Hello, everyone. Welcome to another ICAST. I'm Michael Doeies, and I'm back this week with a good group of folks. They're not scary folks, so you don't have to worry. Yeah, you might be. Well, that voice you heard was Alicia Geary. Hi, Alicia.
Hi.
And we have Marty SoBo with us. Hey, Marty.
Hey, how's it going?
Good. And we have another guest today. We have Taylor art. Hi, Taylor.
Hi, Michael. And all.
All right, so we had a very interesting Apple week. We had on Monday night, monday evening, the first Apple event in the evening, I believe. And it was their scary fast event. And it was scary fast. It was like 30 to 35 minutes, right, Marty?
Yeah, it was probably the fastest keynote I've ever seen.
I've been watching keynotes since 2005. Did you start watching them before that, Marty? Yeah, so, fastest keynote I've ever seen. Although I wonder if the video in the beginning of the year was that fast for the M two MacBooks because they did a video that just dropped in the morning. It wasn't streamed. It was just here you go.
It was longer than 30 minutes, if I remember correctly.
It might have been. But it's very interesting that they made this into a stream, and we'll talk about why I think they did it as a stream instead of just a download in a little bit because it's made quite the commotion on the Internet.
Oh, really?
Oh, yeah. It's a huge commotion. And I'll talk more about that later, but we got some new Macs on Monday, and I'm really excited about these. Although there's one detail I don't think anybody is really talking about that I heard on a podcast. So we got new 14 inch MacBook Pros. Okay. And what this signifies is the end of an era because we now have a MacBook Pro with an M three chip, which means no more 13 inch MacBook Pro. So let's talk about that. What are your thoughts on that?
Well, I kind of look at the 13 inch MacBook Pro. I mean, this last iteration of it that they've had out, kind of like the iPhone Se, they basically took a machine that was an intel machine, and they did absolutely nothing to it except put an M Two chip in it and just left it as is. So it was the last machine with a Touch bar, and really nothing else with it has changed. It's identical to the intel version. The only thing they did was swap out the intel chip for an M two chip, I believe. So now that they have this 14 inch MacBook Pro, they're officially getting rid of and no longer going to have a 13 inch MacBook Pro. So two things actually to that is they're not going to any longer have a 13 inch MacBook Pro that is gone, and they are no longer going to have a Touch bar. That was the last machine with a Touch bar. And so now the Touch bar is officially gone.
It's about time that it's all gone. I mean, it's much of a pain in the butt that the touch bar is. I know some people really like it, but I also know that some people really don't like it. And I think it's about time that it's actually gone. And we're kind of back to the quote unquote normal Max, especially with the good keyboard, which I'm sure Mike will talk about later.
Yeah, well, as far as I know, the new 14 inch MacBook Pro with just the regular M Three chip is exactly the same as the 14 MacBook Pro with the M Three Pro or Max chip. I don't really think there's any other difference. I just think it has the regular chip in it. They make it less expensive. So if you want to come in into a MacBook Pro at a more affordable price, and you're not trying to do a lot of crazy rendering or a lot of professional video audio production work and stuff like that, it's a great option for someone who's doing all the day to day stuff. Music, like listening to music, watching videos, email, anything. I mean, and it's still powerful enough to still do audio and video work, even at that. It's no slouch the machine, that's for sure.
And they basically said that this version, it's a lot cheaper too. So in the notes that I have in front of me, they said that this version is good for software developers and in Photoshop, and complex projects with complex workflows are all good for this cheaper machine.
Yeah, you can do anything on it and then some. And I think it's a really great option. It fits right in the middle and it removes that 13 inch MacBook Pro. So if you're looking for something that's somewhat portable but yet powerful, then definitely that's the way to go if you're not doing major rendering or anything like that. But the interesting thing is, and I'm waiting to see what's going to happen here, but as they go down the line and they update all of the machines with an M Three processor, what is it going to look like? If you have a 14 inch MacBook Pro that's kind of right in that regular M Three, everyday work, day to day stuff, kind of a machine. And they're also going to have then a 15 inch MacBook Air probably with a regular M Three chip also. So the only real difference is you're going to have to make a decision. Do you want a little bit of a smaller screen and more ports, or are you going to want to have a little bit of a bigger screen and less ports? Because otherwise that's probably really the big difference. The only other major difference is you probably could put more Ram in the Pro than you could in the Air also.
