MacGeekGab episode 1007 for Monday evening, October 30th, 2023.
Greetings, folks, and welcome to the second MacGeekGab released, hopefully released today.
Music.
We're certainly the one intentionally released today.
We're normally the show that answers your questions and solves your problems and shares your tips
and shares your cool stuff down.
And we're gonna keep doing that. It's just right now, we just finished watching Apple's ScaryFast event,
and we watched it scarily fast.
And we're gonna talk about it.
Pilot Pete couldn't make it. However, we have, uh, we have, uh, uh, uh, uh, well,
what I would like to think is an excellent group of people and me for you today. So, uh, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.
Well, here in Boulder, Colorado, I'm Jeff Gamet. And here in cold South Dakota.
I'm Adam Christensen.
Thanks for joining us guys. This is great. Yep. Um, yeah, It's cold here too, in my studio,
because I set the heat to come on 90 minutes after Apple's event started,
thinking that would be perfect timing, and Apple's event took 30 minutes.
So that was interesting.
So by the time we're done recording here, your heat's gonna kick on.
Okay, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna keep peeling off layers.
So for those of you that chose to watch the video, I'm sorry, so.
Yeah, or you're welcome.
Okay, sure. It's one of those things. Who are we to judge? Who are we?
Well, It's definitely been scary fast.
Like the whole, this whole keynote was weird.
I'm just freaked out by the whole thing. Are you, are you, are you, were you scared by it, Adam? No, not scared.
Just more like, why is it at five, you know, why was it at 5 PM Pacific?
Why was it 30 minutes? Why was it like, it's just like the weirdest keynote I can ever remember
Apple doing, like it's bizarre.
And they disappointed me because, like we talked about on the last Mac Geek Gab.
They weren't all dressed up like for Halloween. No, they all wore black, though.
Or dark clothing. I did notice that they all wore black.
Yeah. I wanted Tim Cook as, like, you know, a werewolf or Frankenstein or something.
It would've been great.
Well, we didn't give him enough time to turn into the werewolf, Adam.
I think that still could happen. Maybe that's why they had to do it so fast.
They could get through it before he transformed.
I, I, um.
I would equate, it's interesting that, maybe it's not interesting, this was about Macs.
Apple announced the new M3 line of chips, and then the new MacBook Pros based on those,
and iMacs based on those. I don't want to say new iMacs based on those,
I just want to say iMacs based on those. But it reminded me of how we would, in the past,
we would get like a big deal about iPhones and a big deal about iPads sometimes and then
a press release on a Tuesday morning that was like, oh yeah, by the way, we speed bumped a
couple of Macs. You know, like that for a long time, Jeff, that like when we were doing Mac
Observer together, that was a pattern. Like we came to expect it like, oh, it's probably going
to be, you know, this particular Tuesday that we're going to get that press release. So let's
be ready for it, let's be on the lookout, you know, those kinds of things. Yep. This event reminded me,
of that. I mean, I know it was an event. I also noticed, because I guess I was hungry for content,
I watched all the way through to the end, and I'm trying to find the screenshot that I took,
which magically is not here. But it ended by saying that the entire event was shot on iPhone
and edited on a Mac.
They say, all presenters, locations, and drone footage shot on iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Yep. See, I missed that because I was still in my adrenaline rush from just the whole thing being so fast.
And I hopped up and was getting ready for this, and so I totally missed it. That's fascinating.
Yeah. Well, they did pan a moonshot across the Apple logo and have a werewolf howl at the end also. So maybe that's when Tim Cook, uh, is, uh,
Oh, that, that could be that. I, I missed the, I, I missed the where the, um, I saw the, the,
the thing I did not hear any sound though. So yeah, there was a, there was a distinct howl,
wolf howl, howl at the moon kind of thing. And then, and then that shot that you showed,
yeah, which I mean, I was assumed at least edit it. Like they, they always edit on a Mac, right?
I would assume, that's not a surprise. Yeah, if that is news, that in and of itself,
the fact that it's news is the biggest news, right? Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I assume these were all shot on camera, read, edited on Max using Final Cut Pro,
and well, at least I was partially right.
Partially, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So let's talk about some of these things that Apple announced.
I was gonna say I don't wanna rehash everything, but in a sense, we just did.
But...
I thought, to me the most disappointing thing was the iMacs, so maybe we just dismiss that really quickly, unless you guys have anything you want to talk about.
