was great. It was fantastic. It was legitimately great. Funny story. They wouldn't give review units of that out to almost anybody because it was a pro system and Macworld ended up paying me

for my review of it because I had bought one for myself. And one way that you get your money back for buying an expensive computer is having somebody pay you to review it. That was hilarious. And then it's like literally the only time that one of my articles

has been tweeted by Phil Schiller. And I'm like, you guys didn't even want to give Macworld one. I bought it myself and now you're tweeting my review of it it was just an amazing moment well i mean because they made the money and got the press it's like that's like yeah i guess i guess so money money money anyway yeah it's your yeah it's the that display was great and and that's why i had a 5k i've got the first ik 5k imac when i went out on my own that was my i had like a dell display and a MacBook Air and then that 5K iMac got announced.

I was like, that is it, I'm gonna buy it. Because again, getting a display like that was so rare and it came with a computer and you're like, great, well, it's a perfectly reasonable, powerful computer. And then that iMac Pro came out. It's like, oh, that display, the Xeon processor, it's gonna let me do all my isotope audio stuff and all that.

It was great. In a moment that, um, Stephen Hackett wrote a great piece called the great iMac realignment that was about this. And, um, he called back to that moment. That was like the parallel universe, right? Where they were, they were taking the Mac at a different direction. And then they did the, um, you know, they did the thing where they brought in the press and they, they said, Oh no, no, no, we're recommitting to pro users and there'll be a new Mac Pro. But the story was that the iMac Pro was originally, that was the future of the Mac Pro. So the Mac Pro was dead. That was it. So the iMac became this vessel. I'm using the vessel into which a lot

these days, but let's just go with it. The Mac Pro became the vessel that Apple was going to use for high-end systems because they had their whole high-end system, non-laptop high-end system product line was a disaster. And so people just flocked to the iMac. And what we're seeing is Apple unwinding that and saying, no, no, no, you can get that display externally. Plus we make this other super expensive, fantastic display.

And we've got all these different modular desktops more than ever before that take you from the low end to the high end. And then the Mac Pro is on top of that. We have so many different choices for you. You don't have to have an iMac again. The iMac, this new, and they designed the new iMac with that in mind, right? They designed it knowing that they didn't need the iMac to hold up the Pros anymore. And so it's this super thin, light, cute, adorable, not very well. I mean, it's got cooling in it, but like, I'm not sure it would take a Pro processor if you put one in it.

Maybe, but like, it's not for that. And it's got the colors and it's like, it's fine. And the iMac Pro, again, we're a different, we talk about this on this show all the time, it was a different timeline. Like the iMac Pro existed in a parallel universe that we ended up moving away from, right? Like it was going to exist,

probably as the replacement for the mac pro and it was going to be the mac pro but then they had to change course because they realized they were going in a different time we're still going to get the iMac pro but it was a one and done because then by the time that apple had made the decision they were going to make they decided to go to apple silicon and then everything changed and the iMac pro was still in development and they needed something to try and make people feel better in the meantime until they could develop the like the forget that the trash can ever happened Mac Pro right and like and now we're back on to course again but then the iMac Pro just sits out there is like this vestige from a different time and so it was only ever done once

and it will never happen again, I think. Right. So I'd say pro-level users fled to the iMac in part because Apple's the Mac was in a sad place right then. Yep. And Apple's choices had led them to that place. And I would argue

it was a rational thing for users to do to have a pro iMac and to go there or a high-end iMac, even if you didn't buy the iMac pro, like at the end there, you could get a really stacked. I remember that the last generation iMac, remember we did, we had Colleen on the, on the podcast. I think that was the last generation Intel iMac and like an i7, the high end of that was faster than my iMac Pro was, as I recall, for most tasks. Like, they were really powerful.

And I think it was a rational thing for Pro-level users to use an iMac in that era. But with Apple Silicon, another one of the decisions Apple made, in addition to things like that the M1, 2, and 3 don't support two external monitors, one of their decisions was that's not what the iMac is going to be anymore. We're going to do a studio display, and we got our Pro Display, and we've got Mac Studio in addition to the Mac Mini, plus all our laptops can drive those 5K displays, and we don't need to make a Pro iMac anymore. It was a distortion in the iMac for a bad time that we don't want to talk about anymore. And I, I just, I think that's the truth of it. Now, if they, that's why I'm so baffled about, about the rumors that they keep tinkering with the idea of an iMac that is, that is huge.

