Hello and welcome to episode 28 of the Brew and Byte show.
First up we’ll say hello to Tina. How are you?
Very well, thank you. I’m suffering slightly because I started gardening.
It’s been nice and sunny this week. That makes a change.
Indeed and that means all the weeds are growing.
Next up we’ll say hello to Alistair. How are you today?
I’m good, thanks Craig. Just been catching up on the latest Apple news.
And not forgetting, how is Martin?
Martin is recovering. I was taking on a surprise birthday trip around London yesterday
with my wife and sister. We went off to the Titanic exhibition and we then toured all around
Brick Lane area and stuff like that. So walked much further than I have done for ages. So yes,
So I’m sitting in the chair relaxing today.
Amazing.
The Titanic comes highly recommended
if none of the other panel have been to see it yet.
What will be our first topic for the news this week?
I think that EU have been getting involved in technology
yet again.
The EU is going to require iMessage, WhatsApp,
Facebook, or Meta’s Messenger to communicate
with smaller messaging apps.
What happened, Alistair?
What did they come up with this time?
So from the same guys who produced the cookie notification and the GDPR, they have now suggested
that they would like under the Digital Marketing Act, all major providers who have greater than
45 million users have to provide some form of alternative or a different system for dealing
with it and it’s to do with privacy and security and it’s trying to get around this problem
which they’ve said of not having enough independent small companies to rival the big companies.
Also apart from Signal and Telegram, the rest are all American, so that could also be part
of the issue. The other minor issue they were talking about was legislation because if it
all is controlled by two or three companies, it gets very hard to legislate or bring anything
new into it. But of course, being in the European Union, they’ll probably come up with some
slightly more annoying way to do it.
Because to me, the issues there would be security. You know, the big boys have enough of a problem
keeping their servers safe and your messaging safe and everything else. Smaller companies
may not have that resource. If it’s now multi-platform, you could be endangering all your own security
because one of the smaller outfits may let the bad guys in.
The other thing which comes with that is that it’s not clear how this is going to be implemented.
It’s not necessarily going to go iMessage to this new third individual.
It’s probably going to be something completely separate from that.
And just like when email first came out or browsers first came out or search engines first
came out, there were lots of alternative and then they got narrowed down.
I think what they’re looking at is trying to provide alternative messaging for non-secure
information.
So it’s sort of like, “Oh, I’m coming home at 4pm.”
It’s not that exciting.
But if it’s a message from your bank, well, that’s more secure.
So we might end up with two-tier messaging system.
The one which is native to the platform will be used primarily for secure messaging.
And the thing which is considered non-secure will be on the third-party platforms.
The other problem we’ve got is if they start going by country, it’s going to get even
more complicated.
I just find it interesting though, because if you look at WhatsApp, at one stage WhatsApp
was a disruptor.
It was a small app compared to everything else and it’s coming in and it’s created
a market.
If I send a picture, I generally send it in WhatsApp.
Why?
Because I don’t have to pay for any picture costs, which I would do with an iMessage.
interested people are going to be.
This is the problem. I mean, if we look at the cooking notification system that was presented
to us and we don’t have a choice to get out of it. Now, if you look at why WhatsApp was
created, it was because in America you had to pay to send and receive text messages originally
and that was costing people a fortune, especially if you’re getting lots of junk spam messages
and you had to buy them in bundles. Say if you bought 100 and you got 50 spam messages,
you lost 50 and you could only send 50 that month.
So that was part of the reason.
The second big problem was,
if you were trying to send off your network
in certain countries, it was very expensive
because you had cross network charges.
So those were all good reasons
for creating an instant messaging system.
More importantly, they wanted a system which could run
when you didn’t have any mobile phone signal.
So you could be in your office
and have perfect signal on Wi-Fi.
If we’re not careful, it’s going to turn up a bit like the general election where anyone can stand to become an MP.
And you get a list, you know, almost like two foot long of who would you like to select.
I had two trials before on this.
One, what if you’re a small messaging app and then you’re suddenly integrated into a much larger system?