They did make it abundantly clear that there will not be a 27-inch iMac without saying, they got as close to saying there will not be a 27-inch iMac by saying that, I'm looking for the little grid, what did they say?
That there was right the iMac is a 4.5 K screen with the 24 inch and that is uh that's that's
a good replacement for right whatever they said for the same this is the same story they've given
in the past though like yes their their statement is basically you know it's essentially a 27 inch
it's not 27 inches no you know it's not it's 24 inches that's what they're trying to imply
They're they're trying to get us to believe that it's just as good because the resolution's so high and you know,
Why would you need 27 inches anyway, cuz it's actually bigger. I know I know you know.
The problem Dave is you did not buy enough of the 27 inch iMacs for Apple to keep making them
I don't know. I got two of them sitting on my floor
Unused at the moment one where the screen died and that's why I have a Mac studio here now and another one
that was, I bought a lot of those. Maybe I should have bought more. I guess so. I guess. Yeah,
I guess that's it. And, and, and I don't, now that I have divested myself of reliance on the 27 inch
iMac, I like the flexibility that I have buying a more modular system, either a Mac mini or Mac
studio and then I can choose my 27 inch or larger screen of my liking.
So I get it but it's also well then the iMac is just not for me and perhaps ever again.
And that's okay. Yes, of course. Yeah. Yeah. They've squarely said, I mean, I think it's
also them squarely saying, like, look, this is a consumer computer. It's for small businesses.
It's for this is not a pro computer. It doesn't have a pro chip. It's not a pro computer.
It is for someone who just wants to plop something simple on their desk. They don't want an,
extra display or any of those complications. And if you want that, hey, guess what? We've
We've got a great Mac Mini for you, and we've got a great studio.
Well, let's, so to wrap it up with the iMac, the, it quote unquote only, has the M3 chip,
not the M3 Pro nor the M3 Max, which all three were announced today.
You get up to 24 gigs, sorry, not terabytes, 24 gigs of unified memory.
It does have Wi-Fi 6E in it now, I noticed from the grid.
Uh, so it, you know, it got some upgrades in that sense.
It was the Bluetooth upgraded? I can't remember where we were at.
5.3. Yes, the Bluetooth was upgraded as well.
Yeah, it, it, like, it, it saw a lot of, of upgrades, which I, which I thought, okay,
like, like internally it, it, it, it was bumped, let's call it, um, but yeah.
To your earlier point, all of these things actually in the past would have been, this
This is like our video press release. Exactly. Shot on iPhone, no less.
You mentioned here's a Mac mini for you, but there's not an M3 Mac mini. That seemed
lacking to me. Maybe that's the press release we get tomorrow.
Just to give us one of those things. Sure. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'll buy that.
If not, I mean, if not, you know, that updates coming sometime next year,
like probably early next year. Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. Interesting that they didn't just do that today. Yeah.
Maybe they're managing expectations because there might be like, uh, uh,
parts, uh, inventory issues.
Sure.
And so they, they have enough that they feel comfortable rolling out the iMac.
And once they ramp up production enough, then they'll add in the Mac mini.
My my guess is to like, it's not so much the M3 for the IMAX is probably the M3
needing to be set aside for that base model MacBook, which is going to be hugely popular.
I would imagine the MacBook Pro just just for the MacBook. Yeah, sorry. The MacBook
Pro entry level where they drop the price. That price point is killer for a lot of people like
that. I don't disagree. Yeah. So let's let's let's talk about this this new MacBook Pro,
because this this is truly a new device.
And.
It gets the full M3 treatment. The 14-inch, like you said, Adam, the price now starts at $14.99,
which is... For students, like if you're a student going to college right now, like,
and haven't bought a machine, unfortunately, their timing's a little bit off. But yeah,
like this should have been, if they would have been out in the fall before kids went back to
school, like there'd be a lot of kids going to school with that machine. Yep. Yeah, I agree.
Although the Air really does serve the purpose for a lot of people who in past years would have,
needed a MacBook Pro. Oh, for sure. No doubt. But I mean, if you're going into graphics,
if you're going into video production, if you're going into computer programming.
That's a killer machine. But looking at this price grid, there's an interesting
thing. So looking at the 14 inches on the, and of course you can customize these things left and
right. The base model at $1499 is the M3 chip with eight gigs of unified memory and 512 gig SSD
storage. And then it bumps up to the same chip with a terabyte for another 200 bucks, terabyte
bit of storage. So your W storage, 1499 to 1699 gets you that.