And the only, I'm going to throw out a wacky idea here. This is not quite a shower thought, but it's close to that, which is I do, having used that Samsung monitor, that's basically a TV. I wonder if maybe the discussion about like a big iMac is something like,

what if we did a big monitor that had an embedded computer in it? Because once you have a studio display with an A chip in it, right? Like, could we just do a big monitor and put an M computer in it? Cause once you have a studio display with an a chip in it, right? Like, could we just do a big monitor and put an M three in it and, or an M four in it, and you could run Mac OS on it, or you could boot TV OS on it, or you could just use it as a TV. And you know, is there a, like a, a weird kind of multifunction big display that you could do? kind of multifunction big display that you could do. Probably not. That sounds like a toaster fridge to me. But anyway, I start thinking about weird stuff like that because I don't think

it makes sense based on where Apple is right now to do something like a really big Pro iMac. I feel like their direction is keep iterating Mac Studio, keep iterating Mac Mini, and keep building great laptops that you can hook up to these big displays and continue to make a line of really nice displays because clearly nobody else is going to. So Mac users are going to have to rely on Apple to make those external displays good. I expect that there is a big display coming and it's really powerful and it has some kind of chip inside of it right because it needs to and it's not an iMac it's just the next studio display my yeah my other experience of using the uh the samsung is although i didn't like it because like you you turn off your computer and a blue screen comes up and says i'm going to sleep in 30 seconds it's very bad apple would never do that i think but um but yeah i'll tell you, if

you've got an A-series chip in your studio display, you know what would be really nice, or your big, beautiful display, is tvOS at the very least, right? Can I repurpose that, not as a Mac necessarily, but as an Apple TV when I'm not using it in a small environment somewhere? Why not? I actually am a little offended that the the that my studio display can't do that given the chip that's inside of it but it can't it's you know it's running ios but it can't do that um but yeah i i wouldn't i don't want them to make a bigger mac bigger imac um it doesn't make sense to me i realize if you're somebody who just loves using an all-in-one but you know i i my my computing life has not changed at all. I now have a studio display on a monitor arm

instead of an iMac, and I have the Mac Studio under my desk, and it's the same experience, right? Yeah, it's two pieces instead of one, but it's basically the exact same experience as before. And it's fine. Yeah, the $5,000 iMac Pro exists today. It is a Mac Studio and a Studio Display.

You just add them together and you've gotten to where you need to go, you know? And for our friends, we have some friends, like I think Marco and Steven both do this, like the laptop you attach to a studio display life. I used a MacBook Air for years in the Intel era where I had an external display at work and I would bring that MacBook Air back and forth

in my backpack every day and I would plug it into the external display and keyboard and mouse at my desk at Mac world. And let me tell you, it was a buggy. Like sometimes it wouldn't go to sleep when I disconnected it and it would be hot in my backpack when I got home. Sometimes the video connection wouldn't work right. Like there was lots of things about it today. It's not like that at all. My, my studio B, you know, other room where i have a studio display i just use my macbook air back there and i could not like it i mean i'll say specifically

great that is an apple silicon and studio display like if you use non-apple silicon and a display doesn't work so well uh if you use uh apple silicon and an og display doesn't work so well specifically those two products together it's like perfect right the Apple Silicon and an LG display, it doesn't work so well. Specifically, those two products together, it's like perfect, right? The studio display and an Apple Silicon Mac. Yeah, that's the magic of it. So yes, I agree. The Apple solution to the 5K iMac being gone is the studio display and literally pick your product from the M2 Air all air all the way up that is better than i agree

pro that is a better product and in three years when you're ready to upgrade your computer you won't have to get rid of your display the display and you'll be you'll be good to go uh i just before we move on you mentioned the episode of colleen and i want to put it in the show notes. And I looked at the description, and this might be the weirdest episode of Upgrade. All right? Listen to this description. The new iMacs are here, and Jason has an exclusive interview with the iMac product manager. We also discussed the new iPads, and then Jason and Mike draft what they think will happen at next week's Apple event. Yeah.