Like the fan as well, I think, right, Michael? The fan is not in the air. But you wanted to say something, didn't you?
Well, first I want to see Alicia as a switcher to the Apple ecosystem. What are your thoughts on this MacBook Pro?
So the Mac Pro, I was mainly impressed with the price because the price, I think, is going to make it easier for people to break out their wallets. It's a lower price that no one expected, and I don't know, I did not expect the price to didn't it drop, Michael? Didn't it drop on the MacBook Pros?
Yes and no. It dropped, but it didn't drop. And the reason why I say that is because, yes, it's less expensive, but they have a lesser chip than a Pro or a Max in it. And the other thing, and I kind of have mixed feelings about this is that I believe on that, the regular M three MacBook Pro, I believe. And Michael, you can chime in on this if I'm wrong, but I think that machine, the base model without any updates, comes with 256 SSD and eight gigs of Ram, where the other machines with the Pro and the Max processors start at 512 and 16 gigs of Ram.
I think that's accurate.
Really. It's cheap, but it's the only MacBook Pro that's getting less specs out of the gate than the other machines. So if you want to make it equal to one of the other machines, you're going to be paying more money to bump the drive from 256 to 512 and get it to 16 gigs to be even with the other MacBook Pros that are there. But if that's all you need, then it's great, right?
There's a few more caveats, though, I want to point out. The one thing that this machine is to basically replace the 13 inch. That's why it's cheaper, because the 13 inch, I think, was like $100 cheaper, like 1399 or 1299, something like that.
It was 1299, I think.
So this is kind of to stay in that mid price point range between the 14 inch MacBook Pro of last year and or of earlier this year and the Airs. So there are a few differences, though. So one of the things that you do get on this new machine is you get a 14 inch machine for that price point, which is a little more expensive than the 13 inch was. But you're getting a promotion display, which.
Means you get is that on the base also on the 14 inch?
Yes, you are getting the 14 I'm.
Sorry, the 14 inch. So you get that display from beginning all the way up. They're not only putting it on the Pro and the Pro Max versions, right.
That's a big improvement. You're getting that better camera, of course. Now, the confusing thing is you have a 1415 and 16 inch, which is the MacBook Air 15, and it has a lesser quality display. So that, I think, is going to confuse some people.
Right, but I agree with you. But when it comes down to it, both machines, I have a feeling now, we don't know because they have not announced the new 15 inch MacBook Air yet, but when they do, is the configuration going to also be 256 SSD and eight gigs of Ram, which would be the same as that 14. So really, you're choosing, really, between a little bit of a smaller machine at 14 and more ports on the machine, or you go to the Air and you get a little bit of a bigger screen, less of quality on the display and less ports. But the price is going to be so close, only a few hundred dollars difference. So which do you choose? I guess?
And since the World Series is going on, let me throw a curveball at you. The 14 inch M three MacBook Pro is running an M three, and does anybody know what the limitations of the M three compared to M three Pro and Macs are that are outward facing?
I think the amount of Ram that you can upgrade it to I think is different. No, and I think that the amount of cores, I think is different.
All of that's different. Yes. But the M three does not have the data support that the Pro and Max have. So on the 14 inch with Pro and Max, you get an HDMI connector. I don't believe that you get that with this. I'll have to verify that. But you for sure only get two USBC Thunderbolt ports on this machine.
Really?
Yes. So that's what's kind of being talked about with this. Is it's using the new form factor with the new display and everything?
Yeah. And it can support more stuff. Like if you want multiple displays, you can have high motion and things like that.
Yeah, you're going to have MagSafe. So you're not taking up one of the USBC that you get for charging. You can use them both for whatever you want.