But there's this 1849 sitting out here, which bumps you all the way up to an M3 Pro,
which qualifies you for the new space black color, which doesn't look all that different from the midnight that I see on my air,
but maybe in person it's radically different.
But that now because it's the M3 Pro it's the 11 core CPU instead of the and it's got a whopping 18 gigs of unified memory.
It adds 10 gigs of memory and this new CPU, still with the 512 gigs SSD for 350 bucks.
That's an interesting sort of carrot to dangle out there for folks.
Like, hey- That's 250, right?
Am I doing my math right? 1499 to 1849. Oh, you're going from the base,
or I was going from the mid tier, from the 1699.
Yeah, did I get it right? Is it, is it, I thought it was 350, I'm getting it right?
1849 minus 1499 is 350, yes, yeah. Yeah, if you're going all the way from the base model.
I was going all the way from the base model, yes.
But thank you for, for catching that, just in case anybody at home was confused too, yeah.
That, to me, is an interesting.
Delta because it's like well extra for 350 exactly yeah for apple baby for what apple
you typically charges for memory like that's a steal yeah yeah it's not bad and and i'm assuming
if i wanted to bump that up to a two terabyte okay so it 180 bucks so 2029 gets you that machine
sorry, with a one terabyte storage.
Two terabytes is another 360.
But yeah, okay, so you get a little bit of a discount on the additional storage by doing it on this one.
Side note here, as I'm looking at the pages with all the specs and the pricing,
that base model is $100 more on all the pages for me.
It's 1599 instead of 1499. What?
What are you, in the UK? Are you, are you like VPN somewhere?
Let me make sure I don't have a VPN turned on. I mean, that's weird, right? Like totally weird.
I want to, now I want to send you the, the, the URL that I am looking at, because
you can, you can see my screen. Cause you can see the video.
Um, and I see exactly what you're seeing, but it says 1599. And for me, it's the same thing, except the pricing on that base model is.
$15.99, and, uh...
Well, you get the special Jeff Gamet pricing. I was gonna say, dude...
We'll all pay the other pricing. Yeah, I pay the special Colorado tax.
No, no. Dave's on EDU. I'm on the EDU, I'm on the education store.
Because I don't know how I got there. I clicked through from Apple's site.
You're not wrong, Jeff.
$15.99. Thank you for catching that. Holy cow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is why we do this together. Okay, this looks so, so, uh...
Much better to me now. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you said what I'm doing wrong is not going for
edu pricing. Yeah. How did I get to the education store? That's I, I don't know. But anyway,
there you go. So some pricing differences now, 1599 for the base model, unless you can convince
Apple that you are a student of life, in which case you all the previous prices I just mentioned
are yours. $19.99. So it's a $400 Delta, not a $350 Delta to this 18 gig machine. And then adding.
Another, doubling up your storage to a terabyte as, oh wait, it just did it to me.
See, okay, it's 200 bucks. 20, 200 bucks.
Yeah, it's 200 bucks to add that storage. So you don't get the discount on that.
So by the time you've beefed up that with all that other stuff, just buy the 12-core M3 Pro for $2399.
Because now you get the 12-core CPU, 18-core GPU, 1TB SSD, and it's $2399.
That's that next tier up, right?
Yeah, so they're really, I mean, what I was going to say earlier is like they're really,
I think, differentiating, like making you decide, you know, where you're at.
It's a MacBook Pro, right?
I think for Pro users, it seems like an easier choice if you're one of those people that
lives on the fence, like you were saying, Dave, with the MacBook Air, right, which is
now M2 versus the MacBook Pro entry level.
It seems like it's getting maybe a little muddy for some folks, I don't know, potentially.
Yeah, well, yeah, right. Do you want thin and light? Do you want a little, little extra processor?
Do you want, like, they've kind of blurred that line a little bit.
Yeah, that's a good question, right? It is. It is a blurred line.
I'm curious to see how it how it kind of shakes out in the market as things as things evolve.
Yeah, I think consumers will probably more opt for the air just because it that's a sexy machine.
But you know and it's if you want a pro you're probably wanting the pro processor you're wanting,
you know that more memory you're wanting all those other things so i've had this conversation
actually with friends who are on the fence they're like should i get the base model pro or the air,
and i think almost always once you talk it out with someone they they end up with the air just
because of how thin and light it is and it's not that big of a delta like you're not getting that
much extra by bumping up to the pro, typically.
For most people, for most people at that level. That's what I'm saying.
Yep. Yep. I mean, and I am at that level. Like, I can't see a world where a pro would be the right machine for me.
I mean, I tried it a couple of years ago and I was like, no, I want my air back, please.
Yeah. And see, for me, I'm in the other world because if I was just doing doing the podcasting stuff, then yeah, the Air would be a clear choice.
Yes. Because I'm a developer and some of those other things come into play where I'm doing
Photoshop stuff occasionally, all that stuff. I prefer having the little extra bump.
Yep.
Especially on the GPU side that the Pro gives me. Well, that's a great point.
Yeah. I wound up giving my Pro that I had for five minutes to my son, which he still uses, and
he's a software engineer.
Like it makes, yeah, he's great with it.
It gives him the little bit of extra that he needed for that. So, yeah. It's interesting
that you mentioned, were you going to say something, Jeff? Sorry, I was going to take
us kind of down a different rabbit hole. Actually, it doesn't matter because it just
would have carried on to what we're saying. Take us down to rabbit hole.
Well, the rabbit hole is, I noticed as Apple, especially as they were talking about the new
M3 chips, which is how they started the event. For those of you that haven't watched it yet,
It started with probably a good 10 to 12 minutes about the, you know, the M3 chips.
And then it was like, by the way, here, these computers that we put them in.
All right, good night.
And, uh, they talked a lot about how the new GPUs were going to make games better.
They, they, it's got this dynamic caching in there, which more efficiently uses memory, but then they vary.
And they said, by the way, that this dynamic caching is transparent to developers,
meaning it's just going to take the existing code and do it the right way, the new way, whatever.
But then they talked about hardware-accelerated mesh shading,
and for the first time on the Mac, hardware-accelerated ray tracing.
And that was interesting. Like, they're really pushing, if you take this combined with the,
you know, port, I forget the name of the technology that Apple has to help game developers
port over to the Mac, but or to Apple platforms in general. But, you know, pushing this is like,
this is a gaming machine. This is a gaming machine. That's like, that's interesting to me
that Apple's really like, they're going bullish on this. And they, and they talked about it with
the new MacBook Pros too. How much of this is important for their whole VR initiative?
Yeah, that's what I was going to say too. I feel like this is more about.
Trying to convince people they have these technologies coming for Vision and Vision
Pro or whatever in the future. I mean as much as Apple wants to sell that they have all these
great features which are awesome and it's easy to port and stuff like that, where they need to be
putting the time and the investment and the money is not in the technologies that they're providing,
it's at convincing developers that there's a gaming market in the Mac market and that they
that can sell titles.
You know what I mean? Like that's all developers care about.
Like they want to sell titles and even with all the ease of porting
that Apple wants to say that they have,
there still has to be a market there.
And there just isn't today because you talk to any gamer and they will tell you,
you know, like you're going to have to convince those people,
and I don't think just saying we have all these cool technologies that you've been waiting for
to come to the back for forever, they're here now.
Gamers are going to go, where are the titles? And game developers are going to go, where are the users?
Where are my customers? And Apple does have a pretty bad track record with the gaming space.
This is a pretty big ask.
I have another question, a tech question. of these new technologies that appear to be focused on the
gaming space, it's kind of transparent. Your code will just take advantage of them. But some of the things, it's not clear to
me, like with the whole on-chip ray tracing, things like that.
Are these things that developers are going to have to code specifically for the M3? Or does the hardware just take
advantage of that for free for them?
I, I don't, I don't know. I, they weren't clear on that. My, my guess is that some of it,
the hardware is just going to do for free. And, and then if you really want to like eke out the most performance you would write
specifically for that chip.
Yeah. I was going to say, I, I, my understanding is it's very much a combination.
And it also comes down to any specific title and how it was actually developed.
Like there's probably some titles that are...
Much easier and we'll just take advantage a lot of these things and then there's a lot of other
titles that aren't. I mean, I think, again I'm not a huge gamer, but I'm pretty sure.
ActiveX or whatever the current generation of that on the PC side is still a huge thing and
I don't think it's just a matter of like that just flops over. I could be wrong.
Yeah. But it's not my understanding that that's what happens from a game developer standpoint.
Yeah, I guess they they could buy their way into being a gaming platform.
Yeah, I mean, in a sense, they they have on the iPhone ish kind of right.
But they could buy their way in by signing exclusive titles on, you know, Apple,
right? You have to have an Apple device to play whatever the latest and greatest.
I mean, it would cost them a lot.
But how about this? Just fund the game ports like. developers that don't want to do it just like underwrite the freaking conversion of AAA titles.
That's a, I bet that's way cheaper than my idea. I'm with you, Adam. That's what I was thinking too. Apple just starts raising checks to the
development companies. Make a Mac version. Here's the money to go do it.
Or even, here are the engineers to do it with you. Like that would, you know, like.
Or here's the money for the engineers. Yeah.
Or both. Like, you know, if they really want to do this, if they're serious, if
they're serious about it, they have the money to do it.
They can, they can invest their way into this, but, but they're going to need,
they're going to need a couple of big wins, but look at what they did with Apple TV plus, right?
Like they just kept spending and spending and spending and basically giving the
service away for a long time until suddenly, you know, they had Ted Lasso and then, and
then it was like, aha, yeah, okay, now start coughing up your money folks, right?
And it's not just Ted Lasso. They've had lots of hits on Apple TV plus, but initially they didn't have any.
And we were like, oh, I mean, this show's okay. That shows all right.
Like, you know, fine. But they, they were just pushing and they know how that game works.
And so they just, so they could do it and they, I think they didn't push out any crap.
It was all at least good. Yes. That's fair.
Right. That is a hundred percent true. I mean, anything that I've ever watched on it has been great.
Now I don't watch all this stuff. Like I've never gone back to the morning show, but that's a, that was a great show.
I really enjoyed it. I watched the first season. I haven't gotten back to it.
Probably will someday. The second season, I thought it ended strong. The morning show.
The second season did not, in my opinion, start strong. We just watched the first episode of season three.
And I think in my household, we were on the fence. I liked it.
It, it brings back enough of the newsroom that I want to keep watching it because I really love
that Sorkin series, the newsroom. It is not, it is like the writing's good on morning show.
It's not Sorkin. I do not want to mislead anyone. I am other than myself. Like I mislead myself
into watching it and it's fine. It's good. Lisa was like, I asked her the next day. I'm like,
what'd you think? Like, should we watch the next one? She was like, like, oh, okay.
I think there's a lot of stuff that is falling into that category, though, for me, too.
It's like, you know, it's not, that's just one example.
Overall, the quality level, like, the quality level of everything that I've watched
on Apple TV, even the stuff that I haven't gone back to.
Is way higher than probably 80% of the Netflix things that I tried, you know, it's just like,
I am not coming back to this no matter what.
This is just garbage. You just didn't like Tiger King? I love Tiger King.
Okay, good. I just wanted to make sure we could still be friends.
No, but he's the only person that hasn't watched Tiger King yet.
I mean, it's on my list. I just haven't gotten to it. You are.
Yes, Jeff, you are the only person.
You are the only person. Yeah. But you get my point.
It's like the base quality level of anything at Apple is top tier of, in my mind, almost
any other streaming service.
And then you find the real cream at the top. There's occasionally the cream, right, that just resonates.
Yeah, but there's very rarely something that I pop on on Apple and I go, like, this sucks.
Yep, fair. Just flat out sucks. Just flat out sucks. No, you're right.
It may not be your cup of tea, but it's good quality.
I guess I found out with everything, including the things that were not my cup of tea,
where it was like, oh, this doesn't, it just didn't get its hooks into me.
So many things on Netflix and Amazon that are just like, oh, they totally phoned this in.
Like, this was just garbage.
You know, if all the shows on Apple TV were shows that each of us liked.
Like just, we all watch it, it's like everything is great. That would actually really concern me
because that would tell me they focused on a very narrow demographic,
but having a lot of good stuff, some of which appeals to us, some of which doesn't,
that's good.
Get a wider demographic. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaking of demographics, we backed into this Apple TV Plus conversation.
We got too far away. I, I, it is, I think it's relevant.
Uh, we got, we backed into it talking about games.
How I, like, I, I, I used to play a lot of games. I have not, I, I just haven't carved out the time to do it.
Do either of you play games at any level?
I'm, I'm trying to convince myself that I should get back into it.
So, you know, expect this to maybe be an ongoing conversation here on the show, but I'm, I'm just curious.