Isn't that weird? There were new products. We had an interview with someone about one of them. There was a whole other set of new products. Then there was an event the next week. It was the services event. It was the services event. Good memory.

That honestly... I just looked through the draft scorecard. It sounds like uh a description written by chat gpt because it's like we're just going to pick a bunch of things that upgrade that happen on upgrade yes like also like episode 237 new max ipads and the 2019 march event draft that is so weird right it it is well Well, that's like our clip show episode. It's like all the things we do in one. Yeah, that was my interview with Colleen, so I assume that was the one where I actually flew to New York and

interviewed her at Apple's place. And then I was recording from a hotel room floor in Romania. In Romania. And then, so I did the interview with Colleen and then I believe went back to my hotel around the corner in New York. And then we did the rest of Upgrade and the files, I sent the files to you overnight and it was a whole.

Whole thing. Just thing. Yeah. Whole thing. That was good times. That was a whole thing. March 2019. Mm-hmm. Yep. Wild days. Mm-hmm. whole thing just thing yeah that was good times good times march 2019 yep wild days this episode is brought to you by uni pizza ovens the world's number one pizza oven company letting

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support of this show and RelayFM. Let's finish out with some Ask Upgrade questions in today's show. question comes from mike who asks as a 13 inch m1 macbook pro user how long do you think apple will support the touch bar i use keno every day in my classroom and i actually love the touch bar to jump around in a slideshow without scrolling through the slides on screen. That's actually a very good use of the touch bar.

It's like, oh, that technology sounds great. So I think, okay, let me start by just saying something that is, I'm going to be mean. I'm going to speak ill of the dead. I'm going to be mean to the touch bar. Mike, you shouldn't have any trouble because Apple has made no effort to update the touch bar in any way since they launched it, essentially. So essentially, I think it will just continue being what it was forever and never change. And so I think it will be supported until the last touch bar laptop dies. But it will never be changed.

It will never be updated in any way. It'll just keep being what it was from the beginning and i guess it's one of these things where you have to hope that no bugs get introduced right because like if they do yeah no i think they'll support it i i think that i think i think as long as they're supporting the m2 processor they will support the touch bar because it's in that macbook pro so i think it'll just be out there. It just won't do anything new, but I think it'll let you jump around in your slideshow without any trouble. And Zach in the chat room points out that, yeah, sidecar still says like, oh, you want to see the touch bar? So the touch bar is in sidecar. Whenever you use that, you can just make your iPad a touch

bar if you need to. Yay. Touch bar in the sidecar, touch car in in the sidecar touch car in the sidebar touch car in the sidebar i don't know what that means but i like the way it sounds uh brent wants to know why do you think apple does not offer cloud backup for max whoa um just because it's hard something to add into services right you want to do another service i agree i agree i think the answer is because it's hard and takes a lot of space i guess right like well but they could charge for it this is the thing i'm sure they've done the math and maybe they've realized that what they would need to charge for mac cloud backup is more than the market is willing to pay or that their margins could accept but i agree as somebody who uses

online backup wouldn't it be great now they do desktop and document sync is a thing in in iCloud and that will get you all your documents folder and your desktop files and photos right there are little components that you can have backed up um but what they have done, and I think part of it is just the technical challenge of how do you do that? You know, Time Machine is not really built to be, to work over a connection that slow.

You know, an internet connection versus even on a network, it's kind of slow. Even on a USB drive attached to your computer, it's kind of slow. And now imagine doing it over the network.

So they would have to re-architect Time Machine. I wonder if they've talked about it or have even planned to do that down the road. Because I agree, it would make a lot of sense and they would charge you extra. So it's more services revenue. They could probably theoretically mark it up. But again, there's a question of what the margin is and does it help their margins or not? Because what would that price be? And do they think they could sell? It may be that they pencil it out, like I said, and we're're like it's not profitable enough for us to do this but i i agree i even wonder if they could just extend desktop and document icloud sync to be

