00:00:00.34 James Welcome back, everyone, to Merch Conflict, your weekly developer podcast where it hasn't been a weekend and I haven't shipped a new app. Just kidding. I totally did ship a new app to the App Store. Frank Grigger beat ya. 00:00:10.78 Frank Are you kidding me? Actually, I think you sent me something and I was just rolling my eyes so far back in my head that I couldn't even read your message. That's how far back. I thought AppReview said no to you. 00:00:23.90 Frank I don't remember what was the message. 00:00:26.65 James ah app and No, no, no. It's all gravy. It's all gravy. 00:00:29.85 Frank AppReview loves you. 00:00:31.70 James app Do I sound okay? Am I too loud? Am I too hot? Do I sound okay? Are you sounding okay? 00:00:35.10 Frank You sound wonderful. You might be a little hot, but that's just you. 00:00:36.09 James Okay. 00:00:38.78 James Oh, I see what you did there. um No. So, all right. So a few things have happened and we're going to get into the Apple event week. 00:00:48.92 Frank Events, plural, fracas. 00:00:52.38 James yeah 00:00:54.10 Frank um 00:00:54.17 James Yep. 00:00:55.26 Frank Yeah, Jubilee. 00:00:55.99 James Stuff. 00:00:57.75 Frank um Let's go it Jubilee, Apple Jubilee. 00:00:59.22 James Jubilee. 00:00:59.67 Frank It's Jubilee week. 00:01:01.24 James So you got your Jubal ale? 00:01:03.96 Frank I do. ah Yeah, ah mine's an ale without the ale. Ale, but non-alcoholic ale, the best kind of ale, or the worst, depending on your mood. 00:01:16.16 James They're pretty good nowadays. um Well, so i renamed trim tally to way. So it's just called way. And that is approved. It's in the app store. um My pet medication tracker. 00:01:27.63 James That was I don't know if I'm actually going to ship it, but it's there. um Tiny clips that's in the app store. 00:01:31.28 Frank OK. 00:01:32.95 James Now I have an update that's been waiting for review for a way for far too many days. 00:01:33.40 Frank Wow. 00:01:37.11 James i don't know what's going on, um but it's it's it's lingering. 00:01:40.52 Frank Sometimes they just fall off the back of the truck. It's it's weird. like It's nothing about the app. like Somehow like the person was about to review it. They pulled it from the queue and then went to lunch. And then they kind of forgot about it And they'll get an email on Friday. 00:01:54.79 James I'll send you a new one. So Heather and I were and the sauna and she's like, I got it. She's like, I got an app idea. i was like, whoa. 00:02:03.03 Frank Oh, boy. You get pitched app ideas in the sauna? 00:02:04.44 James ah 00:02:06.52 Frank Oh, that might be the worst place to get app ideas. 00:02:09.34 James I was like, bring it. i was like, bring on this app idea. 00:02:10.87 Frank Okay. 00:02:11.42 James Like I'm ready. Right. And, uh, she gave me the app idea. And funnily enough, we were recording last week's podcast. 00:02:16.10 Frank Mm-hmm. 00:02:18.34 James And what you didn't know, Frank, is that I sat down 15 minutes before And I sat down and I went into the Copilot CLI and I worked and i and I wrote up this big prompt that was everything that Heather wanted in an app. 00:02:33.80 Frank Oh. 00:02:35.58 James And i did I did do file new ah iOS app. So i was like, file new iOS Mac app. you know Boom, here's the template I want to use. And i gave it everything I wanted. It's a big photo app. 00:02:48.25 James And I was like, let's plan it out. And I, and I worked with it for 15 minutes before you and I started. And right when we did, i put it into fleet autopilot YOLO mode. 00:02:58.38 James And I said, let's go baby. And we got finished recording the podcast and legitimately like the app was like 90% done. 00:03:06.24 Frank Sped out. 00:03:06.40 James Hmm. 00:03:07.80 Frank Oh, boy. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Hey, what is the difference between Autopilot and YOLO? Is there a difference? 00:03:15.29 James There is, yes. so um ah So the autopilot mode in the CLI basically doing several things. 00:03:28.71 James It's coming up with like a task list of things to break down, verify, um understanding your prompt and your organization. 00:03:33.15 Frank Oh. 00:03:35.31 James And it will continue to do that thing like super fully and deploy sub agents to do things as well, to go off and do things. Usually um autopilot mode and and YOLO mode are together. 00:03:51.72 James They highly recommend it. 00:03:52.84 Frank Yeah. Yeah. 00:03:53.88 James And that's because it's doing so many things like building, verifying, testing, running, doing, and its and it has like a SQL database to track everything. all the things and all the tasks it needs to do um is is that it's a lot of tool calling. 00:04:09.09 James So because it's doing a lot of tool calling, Yolo mode just verifies and said, yeah, go for it, right? So I guess I could delete my hard drive, but like, you know, just go for it. Now Yolo mode is also inside of VS Code, right? 00:04:18.17 Frank yeah 00:04:21.59 James But there's not like an autopilot mode. Now I would say like the difference between like, um, uh, normal, just like agent run and autopilot. 00:04:32.41 James It depends on the scope of the task. And in fact, when you write a plan with the CLI, it'll finish the plan. It's like, okay, my recommendation is for you to run this in just normal mode. 00:04:42.84 James This, this is like, this isn't at a size that you need autopilot mode. Autopilot is like long running processes that you need, a lot of verification, all this other stuff. there's probably better terminology like what it does, but it's like for long ongoing sessions and it's gonna track the status of the tasks that it breaks down and verify itself in the SQL database at it that it has um um in general. 00:05:05.96 James So yeah. 00:05:06.18 Frank That makes sense. But now I'm confused even more. What is the difference between Autopilot and Fleet then? Because I thought Fleet was doing all these sub-agents and everything. 00:05:15.63 James flite ah Fleet is agents. a fleet of agents that deploy their own sub-agents. So they're agents talking to each other. Now you can combine fleet, autopilot, and YOLO mode all together and deploy a fleet of agents that deploy their own sub-agents that are coordinating together. 00:05:31.39 Frank Hmm. 00:05:35.23 James So the fleet will be like, we have all of these tasks and oh, like a bunch of these tasks can be done all together in general. And I think honestly, in my personal opinion, how I've seen it is like, it feels like autopilot kind of does that itself sometimes too. 00:05:48.83 Frank OK. 00:05:48.89 James But the whole idea is that It could say, oh, you need a back end and a front end. I can do those things at the same time. Oh, you need this thing and then another thing. Oh, i I could do the website and the documentation all at the same time and I'll deploy all of it. 00:06:00.49 Frank All right. OK. 00:06:01.46 James Yeah. 00:06:01.75 Frank I guess, yeah. yeah it's It's Fleet that I have the most question about then of when to invoke it. But the rest makes sense to me. OK. 00:06:10.04 James Yeah, I mostly just use, i use plan, normal, but then I use the plan a lot and then the plan will tell me what it tells me to do. And it's like, okay, you so you you tell me to do autopilot. I guess I'm autopiling this puppy. 00:06:19.90 Frank And just do it, man. 00:06:20.41 James ah 00:06:21.46 Frank Cool. Okay. 00:06:22.24 James Anyways, that app, 00:06:22.90 Frank So did you get an app 90%? Did you break past at all? 00:06:28.09 James bro, it's like 99%. The last thing I need to do is deploy the cloud kit schema from private to public, but that doesn't mean you can't use it because as we know, It works flawlessly without it. 00:06:39.44 James It saves locally. Good old Swift data and core data and and Swift core cloud kit things. But i know how to do that now. 00:06:45.40 Frank have forgive 00:06:46.05 James so that's good. So I've been testing it just on my simulator and works great. But obviously on my devices, it also works. It's just not syncing right now, technically. um Anyways, Apple did a thing. Now, i want to before we go into the the devices and the hardware and the shenanigans, Frank, do you like this style of trickle, the little drip, the little drippy drip? 00:07:00.38 Frank m 00:07:04.63 Frank No. 00:07:06.23 James No, he hates it. 00:07:06.46 Frank Heck no. No, and I especially don't appreciate not getting to get some ah Tim Apple up on stage. um I'm sorry, buddy, but you have one job. That's to walk on a blackly lit stage and to announce products. Like, I don't know what CEOs of companies are supposed to do. 00:07:25.40 Frank All I know is what they do do, which is get up on stage and announce products. And I do not appreciate, AIs made me terrible. Speaking of AIs, I don't want to read a press release. 00:07:37.94 Frank No, I don't want to scroll on your website that scroll jacks everything. 00:07:38.14 James No. 00:07:42.78 Frank Like, have you have you tried to scroll on the Apple site? Sometimes it goes left to right. 00:07:45.69 James Impossible. 00:07:47.10 Frank Sometimes goes up and down. Sometimes the page is through something. 