But I, I'm lame at old, so I play a lot of Minecraft. Okay.
Yeah, and I play Hearthstone is my other game. All right.
All right, so for quite a while I was very much into Abduction.
Yeah, from the… From Cyan. From Cyan, the Myst people, folks. Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the only reason I'm not into it or any other games right now is just life got kind of busy. Okay.
But I was also like really into Kerbal Space Program for a long time, for same reason, just got too busy and.
Say that one more time, cause I couldn't, I want to put these
in the show notes for people and I don't know.
Kerbal Space Program. Okay, got it, thanks. It's a great game, yeah.
And for people that know, they know.
And for people that don't, you are so welcome for learning about Kerbal Space Program.
So I did start playing a game the other day, I was like, I need to find something that I want to play.
And I thought, you know, I pay for Apple TV Plus because I pay for Apple TV Plus.
I'm sorry, for Apple. Arcade. Apple Arcade. Yeah, see, see, it's all the same.
I merged it in my brain. I pay for Apple Arcade. Arcade is part of my subscription.
And I found Cypher 007 in there. That's actually really fun.
I mean, it's, you know, it got me.
Like I was, I'm now hooked. So like, yeah, it's not, it's not a.
I thought it, I thought everything in Apple Arcade would be just like quick little, like,
you know, play for five minutes and you're bored kind of thing. And that is not true. Like,
I played this game for an hour the other night and now I want to go play it more. So, and I'm
not done. It's not like I'm just playing the same thing over and over again. And it's, it's an
adventure game. Like I'm, I'm, yep. Some of the stuff that they're bringing back to that,
The revamping of some of the classic titles from iOS is a really interesting thing that they're doing.
I'm pretty sure they brought it out in a plus version on Apple Arcade.
There was a great game called Leo's Fortune.
Leo's Fortune, yes.
It was super fun. It's a side-scroller kind of adventure kind of game sort of thing, and it is super fun.
Interesting.
I haven't went back to revisit it because I played it on iOS originally and, you know, my daughter and I played it together and we beat it.
So I haven't gone back to it. Sure, sure. But that was a fun game.
Huh. All right. So as someone that's into the gaming space in a more casual sense, the games that Apple needs to go after, I totally get it. get it.
They need to go after Halo and Quake and World of Warcraft and all of those caliber games.
If they're going to go after that space, do they also need to go after the, I'll call,
it more casual, but also maybe more kid-oriented.
For example, the games that I continually go back to are the Lego games.
A good question. Yeah. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what they do because they they were definitely the last two events if we kind of zoom out on both of them.
They're they're pushing games hard even the last three events ready to go back to the sea like this is not.
This was not a surprise tonight it was an interesting thing to notice but it was a follow on to all the to the thing that really started at wbc where they just started hammering this.
So, I'm curious, go ahead, yeah.
Like, I mean, like I said earlier, I know this was a Mac event and they were talking about the Mac,
but I really feel like Jeff alluded to earlier.
I think this is a gear up to a bigger push for games in Apple Vision Pro. Fair.
Like, I think that's gonna be their platform where, because it's a new platform that they can bring
developers in on and support developers on.
And it, I mean, from a VR perspective, you know, not the AR, maybe some of the AR stuff too,
but I guess there's, yeah, it'll be interesting to see what they do,
but I have a feeling like that's where all this M-series game technology stuff is going,
because I, you know, they've got a brand new platform,
something brand new that they can bring developers in on.
It's not the Mac, so they don't have that stigma, you know, they can kind of maybe
shake that off a little bit. They can define what this new platform is,
and there will be hype.
Yeah, I mean, Apple is, I mean, in the scheme of things, if you look at mobile gaming,
like Apple is a dominant player in mobile gaming.
Totally. Massively dominant player. And I have a feeling they want to do the same thing,
but now with Vision Pro, they can take that to the next level.
They can go after these more hardcore gaming type folks.
And these folks are also, remember, the people that will spend three,
four grand on a gaming PC. Yes, it astounds me when I see friends post
about what they've spent on a gaming PC.
And it's like, oh man, like I wonder how close a Mac could get to that for probably less.
And maybe that's, I know Apple doesn't like to market that way, but man, like that, that would.
A Mac studio or a Mac Pro positioned as a gaming machine.
Right. There's no hardware in the market that could compete with it just dollar for dollar.
Yeah, not at all. But I mean, again, you gotta have the titles and you gotta have the developers dedicated to the platform
and they're just not, and Apple has a hard time convincing them currently.
But like I said, I think they have an opportunity with a new platform to be like,
hey, get in on the ground floor because we put in all this gaming tech and all this development resources.
You know, we're going to have a bunch of folks clamoring after titles on these on these things.
It's brand new. So I don't know. Yeah, there were two other things I noticed at Apple,
was selling us under under the under the surface on this event. One, and I don't really know that
there's much to talk about on it is pushing the upgrade from Intel, right? They that was interesting.
That was kind of hamfisted. It was hamfisted, but it was there, right? Like, I mean, yeah,
Yeah, smooth or not, you knew that they were telling people,
all right, we're ready for you now. Come on, let's go. Get over to Apple Silicon and they
explain why. So I thought that was good. The other thing that they were pushing was Sonoma.
They were highlighting Sonoma features and saying, we're really ready for you.
And I know that I am biased because Sonoma's audio functions much better than Ventura's does for me in my setup here. And while I'm not alone, I am definitely rare,
in that Ventura didn't break audio for most people, but even beyond what it fixes with audio,
I've been really happy with Sonoma on all of my Macs. Like it, it's the first Mac OS in a while
that I'm happy about other, other than the, the, the thing where it breaks mail plugins and I had
had to change to Thunderbird, but whatever, you know, things happen.
Are you guys happy with Sonoma? I'm kind of indifferent about Mac OS Wine Country.
Okay. I've had audio issues up until the 14.1 update.
Oh, interesting. And losing all of my mail plugins has been a serious problem for my workflow. Same.
Jeff, I won't belabor the point because we belabored it in the previous two episodes, but but like I'm happy to have that conversation with you because that it's not great, but it is functional.
And yeah, so well, I I'm holding out for that beta of male maven.
In. Yeah. Okay. Well, when it comes out, you and I, we'll have you back on the show and
we'll talk about that because I, because I think there's, there's clearly more conversation
to have about this. Yeah. Yes. And I know that's not our topic tonight, but you know
what? I am so looking forward to the email episode of Mackey gap. Yeah. Yeah. We'll do,
we'll do a deep dive at some point. That's a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. The Sonoma thing
for me, it's fine. I have nothing other to say. I upgraded, it went great. I haven't
noticed much of a difference in my daily usage or workflow, which I guess is a positive thing.
There's not a brand new feature that I've keyed in on yet.
With the last update, definitely continuity camera. It changed how I was doing things.
So far, the biggest thing I notice is the little privacy thing where it shows you when an app is like,
like it's doing it now because we're streaming, right?
It's showing me, hey, something's screen sharing your video.
But you can also use that to, for those of you that haven't done this in Sonoma yet,
when almost any app, for me, it's been every app
is using a camera, be it an Apple camera or a third party camera, go click on that little, like you're saying, Adam, the
privacy notification in the menu bar, click on that and you can change settings for your
camera and use like Apple's portrait lighting and studio light.
And even, you know, the reactions that Apple lets us do and all of that good stuff.
It, it, it's, it's pretty cool how well it works with anything.
In fact, if you're going to do zoom calls for work, I recommend you go in and at least experiment with the reactions and decide whether you want them on for Zoom or off.
But fair. Yeah. You know.
Discounting all of the really great controls you have from those notifications. Yeah.
Just the fact that they took what was previously nondescript dots in the menu bar and turned them
into something that actually gives you useful information. Thank you. Yeah. Fair. Yeah.
But that's like the one new feature of like really noticing it, like I haven't turned on,
I haven't put widgets on. I need to do the widgets thing. Have you done widgets, Jeff?
I have. And what I found is that most of what I want with widgets, I actually don't want on my
Mac. Right. But I didn't know that until I started playing with all the widgets. It's stuff that I
that I wanna see on my iPhone or my iPad.
So right now the only widget I still have active is the one that shows me battery levels.
Oh, interesting. Yeah, I got to mess with widgets. That's definitely on my list.
The fact that I could see my iPhone widgets on my Mac, that was cool. Like having current weather
on my desktop, that was really cool. That's cool. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, we have gone,
we have done it. I didn't, I had all the faith in the world that we would. We have gone longer
talking about Apple's event than Apple did with the event.
I believe that's a first, but of course, this was the shortest Apple event that I can remember.
It may be the shortest event in history. It was about 31 minutes.
I wasn't keeping a timer, but I was aware of the time. So, yeah.
Is there anything more that either of you have to add to what we're talking about here,
or is it time to say goodnight?
I have something to add. What's that, Jeff? My M2 MacBook Pro still hasn't completed
its first year of Apple care. And it's already. I don't mean to laugh at you. Absolutely.
No, laughing is appropriate because otherwise I'd have to cry. Holy crap, Apple.
I got what, nine months before there's a new model out to replace mine? Fair, fair.
And on one hand, that sucks. On the other hand, if I were Intel.
I would be crapping bricks, as they say, because of how fast Apple can rev their chips
and get them out the door.
And they're doing things that Intel just simply can't do right now.
That's fair. Yeah. That's an interesting point. I hadn't thought about that.
Yeah, and we're spoiled now. I mean, look at how quickly,
what, we got the first M1s in fall of 2020, right?
We're in the third generation, two years into this chip.
Three years.
Are we three years? Right? Because it was fall of 2020 that we saw the M1 MacBook Air.
And this is three years later that we're on the M3. Okay. Still, that's really fast.
It's really fast. And there are market improvements in the chips. It's not just like,
we're going to call it, I mean, they can call it whatever they want. Like they can back it up.
Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Interesting.
It's interesting Jeff brought up that thing because I'm in that other camp where,
where, like you said earlier, Dave, this was the first keynote they were targeting Intel users.
I still have a last generation Intel MacBook Pro. Oh, is that?
Okay. You know, I almost made it. We were having some, I say we, Adam was having some tech issues before the show, if you don't
mind.
And you had to reboot your Mac. And I almost made a joke about, well, you need to upgrade that Intel Mac to, you know,
an Apple Silicon.
That's true. But it actually is true. I thought you were on Apple Silicon there already.
Interesting. Yeah, but I'm actually kind of glad I waited, and I don't know.
I generally don't have any issues with that. Now I have an M1 for work.
But yeah, for my daily driver, for my personal computer, it's still that Apple Silicon,
like last generation 15-inch MacBook Pro. Intel.
Or Intel, yeah, sorry. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Intel, and I don't know.
I mean, as much as the new M3s look great, it's just like, I'm not itching to spend the money, you know?
And I don't know that there's enough still in there for me to like be, I need, I mean,
I'm going to probably be that person that waits until like the operating system won't run on Intel anymore,
which is probably, I'm guessing, the next generation, so.
I have a feeling they were telegraphing that tonight when they were saying, hey, if you've got an Intel,
this is a really great time to upgrade. You know? Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Huh.
Yeah. The next Mac OS California City here is probably not going to be Intel compatible. It wouldn't surprise me.
Fair. Fair. That's my expectation, especially after tonight's event.
All right, well, that's a good spot for us to bring the band in. Thank you both for doing this
tonight. This was actually fun. This conversation went in a direction I did not expect, and I'm glad
it did. Because, yeah. So much fun. MacGeekAb after dark, it kind of felt like. I don't know.
Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. Feedback at MacGeekAb.com is where you can send in all of
your comments, questions, tips. I will make sure things get to Adam and Jeff as appropriate. But,
if you want to get in touch with them directly, Adam, you want to tell people where to find you,
please? Yep, mine's super easy. You can find me at maccast.com, maccast on the social medias. And
if you need to send me an email, it's maccast at gmail.com. And Jeff? I'm Jay Gamet on all the
socials. Perfect. You can find me most easily right now on Mastodon Instagram, and I'm working on Threads.
Nice. All right. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I got into Threads when it first started and then forgot about it until you said it just
now. So I need to I need to get back into that.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm working on it too. All right. Yeah.
We'll work on that together. All right. I'll see you over there on Threads folks.
I'll see you on. You know I'm Dave Hamilton everywhere. X and Mastodon and Facebook and all that good stuff.
Thanks for hanging out with us folks. Thanks for listening. Share the show with a friend.
We would love that and, uh, yeah, keep having fun out there.
Jeff, it's been a little while since you've been here. Do you happen to have, like, one word's not enough.
Five is way too many.
Music.
Do you maybe have like three words of generic advice that you might be able to
share with someone like me who's a podcaster and is supposed to be accurate
and then goes and visits the education store and shares the wrong prices with all my listeners?
I do. And Dave, I say this with all love, don't get caught.
Made on a Mac. That's good advice. I'll try and take it to heart.
Later.