also your preferences or something so that there was like an enhanced migration from the cloud in case you didn't have a time machine backup where they could pull stuff off of the cloud that would make it a little bit better right like not a full like restorable time machine backup but like a a light version a mini version where you're still going to have to go get your apps and stuff but they'll they'll do your preferences and things like that i i don't think it's not i i don't think it's impossible that they will eventually do this um i think it's telling that they have still not done it because that suggests there is a roadblock there it's probably not a very attractive service on the potential list

of things they could offer right because it's messy right and hard and it's messy i would also also say it's potentially messy in terms of uh although they love messy he's great um but uh the wait for it anyway uh they it is it is like how do you do you track this is all this data going into your iCloud um storage allotment and if that true, like now they do have, you can buy more storage, but like, cause it's gonna be a lot of storage for some people, maybe too much. And then are you gonna do versioning?

And like, there's a lot that goes into that. My guess is that they've thought about it. They've walked through all these things. They've looked at how much they would need to do to change like time machine essentially to do something like this and how much they would have to do to change like time machine essentially to do something like this and how much they would have to do on the back end and how long it would take for people to back up the first time and could they could they limit it to certain areas of the computer so it

wouldn't be a full backup but it would get most everything uh optionally done and then like how much storage is this going to take up and bandwidth on our in our server farms and what's that going to cost us and then looking at all of that bandwidth on our, in our server farms and what's that going to cost us. And then looking at all of that, now let's put in our traditional, my guess is our traditional markup for services and it's going to cost what nobody's going to buy that. Forget it. That's my guess is they're going to, that they've, that they've looked all that, but I do think it's an opportunity.

And in the meantime, you know, it's an opportunity for Backblaze and companies like that. And I use Backblaze and it's great, but it's not the same as having it be like Apple holding your hand and saying, hey, you got a new Mac. That's great. Would you like to back it up? Because they do that with our iPads and our iPhones, but not our Macs. So I think it's a great opportunity, but that's my guess is that it doesn't pencil out technically and or financially.

Zach asks, how long do you think Apple will keep the MacBook Air on M2? I wonder if they're willing to keep it there for longer to differentiate it more from the Pro, like how the base and Pro iPhones are now distinguished by a chip generation. It's a good question. I like the way you think. I think Apple will keep the MacBook Air on M2 until they ship the M3 MacBook Air sometime next year. I don't think it's going to stay behind.

It's the most important laptop. I don't think they're going to keep it behind. I just don't. And I guess the question is, like, which is the most important iPhone? Like if we're overlaying those two things together, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't think Apple's like,

oh man, let's artificially limit our most popular laptop so more people buy the weirdly limited low-end MacBook Pro. I don't think so. I just don't. I think that the MacBook Air being M3, in fact, I think they're burned, like I said earlier on this show, from releasing that 15-inch model late in the M2 cycle and that it didn't sell as well. I think you really want your popular laptop to be on the current generation as quickly as possible. So I don't think it'll be very long

at all. And then I suspect that update will be very similar to what we saw with the iMac and the MacBook Pro, which is that MacBook Air has already been redesigned. It's a relatively fresh design. It will be, I suspect, indistinguishable from the current models, except with an M3 processor. To overlap it though, do you think, do we know, do you reckon the iPhone Pro sells more than the iPhone? I think so. I reckon so too. Yeah. If you would like to send in a question of your own for us to answer on the show,

just go to upgradefeedback.com. You can also send in your follow-up and your Snell Talk questions there. Don't forget to go to upgradeys.vote to put your nominations in for the 10th Annual Upgradees Awards. If you would like to read Jason's reviews that we mentioned today, there's lots more in them than we covered. Please go to SixColors.com where you can do that. You can hear Jason's podcast

on TheIncomparable.com and here on RelayFM where you'll find me too. You can check out my work as well at CortexBrand.com. You can find us on Mastodon. Jason is at jsnell on zeppelin.flights. And I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E on mike.social. You can find the show on Mastodon as well as upgrade at relayfm.social. You can watch video clips of the

show there, but also on our dedicated video platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where we are Upgrade Relay on all of those platforms. We're on threads as well. I am iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. Jason is at jsnell. Thank you to our members who support us of Upgrade Plus. Go to getupgradeplus.com.

Thank you to our sponsors, Ooni, Squarespace, and Wild Grain. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody.