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Commentary on Apple Unleashed
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In this Cast | Commentary on Apple Unleashed
Michael Sliwinski
Michael is a productivity guy – he’s the founder and CEO of Nozbe, where they have two productivity apps, Nozbe Teams – an uber-functional to-do app for small and medium teams and Nozbe – a project management and collaboration tool for busy professionals. Both Nozbe Teams and Nozbe are web-based tools with apps for all the major platforms. Michael is also a speaker, author of a few best-selling books, a podcaster and a blogger. He is happily married to his wife Ewelina and they have three daughters.
Art Gelwicks
Art Gelwicks, a productivity and collaboration consultant, blogger at theideapump.com, and host of the Being Productive podcast, CrossPlatform podcast, as well as ProductivityCast Podcast.
Raw Text Transcript | Commentary on Apple Unleashed
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community Welcome to Anything But Idle, the productivity news podcast. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.
Augusto Pinaud 0:08
I’m Augusto Pinaud.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:10
And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is Episode 88. And this is our commentary episode our special episode regarding the apple unleashed event that happened a few days ago. So each week of course, we read and review and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. But when major productivity and related technology events happen, and it seems that they happened quite frequently this week, we bring you the special commentary episodes to give you the latest latest on what’s happening out there in that world. Today we’ve got two special guests for the special commentary episode. Our first guest is Michael Sliwinsky. He’s the CEO of Nozbe. Mike is a Michael is a productivity guy. He’s the He’s the founder of the software company, where they have two productivity apps. One is known as B teams and Uber functional to do app for small and medium teams. And then nos be a project management and collaboration tool for busy professionals. Both nosb teams and nos B are web based tools with apps for all the major platforms. Michael is also a speaker. He’s the author of a few best selling books, and a podcaster and a blogger. He is happily married to his wife, Lena, and they have three daughters. Welcome to the show. Back to the show. Michael.
Michael Sliwinski 1:22
Hi, thanks. Thanks for having me,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:23
of course. And next up, we have Art Gelwicks. He’s a productivity and collaboration consultant. He’s a blogger at the idea pump. And he’s the host of the being productive podcast. He’s no stranger to the show. And he is also on the cross platform podcast with a Augusto. And of course he joins us on ProductivityCast each week. Welcome to Anything But Idle art.
Art Gelwicks 1:46
Morning guys, how you guys doing? Good, good,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:48
good. All kinds of fun today. It’s a full house. So let’s get into the apple event. What happened at the apple event? What did you appreciate? We started off with the Apple Music and app at the apple air pods announcements, I suppose let’s start there chronologically. What was notable about the announcement of the new Apple Music plans, certainly the voice plan and otherwise. Michael, do you want to kick us off?
Michael Sliwinski 2:15
Yeah, so I don’t know about this voice plan because I don’t trust Siri when I tell her to play me something. But I mean it sometimes works. So I wouldn’t choose that plan. I still appreciate the normal interface. And my daughters are more you know, they do it better. They they know how to ask Siri for the music that they want. But for me I prefer the visual, you know, option to choose you know, music that I play. So that’s great. And the airports, three I think brilliant. I don’t know why they still keep the I mean I know for pricing reasons they still keep the old ones. But airports come just in time for me actually for my mom because her airports just died. So So I think it was very very nicely timed planned obsolescence. But apart from that, I think you know, good improvements everywhere. Also with colorful homepods I wish they had a purple hub homepods edition because this is my color of choice. But anyway, good start but I was waiting for the max anyway.
Augusto Pinaud 3:22
So and I think what they did was bring Apple Music even to more people they give their individual I love them bonds, the family, whatever. And now you can have this even more basic level. So think there was a good move, you know, keep a lot of the people whom five bucks is surprised that is you as a parent decide not to pay for your kids iPhones, most kids may be able to afford so they will now be able to sign up into Apple Music that most likely will make them a customer for a really long time. So I think that was good. I love the colors but I was sharing the pre show. So I was watching the event at night my kids were playing around and or my kid was my son was playing around and he was really loud and the moment I say you know really is the airport’s my favorite speakers will produce because he’s the one that I enjoy consistently. So I already ordered them. I’m allergic to the silicone so I never go into the airport pro because of that. So I’m really looking forward to this ones and see what what improve sound wise but that will not happen suddenly until next Tuesday. I think
Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:48
about the lineup is their air pods second generation at $129 USD. Then they have air pods third generation at 179 USD. Then you have the AirPods pro at two 49 USD and then you can go max with the air pods max at 549. us is that the complete lineup now?
Art Gelwicks 5:08
That is Yeah, I thought it was interesting the way they have those air pods position though, because at the price point, I believe they’re $50 more than the lowest end. But you can see the physical design change, when you see a shot of the three of them lined up, there’s actually an architectural change for when you put it into your ears. So if you would normally buy the pods to I’ll use that as the name. But you don’t particularly care for that feel. You could step up to the three without having to go all the way up to those silicone ear pieces and still get some of the benefits of the of the pros in the threes. So they’ve placed it wedged nicely in between those two. So I thought that was kind of interesting. The the Apple Music for $5. That’s that’s an easy target the because it is limited to Apple devices only. It’s a plan that that’s it, you’re stuck with it. I think you’re absolutely right it gousto it is a gateway. It’s a gateway drug for Apple Music. The you know, we want to get people they want to get people into it using it and then let them upgrade later on. So when you get a phone if that’s your primary thing, fine for $5 a month now you have Apple Music. So
Augusto Pinaud 6:27
yeah, even now, if you fly in American Airlines, American Airlines, I don’t know the other airlines, but I know American, you can get into their free in flight, just to listen to Apple Music. Any American flight who has in a in flight Wi Fi, you will be able to log in into there and then access to Apple Music for free during your flight.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:54
So I did so. Go ahead, Michael.
Michael Sliwinski 6:57
Yeah, I never I never for example, like because because I think well they don’t want to do is this free Spotify plan because Spotify has the free plan. And they don’t want to do that. Because Apple, you know, services, services revenue. So they don’t want to do a free plan. And but for me, for example, the Spotify, like that I that I got when I was in a hotel room or somewhere else was just annoying with ads. So I couldn’t listen to it anyway. So I think I think it’s a good it’s a You’re right, guys, I think it’s a good entry level so that you know you don’t have ads, it doesn’t cost lots of money. And you get used to asking for a music you want.
Augusto Pinaud 7:33
our daughters are around the same age, but the same age actually. Yeah. If your daughter comes to you, and you are not an Apple Music subscriber and said, Hey, Dad, I want to get this is five bucks. What I can do every month, you pay the five bucks for me, you will do it.
Art Gelwicks 7:50
Yeah, if I were out in the spaceship, I would be recommending recommending they bundle the air pods three with that six months of that voice plan as a holiday purchase. To me that’s that’s a natural connection, then, you know, anybody who doesn’t have those, you pick that up, you’re built into the ecosystem. Now, you get your playlist set up. And that’s pretty much the lock in on any any music service. Yeah. So to me, it makes sense.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:20
I just want to I want to explain to folks who are listening that, you know, you have this new voice plan in Apple Music. And as Michael noted a little earlier, right? This is a one person plan Siri on Apple devices. And then you get songs, playlists and stations on any of your Apple devices. And then you go up to the the existing these are already existing plans, the individual and family plans, correct? Correct. Yeah, so then one person for the individual plan and you know, some additional little benefits there and then the apple plus the supported devices and the family plan as it stood before. So now they have three plans and it’s just more choice, I suppose for those individuals who are looking for something that’s not quite the individual plan. I mean, it’s half the price. But you also are limited to Apple devices, which can, you know, provide some level of lock in. Alright, so from the Apple Music to the air pods, third generation announced we move on to the kind of main pieces of the show, which are the MacBook Pro lineup, the 14 and 16 inches right. Do we want to go there? You’re the apple guy. I’m taking your lead here, dude.
Augusto Pinaud 9:33
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Good. Yes. So let me begin saying that I did not expect what we got. Yeah, I was expecting they’re going to show but I didn’t expect that they were going to really show off their silicon that they were going to really set Okay. Let us give you a taste of what we can really do and what we’re bringing to play because the difference between the all MacBooks and the new ones are simply incredible actually. I had a couple of friends and clients who call me and they were asking for the upgrade and I even tell them hold up hold off if you can hold off you get so when this was announced What did you say go and buy whatever dou y you can. You can go wrong with neither of those chipsets. In the case of the two people I was assisting you really they really make now a machine that is laptop power is a laptop that is more powerful than most desktop that people have right now. And it’s light it’s fast and I don’t know it was incredible I’m still digesting on kind of a speechless was what we saw it was really impressive hardware.
Michael Sliwinski 11:01
I mean they they showed us already with em one that it’s just freaking fast. You know the many people who had it who used to have free powerful desktops would just switch to the m one MacBook Air because it was so fast already. So it’s kind of you know, I even feel kind of sorry for Intel right now. Because with the M one they they got they got really a big kick in the rear and then with this m one pro and one m one max. So with really like, stepping it up into is completely dead. Like this is really really bad for Intel because like already these m ones were so fast. And I have the M one MacBook iPad Pro. And of course it’s just freakin fast. But, but you can you could feel it like when so my developer for example, he was my lead developers he had a 16 inch MacBook Pro from Intel. And he didn’t want to buy the M One Laptop because he knew that that something like this was coming that the big ones were coming. So what I did is I bought a MacBook Air for him and rented it for up to him they gave it gave it to him for now and told him that it’s gonna be for my daughter eventually. But I’m gonna I’m giving you this now because on this fabulous m one MacBook Air, he’s compiled times for an hour and osbi app where so much faster than on the Intel 16 inch MacBook Pro that he just you know, he just didn’t want to use that anymore. You know, so I, I bought the MacBook Air only for him for a half a year. Because I knew that now understand that that’s what’s coming, he’s going to upgrade to the you know, 16 or 14 inch MacBook Pro. But already the M one was so fast. So now with this like, it’s it’s just amazing. What they did.
Art Gelwicks 12:54
they’ve they’ve definitely thrown the gauntlet down. It was interesting. I caught a little bit yesterday, the Intel head was trying to imply that maybe someday in the future Apple will come back. I agree with you completely. Michael i if i if i was investing in Apple, or in Intel for Apple did know I need to find something else. Because Apple has clearly stated Yes, this is what we will be doing From now on, we will be building our be building our new hardware. And we can do it. And just the fact that Apple spends so much time walking through the chip design configurations, the assembly process, the GPU configuration. I mean, there was no question they were targeting that at the high end hardware people who were going to make the buying decisions. This was not a demonstration of pretty colored homepods. This was we have big iron, we have fast cars, and we’ve got an engine in them. Now you want to buy this stuff. I’ll be very curious to see when creators and developers now get their hands on this hardware, and really start to put it through its paces. how well it actually does this. I’ll admit I’m not an apple guy. And this is the first time I’ve been seriously impressed by Apple laptop hardware in a long, long time.
Augusto Pinaud 14:23
That is all my bad influences. That’s the reason he just stopped playing with me.
Art Gelwicks 14:29
It’s only but they’ve also done some smart things in my book. I mean, the first thing I saw when I looked through this was this is kind of Back to the Future. They got rid of some things, some decisions that they have made over the years that they recognize did not contribute to power users. They got rid of some of the gimmicks like I believe the Touch ID bar is gone now.
Michael Sliwinski 14:53
Yeah, that touch bar is gone. Yes. The touch bar.
Art Gelwicks 14:57
That’s that’s one of those things. It’s like if Apple willing to admit to say, yeah, we don’t need that, even though we pushed it so hard, is a big step for them. It’s a big change. And I can see true Apple loyalists kind of cringing at that a little bit. But it’s a realistic move to make, if they want to play in this big iron space, then they have to meet those developers and those power users, where they want to be and every indication I’ve seen has said that they took time to listen to those people, and redesign their hardware accordingly.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:34
Yeah, through this before, so I mean, they’ve learned their lessons from this change that they’ve done in the past. And you know, when they were when they made that initial change in chips, they they suffered for it. And in this particular case, they know they learned from that mistake, and they they’ve really done well to speak to their audience in a way that lets them know that they are prepared to make this change and that they’re committed to it. Michael,
Michael Sliwinski 15:57
yeah. So that so there are two things that people are confused. First change is their Apple silicon. So the M one pro and m one Max, which is basically out in telling Intel, so they, they they managed to do that. And then the second part is admitting their mistakes, and really bringing back ports, the Exodus, the famous exodus from tangletown, you know, and then finally, we get to it, they actually bragged on that you can connect to so many screens, and the camera and this and this and still charge the thing without any single dongle, which is brilliant. So so that was that was really like admitting that, you know, they should really as outset, listen to the pros listen to people who are actually using these machines. And for me, especially the HDMI port, I don’t like HDMI, HDMI port, I think it’s too big, too clunky, but it’s standard. So I know that whenever I’m traveling, I need to have my HDMI USBC dongle to be able to connect my iPad to an external screen in the hotel room or to the external projector. And with that, if you have a Mac, you don’t need any dongle, you just connect directly, which is just glorious.
Augusto Pinaud 17:15
There are two things for me the dongles that is annoying, I don’t care if it’s the Mac or the iPad, it is annoying that I have all these dongles. So I think, yeah, great, bring the pro remove that, and give to people, all those. And two, he said they took the bar out. That was an idea. Didn’t work fine. Finally kill it. But third, and more importantly, that I never understood why they killed in the first place. They bring Mac safe back. Yeah, cuz I remember, in my days of working on offices, you know, those PC laptops flying, okay, because somebody kicked the cable. And the thing moving on my mic. disconnected, that’s fine. That’s the magsafe what it works for. And I don’t know when they stop putting the mic save for a while. But I’m really, really glad that it’s back. Because I know for me, that mic save has saved my computer from falling out of that desk more than once.
Art Gelwicks 18:24
Yeah, the the elimination of the dongles on the desktop, or on the laptop units to me just makes logical sense, you have the physical real estate available on those devices to take advantage of making those ports accessible. When you have something like a high end iPad, you are optimizing for weight and size and configuration. So some of that stuff has to be moved off the device, I get that when your design motif pushes you into a space of saying, well, everything’s going to be minimum minimalized. Then you sacrifice things. And again, I think this is one of the things that Apple is demonstrating with the release of these devices, is that they’re not willing to sacrifice things for this audience anymore. They’re they’re listening to them. They’re saying, look, you guys want ports. Fine, we’ll give you ports will give you they’re willing to concede some of these things to be able to get these devices in people’s hands. As for the silicon aspect, and the M one devices, or the M one processors, I think this is a really good thing for Apple. The only thing that sticks out in the back of my mind and that worries me currently is can they make enough of them? Can that can their supply chain hold up to what could be potential demand on this? And I’ll say that for a couple of I mean, Google had their announcements with their chips and things like that. I worry about those supply chain issues right now and having a lot of demand is great in the apple space. There is some familiarity with wanting something and not being able to get it right away you know having that waiting list mindset that’s not as unpalatable to the Apple audience but are they going to be able to produce it the levels they’re going to need to? I don’t know.
Michael Sliwinski 20:12
Yeah I mean you know when we had this thing already with them you know with the launch date of the iPhone that unless you managed to be on the on the you know, launch day so just to order right away and like pre order right away and get the launch day then then you would have to wait another four weeks basically so it’s like it’s either this are four weeks later and I know because I did get my iPhone on the lawn on the launch day but like we ordered a phone for one of my team members they had to wait I think three weeks more to get together their stuff so it’s a now it’s fine four to five weeks so it’s really the supply chain is issue is still there you know I think with with the MacBook Pros the the impression I had for from my team, my team was waiting for these laptops, but the prices are pretty high like for for these and of course like when you start configuring them you want to have better and better and better specs which for and for each upgrade Apple charges you know a few 100 bucks so what I heard from my team and I was because I was afraid that everybody was gonna you know older ones. But on my team what happened is that they were like, Well wait, maybe I’m older. So they’re like you know that the price differentiator here is kind of also a stopper like still because also people don’t know if they should go with the bass and one pro chip or they should go with the M one max you know fully 64 gigabytes of RAM thing you know, they don’t know that yet. So I think everyone’s waiting for for the tests for the reviews for all that stuff to be able to make a decision if and whether and which of these math books to buy
Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:15
so hold on a second I just like go go for folks who are listening to know what tips we’re talking about. So Apple has identified the M one pro and the M one max This is in addition to the lineup of the M ones proper so we have m one m one pro and m one max the M one Pro is a a 32 gigabyte 10 core and 16 core CPU the the M one Max and correct me if I’m wrong because I’m reading off of here my notes so we have a 64 gigabyte memory 10 core and 32 core GPU now the MacBook Pro 14 and 16 can both come in different configurations with both pro and Max chips so you can you can basically I got
Michael Sliwinski 23:02
the pro the pro processor I mean the they go the goes up to 32 gigabytes so it can also be configured with 16 gigabytes as base model and then the max can Max 64 gigabytes of RAM so that’s the main difference between these two processors plus they have more cores and stuff especially the GPU cores and also there are several levels of GPU cores how many GPU cores Do you want to have it depends on how much graphic intensive your work is up to 32
Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:31
up to 32 on the on the pro or max for the 14 inch and then on the the 16 inch model you can go up to 64 right and both can go up to eight terabytes of SSD storage
Michael Sliwinski 23:46
so to graduate what they did is they they actually let you configure it the same way both 14 inch and 16 inch there is a you can get the same fully blown processor and RAM on both of these so basically what they did is they pulled the same thing as they did with the iphone iphone pro and iPhone pro max can be SPECT the same they have the same lenses the same everything but you just get choose the size and this will also they did with the MacBook Pros. You can have all processors on both Alliance you just it just you just choose your size. Do you want a smaller one? Or a bigger one? Yeah, it’s
Art Gelwicks 24:24
it’s really interesting, Michael, because you’re absolutely right on that. The way they with the structure this is if you need something big that’s gonna live on your desktop primarily you can get that configured the only real differences I’m seeing between the 14th and the 16th are battery life a bit. Yeah, because of you know, sheer physical you know, you’ve got sheer physical size 70 watt hours versus 100 watt hours. Aside from that, I mean there’s they’re pretty much identical. Yeah, it just depends on whether it’s gonna fit in your bag or not.
Michael Sliwinski 24:57
Yeah, it depends on the on the weight, and on the screen size that you need here
Art Gelwicks 25:01
and the pricing configuration. Still, it’s not that not that far off. I mean if I look at a high end Mac Book, 14 inch MacBook Pro versus a high end Mac 16 inch MacBook Pro. Yeah, it’s and I’m only talking to, yeah, a difference for about 600 bucks between the two. And at that point, you’re talking couch change there. So I think they’re doing a smart move with this. Honestly, it feels like they just released one device, just two different screens on it. But they’re, they’re running. I mean, those are impressive screens to say, you know, no question about it. They’re running the retina displays. They’re running 120 hertz pro motion displays. backlit LED is true tone with p3 wide color. I mean, they’ve got beautiful. Oh, here’s the one thing that I have heard a little bit of pushback. They have a notch. They have a notch at the top for the webcam. So
Augusto Pinaud 26:02
you get a 1080 camera for the first time. Okay, cameras from cameras for the MacBooks has been. Let’s call it not great. Okay. Not to call it so so we don’t get to express the explicit label.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:21
Yeah, they were awful. Michaels word is correct. They were awful.
Augusto Pinaud 26:25
Yeah. What happened is in Michaels, English is better than mine. So they were awful. Now they gave us a really great camera. They, I mean, they really need an incredible device. I don’t know. The only thing now is do I want a laptop? Or, or not? But I think for the people who were complaining, well, you know, they’re expensive. Yeah, they’re expensive. But now you’re getting something that will really be
Art Gelwicks 26:59
incredible to run. Yeah, it would be interesting. If I was building a creator’s say Home Office, either one of these machines, I wouldn’t hesitate. It could be the center of an entire home office environment. Especially driving multiple displays, because the specs for running two, I think it’s two 4k displays plus the the main display on that on that device is pretty impressive. You can run parallels on it, you can run everything else. So this this, these are work machines. I mean, these are definitely designed to be serious work machines, and which is a little different. And I’ll go off on a tangent here a little bit. When you look at competing machines that are in this really high end space, that are often executive machines, for lack of a better term. They’re their showcase machines, they have all kinds of crazy power, but they’re not really targeted at specific audiences. I think Apple is looking at these devices going you know what? These, these are for our true power users, we’re not even going to bother trying to sell them to anybody else. If somebody has the cash, and they can come up and buy it great. But they’re not going to go through the effort. The people who want these, and can get the most out of them. No, they can. And they’re the ones they’re going to be talking to anyone.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:21
From a peripheral perspective, there are and correct me if I’m wrong here, but there are three Thunderbolt four ports, HDMI, and SD card slot, and then the magsafe connectivity, the charger port. So we’ve got pretty, you know, pretty good number of ports there for these MacBook Pros. I’m really pleased with that. And yeah, I know and looking about looking at the specs, it’s certainly in laptop that could become a main driver for you know, certainly for me. So I think that that’s the point there.
Augusto Pinaud 28:53
And the fact that Wednesday, m one Pro, you can run two monitors, there is no standards for good for, but it was a max now you can run three monitors and a TV all at the same time. I mean, that makes it for super powerful.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:12
And just so people are clear, you mean the M one Max, not just max generally. For the M one max chip, you can now run up to four monitors, which is just remarkable. I think that’s great. Yeah, so yeah,
Art Gelwicks 29:24
just to throw it out there. These did get a little bit chunkier. I mean that the MacBook Pro 13 inch from 2020 was about three pounds. The 14 inch now is three and a half pounds and the 16 inch MacBook Pro is 4.7 pounds.
Augusto Pinaud 29:43
So the four of us here carry 30 pound devices.
Art Gelwicks 29:47
That’s a terrible thing. I’m just saying that they’ve gotten they picked up a little weight, which means that they’ve invested I believe primarily in the battery capacity. But it It is it is a thing I just want to throw those little numbers out there
Michael Sliwinski 30:03
so yeah but what was really important is that they really like a few years back they really prioritize fitness above everything it has to be thin Johnny I’ve thin so that was the the main driver the main goal. And now they understood that you know, this these are pro machines, the thin one MacBook Air keeps on being thin and light, which is great. And I hope they will will actually improve it and make it even thinner and lighter and better with the redesign next year. But these are pro machines they like pros don’t prioritize fitness, but they’re still much thinner than as you said, are they comparing you know Intel beasts for these kind of pros because they they comparing like, you know when you get to Alienware and all this all these other you know, specialty brands, which they have fixed, super powerful laptops, they are just really huge among us. And then compared that these MacBook Pros are really, you know, supermodels
Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:07
under 17 millimeters for the the 16 inch model, and then 15.5 millimeters for the for the 14 inch. So yeah, these are really, you know, they’re, they’re small for what they’re doing.
Art Gelwicks 31:18
I gotta say, I’m impressed both the unit support fast charging, which allegedly gives you a 50% battery in 30 minutes. Well, for the 16 inch. Again, that’s a that’s a big machine. But that 14 if you’re if you’re squeezed for battery power, if you know that in 30 minutes, you can be at 50%. Again, that’s phone level stuff. I mean, that’s really what what we’re talking about there.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:42
And Apple’s learning from their phones, right? They’re learning how to use this technology in smaller and smaller form factors. So it’s,
Art Gelwicks 31:49
it’s working. Yeah, all the companies are doing that. The other thing I am anxiously awaiting, I just want to see what they do with this and the desktop. When they have no mobile constraints put on them. I guess I saw one brief posting about potential of the next I guess it’s the iMac I don’t know the names. Yeah. I’m very curious to see how much they can really do with this.
Michael Sliwinski 32:14
Yeah, I think they’ll go with the with the same kind of you know, naming scheme. So they have the iMac, which is the 24.5 inch, the one that they’re saying right now, which is really beautiful. And then next year, they will announce the iMac Pro, and this will be the one with these processors and it’s going to be just freaking fast.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:35
And just makes me want to hold out for that one now, but I can’t I can’t wait any longer. I’ve got an aging, I’ve got an aging mac book I need to change out. So I think this is gonna This is gonna twist my arm towards a one of these, most likely the 14 or 16 inch, you know here because I think that the 16 inches is a big screen. But I’m not really moving around all that much, you know, and if I do need to go on the road again, it’ll be fine. I’m not worried about carrying around a 16 inch, you know, laptop that’s done it in the past, I’ll do it in the future, it’ll be fine.
Art Gelwicks 33:07
Seems it seems to be a logical connection. If you’re, if you’re getting something like this 16 inch setup, and you’ve got this big iron setup. adding to it, the 12 inch iPad Pro is a logical connection in my book, because now you’ve you’ve said look, I’m willing to have something that’s four and a half pounds that I’ll throw in a bag when I need it. But when I need to be mobile, I have this tablet configuration and platform that can provide me the functionality I need. It’s the ecosystem. And it’s just it’s finally getting back to that upper end of the ecosystem and say, I if I’m bought in on Apple, I don’t have to buy a different device. I don’t have to go buy an Intel machine or anything like that, because everything I need, you know, soup to nuts is available with that little apple sticker on it.
Michael Sliwinski 33:58
So just to give you that just to give two points of criticism, because like we have to figure something out to be critical about it. Because really these laptops are glorious.
Art Gelwicks 34:07
I have been good. I’m being good. Yes.
Michael Sliwinski 34:11
Yeah, but but there are two things that my iPad Pro is much superior to these devices still. And the first one being cellular connection. I have 5g 5g 5g so I’m on the line all the time. And then face ID my iPad knows me
Art Gelwicks 34:34
that’s I’m kind of surprised that they don’t have face ID in these since they’ve added that new webcam.
Michael Sliwinski 34:43
right i mean they they have the whole housing but I think the face that what I’m afraid of is that the face ID stuff would be just too thick for them and they didn’t want to sacrifice the thickness of the screen. I think
Augusto Pinaud 34:57
that on his speed I read it’s a matter of his They wanted them a new machine to give the impression that you are on in seconds and milliseconds. And the face ID takes much longer than that that to tend to get. But you made a good point with the iPad Pro, because I have an aging MacBook Air that will need to be upgraded. Soon, I’ve actually, and I don’t connect to that, okay, when I need to do something on that machine, and that’s means I need to open that parallel thing to connect into a Windows machine. So it’s a painful experience. In general, I don’t do it in that thing, I go into my iPad open, jumpy, see, and do what I’m going to do. And I’m out. That said, I look into these Mac laptops and say, Oh, I can put it in there, leave it in there. And now continue to win it for my iPad. And that’s something that I’ve been teaching people, you know, you can get the machine but continue caring, especially people I have worked in the past will love the iPad, I will don’t want to leave the iPad necessarily, even for the power because they need it for two or three things. Oh, do it this way. So you log in remotely into your MacBook from the iPad there, what you’re going to do now with the magic keyboard and the mouse, really, you will not see much difference between being or not being in the Mac. Even with 5g, the connection is fast enough now that you can work on real time. So that may be an option too, for people wants to travel, get the 16 inches for when you around that desk and carry the iPad the rest of the time.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 36:44
That anybody have any thoughts on on the spatial audio features that they talked about any there in terms of I didn’t really pick up anything in terms of things that jumped out to me in terms of the
Art Gelwicks 36:57
Dolby Atmos is the basis of it. I understand the premise of it. I like the idea. There’s other headphone manufacturers that have provided that kind of functionality. I did like and it was almost a throwaway line that they put in there that it has head tracking included in the air pod threes, which for anybody who’s not familiar with it, if you have let’s say you’re listening to classical music that’s being produced in a concert hall. When you’re playing it, it sounds like everything, you know, the horns are on one side, clarinets are on the other, as you move your head the audio tracks so that it sounds like you’ve actually moved your head within that space, even though the earbuds are moving with you. For a true audio file. It’s a wonderful thing. I mean, it’s it’s a neat experience. If you’re not expecting it, it can be a little off putting initially. But I don’t know that that’s necessarily something that would compel somebody to buy that particular device. It’s a nice feature. I think it’s a carry down from the pros. I’m not sure. But spatial audio and that Dolby Atmos support definitely demonstrates to me that it’s not the low end Gen two air pods. It’s supposed to be you know, your get this is what you’re getting for your extra 50 bucks.
Augusto Pinaud 38:17
Yeah, well, and when when you’re watching movies, again, these are my favorite speakers. Once again, okay, that it makes a difference when you when you move on, you see the explosions and you get a much better experience when you’re watching a movie is you have that I agree with you or listen music concert halls, and you move is incredible.
Michael Sliwinski 38:38
It was so funny when I heard it the first time I was I was watching a YouTube video and then I had my airports pro froze in my in my ears. And I just turned around to fetch something. And then the thing just moved with me like, I was like, well, it just happened. I didn’t I didn’t expect the sound to to change just because I turned my head around, right? But it was just you know, included in there already and then enabled by default. And I was just stunned by like, so as you said art, I was just kind of put off I was like, What is this? But then I realized like what they’re
Art Gelwicks 39:13
doing. I had I do like the fact that on the threes, they did not put silicone tips on them. And just because I know a lot of people are not Thank you, thank you. They’re not fans of them. I’m okay with them. But even the earbuds I use now don’t have tips on they’re just you know, regular bud style ear drums or ear pods. That compromise of willing to produce higher quality audio without having that additional piece that just makes some people uncomfortable and adhering to that. I think again, it’s one of those worthy concessions that Apple is making to their audience to say our iPods were really popular in this shape. Our iPod pros are really powerful. How do we get halfway. And I see that here, I’m also seeing that with the Apple Music service, I’m seeing that on the pros themselves and their entire line of gousto. You and I have talked about this a couple times kicking back and forth on cross platform about Apple and the lack of magic in their latest events and recent events, this event this this is, I was waiting for the and one more thing, moment out of it. So and apparently the one more thing is the $19 screen, wipe cart or cloth. So
Michael Sliwinski 40:39
Apple cloth already backordered until December. So if you want to order now, you have to wait for your Apple cloth eyes.
Art Gelwicks 40:46
I try so hard to not pick on them. And then they do things like this.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 40:53
I did like the apple homepod Mini is coming in a couple more colors, they have white in space right now they have the yellow, orange and blue colors. I thought that was really nice because you have to put these things in visual spaces in your home. And you know, like you want you want them to match. You want them to be able to blend into the environment, though, it’s nice that they brought more colors.
Art Gelwicks 41:12
This is something I’m seeing across all of the manufacturers currently, you can look at, if you look at all their announcements, and they’re all they’re all their product releases. individualization customization, and personalization is basically the where with all of all these devices right now, every manufacturer is offering variety of color via a variety of configuration. It’s just one of those things that I think it’s about time, we’re not dealing with black slabs of glass anymore, and gray fuzzy speakers anymore. If that’s why they integrate,
Michael Sliwinski 41:48
go ahead. That’s why the MacBook Pros right now they come in gray, or dark gray.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:56
You think you can get no but you can get you can get them skinned at that at that high end point. There are third party miniatures who provide skins and covers and those kinds of things for them. So you know, again, I’ve done the same thing with my own MacBook, you know, I’ve I have a skin on it so that it has different, it has a personalized, you know, feel to it in that perspective. So I think at that higher end, it’s not particularly an issue. But I do like the fact that they’re providing, certainly for a home device, right? It is a smart home device, these smart speakers. And so you want you want those things to blend into the environment. And so but i but i do agree with you aren’t that but now all of the OEMs need to start thinking about how they’re actually wanting products and making them it’s kind of like the key a concept, which is once you build your own furniture, you feel more wedded to it. In essence, once you have customized a piece technology you feel more wedded to the brand for for having. And so it becomes just more brand loyalty for Apple, you know, one would presume they don’t really need more of that. But you know, it’s good for them to be thinking thinking that through any final thoughts before we wrap up this episode, Michael?
Michael Sliwinski 43:09
Yeah, so I’m right now torn between so I’m not getting these MacBook Pros. people on my team will be getting them surely. I’ll need them. I have my iPad Pro. But right now I’m kind of torn because on one hand, I would want to change my old iMac to the colorful iMac that Mr. iMac. But the problem is that the iMac pro next year might be really, really cool and really powerful. So I don’t know what to do. But then again, well, it’s a nice problem to have.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 43:45
Alright gentlemen, this has been a pleasure. And so let’s start with you art art working folks keep up to date with you and what you’re there in the world.
Art Gelwicks 43:54
best place to find me is come over to the idea pump, check out idea pump slash Follow me. If I’m writing if I’m podcasting, if I’m posting, you’ll find it there.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:03
Fantastic. Thanks always for joining us on the show art. My pleasure. And Michael, where can folks keep up to date with you and what you’re doing out there in the world.
Michael Sliwinski 44:14
So just go to not be calm or microdots team and a Yeah, or Stevie skills calm, but then you will be redirected to Michael’s team anyway. So yeah, just these two websites. You can find me there on my writing and all my stuff and then you can find me on social media.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:32
So Michael dot team and nose be calm and I’ll make sure to update that for the next show. Cool. always wonderful to have you here on anything. Thank you so much. Thanks. Alright, gentlemen, thank you gousto for putting together the show
Augusto Pinaud 44:48
there is to again Yes. I got the Christie.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:54
Alright, we’ll be doing a couple more shows. For the the other events both the Samsung and the Google Pixel event. The pixel fall launch event as well. So you’ll be hearing from us in the podcast feed quite a few times this week. But either way, if you wanted to add any additional commentary to the show, feel free to head over to Anything But idle.com forward slash 088 or episode page where you can go ahead and you know, add thoughts join in the conversation. But otherwise, that brings us to the end of this episode. And here’s your life. Take care, everybody.
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