00:07:50.52 James They don't want you to scroll. 00:07:50.78 Frank but 00:07:51.58 James They don't want you to scroll. 00:07:52.02 Frank Every website, every like publishing website is terrible at scrolling. Now, I was trying to read like a Tom's hardware comparison between the M1 and the other stuff we'll talk about today. And my God, that one's bad too. But Apple, stop it with the scroll jacking. And just put, it can be a synthetic Tim Apple. 00:08:11.58 Frank You know what? We have AIs now. Just get Sora to generate a Tim video. I mean, no one's going to care or know. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. 00:08:22.26 Frank Generate a video. I want to watch an event. I'm not buying your products unless they get presented to me on a stage. 00:08:28.18 James Frank's all in. 00:08:28.30 Frank That's it. 00:08:28.78 James He's all in. He's like, give me give me the AI moments, people. I need it. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, you know, I think i don't like I don't like it. I think because you and I were talking, we said, oh, let's record the podcast on Wednesday because there's an Apple event. 00:08:43.14 James And then I was like, was there even an Apple event? 00:08:43.81 Frank Yeah. 00:08:45.78 James I just saw that there was stuff out. Like, was there even a video? There wasn't a video to watch, was there? 00:08:50.52 Frank Full disclosure, I didn't even know any of this was happening this week. So you said let's wait until the app Apple event. 00:08:54.09 James You're welcome. 00:08:56.80 Frank So for the last three days, I've been searching for an Apple event to watch. And everyone's like, they're announcing these products. I'm like, but who? Who is announcing these products? It turns out the website is announcing these products. 00:09:08.73 James the The internet, just the, end the, the, I know you're right. 00:09:10.46 Frank Yeah. 00:09:12.25 James Just the website is announcing. And, and actually there was a tree, there was a teaser, which was like the Apple, it was like a circle and it was an Apple. They swiped it away. And the whole internet thought that maybe there was a touchscreen device coming. 00:09:23.52 Frank Oh, we can be fine. 00:09:24.50 James I mean, there is, there's a, there's an iPad, but an iPhone has, ah those have touchscreens. 00:09:28.92 Frank i thought i thought It was funny because we had just done our... um Well, we were talking about iCircuit, but in a lot of ways it was talking about the original iPad, too. um I thought this was going to be the iPad killer week. I thought, like, 2026 was going to be Macs have finally gotten touchscreens. That rumor has been around for the last... I mean, ever since the iPad has come out, that rumor has been around that Mac is going to get a touchscreen. And ah the rumor mail failed. 00:09:53.34 Frank um You can't read into those Apple invitation things. You just... And do you think, sorry, I'm going to interrupt you. 00:10:00.15 James Yeah, this. ahead. 00:10:02.89 Frank You didn't even get to start that sentence. Do you think that the hand in the product we have yet to discuss, the MacBook something, do you think that that hand was real? 00:10:13.65 Frank Because the rest of the stuff in that video was fake. 00:10:14.10 James Oh, no. No, it's not real. No, it's all AI. 00:10:18.58 Frank That is some, that's not even AI. 00:10:19.30 James CG. 00:10:20.18 Frank I think it's CG. And that is a good renderer. 00:10:21.66 James CG. Yeah, 00:10:22.50 Frank It was getting the subsurface diffusion just perfect on that skin. 00:10:26.73 James no, it's all fake. 00:10:26.90 Frank That was a very good renderer. 00:10:27.85 James It had to have been. It had have been all fake. 00:10:31.19 Frank It would have been a pain to composite all that and get the composite. Yeah. it It wasn't until halfway through, though. I was like, well, why didn't they just have Tim up there doing this then? If if we're going to have a fake hand, what's the difference between a fake face? 00:10:42.74 James Have them hold it up. 00:10:44.24 Frank I... 00:10:44.31 James Hold it up. Put it up. Hey! This was like an event. event Because it's like three days. i get confused by it because 70% the devices were for not and 80% of the device, 80% of the devices were not for us. 00:11:07.84 James 20% of the devices, maybe for us. So like, was this the mainstream casual Apple device value budget line or what was, you know, I was, as that's why I was confused. 00:11:20.76 Frank I mean, was all week I've been trying to sell my mom on a $3,600 monitor. I'm like, Mom, you need this. And then you can give it to me just for fun. Like, you should buy this and give it to me. 00:11:33.69 Frank um So it was really for her, but, you know, I could use it if she didn't want it. 00:11:34.67 James checks out. 00:11:38.70 Frank ah No, I feel like there was a lot of consumer grade stuff, for sure. um But you can't say an M5 Max chip and a studio display XDR are for everyday consumers. 00:11:54.20 Frank That is for the pro, pro, pro crowd. 00:11:56.31 James that That's all I'm saying. 20% to 30% for the Pro, 70% to 80% for the the mass consumer. 00:11:58.30 Frank Yeah. 00:12:03.93 James what Even. 00:12:04.50 Frank I'm counting half because um what we got a MacBook Air M4 and a MacBook Air M5. Like, it's funny. Like, it's funny to just get two different models out of the same not event. 00:12:18.07 James Yeah, but MacBook Air is you know mid-consumer. 00:12:22.10 Frank Is it? OK. I think that's for us. 00:12:23.36 James Yeah. 00:12:24.25 Frank I don't know you know. 00:12:24.98 James I... 00:12:25.61 Frank Because I work on a desktop, I prefer a desktop. So my laptop, I don't need. i don't ever get the pro laptops anymore. You and i that's that's your baby. What color is that? is that rose gold? 00:12:35.98 James It's a rose gold, baby. They don't make them like this anymore. 00:12:39.59 Frank What's the new one called? Blush. 00:12:41.62 James They don't make them they don't make them like this anymore. Trust me. 00:12:44.47 Frank If you're just listening, ah James is caressing his laptop at the moment. 00:12:44.54 James um 00:12:49.37 James It's very nice. It was designed by Apple and california in California and assembled in China. um yeah You know, I do think that baseline MacBook air is general consumer. 00:13:03.13 Frank OK. 00:13:03.10 James um and even funnily enough, I believe MacBook pro baseline M five general consumer, obviously pro max not. 00:13:10.71 Frank OK. 00:13:12.15 James Um, but you know, I think they started off the week with the iPhone 17 E super mainstream mainstream device. 00:13:17.66 Frank Good phone, yeah. 00:13:21.33 James It looks like a phone. It looks like a 00:13:24.09 Frank What is it, $600? I think $599 US. um Good price. 00:13:27.69 James No. 00:13:28.05 Frank I forget what the Air costs, what the iPhone Air is. But $600 for an iPhone seems pretty nice to me. I mean, i like the reading about its downsides. 00:13:40.23 Frank It's like a 60 megahertz or a 60 hertz screen versus the 120. I'm like, I can't notice the 120 hertz, everyone. I just can't. So 60 hertz, wonderful. No dynamic island, though. 00:13:51.26 James It does come in soft pink, and I really do like that. 00:13:51.45 Frank system 00:13:53.42 James appreciate it. No, for $600, you know, I mean, it did obviously go up in price since the iPhone SE. Hold on one second. 00:14:06.97 Frank Can we blame the RAM wars for that? It's it's it's always hard to know like what is real economics and what is Apple just protecting their margins. 00:14:14.35 James That's true. That's true. I mean, this puppy has... um Does have an M chip? So it has an A whatever chip, A 19 chip, 40 megapixel fusion, 256 gig standard starting. 00:14:25.08 Frank I think 00:14:30.26 James Good work. USB-C. 00:14:31.48 Frank Yeah. 00:14:31.94 James yeah it has has a more modern. Mine's got lightning still. You see, oh, look at this. MagSafe. I like that. 00:14:37.66 Frank They added the MagSafe too, I believe. 00:14:37.96 James Zinc. 00:14:39.49 Frank $3, 00:14:39.80 James Now you got MagSafe. Yeah, right here. and i And I got it on my iPhone 11 Pro. 00:14:43.15 Frank yeah. 00:14:43.90 James When I was in Korea, we went to a Daiso and then this was $3, this case. 00:14:44.47 Frank Good add-on. 00:14:49.19 James Very nice. 00:14:49.40 Frank three hours yeah 00:14:49.72 James $3. three dollars um 00:14:50.55 Frank add on 00:14:52.92 James Great device. I mean, if you're if you're like, hey, I need a budget device, boom, good to go. I think that the Air is $10.99 and the iPhone 17 is $9.99. 00:15:03.80 James nine ninety nine I mean, I think that's the only problem is you're like, if I'm going to buy a device, do I spend $300 more and then get a device that's going to last me even longer on the newer stuff? And that's the hard battle. 00:15:13.72 Frank Yeah. 00:15:13.98 James When this thing was specifically like, you know, they say, oh, compare it with. They have a compare with on their website. 00:15:20.55 Frank Mm-hmm. 00:15:20.63 James They give you iPhone 11 or iPhone 12. 00:15:21.07 Frank Mm-hmm. 00:15:23.58 James Okay, this is like not even pro, just standard iPhone. Like, okay, bro. 00:15:27.71 Frank Ouch. Bro. 00:15:28.66 James Like, let's let's compare it to a six-year-old device. Come on, bro. 00:15:31.38 Frank Yeah. 00:15:32.23 James I'm just saying. um But, you know if I was in the market, I still think $599. It's a, you know, inflation. I get it. 00:15:42.58 James But dang, you know, I bought this iPhone SE right here. This is my work phone. $399, man. Now that is a deal. 00:15:48.91 Frank Oof. Can't beat that price. Yeah. Well, yeah. 00:15:52.98 James Never happening again. 00:15:53.75 Frank Mm-hmm. 00:15:53.98 James Never happened. This is never happening again, people. Never happening again. So all this really tells me is probably other devices, maybe iPhone 18 or 19 or whatever it is this fall, will probably creep up a little bit in price. 00:16:04.94 James But it' it's it's nice. New modern design. Nice camera. Nice stuff. Looks good. You know, and this thing, it runs iPhone 20, iPhone, iOS 20, 20. 00:16:14.04 Frank but yeah 00:16:14.86 James It works fine. Works completely fine. 00:16:15.61 Frank yeah 00:16:16.74 James So I have all the I have all of the. positive things to say if you're like I need a cheap device it's gonna last me five to six years this would that would do it you know what I mean if you want to be the iPhone but if you're like I want a better experience maybe save up for a few more months put 50 bucks aside get that iPhone 17. 00:16:26.52 Frank Yeah. 00:16:35.48 Frank And my argument for getting the newer phones was always, well, Apple intelligence is out and you want the big powerful phones so that you can run Apple intelligence locally. 00:16:43.35 James pay up 00:16:45.72 Frank Here's the deal though. um i think both that you and I have both experimented a lot with Apple intelligence. It's not there yet. It's not good enough yet. um So why put the extra $600, $700 into the device hardware? 00:17:00.98 Frank for a feature that just frankly isn't there at the moment. I think great innovations are to come and we're seeing that with the max chips and all that, but I feel like we've got five years before local AI is actually going to be properly a thing. 00:17:17.06 James Yeah. 00:17:17.50 Frank Right now we're in an awkward transition stage. I'm hoping my phone last five years. But um if and when it dies, like I'm probably going to get a baseline phone. 00:17:28.00 Frank like I'm a little bit tired of chasing the pro stuff, to be thoroughly honest. 00:17:29.10 James Yeah. 00:17:32.85 James Yeah. I was just looking here. The actually the price differential between the 17 and 17 is $200. And you know, they're not that different. I would say the ultra wide in my personal opinion It's almost worth the $200. 00:17:46.81 James They both have Apple intelligence technically. 00:17:47.42 Frank Mm-hmm. 00:17:49.05 James So, but you're really just paying for that extra, you know, the dynamic Island, which I do like, and you are paying for that extra stuff. so There must be some other things in there as well. Um, but I don't know. 00:18:03.77 James i like, I do like the soft pink. It's almost worth it for the soft pink. I do like that. It's a little bit smaller. I'm looking at the comparison between the 17 and 00:18:11.00 Frank Yeah. 00:18:13.37 James m it doesn't have center stage. Interesting. 00:18:17.06 Frank Yeah. 00:18:17.36 James Okay. It doesn't have, doesn't have the macro photography. 00:18:18.62 Frank It's funny little features it's lacking, yeah. 00:18:24.82 James ah yeah. I mean the 0.5, that's a kind of a game changer, but I mean, honestly, it's really not that different. If you can live without 0.5, which I don't know if I can, uh, at this one, I mean, this device is, that's the thing is this device, five years old, six years old, iPhone 11 00:18:43.36 James Is that what this is? No, it's a 14 Pro. 00:18:44.66 Frank I feel like you're, ah yeah, I was going to say those lenses look a little big, James. 00:18:48.73 James But, hold 11 Pro. 00:18:53.59 Frank Maybe. 00:18:53.69 James You can you can see because it's so thin..5, I'm just saying. So the other thing that that a lot of people say with these iPhones, is like you could buy a used 16 Pro, right? 00:19:06.37 James Like reduce, reuse, recycle. 00:19:07.26 Frank Mm-hmm. 00:19:08.76 James So I do think if you're in that's the hard sell. If you're in the market for a 17E, you might as well get 17, 16 Pro. You know what I mean? Used on the market. 00:19:18.05 Frank Yeah. 00:19:18.36 James And I bet you can find one for similar price in general. 00:19:22.19 Frank And I think that's a good lead into the MacBook because I'm pretty sure that's exactly the um monetary decisions Apple was making. Would you mind if we jumped to a different piece of hardware? 00:19:33.78 Frank Because what I think is um i have the M1 laptop, the Air M1, slightly upgraded and all that stuff, but the first m one and that computer is still excellent. 00:19:33.85 James Let's do it. Yeah. 00:19:48.76 Frank i I think I try to sing its praises every third podcast or so because I take it on trips and like this computer's fine, works fine. Only every so often will I see it get a little whatever crazy. 00:20:02.71 Frank And my my philosophy is i think people are still buying those old M1s and finding them used for, you know, four five hundred dollars. i don't even I think you can find them for that low used. 00:20:13.46 James Yeah. 00:20:14.55 Frank And why go buy a new one when you can get a perfectly good laptop for five hundred dollars? I think someone at Apple had the bright idea of. What if, what if, just throwing it out there, we built a new computer and charged $500, $600, maybe even $700 you want to upgrade it, but keep it in that $500 vague range of price. 00:20:38.37 Frank And I think that's what we got. We got the MacBook Neo, ah the new the new suffix for MacBooks. 00:20:44.25 James Ah, I didn't, I didn't know that you were jumping into the Neo, but okay. 00:20:50.42 Frank I had to, I had to. 00:20:52.82 James All right. i mean, that was today's. 00:20:53.91 Frank What's wrong? 00:20:54.65 James and i i Okay, fine. That's fine. 00:20:57.56 Frank Phronology doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. 00:20:59.03 James Okay. 00:20:59.66 Frank It just doesn't matter. 00:20:59.63 James Okay. 00:21:00.62 Frank We can compare and contrast with the air. 00:21:03.38 James This device is not for us. 00:21:06.49 Frank Is that it? 00:21:07.26 James I want, I want the world to be clear because I see the Twitter verse today. yeah nah This device is not for us. 00:21:14.59 Frank Okay. 00:21:16.43 James It's not for is' not for you. It's not for me. It's not for anyone listening to this podcast. You know who it's for? It's for like a family member. It's for a parent. It's for someone that is browsing the internet that needs a computer to do a thing. 00:21:32.41 James Someone that is 00:21:32.73 Frank A high school student who is guaranteed to drop it and definitely smash it within one year of its life. 00:21:39.16 James college student. College student, right? This is great. um This is... Mass consumer goodies. Totally good. All right, Neo. 00:21:50.42 James So cute. What a cute. Love the pink. Big fan of the pink. That's one I would get. 00:21:55.00 Frank That was the first thing I heard from my friend is are you going to get the cute new laptop? Because everyone thinks it's cute. I don't know about the cute thing. The cute is just in the color, right? Because the shape is the shape. 00:22:07.45 Frank the Apple laptop shapes haven't changed shape in, as far as I can tell, 30 years. 00:22:10.63 James The same. Yeah. 00:22:12.63 Frank um So it it's still still a MacBook. But everyone seems to love the colors. And the the cute blue, the cute pink, the cute yellow. 00:22:24.06 James You know, colors are personalization. When you have pro models get like black and silver, like cool, thanks, you know, whatever. 00:22:29.75 Frank Yeah. within 00:22:30.34 James But you know, the iMac back in the day, right? Like that was iconic. 00:22:34.07 Frank yeah 00:22:34.38 James And they brought it back recently with the iMacs on the desktop. and And I think the colors are iconic, especially in the Appleverse in general. And I was not, I've never owned really an Apple device up and until i had to buy one ah for work purposes, you know, and have a ah MacBook Air. 00:22:53.72 James for work. And, uh, you know, just in general, I, feel like those colors are really the identity of it. And they had that era where was just like black and silver and it's kind of boring. 00:23:01.57 Frank Mm-hmm. 00:23:03.74 James So i'm glad they're bringing these colors back and unique, different colors. And especially here, this is really, ah unique because I think the consumer in this aspect is one of that personalization. I mean, this device in general, 00:23:20.38 James not for me, not for me. 00:23:21.66 Frank Not for you. Well, let's be clear. Why isn't it for you? For me, it's it's the memory limit. There's a hard limit. There's a $599 model, $699 model. 00:23:32.26 Frank both have gigabytes of RAM. 00:23:35.32 James Yeah, and that's it. 00:23:35.61 Frank and Yeah, that's ah that's it. 00:23:37.16 James That's it. 00:23:38.87 Frank And I'm not sure if you can even run run one React Native app, one Electron app. Is that capable of running? Like, maybe you could run Discord, but you're not going to run Teams and Discord. 00:23:50.95 Frank You're not going to run Discord and VS Code at the same time, because that will take up all your CPUs and all your RAMs. 00:23:57.40 James the The only difference between this device, ah the two devices, is the 256 or 512. That's the only difference. It's got an a eighteen Pro chip, which funnily enough, funnily enough, the new iPhone 17E has an A19 chip, not a Pro, but an A19 chip. 00:24:07.33 Frank Touch ID. 00:24:14.51 James I'm just saying. Um, so it's got six core CPU, five core GPU, some neural engine. That's cool. 60 gigabit, gigabit memory bandwidth. Okay. It's got a USB C or USB C three and two fine ish. 00:24:30.09 Frank It's weird weird. One port is USB 3. The other port is USB 2. So that means that chip doesn't have the bus speeds to do two 3s. 00:24:33.75 James And 00:24:39.38 James That is exactly what that means, Frank Kruger. 00:24:41.30 Frank so 00:24:41.30 James Thank you for clarifying that. That is exactly what it means. It means one goes fast, up to 10 gigabits. And the other one, dream like like you would think from two to three, not that much, but actually twenty x to speed. 00:24:48.44 Frank Not so much. 00:24:52.90 Frank Yeah. 00:24:56.05 Frank It's for your keyboards and your mices and, honestly, your microphones and, like, speakers and things like that. 00:25:02.87 James i got I got two two on this M1 MacBook Air. 00:25:03.31 Frank That's what it's for. 00:25:06.63 James i don't know what they are, but I think they're both USB 3. 00:25:08.80 Frank I think they're USB 3s. Yeah, because they're M chips, and the M chip has a huge bus, huge memory bus. 00:25:10.04 James I think so. um You know, yeah this is great. you know i Someone gave a good comparison you know on... 00:25:23.16 James Twitter that like, hey, like what Windows devices are like, you can go get a nice like HP or Dell or Lenovo, like like the device for five or 600 bucks, you can get like 16 or 24 gigs of RAM, you know, 512, you know, um hard drive, you can get like i5 or i7 on that, and you can kind of like dial that stuff in. 00:25:43.33 Frank No, I don't know. I don't 00:25:44.09 James And they look pretty nice. Some of these, you know, a lot of these laptops all look the same, you know, a lot of them are mimicking a lot of what Apple does. And then you just come down to a decision. Do you want a Mac or PC? I just think that this device It's just not good enough, in my personal opinion. 00:26:00.57 James It's really not. And you know why? It comes down to what exactly you said earlier. It's not enough RAM. Nobody, nope, not a single person, Windows, Mac, Linux, not a single person should have to suffer with eight gigs of RAM. 00:26:15.10 James It is a it is a gosh darn travesty, Frank Kruger. 00:26:18.56 Frank Wow. Okay. 00:26:19.83 James it is It is almost, I'm just saying, what is this, a netbook? like it is a it is a it is a It should be a crime to sell a modern-day laptop with eight gigs of RAM. 00:26:33.91 Frank Wow. 00:26:35.45 James Now, funnily enough, I bet if I go to like, you know i don't want to someone will be like, I went to the Surface website, and you can get a Surface for eight gigs of RAM. 00:26:41.72 Frank Yeah. 00:26:42.42 James That should be illegal. it should be It's inappropriate. It's inappropriate. Because of what you said earlier is like, if someone is just browsing the internet, guess what? The internet is heavy, right? 00:26:54.81 Frank Yeah. 00:26:55.46 James I'm not even doing that much. If I go to activity monitor, how many jigs of RAM am I using right now? 00:26:59.80 Frank Yeah. 00:27:03.16 Frank Or sort your app by RAM. 00:27:03.25 James Where's my memory? 00:27:05.20 Frank It's the major tab at the top. 00:27:07.25 James I'm using 40. How am I using 40 gigs of memory? What? 00:27:11.99 Frank How many React apps do you have open? 00:27:14.62 James I have all of them. I have no idea. Well, you know, right away, just the browser. why i have Camtasia open. It's like, i mean, it says Edge helper, but if you look at it it's like, you know, you have Chrome chrome or Edge. 00:27:27.45 Frank got to sum them all up. Yeah. 00:27:29.30 James They're all there. You have to sum them all up. I'm just saying, I got Stream Deck, 200 megs. I got Camtasia. ah Why is Camtasia open? me close that. That was a gig. 00:27:37.78 Frank Like, VS Code is two gigabytes just by itself. 00:27:40.23 James Mail, 700 megs. Mail. Messages, 700 megs. messages seven hundred megs 00:27:46.87 Frank It's there. 00:27:46.94 James I'm just saying. 00:27:48.43 Frank Dropbox, for whatever reason, 900 megs. what Why does it need that memory? 00:27:51.59 James Finder 200 is Finder. It's not even open right now. 200 megs. 00:27:56.69 Frank 174, not open. 00:27:59.82 James It's not even open. I'm just saying I'm not even a pat power power user. 00:28:05.77 Frank wait, wait. um let The Twitter website, x.com, 400 megabytes. Mm-hmm. four hundred megabytes 00:28:12.47 James Exactly. Like. I'm sure that Apple has done some amazing architecture and engineering to optimize Safari for all sorts of things. 00:28:23.48 James I'm just saying it's not good enough. It's not good enough. And the price is fantastic. $599. Cute device. Button cute. Love the colors. Love this device. 00:28:36.49 James It's not good enough. I bought a Surface Go. ah remember the Surface Go devices are little small. Not good enough, just not good enough. 00:28:42.68 Frank Yeah, OK. 00:28:42.78 James And unfortunately it just wasn't good enough. And you know what the restriction was Frank Krueger besides the CPU, the memory is mostly the memory. You have the world's best CPU and this is a great chip. 00:28:53.10 James This what a great chip. All these ships are all great nowadays. Who cares? they're all great. 00:28:56.39 Frank Mm-hmm. 00:28:58.85 James Your, your, your main bottleneck is going to be that eight jigs of memory and you and you just cannot have, it's like, it's like if Apple, it's like if Apple, was to release an iPhone with 32 gigs of of storage. Inappropriate. 00:29:16.41 James remember when Remember when iCloud's default was 50 megabytes? Inappropriate, a little inappropriate. 00:29:21.18 Frank Yeah. 00:29:23.02 James I'm just saying, you might as well just give me nothing. So I think here, Apple, whatever you had to do to upgrade it to 12 or 16 gigs of memory, 00:29:38.81 James That is the price I want to pay. I would take 256 storage. 00:29:42.78 Frank Mm-hmm. 00:29:43.19 James I can plug in an external drive. It's fine. With 12, even 12. Even 12. But eight, Frank. 00:29:54.41 James That's the name of this this it episode name. 00:29:54.97 Frank midal 00:29:56.86 James Okay, AI. AI, you're listening to this transcript. Name of this episode podcast. Eight gigs of memory. 00:30:05.49 Frank inappropriate 00:30:05.62 James Inappropriate. It's inappropriate. Eight gigs of memory is inappropriate. 00:30:09.94 Frank wow 00:30:10.88 James Am I wrong? Tell me I'm wrong. 00:30:12.86 Frank I want to disagree with you because i keep thinking of the high school student. like I think it's inappropriate for college students, honestly, because college students have heavier workloads and all that. But I'm thinking about a high school student who's spending all their time on websites, essentially. And it's just a glorified web browser in an aluminum can. 00:30:33.69 Frank um The fact that Twitter takes up half a gig, that means at max, you could run 16 tabs of Twitter. And that's not true because the system takes up memory also. 00:30:45.74 Frank And you can't run your system to zero memory. So let's call it realistically 10 tabs. 10 tabs, you're going to use up all your memory for highfalutin tabs, you know. 00:30:56.10 Frank And then you have one game tab open also. 00:30:56.47 James these these kids These kids are going to be on Discord. 00:30:58.77 Frank it's it's been 00:31:01.82 James They're going to be on a Zoom call. They're going to be... well as just as 00:31:08.12 Frank YouTube in the background on three different tabs, yeah. 00:31:08.34 James I'm just saying. And it it's disheartening because so close. So close. 00:31:18.94 Frank See, i i have I have a horse in this race, which is i want to see cheap Macs out there because my my iPhone sales, my iOS sales are much greater than my Mac sales. 00:31:25.27 James Oh, yeah. 00:31:30.90 Frank So I am always looking for the Mac ecosystem to gain new people, new app buyers specifically. And so I am normally a cheerleader for Mac. I just want to see Mac succeed. 00:31:44.18 Frank um But you have a strong point, even though you're just keep saying the word inappropriate over again. It's a strong point. 00:31:52.50 James It's like, okay, so they also announced a MacBook Air with an M5 and a MacBook Pro with the M5, M5 Pro, and M5 Max chips. Woo, so many chips. 00:32:00.72 Frank Wow. Yeah. 00:32:01.59 James ah Lovely. Because you i we had talked about maybe I should get a MacBook Pro upgrade, but it was M4s. 00:32:03.22 Frank That's the sweet spot. 00:32:08.47 James I'm like, yeah and i don't want that. I want that. oh oh That shit. You know, um and you know, the, you're right. I mean, $599 compared to the starting price of the 14 inch MacBook Pro, $1699, the MacBook Air, $1099. 00:32:23.06 James That's $500 or $1,100 difference. 00:32:25.69 Frank I'm good. 00:32:29.09 James That is two extra MacBook Neos. You can get three MacBook Neos for one MacBook Pro. 00:32:35.51 Frank You can get a new Mac and a new phone for the price of one Air. Think of it that way. 00:32:40.66 James Cheers to that. Cheers to that. 00:32:41.88 Frank and And we should just because the student price is $499. Like that is getting into the netbook Chromebook territory. I was shopping for Chromebooks and like, yeah, they start out around $250. 00:32:54.82 Frank But you're easily into the $400 or $500 to get anything half decent that's not a screen $19.99. 00:32:59.51 James Easily. Totally. We were trying to buy one for my father-in-law and was the same thing. We're like, well... I was just getting a new computer. He might as well get a real computer at this point. If you want a good Chromebook or whatever, yeah, this might as well. 00:33:09.18 Frank Yeah. okay but yeah Yeah. Okay. See, I came into this podcast all excited. I like it. 00:33:20.53 Frank Mostly because it's a Mac that's cheap. And we need Macs out there. 00:33:23.85 James Yeah. you It is. 00:33:26.10 Frank But you're right. 00:33:26.32 James a 00:33:26.70 Frank You have me very depressed about the 8GB now. Yeah. 00:33:29.18 James I think like, okay, here's the thing. and iPhone SE 2 or whatever, like six years old, like iPhone world constricted, right? It's fine. did Not just like, you know, apps running everywhere, right? It's constricted. It's one app at a time. it worked It works. Reduce memory. Doesn't work. Computer. All right, let's talk about the thing I'm most excited about. 00:33:54.35 Frank Mac Studio Display XDR. 00:33:56.34 James No. Close. Drop the XDR and you're good to go. Okay. Okay. 00:33:59.74 Frank um Oh, really? Really? 00:34:01.53 James yeah I'm not going to spend $35 bajillion dollars on a display, Frank Kruger. What am I? I got money just flying around this tiny little room. 00:34:07.94 Frank It's $36 bajillion, sir. 00:34:11.32 James ah 00:34:12.28 Frank But do you have $16 bajillion? Okay. 00:34:14.84 James I do have $16 bajillion. dollars Yeah. 00:34:16.54 Frank yeah 00:34:16.72 James That why that seems. 00:34:17.66 Frank You know, I've been doing the math. Okay. um so So, sorry. 00:34:20.74 James Okay. 00:34:22.05 Frank ah There's a new Mac Studio display out there. 27-inch Yeah. 00:34:24.82 James Which you and I talked about. 00:34:25.46 Frank Yeah. fk yeah 00:34:27.35 James You and I talked about, by the way, when we bought our Mac minis, was like, I hate that this resolution of my ultra wide, which I love, which is only like $400 at Costco, like, you know, was there. 00:34:36.55 Frank Well... 00:34:37.61 James And I was like, should I buy the studio display? And at that, I was like, well, it's like five years old. garbage, right? So we're waiting. So like two are out. And I actually, i don't know what the main difference is. 00:34:50.04 James One is expensive and one is very expensive. And they're both five k right? 00:34:56.57 Frank Correct. Yeah. And even the expensive one has an expensive upgrade. You can easily add $300 to the price if you care to. If you are interested into nano texture, and I say to myself, it's nano. I can't see nano. That's too small. 00:35:10.04 Frank I can barely see size 12 font on my screen at the moment 00:35:16.54 Frank um Okay, so $1,600 is expensive for a monitor. The monitor I'm looking at, because I was tempted to go buy a second one to just pair them up, is $400, and it's roughly the same size. Not nearly the same resolution, but roughly the same size. 00:35:33.24 Frank ah So we're talking 4x. You can basically get four monitors for the price of this puppy. But I've been trying to justify its price in my head. James, here are the justifications I've come up with. Integrated webcam, which I miss. 00:35:46.96 Frank It's nice having a webcam up there. 00:35:47.03 James Nice. 00:35:48.28 Frank 15 megapixels. 00:35:48.60 James It is nice. 00:35:50.06 Frank Then I did a little bit more math in my head. I'm like, what is HD? HD is 1920 by 1080. Multiply those numbers together. That's 19 megapixels. Oh my God, it's sub HD. 00:36:00.50 Frank So that made me a little bit sad. 00:36:03.29 James Is it really? 00:36:04.63 Frank i don't They don't give the actual resolution. They just talk in megapixels. And I don't know, maybe I'm doing the math wrong there, but I'm pretty sure I know how to multiply two numbers together. um So I'm just saying... 00:36:15.64 James It does have center stage so it can follow us with desk. 00:36:18.53 Frank Center stage is nice. 00:36:18.88 James It's got a desk view. 00:36:20.34 Frank And it has all the Apple filters. Like Apple does a lot of image processing, which is always good, which they seem to refuse do with third-party cameras, which is super annoying. 00:36:29.97 James true. 00:36:30.81 Frank So you get a little webcam, so i'll call that $100. And then it also has a Thunderbolt um basically hub on it and ports. 00:36:39.38 James Two of them. 00:36:41.85 Frank The hub is one, though. So if you go buy like a Thunderbolt hub, that's $200. two hundred bucks 00:36:47.73 James ah my thunder my thunder My Thunderbolt 5 hub, $400. 00:36:50.62 Frank yeah okay there we go okay so let's be generous um hub yeah 00:36:55.83 James and It's got a lot more ports. It's got a lot more ports. It's got a lot more ports. 00:36:59.67 Frank And it has six speakers, okay? That's at least seven more speakers than the Mini has because I still use the Mini's internal speakers. i don't know about you, but I've been listening to some tinny, tinny, tinny audio for the past years. 00:37:09.02 James I like it. 00:37:14.39 Frank So it's got speakers, a webcam, and a very expensive Thunderbolt hub. Let's call that $600 worth of peripherals on this peripheral. So now the monitor is only $1,000. It's only mildly expensive, not super expensive. That's how I keep justifying its price. Plus, it's gorgeous retina display, obviously. 00:37:36.60 James Yeah, the Thunderbolt 5, I do appreciate. It's got two Thunderbolt 5s and ah two USB-C ports, which are USB 3 ports. Obviously, USB 4 would be Thunderbolt 5. 00:37:46.49 Frank Mm-hmm. 00:37:49.17 James um Now, the studio display has 96-watt host charging. 00:37:50.31 Frank That's confusing. Oh, 00:37:55.36 James That's pretty nice. That'll charge most Macs, probably not the pros. 00:37:56.73 Frank OK. 00:37:59.03 James The bigger XDR will do 140-watt. That's what my anchor does. 00:38:02.73 Frank Jeez. 00:38:03.91 James um Yeah, if you got all those a watts. 00:38:04.69 Frank Wow. 00:38:06.68 James on there. um So that's pretty nice, you know, some more ports. And the nice thing with Thunderbolt you can like link Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt and like it all works very nicely. 00:38:13.88 Frank Mm-hmm. 00:38:14.68 James So I could, you could do a dock to this and then your dock becomes a thing and then the thing and then the upstream and all the things happen. I like it. I do like that. i mean, right now, for example, my ultra wide here from Costco has a USB 3.0 00:38:31.59 Frank Yeah. 00:38:32.50 James hub in it. Right. And that's hooked up to my Thunderbolt five doc. So then I get more ports, which on the back of my monitor, so it'd be very similar in this regard. I would just hook the Thunderbolt five to the Thunderbolt five. Um, super nice. Um, I like that there's one upstream, one downstream, and there's a little dot that indicates that. Um, so very, very nice. I do like that. Um, I think what I'm hung up on, you know, is what stand do I want? 00:39:02.70 Frank Oh my God. that though Yeah, talking about ways to make your expensive monitor more expensive. So James, the options are for no upsell, you can tilt your monitor. 00:39:12.44 James Nice. 00:39:13.02 Frank For $200 upsell, you can move the monitor up and down. Up, down, up, down. 00:39:18.10 James No, no, $400 upgrade. 00:39:18.68 Frank And James, $400. Oh my God. Oh my God, that's a $400 stand. 00:39:22.55 James yes 00:39:24.13 Frank Okay, but here's the part that make cracks me up. If you have no stand, do you get a discount on the monitor? No. No, no. So it really bothers me that you can choose either the janky tilt to only stand or Visa mount. Both are at the same price. One obviously includes a stand, the other doesn't, but they're the same price. 00:39:48.16 James Well, one includes the mount. 00:39:48.30 Frank That's what kills me. 00:39:53.14 Frank It's four holes. I have a drill. i can put four holes into anything. It's not rocket science. 00:40:02.14 James No, I think it's an attachment on the back that goes in. 00:40:05.46 Frank It is. it is. 00:40:06.49 James Yeah, that gives you four holes. 00:40:06.94 Frank i will 3D print you an attachment and I'll give you some super glue and you can visa mount anything. Pro tip out there, visa mounts are four holes. 00:40:18.17 Frank If you want to visa mount something, just glue a hunk of plastic on it and drill four holes. 00:40:18.46 James And they're standard. 00:40:24.95 James You could probably most likely 3D print this. Well, so the funny part is I have a very expensive, uh, visa, like does all the thing. 00:40:35.26 Frank arm thing. 00:40:36.40 James So I think I'd end up getting the visa mount adapter, like a knucklehead over here and then not having a stand. 00:40:36.60 Frank Yeah. 00:40:41.25 Frank You're not going to get a stand. 00:40:43.90 James No, because like if you get this, you got to pick one. You can't even buy the Visa don't have a 3D printer. 00:40:47.77 Frank You know, if I'm playing devil's advocate, you could 3D print a stand also that would have the visa mount attachment. 00:40:55.53 James What do I got to do? 00:40:56.49 Frank Oh, yeah. I'm sure you know what picture. 00:40:58.26 James Well, ah so I think that's it's that's, I'm hung up on it because normal people. Internet. Merge conflict listeners. 00:41:09.02 James Normal monitors. 00:41:09.52 Frank High. 00:41:11.13 James Any monitor in the modern age, you buy it. 00:41:14.04 Frank Above $100. Probably 00:41:15.67 James Above, even probably, yeah, above $100. 00:41:18.07 Frank probably the $100 ones too, yeah. 00:41:20.82 James You know what it does? It comes with a stand and it a Visa mount. 00:41:23.93 Frank And four holes. Because you know how hard a hole is to put in a case? 00:41:28.06 James Four holes. 00:41:30.00 Frank Very easy. 00:41:31.16 James Very easy. You know what You drill the holes. 00:41:31.86 Frank You just put the hole there. 00:41:33.23 James You put 00:41:35.64 James No, I mean... 00:41:35.80 Frank It's re ridiculous. You know why they need the Visa thing? It's because the back is curved and Visa mounts are flat. So they have to uncurve it. you know what they could do instead? 00:41:46.52 Frank They could just not make it curved in that part. And then they would just put four holes in it. look 00:41:52.70 James That's true. 00:41:53.50 Frank But they don't want to blemish it. 00:41:53.85 James It's like so... 00:41:55.42 Frank You know what they could do? They could make their stands, Visa stands, and they could just mount that way. So when you want to like put your monitor on a Visa mount, you remove it from the Visa stand, and then you put it on a Visa arm. 00:42:07.95 James I think the stand just a tilt of adjustable stand. 00:42:08.28 Frank no one 00:42:11.81 James I I've had monitors, which are those a hundred dollar modeler monitors that we're talking about that don't, they don't, they don't do it. They don't move the a hundred bucks. 00:42:18.99 Frank Oh, OK. Crazy. 00:42:21.73 James No 200 bucks. Now we're talking, you know, they can, 00:42:27.50 James I mean, a $1,600, like it is, is flipping it's it's wrote, 00:42:31.03 Frank It should Like, none of these are even rotating, right? 00:42:34.07 James None of, you know, the Dell, the Dell monitors, which are like this, the Dell studio, whatever they are monitors. 00:42:34.59 Frank I don't think it's not. 00:42:40.27 James I've had those. They do 360 spit them. If you want to, it's like wild. Cause I used to have that. You can, I, you can't, I guess if you got a visa amount, you could. 00:42:49.60 Frank Yeah. Yeah. 00:42:50.66 James That's the only way you can't even do it with a tilt and height adjustable one. I was, I was originally thinking in tilt and height adjustable one by like $2,000. I mean, I mean, that's the one you probably want because you want to move it up and down. 00:43:02.26 James There's no way that the tilt adjustable one is the perfect height for your eyes. 00:43:03.70 Frank Books. 00:43:07.50 James I also got to put it on books. 00:43:09.72 Frank books 00:43:10.02 James I'm not farmer. What's happening here? 00:43:12.98 Frank You know, i um I have a little bit of a wood shop. I made a beautiful monitor stand, um but I've yet to clear my desk off enough to install my monitor stand. I built it probably a few months ago. James, it's been months since my desk has been clear enough to put a stand on. 00:43:28.84 Frank Just put it out there. You don't have to do books. You don't have to look like a student. You could go into your own personal wood shop and build a stand and then leave it on the shelf for three months because your desk is too messy to install the stand. Just saying that's always an option too. 00:43:42.48 James That's true. Yeah. I don't know I'm like really into this, this studio display only because I'm so disheartened by density pixels of, of, of Mac OS that I really want. I think that, I think that it'll win me over that the display that costs more than my computer will finally fix my computer. 00:44:04.28 Frank Yeah, you know, um umm I'm obviously justifying it too, but I'm leaning toward it too, but it my argument is a little bit different. the The monitor I'm using is actually kind of low res, like to the point where I can see the pixels. 00:44:15.93 James Yeah. 00:44:17.65 Frank And so I often forget to like double check my apps now in Retina because I actually i have to use my laptop. to double check Retina. And I certainly don't test for high gamut. 00:44:29.46 Frank So like rendering um HDR imagery, which apps can do now back in the day. It's a feature I really want to add to Eye Circuit. When you make an LED bright, like it should hurt your eyes. should It should be so bright. It's just blasting you in the face. And my current sRGB monitor cannot do that. You need a high gamut. 00:44:53.05 James I, you know, I agree. Like when I play, I know this, this month or when I play my switch on it, like it's not doing 120 Hertz. It's not doing HDR. It's not doing the things that I would want it to do. 00:45:04.26 James ah in general, it'd be the most expensive display of any kind that I've ever purchased. Even my plasma TV that I have, it's like old now. 00:45:12.75 Frank Oh, good comparison. 00:45:13.92 James So when I first moved to Seattle plasma, baby Panasonic, the blacks are real black. 00:45:18.07 Frank Nice. 00:45:18.65 James In fact, they're, they're off. 00:45:19.03 Frank I have one of those. 00:45:21.04 James Um, The blackest blacks. 00:45:23.43 Frank I still have one. It's gorgeous. Except for the burnet. 00:45:25.40 James There's except for the burn in. 00:45:25.95 Frank It's gorgeous. Yeah. 00:45:27.74 James It's beautiful. That burn in fades away. 00:45:28.86 Frank yeah 00:45:30.16 James Um, I mean, it still goes and I refuse. That's 10 ADP and I love it. It's 55 inch. And, uh, that was 1100 or $1,200 when I bought it. And that would be, this would be the most expensive business expense, uh, display that I ever purchased. 00:45:45.56 Frank Yeah. Yeah. 00:45:46.26 James Um, um, I mean, and I will say like the Mac, the Mac book air and the Mac mini, I'm still very pleased with, but I actually, funnily enough, what you just said resonates with me because I was having an issue with tiny clips where the arrows and things that it was drawing when it was rendering them out, I noticed that they were smaller on the retina display of my Mac book air than there were on my normal display. 00:46:09.40 Frank yeah 00:46:12.25 James And, um, shut funnily enough, I asked, co-pilot to analyze it. And it was like, yeah, the problem is with like the different density of pixels and this and that and how it's like calculating stuff. was like, it's like good find. And I like, thanks. 00:46:24.82 Frank thanks buddy 00:46:24.86 James Thanks. I only had to test it on 20. And you know, testing is important. You're running your apps. 00:46:28.89 Frank Yeah. 00:46:29.14 James It's important. um It's a very nice display and is an expensive display. And this is, you're right. I mean, both of these display are pro consumers, but what is the difference between the two besides the $2,000? 00:46:43.26 Frank Oh, it's the other one is color calibrated. So if you're doing actual like movie production where you want to match it to how a theater projector will project the color, or if you're working on video game art assets, even then that probably doesn't matter too much. um It's, it's guaranteed color. So like if you put Pantone red up there, Pantone red has a certain spectrograph um spectrum, spectrum. 00:47:13.27 Frank Whatever. 00:47:13.88 James like 00:47:14.03 Frank different Different intensities at different frequencies, a profile that you want to match, and that monitor will get closer to it. You know, you put the color red up on a cheap monitor, and you actually, like, measure the color spectrum that it produces, you're going to see there's all sorts of colors in there, not just pure red blasted at you. 00:47:34.77 Frank What you're going to see is a ton of noise, and then a little peek at red, and then a few peeks at some resonant frequencies of red. Whereas a high quality studio color calibrated monitor will have less of the noise and stronger peaks at the correct positions where the peaks should be. 00:47:55.51 Frank But to be thoroughly honest, color is relative. um You know how there's some people out there that have perfect pitch? They can actually tell notes from musical instruments and absolute value of that pitch. They hear an F sharp, they can say that's an F sharp. Most people have relative pitch. You can tell if a note is higher or lower than another note. 00:48:17.40 Frank The same thing applies to color. people You do not see absolute color. You see relative color. This one's redder than that color. It's redder than that blue. That one's bluer than that green. You know, that that's how color works. There is not one human being on the planet who has perfect color or absolute color. No one has ever tested for it. No one has ever succeeded at that test. 00:48:40.54 Frank So unless you are in the professional filmmaking, maybe game making business, the monitor is not for you. 00:48:51.00 James Perfect. I will not buy that monitor. 00:48:53.14 Frank I mean, we could argue as app developers, we need perfect color reproducibility. But the truth is absolutely no one who runs our apps has one of those monitors. So everyone's running them on the $200, $300 monitors that we all use reality. 00:49:07.18 James Yeah. 00:49:08.22 Frank So yeah, it doesn't matter. 00:49:11.04 James I like it. That's a good, that's a good breakdown. Cause I was even putting them side by side. was like, they look so much like this. Obviously the only big difference is the hub, you know, in general, um, that's inside of it that I was looking at it, which, which does make sense. 00:49:19.05 Frank Mm-hmm. 00:49:22.36 James Cause if you're probably sitting there and you are running like a Mac, you know, MacBook pro or whatever, you're going to need all the stuff inside of it. 00:49:33.70 James Yeah, looking at it. It's still got the 12 megapixel center display. And it still has, yeah, just two Thunderbolt 5s and USB-C. 00:49:37.18 Frank Yeah. 00:49:41.06 James But funnily enough, it just happens to be the power that it gives us is 140 watt host charging, which I do know quite a few devices do need, funnily enough. 00:49:51.96 Frank Crazy. 00:49:52.42 James But 96 is going to be good for most devices. 00:49:54.81 Frank i the Yeah, come on. I charge almost everything I have off of 60 watt chargers. 00:50:00.09 James I have two different laptops here, one that I can't talk about, and that one does require 140 watt host charging. 00:50:05.33 Frank It requires? Wow. 00:50:06.33 James and And my thought specifically, by the way, the reason at my Anker Thunderbolt 5 doc is that is that I needed 140 watt charging and it gives it to me. 00:50:18.90 James So and I just recently, by the way, I from work, we got a device refresh and sure enough, I got like a HP doc. 00:50:19.49 Frank Dang. 00:50:26.01 James That puppy was $300. Like these docs are at are as a small fortune. 00:50:29.34 Frank Yeah. 00:50:32.75 James It's crazy. Yeah. 00:50:33.82 Frank Yeah, so factor that into the price. Thank you. It will help justify it to my accountant and my conscience at night. You know, it's funny. 00:50:41.50 James Well, here's the fun. Well, really quick. 00:50:42.94 Frank Sorry. i 00:50:43.58 James the The funny part is that if you go to the XDR, I'm just saying if you want to save some money, there is no standard stand option. It's only tilt and height or visa amount. 00:50:53.78 James And those are the same price, by the way. Those are the same price. Do you want less? 00:50:58.90 Frank Oh, let's see. I thought they had the expensive stand. Didn't they used to charge like $1,000 for the stand? What was that for? 00:51:04.41 James the The stand is in the price now, but you can also forego the stand and get the visa amount for the same price. 00:51:07.29 Frank Okay. 00:51:09.94 Frank For the same price. Apple, you're killing me. 00:51:12.02 James and That's a worse deal. That's a worse 00:51:13.61 Frank You are just killing me, Apple. Just make the stands Visa stands, and then you'll make everyone happy. 00:51:19.67 James deal. 00:51:21.31 Frank If professionals, professionals want Visa mount, because professionals use arms and things, and they have... 00:51:26.97 James When you look, when you look at the visa mount adapter, it looks like a piece of piece of plastic and it has screws in it, which is the screw. 00:51:34.59 Frank I'm sure it's aluminum. 00:51:35.96 James So, so it is, but here's the thing. It is legitimately, two different monitors, like because the S where the screws screw in are not on the monitors with the stands. 00:51:52.28 Frank believe it. 00:51:52.37 James Legitimately, they have two production lines. One production line is over there drilling four tiny holes. And the other one, one slit, I guess, inside of it, Apple Why do you do this to yourselves? Just put it on one production line, put the slit, put the four holes. Nobody's looking at the back of your devices. 00:52:14.36 James Not at your displays. 00:52:15.19 Frank You know, I assume these things are made of aluminum. You can braze aluminum. It's like welding. You know you just get a hunk of aluminum and just kind of weld it onto the back, drill your own holes. 00:52:27.01 Frank Visa mount. 00:52:26.98 James Oh, yeah, yeah. All right. Last device. iPad Air talking about the iPad M for iPad Air. Cool. 00:52:36.74 Frank Yep, nice. Nothing to say other than nice. 00:52:40.25 James I think the star of the show, the star of the show, Frank Krueger, this wine is hitting me hard tonight. 00:52:40.87 Frank lot of iPads these days. 00:52:46.87 Frank Okay. 00:52:49.84 Frank Don't you dare say the display. 00:52:49.91 James I think, 00:52:54.07 James um, no star of the show is I'm going to, I'm configuring, please hold. 00:53:00.73 Frank Okay. 00:53:01.27 James oh oh, you know what? 00:53:02.49 Frank Okay. 00:53:02.63 James The website, Apple. No, you made your website worse. There's you have to edit. You have to drop down. Okay. 00:53:09.40 Frank Yeah, yeah. 00:53:09.95 James 32. 00:53:10.03 James All right, that's good. 00:53:10.33 Frank Edit. You've got to edit your RAMs. 00:53:12.34 James Yeah. 00:53:13.59 Frank you're You're up in the RAM? 00:53:16.06 James You know, I am a star of the show. 00:53:17.69 Frank Got it. RAM. 00:53:18.13 James All right, star of the show. I've just i've decided. 00:53:22.93 Frank Okay. 00:53:22.97 James OK. Apple, why is your configuration screen one of those scrolly things? Star of the show, MacBook Air, $16.99. That's expensive. 00:53:34.33 Frank It is. 00:53:34.46 James but that's gonna get you an M5 with the 16 core neural engine, 10 core GPU, 10 core CPU, 32 gigabytes. 00:53:37.30 Frank Nice. 00:53:41.78 Frank Gorgeous. 00:53:45.69 James That is four times more of the other one and one terabyte of storage, 1699. sixty nine nine That's the start of the show. the The MacBook Air, quote me, that's the best deal. That's the best deal right there. You don't even to get that. Our MacBook Airs, 00:54:02.07 Frank Well, 00:54:03.55 James 16 jigs. 16 jigs. That was the maximum. 00:54:05.22 Frank yeah, correct. It's correct. 00:54:07.16 James You can get 24 jigs. 00:54:07.32 Frank It's true. 00:54:08.48 James You can get 16 jigs. You get... How much storage do I even have on this? 512. I'm on. Boone it up. Let me look. Frank, please. 00:54:15.16 Frank I have too little. I can answer that question. I mean, that's part of the reason I upgraded to the Mac Mini. If you are going to invest in an Apple product, let me remind you, please upgrade the hard drive if you don't want to physically do it yourself. 00:54:29.21 James I got 512. I had the standard. I got 512 and i still got... 00:54:31.16 Frank Yeah. 00:54:33.50 James Well, not that much. I only got 100 gigs left. that's that's ah That's not good. 00:54:38.62 Frank this 00:54:39.22 James Tendery format. Okay. I'm just saying, deal. M5. That's four times better than the 00:54:49.37 Frank So I'll say that price isn't terrible because that's the price I paid for my M1. I paid $1,700 for 16 GB and an M1. So getting an M5 with 32 GB, beautiful. 00:54:59.37 James And 00:55:01.98 James And we couldn't upgrade it any further and, or else we would have, because we would have put more Ram in this puppy and you are correct. 00:55:05.04 Frank Right. 00:55:10.16 James I think Frank is always correct. By the way, one terabyte is a minimum. 