Your IT infrastructure is not going
to cope if you’ve suddenly onboarded more than 45
million customers that are trying to send messages back
and forth to communicate with iMessage, WhatsApp, Meta,
which are the one you want to choose.
The security aspect of it was a concern.
I know we brought that up.
But I quite loved some of the facts that came up
on the EU’s legislation Twitter account.
feedback they got automatically was, “I don’t mind as long as I can block Facebook as an option,
what was the other one? I’m quite happy to choose which system or search engine I can use as long as
I have a chance to block and choose what I want to block. Will that be an option?”
Now, this is where it gets interesting. I mean, if we go on nationality, it could get very confusing
for us because it could be if you live in Wales or Scotland, does that mean you have
to go for one which is local to that region or does it mean if you’re sending from England
to Scotland you have to make it compatible with Scottish law because they’re under different
law than British law. I mean it gets it’s going to open a whole range of new possibilities.
Also here’s the bigger problem. Let’s say that all three of us are on three separate
platforms. How do we communicate with each other? You forgot to mention there Alastair,
we’re not part of the EU, so would it even apply to the UK? Are we going to have to have a separate
set of rules just for the UK? Unfortunately, we still have an EU cookie monster on our computers.
Yeah, and as things go with our government, they seem to borrow rules of their neighbour and just
reword them slightly. So will they probably follow suit? It is interesting though, isn’t it? Because
there’s the big discussion with iMessage and the blue text box and the green text box and that’s
a deliberate strategy that they have continued and apparently in some areas in some schools for
instance if your text box isn’t blue then you’re bullied because clearly you don’t have an iPhone.
The other thing you just reminded me of is do you remember when WhatsApp first came out before it
got bought by what was then Facebook that you couldn’t send into continent. So Americans could
not send to Britain WhatsApp messages. It was region locked. Interesting, like a DVD.
And one interesting fact behind the colour of the bubbles. I don’t know if you guys know this. So
Apple introduced the blue bubble, which is meant to be that it’s free to send a message. And the
And the reason they’re green is that they’re paid for because the green represents the
US dollar bill colour.
That was their full process behind it.
So what colour are we going to get next?
Yellow for the third parties?
Place your bets.
You could have grey, which is a common one that they’ve used in the past, but that’s
normally used for service messaging.
I reckon puce myself.
I reckon it will probably be if Apple are going down their usual colour route, it will
be either orange or purple. Does that mean I can’t have a space grey bubble?
Some happy news for our EU listeners is that Apple officially launched the HomePod
Mini. Which countries are they available in? Belgium. Hooray! Switzerland. And?
Alistair? Netherlands. And the interesting thing is that they’ve gone from dollar to
euro conversion of course and I think they are 89 euros or 99 euros. Is that the
Apple exchange rate. Does that mean that they’re cheaper than buying them in the UK?
But what else are Apple up to? Rumour has it they’re going to introduce a hardware
subscription service for their products. What does that look like?
Is this going down the route of what they started in America with the Apple card? So
the Goldman Sachs credit cards where you can buy the Apple products at a slight discount
with their Apple card. And one of the rumours is when they bought this new company that
you would be able to rent your phone. So you wouldn’t actually own your phone. The phone
would be Apple at all times and you’d rent the phone for the length of your contract,
which would cause a few interesting questions such as do you own the data and the photographs
if it’s not your phone?
It’s interesting because for the UK, Apple do offer that kind of service with the iPhone,
financing side of it is not done by Apple, it’s a third party. So does this mean they’re actually
going to take it on themselves? Or as you said Alistair, will it give them an ability to add
bundles with them? One rumour is if you buy it on the Apple Finance, it comes with Apple Care
straight away. Is it finance or is it rent? Because if it’s finance, eventually you’ll own it.
Whereas if you’re renting it, it could be that you never own it. And there’s also a third option,
which is what they do with cars, where until the final payment you don’t actually own it.
And if it’s involved in a car crash, you don’t own it and it’s the car company who take the car from you.
That’s similar to most HP purchases, isn’t it? If you buy anything, it’s not yours until the final
payment is made. But I suppose it might be like their hybrid phone system. You rent the phone for
the first year basically, don’t you? And then you can either swap it for a new one at the end of the
year or you can carry on the payments and then purchase the machine outright
after 20 months. So if it’s a similar sort of scheme that you want to buy a
new MacBook Pro for example that you would pay for it on a monthly basis for
the first year then have the option to upgrade it if you wanted to or you buy
outright by carrying on the payments. So it sounds like a cross between a rent and
HP service. Now if they tied that up with their own card, which they recently bought a company
that does credit check in this country, they may be setting it up so that the credit, their own
Apple card could now work in this country and you would buy your equipment based upon that card,
all tied up with all the other services they provide. So you’re making a one monthly payment,
so like you’ve got your mortgage, you’ve got your rates and then you’ve got your Apple payment.
And it’s interesting because there are some of the phone companies already do things like
you can rent an iPad, you can rent certain tech. So there are people that do it. And for those of
us that are slightly older, this is almost going back to radio rentals. People used to rent TVs,
they used to rent washing machines. So, you know, it could be for some people that they can’t afford
to buy things, they want them, they can afford to pay a certain amount per month. So it means that
they can have what they want now rather than, you know, get a loan or do something else.
It doesn’t appeal to me, but I can see if there was the option that Martin described where you
rented it for a year and at the end of the year you said, “Okay, I mean, I want the latest one now.
I want to swap it and I’m going to carry on renting.” There might be some people that just
want the latest all the time and they’re prepared to just pay a certain amount per month to have it.
But look at it from a slightly different perspective. If it’s now that you don’t own anything, you don’t have any assets, which is a slightly different point of view from a tax.
Also, it’s putting people into debts, regardless of whether they can pay for it or not.
So this gets into another interesting problem whereby you only have to look at what happened with Lehman Brothers when they decided to shut down the company and they shut down all phones instantaneously.
And there was no way to get in contact with anyone once they had shut down the business.
Now, if you suddenly lose your job and you can’t make payments on your phone, your phone
is cut off and the phone is taken away from you.
It’s no different from having bank loans and HPE commitments, all the other things that
people have anyway.
You know, you have your mortgage in the same way.
You don’t own the house you live in until you’ve made the final 2050 abatement.
So most people are living under those conditions already.
How many people save up for two years the two or three thousand pound needed to buy
next bit of kit to find out that the next bit of cash has come out and it’s another 500 quid. So
a lot of people already use easy payments and things like that, but they don’t bring out the
kit on the same kind of schedule, do they? Mac Studio, iMac, all that. So will they make it like
what they call a PCP for private car purchase? It might be they’ll say, right, if you want to
buy a Mac Studio now, kit it out eight grand, we’re going to balance that over three years,
because it’s unlikely that you will upgrade that machine in that period.
Do you also think from a different perspective a good idea from an environmental point of view?
Because you’re not effectively owning your device, say at the end of the two years you give back in
your device like they do with that Apple recycling program. That would then be no different from your
trading value. If after the end of the three years you want to get the Mac Studio Mark II,
there will be a trading of your old kit against that new one before they set
the new monthly price. So if you have trashed it, then you’re going to get a very poor trading value
with anything other than scrap. Or if you’ve been conscientious and you’ve looked after it,
and it goes back to them in a condition that they can refurbish it fairly cost effectively,
and then sell it on as a secondhand machine, then that would be a much higher value against
your new machine. So it’s no different from purchasing a car. At the end of the three or
four-year period when the car goes back, it’s valued as the return and that’s what you either
pay off to buy it or you put that against the cost of a replacement car. So it’d be pretty similar
to that. And then at the end of the day, it means Apple have even more control over what’s going on
with their products. And it’d be interesting as well if you were renting, say, a laptop,
as part of that rental, would you automatically get a huge amount of iCloud storage? Because
ultimately if you’re renting the laptop and then you think, “Do you know what? I’m not going to do
this anymore.” You’ve got all this data. So unless you’re someone that then says, “Oh, I’m going to be
a bit organized here. I’m not going to do this anymore.” And then you go off and buy yourself
a hard drive so that you can save all your data. It’ll be interesting what people do with their data.
Well, no different from having a good backup strategy now, Tina. You should have all your
data not only stored on our cloud. You should have separate backups in various formats.
The last point I wanted to make about the potential hiring is I’m sure Apple realized
that if you’re not paying it all of the money upfront, you’ll be more tempted to up the
spec of the machine you’re buying because if you’re going to put it on over a period of time.
So whereas you might have just bought, say, the Mac Studio Pro, because you can pay for it over
a period of time, you might be more tempted to actually get the Mac Pro Mac with the Ultra chip.
So I think there could be some benefit to Apple in increased sales because you’re going to spec
up because you’re not as limited with, you know, I’ve only got 2000 pounds to spend. That’s it.
That’s actually a really good example because I know Amazon have started doing this to pay
a balance over a period of time and it’s more favorable to pick the higher spec. You’ll notice
it a lot, especially in iPads on there at the moment for sure. But one other thing that comes
in a box. Of course, a birthday present. And whose birthday was it this month? It was Mac OS X. Mac
OS X is officially, it’s actually only 19 years up until Big Sur. Does anybody remember the beta of
Mac OS X? Yes, very much so. And what could you install it on? We installed it on a fourth generation
iMac. You know, one of the ones which are grey on the sides. Yeah, we had it on some blue and white
G3s. I even put it onto my I had a Prismo the bronze key Prismo laptop the
G3 laptop one of the best ever made I love that machine but that was the
first to run OS 10 beta. I had it on a G4 the one just before a Quicksilver. Yeah
It was officially launched on the 24th of March 2001.
The reviews are out.
What did we see from the Apple event?
And does anybody want to pick something that they would like to talk about first?
Well, I haven’t ordered anything.
I had been waiting on the event because I was in this frustrating issue about wanting a larger iMac, the 27 inch iMac.
And I thought it was going to clarify that they were going to launch a 27-inch iMac and I can make my decision about that or a MacBook Pro.
But of course, they’ve just thrown in even more decisions to make, whether or not you go for a studio or you go for the studio display as well.
because now you’re talking about up to three and a half four thousand pound to get that 27 inch
iMac kind of setup. So whether a 27 inch iMac would have come in at the same sort of price,
I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have been too far short of that. Once you’re into that kind of
territory three and a half to four thousand pound, then you’re also into a maxed out MacBook Pro 16
inch. So it’s just made the decisions even more of an issue if you’re in that position that
you want a larger screen Apple machine. I am intrigued with the Apple Studio display.
We won’t delve too much into the details because I’m sure everybody saw the event,
but what things have we found out since it’s been released?
The cable can’t be taken off the back of it, the power cable.
Well it can. If you give it a really good yank it will come out. It’s not totally thick,
so if you catch it through the power cable you could get it replaced without having to
send the whole machine back. It’s interesting you made that comment. So rumour has it that it has to
go to an Apple service provider to have a new cable fitted because the cable can’t physically
be pulled out or advised to be pulled out and they’ve actually been provided a rather strange
tool to pull the cable out in Apple service centers. I don’t know if anybody’s seen them.
It looks like a huge wallpaper roller. It’s a circular cam. Yeah, you just hook it on and
use the cam lever to pull it out. I’d be intrigued. I wonder if we have a service price for doing that
yet. Were there any other things that we picked up? Hasn’t the display got some form of chip in it,
which is interesting? It has got an A15 Bionic chip in it, which effectively makes it like a 27
inch iPad. Not that I’m going to try and lug it around on the tube to read a book, but yeah,
it has a camera and speakers and a chip. And I believe it’s a pared down version of iOS that
it’s running? I’m not sure. I haven’t read what operating system it’s running, but it does have
its own RAM as well. So it’s like a paired down iMac almost or giant iPad. It’s got quite a few
things inside it. That’s what I find interesting because where’s it going next? If it’s got its
own operating system effectively, albeit a really cut down one, what else are they hoping to do with
it? I mean, it does center stage, so that’s interesting, but have they got any other
sort of plans that they want to do with it. Is there a possibility that if it’s tied to a smaller
like the Mac Mini, would it be that the two chips could work in conjunction? So the M1 chip in a Mac
Mini would be able to use some of the power and resource of a chip in the screen to do more advanced
work like AI work or 3D work or stuff like that on the screen? Or not necessarily the Mac Mini,
if you had a laptop and you paired it. So say you for someone like me that’s got a
MacBook Air that I use because I’m traveling around. So clearly in the last two years we haven’t done
a lot of that. But then when I get home, I want something that’s slightly more powerful. Would I
then be able to pair, you know, get a display, link up my MacBook Air and then then somehow support
each other so that my MacBook Air has got a bit more power? That could maybe work with any M1
powered on an iPad or an Air or a Mac Mini to give the M1 chip the boost. I thought they were
going to announce an M1 Pro and Max version at the show, but I think that announcement got pulled.
So maybe this would enable them to give a power boost to M1 chips.
One of the things that seems logical is that they’ve got, from the early releases we’ve seen
of the camera on the studio display, it’s the bit grainy and it’s not as good as some of the
best stuff on the market and Apple says we’re hoping to release a software update to improve
this. So just like any computer you have updates as more and more people start to use them
as security features get added or new improvements to new computers haven’t been released.
You want to let the display know about them so you release updates which would then fix them inside
the display. Now if you wanted to keep that display for maybe five years you’d
want it to stay current and up-to-date just like you can with a camera and you
get all the latest raw updates. It’s that sort of change and update and it makes a
lot of sense because what you you’re moving away from is just having a slave
unit monitor and everything has to be on the computer. Whereas why don’t you move
half of it onto the display and then that can produce higher resolution output
and that can keep the laptops lighter because you don’t have to put such a
beefy graphics card in. So it was one possibility. One of the things I saw was
a lot of the voices on who commentate on Mac and we’re all seen to be
disappointed they were expecting an XLR display in a thousand pound piece of
kit and I just thought that they were from their point of view and from a
professional point of view, this monitor isn’t for them. I think this is more for general use.
And for most people, I think the onboard camera is adequate. I can’t see any other monitor which
has a better onboard camera. You can obviously buy separate cameras, but if you look at the
monitors which have cameras, they’re all operating around about that range. So for general use and
for people who want to use Zoom and stuff like that with a one component kit set up, then I think
the screen works quite well for them. The only common thing that really got most people annoyed
was the cost. It does seem to be Apple tax plus VAT or whatever you want to call it. It does seem
to be quite high for what it’s offering. I know it’s the only 5K monitor out there, but there are
4K monitors, even slightly bigger size, that are much better value if you want to in that term.
Interesting. So the internals of the studio display, it actually does run iOS 15.4 currently.
I think the chip is there for a number of reasons. Not necessarily the hype that it could become an
Apple TV. I think a lot of that comes down to some of the added features and what power it needs to
run it. So firstly, it can respond to “Hey Apple lady”, so it does need a chip to run those
facilities. Also, Tina, you mentioned the center stage. I don’t think that would be capable without
a chip and there needs to be some way of managing the spatial audio from the speakers. Maybe that’s
the reason why they had to embed the chip. It’s interesting because it wasn’t one of the other
criticisms that it doesn’t support all of the iPad lineups as an external
display. Well is that because the iPads aren’t powerful enough to run the
display rather than display. You also forgot to mention that chip might be
there so it can it can do an emojis through the inbuilt camera. Because
that’s really important. It is, everyone’s got to have their own anemose.
I particularly like the line I’ll be honest. Does anybody have a new favorite
emoji since the recent update? No haven’t seen any ones yet that I’ve taken a
particular fancy to. Just to mention a few that I can think of, there’s now a
troll so you can have an internet troll and not forgetting the three magic beans
which is an interesting add to the emoji collection. You’d need a lot of magic
beans to buy the next product. What do we think of the Mac studio with the M1
Ultra? Even for professionals from what I’ve heard it’s overkill. One or two just
that think that they don’t need that power at the moment. They always want more power. It’s a bit
like a turbocharged Porsche. Do you need to put a supercharger on it as well? Well, yes, but they’re
looking at where we’re going to go with this as more and more cameras start to do 8k now. That
sort of power will be needed. The most interesting thing I heard though, which was really strange,
was that on single core performance, the Ultra is no quicker than the M1 in Tina’s MacBook Air.
The single core performance is the same across all four M1 chips. It’s only when you get into
multi-core use and applications that make use of the multi-core features that then it really
starts to sing and fly. But it just really seems really strange that the Ultra has a similar score
single core to the M1 chip. I think some benchmarks came out and kind of come to the same conclusion,
if I’m not mistaken. It was a few seconds within in terms of processing a file but it was literally
the same clock speed. You’re not going to send an iron message any quicker on an M1 or an M1 Ultra
or look at your emails or look at the internet. The basic stuff is running very similar but
and this is one of the conversations the new version of Final Cut Pro we might see this year
may very well make use of that for certainly for more 3D work. And I know my own particular
company would deal with ARCHICAD. Again, they’re looking at the renders and the detail that you’ll
be able to do in 3D will be just enhanced hugely by that kind of raw power. So I think what’s
interesting about this one is you’ve got the entry-level Mac Mini, then you’ve got the Studio
version. So you’ve got like the consumer version and the pro-consumer version. So we’ve gone back
in a way to having like the MacBook versus the MacBook Pro. We’ve got the Mac Mini versus the
Mac Mini Pro but they’re not calling it Pro they’re calling it Studio. This is sort of looking at
where things are going in the future. Now there also could be a theory which comes out from this
which is we’re not going to upgrade the Mac Mini for some time to come so as a result of that
get used to the fact that this Mac Studio is going to be around for some time and that’s why we’ve
made it more powerful because in four years time that’s when we’re going to give you the new update.
But it’s interesting isn’t it because they’ve looked at some of the hard drives within the
studio and although there are empty slots for SSDs you can’t swap your own in and that’s
especially now with this whole idea of being able to fix it yourself whatever the proper rule
lorries. That’s an interesting one. And presumably people are going to be thinking, well, I need to
spec this out as much as possible because I can’t upgrade any of it once I’ve bought it.
There is also the other idea that this was not made for the consumer market. So that they were
saying that this was made for more videographers, the film industry, and those who work in
universities who needed a machine which was just slightly more powerful to do 3D rendering.
This is a professional market. There’s a design studio that I know and work with
and they have eight positions where their draftsmen work. The last time they changed them,
they changed to the Mac Pro and each machine cost I think about £26,000 with the specification they
set up. Now to change eight of those, you’re talking about what nearly £200,000. If you can
buy an £8,000 Mac Studio fully maxed, which will do all that, you know that you’re talking about
a realistic change in price cost that they can do. So I think that’s where the market lies. It’s
office based, it’s commercial based and it’s also for, there’s obviously there’s people out there
who just want to buy the latest Apple kit and have it. That’s because that’s their bent. That’s what
they like doing. I have an interesting question. So we saw the death of the 27 inch iMac. Was the
The Mac Studio and the Studio Display, it’s replacement.
But more importantly, if I own an office, which Mac do I buy for my employees?
Do I want rainbow-colored 24-inch iMacs or is the Mac Mini now the office device?
So if you look at universities around about the turn of the century, what you found was
they all went for internet-based units, what iMacs.
you have like the internet room and doing simple tasks and then you would have next to the print
server in those days you had to have one machine dedicated to us doing printing that was the high
end mac and so i would say what you’d probably do if you had an office you’d have a whole range
of colorful iMacs but then you would have for the higher end lot would do mac minis or mac studios
but they would go up by usage case scenario but you still keep the mac pros for the really high
end design stuff because they are not going to change their machines for what, eight years,
nine years? Because they can’t afford to because their budgets are set that they have to get X
amount of money out of them before they can buy a new one. I’m probably going to eventually get
a laptop because that’s how I like working, but I might be someone that does video and this,
that and the other, but doesn’t need the power of the Mac Studio. But what I want is the screen
size. That’s the concern then, what you do? You’re in a big room, it’s going to be far away from you
because you’ve got a big desk or whatever, or you just like to have a big screen. And it seems that
if you want a big screen, you can’t have an iMac. I think also there’s an awful lot to do with
design aesthetics as well. If you go into an office where there’s 20, 30, 40 desks all in
an open plan area. You don’t want 20 or 30 different styles of machine in that area.
So in that case where it’s just general task and general use, then the iMac is almost perfect
and they can set it up. We’ve actually done one where they have different colored banks,
there’s eight on a desk, so they have four different colors for each bank of desks, which
looked quite good when you’re walking and open. But then go further down, go into where
the design studio in and they’re all running Mac Pros with the XLR screens. So it really
is horses for courses and I think Apple have just increased your choice there as to what
machine is best suited to the task you’re going to do. Very few people need anywhere
near the power of the Ultra. The Mac Studio will do most of the work that would be required
in an office environment and then the iMac 24-inch will then mop up the rest. The one
One thing as well you’ve got to remember is that, especially in studio design studios
and places like that, time is money.
So if you’re saving half an hour, an hour a day because the machine is quicker, that
can easily mount up to a few thousand pounds in a month.
The other thing which will be interesting would be to see how well it does going forwards
with virtual machines.
So we’re looking at VMware and Parallels and we know that they’re going to get better over
time and there’s a number of instances where by someone needs to run some piece
of software once a month which runs on Windows but everything else has to be Mac.
Wasn’t there a few years back Alastair that the expression was one of the best
machines to run Windows on was a Mac running Parallels. The M1 has a
problem with doing that at the moment. Parallels is not great and it only
run Windows 11, the digital version and the VM version which isn’t running too
well but once they crack that they would enable you to use a multi-threaded M-chip.
You could be running both systems at the same time and is that the reason why they’ve kept the
Mac Mini Intel on board at the moment? That’s still available isn’t it? Yeah that’s true because it’s
still one of the very few machines that can run native code for VMware and don’t forget that there’s
lot of Mac minis are hidden behind big displays. So for example, they run the
displays in most train stations, they run the displays behind anywhere where you
see big notifications. They’re Macs. On the subject of money, would you buy the
new SE or would you go for an iPhone mini? You do ask the question don’t you
Craig? I don’t think I could go back to such a small phone. I looked at one in
the shop the other day and I couldn’t believe how small it was and just holding
the Mac mini just it just felt like I was a giant and hands on it it just felt
really strange I’m sure I would have got used to I had to go back to something
like that but it does seem strange it’s like picking up an old you know the
original iPhone or an iPhone 4 they just seem so small and light it’s quite
strange so I can’t choose between either Craig it’s not a kind of it’s not a kind
phone I’m going to be contemplating. If it’s your first foray into it then the
SE makes sense because it’s cheaper. The SE starts at £419 so that’s up from last
year’s model for 64 gig then it’s £469 for 128 gig and £569 for 256. Compare
that to iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini is 679 so you’re looking at 300 pound difference
compare that to iPhone 12 mini comes in at 579 so that is now very competitive
with the iPhone so for not much more money you could get a 12 mini. And the
The other thing of course is do you fancy the new green color that they’ve come up with?
The green does nothing for me, I’ll be honest.
I don’t know why that was such a big announcement.
I watched and I thought, okay.
Well it’s the usual half term color upgrade to keep you interested until the new phone
comes out in September.
Apparently it seemed to be a bigger thing on American news websites than the UK
websites.
So I was reading on the American websites, it’s the first time Apple have done green
in six years for the low-end models.
- Of course, it was perfect timing
for Serpadis Day as well.
- And it certainly gave, is it Samsung, a laugh
because they offered a green previously
so they could claim that Apple were copying them.
- But also it goes with the idea of, you know,
people like green phones because they feel greener.
- On the mention of colours,
and it will be our last section,
is what did we think of the M1 iPad Air
and the introduction of some new colours.
The blue one has been particularly popular.