Yes, but it's not the same as the 14 inch Pro. Right. The 14 inch M three Pro or Max, you just have the two USBC Thunderbolt ports like you have on the Air.
And are they slower in transfer speed than the other two? I think they are.
I'm not sure that they are, I just know that they can't have that third one that are on the higher end machines. No. So that's a few things to keep in mind when you're looking at that lower end machine, you're still getting that great keyboard, you're getting a promotion display and all of those things. So it's a fantastic machine for the price.
Oh, yeah. Like if you're doing the kind of work like that Alicia is doing, where you're just like typing all day long for the most part, and know email and know, like listening to music, watching videos, doing day to day writing work, email, stuff like that. This machine will be mean and it's future proofing. Yeah, right. Exactly. Although make sure that you configure it out of the gate because once you get it, you can't upgrade it. If you want to have more Ram or more hard drive space. You got to decide all that when you're making the purchase.
That is one problem with Macs is once you set a configuration that's what you're stuck with for the life of that machine.
Yep. So who's this machine? Good cause like you know, in the Apple event that's a software developers and other well because we have the Air and it kind of blends the line. So it's like who should buy this machine versus an error.
So I think the people that should buy this machine are people that want to do that slight little bit more than they can on an Air. And what I mean by that is that the main difference between this and the Air is well the screen and the fact that this has a fan and it's right between the 13 and the 15 inch Air. So you're getting a great machine with portability and excellent battery life. You're going to get a pretty amazing battery life on this. Okay, so I'm really excited about this machine because it finally marks the end of the Touch bar and those machines. I've seen a lot of people on Twitter really rage against not rage against the fact that this has changed, but rage against the Touch Bar. Like thank God it's gone. Some of my favorite YouTubers have been really still cursing the name of the Touch bar. I'm like, man guys it's over, let it go. But it's very interesting watching people's reactions online to this because it needed to happen and I think that this kind of marks the I mean they're still selling M One machines but I think we're fully away from everything related to intel and even most M One related stuff is now moved on. We're moving on from that.
Well, them keeping that base model M One MacBook Air around is a great thing in my opinion because it gets somebody into the Apple ecosystem for super cheap and it's still an amazing machine. I mean an M One is still going to be faster than most computers that are out there. It's still a great machine. I think a lot of people could do more than they need to do or want to do on that machine. It's still super duper powerful. So don't think that it's like garbage now. I mean it's still a great so.
I just don't like the case that it's built with that wedge shape. I feel like it's okay, but that was kind of the intel generation of Macs, you know what I mean?
Yeah, well we'll see how long they keep it around for. Maybe they'll turn that into an M Two and who knows? We'll see, I guess.
Right.
But there's one other thing before I move on that we have not talked about yet, and that is these new MacBook Pros have a new color. It's a matte black color.
Yeah. And there's a podcast, and the name of that podcast was Space Grayer.
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Now I think with this, they have this new black version and I think they've gotten rid of what they used to call space Gray, which was the darker. It was kind of not quite all the way black, but it was definitely darker than the traditional silver standard mac color that everyone's been getting all these years. So I believe now you can choose between that regular standard silver color or you can go with this new matte black color.
What?
Are you going to say something?
I think it looks really sleek. I think it looks awesome. I love it. I know there's a lot of people that are going to be like, oh, why'd you get rid of Space Gray? It's like a classic. Like it's been there forever. No, I think that the space black looks I don't know. I love it sleek.
I think it looks nice. I don't know that it is as dark. So this kind of comes back to what we're going to talk about at the end of this episode. But I don't feel like from what people are saying that have had their hands on with it, that it's as dark as they make it out to be. Like it's darker than the previous Space Gray, but they're still saying it's pretty light.
Go ahead.
I was going to say I just feel like that's kind of a shame because it would really look what I was hoping for though, was the midnight. Like if they brought the midnight of the air of the MacBook air. I love my midnight MacBook air. That is such a nice color. And if they brought that to the Pros, that would have been sweet.
I don't know that they'll do that, but that'd be really nice.
So the interesting thing here is going to be and they did bring this up at the keynote, actually, but is it going to be one of those things where it's going to get fingerprints all over it? Or is their technology and what they're actually touting really going to make it so that it really doesn't get bogged down with tons of fingerprints and gunk all over it. Because a lot of people hate that.
The person that will report on that for sure will be MKBHD because he always points out if it's a fingerprint magnet, I'm like, yeah, definitely. That's the person I go to.
I'm sure that they'll have a review on it here pretty quick.
I was worried about scratches because if it gets a bit too banged up, I wonder if the little silver is going to show through because it's a darker color. I was a little bit worried about scratches.
You got to kind of worry about that with any machine, though, because you're talking about an aluminum body. So you just got to be a little bit careful with it. Of course, the silver, which is the traditional color, will show the least. It's just that they got that figured out on that color. We'll have to see what this new black does, I think. It doesn't get any fingerprints and it holds up and DA DA DA. But we have to see it in practical, real life use and see what people say.
I think the silver is just kind of the natural aluminum look so it doesn't scratch as easily. But we'll see. We will see. We haven't even really talked about these processors and I mean, there's a lot of technical jargon you could find online, but they do have more cores and higher proficiency. It's interesting they compared them to the M One and the intel, though, not to the M Two.
Boost the numbers that way and say, look, it's 80% faster.
I feel like this is kind of the third generation Apple silicon. So it's kind of that point. If you're still running on intel, it's about time to switch or start looking at switching. A lot of businesses don't start switching computers till four years after their last purchase of a machine. So we're starting to get there. We're starting to get to that point of time where businesses are going to start looking at what are the next things we're going to, you know, Macs are more efficient, all those kind of things. So we'll see. And it'll be exciting, it's very exciting to see what we're going to have with these Apple silicon Macs. I mean, the one thing that Apple needs to work on is just open Safari and get Voiceover busy or Voiceover or Safari not responding. That's kind of the one area where they need to do some work. But the neat thing is that these new machines will I think the 14 inch pro with the M Three pro will start at 1999 and the 16 inch will start at 24 99, just like they always have.
Right. And then you've got that regular M Three model which comes in, I believe.
It'S 1599, something like that.
Yes.
The model that I want is going to be 43 99. So that's a little steep. Although Apple trade in is really nice because they're still taking 1335 for my machine or 1355 for trade in. That's not bad considering it's a two years out of date model.
Yeah, well, then if you put it like that, then you only have to pay like, what, 3000 something, right. Rough math something.
So it's pretty exciting. I'm really thinking that these are the ones to go to. They did mention ray tracing, so gaming is going to be amazing on these things. And they do have a model with a 40 core GPU.
Good grief. That's crazy.
And if you get that model, you have to up to 48 gigs of Ram.
That means you'll have 48 gigs of Ram.
And I'm looking at the two terabyte model. So this thing is going to be pretty beefy, but it's a potential that this might be the machine that replaces my gaming machine. I may not need a Windows gaming machine with this at all. With advances in Parallels in DirectX Twelve coming soon to Parallels, this might be it. I'm spending on upgrade cycles for gaming machine and Mac laptop, close to $7,000 every few years. That's a lot of money. And if I could just buy one machine to do all of that work, then that is all I need. So this might be my last Windows computer for a long time. And if that's the case, I might just upgrade the hard drive to four terabytes.
Good grief. Michael?
Well, I mean, get what you need because one thing with Macs, again, like we said, you cannot upgrade the firmware, the insides, but you don't want to connect external storage because the internals are so much faster than anything else out there. Oh, of course, yeah, because Macs have unified Ram, which makes it run much faster because everything's on the chip, it has the SSD basically right on the chip. Whereas you don't really get as fast of speeds on Windows machines and things like that. I mean, you get close, but I think they said 5GB a second of transfer on the internal storage. That is fast.
That's nuts.
When you start getting into terabytes of upgrade on the hard drive, it gets expensive real quick. Or Ram, well, either, yeah, you've got to figure out what you need. I would definitely suggest, unless you're only like typing text documents or doing email and browsing the web, you probably would going to want to bump up the hard drive and the Ram from 256 and eight gigs just because if you're talking about future proofing a machine, you definitely at least want to go 512 and 16 gigs. But the only caveat to that is if you're only really doing browsing the web, email and writing documents or something like that. But 256 isn't going to get you that far. And eight gigs is kind of at the end of its life, I feel like, for having a new machine for these days, with what the software is requiring. And if you're wanting to future proof a machine for, let's say, five years down the road, you might get stuck if they in a year or in a year and a half, say, hey, the new operating system and most of the new software is going to require 16 gigs minimum. Right. And also with all of this hard drive space out there, they're not as conscious or not just Apple, but any developers aren't as conscious of keeping their apps so small in terms of size because there's just so much hard drive space now available. So if you're only at 256, you might blow that out. I mean, especially look at people with phones in their pocket. They've got hard drives bigger than that now. 512, 1, TB, whatever. It is all food for thought. You got to figure out what you need and go with what you need and just be happy with it.
And I mean, some people just use cloud storage. They get like three terabytes or however much of cloud storage, and they have a 256 gig computer and they just keep everything offline.
Yes, that's true too.
It just depends on what works best for what you need and how online you're going to be. I travel and go to places where I may have no Internet, so I like to have everything with me if I need it, and then I can back up to an external drive or to the cloud or things like that. So it just depends on what you need, right?
Yes. Do your due diligence, do your research, make sure that you figure it all out and that once you make your purchase that you're going to be happy with whatever you get. Because once you get it, you can't update.
Well, to that point, I bought a MacBook Air last year because I like having a small Mac. It's great. And I went with 512 eight gigs of Ram, and I said, you know what, I can throw another 100 or $200 at this. Let me just upgrade to 1. I'm glad I did it. I'm glad I did it because I don't use that computer for anything intensive. And even still, I don't have to worry about, am I going to run out of space on that machine now? My workhorse over here, my M one max, I'm at 400 gigs right now, and I keep going between four to 600 gigs, depending on how many logic files I have, if I've offloaded those to external drives and videos or other things. So it just depends. Or even developer archives. So every time you archive an app to send to App Store Connect, that's like 100 megs. 100 and something megs that adds up. It does. Especially when you make three or four builds a day. Yeah, it adds up real quick. Or iOS and Android Simulators, like running different versions of iPhone and Android on your device, all these things add up. But I feel like we're kind of getting off topic here. But my point is, even with these new machines, figure out what you want and then go with that. But I'm really excited about this new 16 inch. I think it's going to be great. I'm going to finally upgrade to that one, probably early next year, and that will make working with the Vision Pro really easy to do. So that'll be exciting. But I want to go on to one of the more interesting things on the event, and that was the upgrade of the imac with the M Three processor. Now, Alicia, I think you took very big notice of this machine. So do you want to talk about what is interesting about it to you?
I did. So I think from what it said, it's a 24 inch, am I correct, Michael?
Yeah, it's a 24 inch.
The display is a 24 inch, and it's obviously the M Three. But what I really took note of was it's not much more expensive than the M Two Mac Mini that I considered purchasing literally a week ago. So now that I've seen the event, I'm kind of torn on. Well, I was I'm definitely going with the imac now, but I was torn on which one I should go with. Between the M Two Mac Mini and the M Three imac, I think probably going to go with the imac. But the reason why is I still get that Apple Display tech. You get the better speakers because there's definitely going to be better speakers than the monitor that I was definitely going to choose. And it's still like I don't know, I feel like it's a space saver. I never knew how thin, just impossibly thin the imacs were. And I think it's actually not going to have a hard time fitting where you want it to be. So I was really impressed with the imac, and I look forward to getting my hands on it.
You're also getting a camera, which you wouldn't get in a Mini or the display you're going to get. So you'll get a decent quality camera and microphone. Plus it takes up way less space, and now you just take that out of the box and you literally plug it into the wall running.
I do think the ultra fine, though, does have a camera and microphone because it has speakers and all that other stuff, but I could be wrong on that.
It does have a microphone. However, I think the quality of the camera would have been a little bit degraded compared to the one that's going to be on the imac.
And you do get center stage on well, I think you get center stage on the imac.
I'm pretty sure you do.
You should.
I think that's a thing. But it's basically an iPad on a stand is what it is.
With a big old chin.
Yeah. iPad on a stand with a big chin.
I would say more than that because it's running a full blown Mac operating system. So, I mean, you could do whatever on it.
The dimensions, though, like, when you actually touch it in the store, it actually feels like a giant iPad on a stand with a chin.
Yeah, it does come in colors, so you can get some cool colors. Right.
I'm definitely going to go with the Blue, and it's going to match my ear. But the display is going to be better than an iPad. It's going to be larger than an iPad, I think the only real, and it's obviously running full blown macOS sonoma, and it's going to have the M Three processor.
I would still say you might want to think about and again, it depends on what you're doing and all that, but it comes with that base of 256 and eight gigs of Ram, so you may want to think about bumping it to 512 and 16. If it's going to be something you're going to keep for at least five years.
I will say eight gigs on a Mac is still pretty good on certain machines, like Windows machines. Eight gigs would really worry me, but I've been able to play minecraft on the highest settings on eight gigs of Ram, on an M Two Air. I tried that before I sent it.
Back.
And it worked great. The only thing was that if you're on that machine, it had no fan. It was still able to do it, but it couldn't do anything else. That was all that machine could do. Right. So those are just things to think about. Like Marty said, you really want to just make sure do your due diligence before picking those things up. But what I like about the imac is you get everything. You get the keyboard, the mouse or the trackpad and everything in one box. There's another thing that a lot of people don't really think about. Did y'all know that they sell? Apple doesn't, but other brands sell backpacks or rolling bags that are meant to carry the imac.
Yeah.
Whoa.
Some people like to take it with them.
Yikes. That sounds like a hazard to me, honestly.
No, not at all. It actually form fits to the imac, so it looks perfect and it's not a hazard. I had a student that I taught, and he would bring his Mac to the rehabilitation center where I worked as a tech instructor. And it was not a terrible looking bag either. It was just like a small piece, like a small briefcase that you roll. His was a 27 inch. Beyond that, it was a 27 inch with the bigger chin and the bigger bezels, and it still looked okay. And so this one would fit in a very small bag that you could just roll or carry with you. So you get everything and you have I mean, it's not a laptop by any means, but could you imagine doing that with a Mac Mini? You couldn't.
I could see it if you just had no other way to I don't know. If you had no other way to communicate, you needed to bring your Mac Mini with you. I see. You could probably fit that in the backpack, like a normal backpack, and be fine.
You could fit that in the backpack. But the display that goes with it, the cables to hook the Mac Mini up to the display, the two power cables, the keyboard and the mouse.
Well, the best part about the Mac Mini is it's so small, you could probably just hook it up to a TV wherever you are, and just bring well, that's true. You have to bring a display, but.
With the imac, you get everything in one everything's in one place. So it's a lot more portable than a Mac Mini setup. If you were going somewhere where you didn't have even to a hotel, some people could bring an imac and a magic trackpad and a magic keyboard, and you'd be set. You just have the one power cable and everything else is wireless. So it's a pretty nice setup. And a lot of people really like.
So that sounds like it would be horrid to fly with TSA would be like, oh, my God, what is in this bag?
Well, if you flew carry on with that. Yes. But if you did pack that, you would really want to make sure you had a rugged bag for that that would go under the plane, like, horribly. Yeah.
No, I would never. Are.
The imac I think it's 1299. Do you remember, Taylor?
It starts at 1299.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Yeah.
Sorry, I had to take a quick call. It does start at 1299. Yes.
And it can be configured up pretty well, too.
Yes.
So, obviously, for me, the 16 inch was the big highlight for this event. For me, these things, even on an M three, are going to play some of the best games ever. And they're going to run pretty much every application that you even thought about. And I think I did not hear that. So they mentioned Balders Gate Three, which is AA title, and I did not even realize that was coming to the Mac.
Wow. I said wow. Just wow.
Yeah, and then with crossover, you could play Diablo Four on that. And I bet a lot of those games will even run on the M Three. Not even the M three, pro or Max. Just on the M three. And you can't say that. For an intel chip. For Windows, you can't say that. So that is why I'm always very excited to be on this podcast and talk Apple stuff, because it's just great. If game developers would just bring their stuff over, then we would be all set. In fact, that's why I'm looking at if it's viable to make a Mac into a gaming computer in 2024, I'm going to be very interested. The last thing I want to bring up, because I feel like we've almost talked longer than the event was, but after the credits, and I'm glad we stayed through them, because it wasn't just us that picked up on this audio description, said, Event shot on iPhone.
But there's some caveats to that.
Well, the caveats really don't matter. And I'll tell you why. The fact that it is possible to shoot this on an iPhone, to shoot the video. I mean, yes, they've used drones. Yes, there's gimbals, but they're still, for most of the content, using an iPhone. That's amazing, obviously, because there are sections where they're zooming from place to place, and obviously that can't be done on an iPhone unless they have a drone with an iPhone that is carrying or something. That can be a thing. I mean, there's drones, guys, that will deliver packages that are delivering Amazon packages now, right? So if a drone could deliver a package, it can hold and carry an iPhone, and of course, it's Apple. If they break a few iPhones in the process, they don't care now, just make more. So what's remarkable about that is nobody knew. Nobody really knew, and that's remarkable. Now, I could tell you they did not use iPhone microphones, right? They did not use iPhone. I mean, the iPhone microphone is good, don't get me wrong, but it's not that good. So what are y'all's thoughts of this? Is this a big deal? Do y'all feel like this is I mean, Apple released I haven't seen it, but Apple released a whole behind the scenes of how they did this shooting on iPhone. And it's something I want to watch.
I want to see that.
Yeah, I didn't see it either, but I would say I'd like to check out that video and see what they actually show you and then come back and make my opinion on it, because I don't want to make an opinion on only knowing part of the story. We know that they shot it on an iPhone 15 Pro Max. We know that not all of it was because, of course, there's drone footage, there's CGI and other things. And of course, who knows what kind of gimbals they were using, what kind of lighting they were using, what kind of microphones they were using. So it's a little bit skewed, I feel like, but still, they did shoot it on iPhones, so it'd be interesting to watch that and then really have the full picture and then be able to really make an opinion after that.
The interesting thing about that, though, is that a lot of the video I don't know if you guys could tell it was dark. It was darker. Kind of more Halloween themed. Although there was one part at the end where it does kind of like zoom up to kind of look at the I think it was like zooming up to look at the sky. And that did seem a little bit like, oh, I feel like they just turned the iPhone screen up, and it kind of did feel like that, now that I think about it. Or I turned the camera up to the sky and it was like, kind of jerky. Kind of like you could tell it was on a phone. So I'm like looking back on it. That does make me think of an iPhone. But yeah, I think that with any smartphone camera. You're not going to get the best, you're never going to have the lighting. And that's one thing that people talk about, is that the iPhone camera is great. It's amazing, but you don't have the lighting that a lot of professionals will use. So, like, if you were to use an iPhone camera to do filming of a wedding or take shots, you're not going to get the same images because of well, for one thing, the flash is not the same. For two, you're not going to have the proper lenses and things like that, but it will do a pretty good job. It's not going to be that highest quality work. But for video and things like that, I mean, it fooled everybody. Even people with vision were totally like MKBHD and others like I just seen were shocked that they filmed that on an iPhone. And I think we're going to get to the point where our camera phones are doing so much work to make things look good that the average person is not going to tell, I bet there were videographers that were like, what did they use to film this? Or they just knew this is shot on iPhone. But for the rest of us, it was just a regular Apple event, right? We didn't notice the difference.
Nope.