00:55:14.46 Frank I like hearing on that. 00:55:15.61 James You got to put more storage. You always need the more storage. I, the funny part is I, I upgrade, I did upgrade my Mac mini. um And I upgraded the storage to two terabytes, a two terabyte, because Frank told me to, 64 jigs of RAM. 00:55:28.68 Frank Nice. That's Mm-hmm. 00:55:32.79 James And the funny part is that I actually have like an external SSD or whatever little thing on the thing. i don't even know why I do, because I got 1.5 terabytes available that's going to be way faster than the other stuff. You know what I mean? Why am I doing this to myself? Now, I have it built in. So I do think that in general, we kind of future-proof this Mac Mini. 00:55:54.84 James with the 64 and just going all in. So I think if you're like, this is this MacBook, Frank and I have the same MacBook Air. Great device. Superb device. It's actually kind of heavy in my hand because it's matt is not so airy. 00:56:07.74 Frank not so airy, huh? 00:56:09.70 James It's very like, feel like it's going to weigh me down. Too much wine. i had one glass. i told i texted Heather, I said, good wine. This 00:56:19.22 James is a great device. so This pinnacle, pinnacle 00:56:24.82 Frank Yeah. 00:56:25.05 James This M1 MacBook Air, it might be the best device that Apple has ever made. 00:56:32.10 Frank I'm never giving mine up. 00:56:33.55 James It's so good. like ah So I think that that is is the deal in this deal, to be honest with you, because even if you were to configure a Mac Mini, like let's say let's say I go over here, i'm gonna go over to the the mac Mac Mini over here. 00:56:48.65 James Where's Mac Mini? Yeah, so cute. Doesn't come with the display. 00:56:50.58 Frank well you're 00:56:51.83 James Then come with display. Well, let's say you're configuring a Mac mini. Oh, this is going to be cute. Five starts at 599. Right. And then you're like, and do you want the approach? I guess M4 sure. 00:57:03.19 James And then you're like, i want the 32 jigs and then I want the one terabyte. You already had a thousand dollars, right? You want the approach and that's a year old chip. And that's actually a pretty good deal. A thousand dollars. 00:57:13.36 James That's a pretty, pretty good deal. 00:57:14.99 Frank See, apples then, you know. The Apple prices are high, but once you get used to the high prices, there are some deals in there. 00:57:21.05 James Yeah. There's some good deals in there, but you know, you don't have to display. 00:57:23.67 Frank But you're not going be... 00:57:24.98 James So I think, I think the MacBook air is still like the deal with a bigger generation, more Ram, more storage, all the things. It's, it's, it's a good deal. 00:57:35.29 Frank Yeah, and this will be my parting shot at the MacBook Neo. No backlit keyboard. like 00:57:41.08 James Oh, 00:57:41.66 Frank don't know about everyone else, but that's a major feature for the MacBooks for me. I live in the Pacific Northwest. I don't know about you, but it's always dark here. there's There's never a sun. It's always dark. I need backlighting on everything. 00:57:59.03 Frank so um And maybe another little reason and why that computer is not for us. 00:58:04.09 James No, I agree. If it's not backlit, it doesn't exist, to be honest with you. so it's it's Because I can't find it. um if you're not If you're not prompting in the dark, who are you? 00:58:10.86 Frank Yeah. 00:58:15.35 Frank one 00:58:16.66 James What are you doing? ah Do we miss anything else? I guess we didn't really talk too much about the MacBook Pros. They seem good. 00:58:25.17 Frank Did you know back in January they released a second generation of AirTags? We told we didn't cover that. I don't think i don't think anyone knows about this. 00:58:31.77 James ah wow. 00:58:34.78 Frank But they just just put it out there because I was going through all the Apple press releases because I had to because there was no event with no virtual Tim Apple up there. Anyway, ah end of January, new generation of AirTags. 00:58:47.06 Frank Supposed to be louder speaker. Better find um you know accurate positioning finding stuff. 00:58:51.86 James I 00:58:55.00 Frank That all sounds good. I want all that. But I'm not replacing all my AirTags now. But good to know. So if you do buy some AirTags, make sure you get second generation in the future. 00:59:05.76 James like that. The only thing that Apple is missing now, because they have an iMac, a Mac mini, Mac studio, Mac pro. They are missing the either the iMacBook or the ah and the MacBook Mini. 00:59:19.86 James And maybe that's what they should have called it, MacBook Mini. 00:59:21.72 Frank I know. They should have put a touchscreen on it because I still i still give my laptop over to kids and kids still poke the screen expecting something to happen. 00:59:34.10 Frank and And it's the year 2026, I believe, and there should just be a touchscreen on there. I know it'll be weird for them. You know, the future is always scary and weird, Apple. 00:59:46.55 Frank And I know it clouds the whole iPad versus Mac argument and debate and all that, but just put a stupid touchscreen on it. For the love of God, just put a touchscreen on it. 00:59:56.41 James I was, i was having Heather test this new app, you know, on my Mac. And, uh, the first thing she wanted to do is touch the screen. Uh, this isn't like a touch, you know, laptop, you know, or touch monitor, but you could get those technically, but even with the mouse, it's pretty weird with the mouse, like um a mouse to do the simulator dragging and doing stuff. 01:00:12.66 Frank Yeah. 01:00:19.97 James It's like very awkward to the tech track pad. 01:00:20.71 Frank Mm-hmm. 01:00:22.78 James Um, ah She just wanted to touch it. like you know I mean, i like ideally, yes. 01:00:26.83 Frank Yeah. 01:00:26.94 James like Even on my MacBook Air, it'd be nice to to interact with my applications the same way my users does. guess the only question I really have is like, is macOS ready for touch? 01:00:38.23 Frank No, but neither was Windows 8. 01:00:39.13 James No. No, it's not. 01:00:41.24 Frank Microsoft had to go through two versions of Windows before they had it kind of figured out. And even then, there's some weird parts of Windows 11 that are weird. 01:00:49.75 James Totally. 01:00:50.17 Frank But there's no way to do it without just doing it. Like you can sit there and hypothe hypothesize all day long about what needs to change, but you just got to enable it, get some bad press. That's it. They're just afraid of bad press. They can't handle it. They can't handle criticism. 01:01:07.58 James You got to do it because like honestly funnily enough, like this device, which is like the web browsing device is the perfect device to introduce the touchscreen on because most of the apps that people are going to use are going to be from the app store that are like iPhone-esque apps. 01:01:14.02 Frank Mm-hmm. 01:01:17.08 Frank Yeah. 01:01:22.71 James or the browser and the browser is great for scrolling and moving things around in general and if we all look at our macbooks or our surfaces or whatever it is our monitors our displays are just scattered with with smudges from our fingers anyways because we all try to it's right there it's ready it's a big beautiful display ready 01:01:26.80 Frank Yeah. 01:01:42.52 Frank And it's hard when you can spend $600 on a MacBook, which is, i have to say, a better computing platform if you're like a nerd and you're writing code or doing schoolwork and stuff, or you have an iPad, which has touchscreen and makes the web feel awesome. 01:02:00.25 Frank It's hard. Like you you want the iPad because it's the modern device, but you're missing out on all the keyboard and all the benefits of a MacBook. So I know it clouds the argument, but they just have to do it at some point. 01:02:13.98 James I mean, i mean, that's when it gets, it's get confusing, right? Because 11 inch MacBook or iPad air with an M four is say 599. It's the same price. 01:02:23.21 Frank Yeah. 01:02:23.18 James And then you're like, well, why would I buy this versus the other thing? 01:02:23.79 Frank Yeah. 01:02:26.06 James X, Y, Z, blah, blah, blah, blah. 01:02:26.57 Frank Right. 01:02:27.62 James blah Right. And, and, and it is tricky. 01:02:29.27 Frank And I make my money on both platforms. That's why I can say I don't care at this point. Like, get one, get the other, just buy my apps. I'm happy either way. 01:02:37.18 James Yeah. Buy them apps. Wow. Well, Since Apple doesn't have an event, we can't actually tell you if this podcast is longer than that event or not. 01:02:48.61 Frank Oh, fair. Yeah. 01:02:49.53 James But we are going for watch hours on YouTube. So if you stuck around till the end, we appreciate your one hour clicking in on it in general. 01:02:56.18 Frank Thank you. Mm-hmm. 01:02:59.93 James Let us ah know if you're buying any new products at all and what you thought of this event in quotes that I'm doing. or the week if you like it or not, head to youtube.com forward slash at Merge Conflict FM or go to Merge Conflict FM to find all of our back catalog. 01:03:17.62 James Frank, thank you for going down this road of Apple product. 01:03:20.15 Frank James, 01:03:23.22 Frank please let me know if you buy that monitor. So then I'll have more guilt and more reasons to buy it too. 01:03:28.22 James well Well, and that's the funny part between me and Frank is that like we both bought like them the, but we bought the, as the back, you know, as the back MacBook, Mac Air, Mac Mini, like at the same time, like, oh, I guess we'll do it. 01:03:33.47 Frank Damn it, chicken. 01:03:40.15 Frank Air, the minis. Tell me if we're buying monitors. 01:03:44.31 James That's true. That is how we buy devices. um but All right. That's going to do it for this week's Merch Conflict, I guess. So until next time, I'm Jace Montemagno. 01:03:55.19 Frank And I'm Frank Kruger. Thanks for watching and listening. 01:03:58.26 James Peace.