Has anybody had a chance to look at these properly yet?
- No, I haven’t actually been down to the local
Apple Cathedral for a few weeks now.
So I think it is time to get down and feel it
and check all these things.
There’s been a lot of rumblings about why on earth
they put in M1 chips in these lighter weight machines,
completely overpowered.
But I’ve been having this ongoing discussion
several of the guys on the discord server and places. There was a little
dropped announcement made about there’s a new version of iMovie coming. I think
they’re going to bring out an updated iMovie with an awful lot of Final Cut
Pro features built into it and this is what they need the more powerful
chip for. If they don’t make it exactly like Final Cut Pro on the Mac then it’s
a complete waste of time but I think you have a lot of problems with if you use
Final Cut Pro you know that the libraries it creates are immense. They’re
huge and the file management is not very good in Final Cut Pro. Either of those
problems on an iPad or an iPhone for example would be a nightmare that I
think personally they’re gonna they’re gonna bring out an updated version of iMovie.
Now just imagine if you get one of the new iPads or the iPad Pro you’ve
got a pretty good reasonable camera on it. The sound recording isn’t too bad so
a bogger or a person who wants to make some simple movies using the iPad to actually
record it and then be able to use a souped-up version of iMovie Plus or something like
that to do the editing.
And if it’s now their 5G, you could get that out and delivered, uploaded in a matter of
minutes.
There’s also a couple of theories which also come out of this.
People are planning ahead with the potential problems with the chip shortage, so they’re
building in potential different directions so they don’t get stuck in a cul-de-sac or
Sherlock by some other country because they can’t get the software anymore or the hardware.
The other one which is interesting is you start looking at what you could use an iPad
in addition with.
So we’ve already seen it, you can put the iPad with the big display.
We’ve also got the iPad can be used as part of Cycle.
So why don’t you hand off some of the programs bits like Fredishop to the iPad?
So it’s what Martin has been wanting for ages, a replacement for the Touch Bar.
And the iPad now becomes the Touch Bar.
So it integrates with the Mac.
We are also looking at having better quality music.
So we move from the 128 to 256.
So who says that we don’t go for 256 and spatial audio, which will need an awful lot going
on if you’re getting that to run and do something else in the background and not reduce the
battery life.
So it’s all building up for the next two years what we could potentially come up with.
Yeah, I think you are right.
They are future proofing their products.
They obviously know that there’s something coming along the line that’s going to be chip
or processor intensive.
So this might be a way of supporting everyone in that regard.
So maybe they’re working on the idea that they know that people are going to make things
last longer. So that someone that previously might have replaced their iPad after three
years is now going to say, “Well, I’m going to keep it going for five if I can.” And it
would cut down complaints and cut down. They’re going to want people to spend money on apps.
So if your iPad is so old that it can’t run the latest apps, then you’re not spending
money are you unless you update your iPad and if you aren’t doing that then
you’re just gonna say well okay I’ve got this iPad I’m gonna work with what I’ve
got. And if Apple can offer you a cheap financing solution for you to upgrade to
that next bit of kit then it all kind of rolls in together doesn’t it? It’s this
whole and total environment that Apple want to create. The Macosphere is
expanding so I think they’re watching what Facebook are doing with Metaverse
and I think they’re into that as well that they want to be in that scale that
size of company which is all things to all people.
It’s also interesting that the studio display was launched just a few months after the Thunderbolt
display was listed as an Apple vintage product. So they knew when it was going to come out
and there’s the potential for the upgrade cycle for sure.
On that subject, I think we’ve come to the end of episode 28 of the Brew and Bite show
and firstly we’ll say thank you to Martin.
It’s a pleasure. You know how much I enjoy talking to all of you and all the people out there and going off on my little
flight to the fancy of things that are gonna happen. So good luck to all.
Tina, thank you. Thank you. I hope everyone has a good weekend. Thank you very much, Alistair.
Thank you. It’s been enjoyable this evening and
will be interesting to see what not only people end up buying but also whatever we get from
Coming up down from the north. So perfect. Thank you. And as always it’s thank you for me
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