So I find that pretty remarkable and I'm pretty excited. And I'm going to be curious if they do the same thing in their bigger events, like in March, if they have an event and they're back at the main Apple campus, will they use an iPhone when Tim is standing outside talking to people, will they use an iPhone for that? Because I think if they can show off that it can do that with the outside lighting and glare and that kind of thing, then that's when we know that the iPhone camera is better than we're giving than a lot of people give it credit for. So that's kind of my views on that. Do y'all have any other thoughts?
I'd be shocked.
I don't have anything else.
All right, so have we gone through everything or are we missing anything?
Did you forget about the max? Michael?
I can't remember if you explained that the what now?
The max conveyor the pro and then we have the pro max for the chips.
Yeah, we talked about the different okay.
Yeah, I think you did, but I.
Just want to make sure yeah, I don't want to go through all the really technical stuff just because you could look that up online.
Okay.
Yeah, they're great chips. They're all going to be great chips for what you need. Although I did mention there is 40 cores, a maximum of 40 GPU cores, 16 machine learning cores in the max chips. I don't even know what the regular CPU cores are, but me either. It's insane. It's just so many cores on one processor. I do know that the m three max, I believe, goes up to 196gb of Ram. And I think it's the Pro that goes up no, it goes up to 128. That's right. And the Pro, I think, goes to 96. So that is pretty impressive. And I think so that makes it, I think, where the Ultra, when that comes out, the M three Ultra may go up to 256 gigs of Ram.
That'd be insane. Would that be awesome?
That was basically just two m three max chips fused together to make one giant chip. So if you're doubling everything, then you would get that. So it's pretty exciting. And if you're interested in Nording, one of these expensive machines, they're all going to be available by the end of November. So that's pretty neat.
Yeah.
All right. So I think it was a great event. These processors are going to do great computers, all that fun stuff. So I can't wait to get my hands on one. You guys know I'll unbox it whenever I get it next. That that's going to do it for this episode, but as we always do. Marty, do you have an app, pick of the Week, and where can people find you online?
Yes, I do have an app. I will start with that. My app is actually called Dark Noise, and it's a sound machine app. And what it does is it's got all the standard, like, clouds with rain and thunder and water and all of those things. But the cool thing about it is you can mix and match and combine and sort of create your own and tweak as much as you want. So it's really awesome. It's super clean. It works with the voiceover spot on. So it's a great app. So I would definitely if you like to have some background noise to either sleep or take a nap or just have something besides music, you just need some Ambiance in a room or whatever it is, there's a great option. So I would say check it out. If you want to find me, you can track me down on Macedon. Marty at Unmute Community.
All right, Alicia, do you have an app that you want to pick and where can people find you online?
All right. Something for more of our visual users, our more visual about I've really been learning more about Canva because I've been doing a lot of graphics work for marketing and things lately, and I just purchased the Pro subscription for Canva and I've been learning more about what it can do and what I can do with it. And it's been really yeah, canva where you can find me online? I am on LinkedIn. On LinkedIn and Facebook. I'm just Alicia Geary on discord I am blind, one lives and on Macedon I am blind, one lives at Techopolis social. And you can also find my website@blindcopywriter.com.
All right, Taylor, do you have a pick and where can people find you online?
So an app that I've really been using for my business. Again, I can't really think of anything else. So we're just going to roll with this one. It's called square. I really like it because I can be able to navigate and see what's going on from my phone. I can also take a payment from my phone with tap to pay. So Square is pretty awesome.
Where can people find you online?
Okay, yeah, I was just going to say that. It just took me a minute because I was, like, doing two things at once. People can find me online. I'm mastodon at Tayarndt at Tecopolis social. You can also find me on just pretty much all over the web. I'm on X still. I know Tayart. I'm on Facebook, Taylor, Art, I am on, of course, LinkedIn, Taylor, Art, I'm all over the place. So you could just find me on web.
And Taylor took my pick. So I don't think I've picked this one, but I've started to play with the app for Buffer. So Buffer is an app used for social media sharing and scheduling. So that's going to be my pick for this time.
It's my best friend.
I had to kind of have a quick like, oh, what am I going to pick now?
It's my best friend.
Yeah, it's great. And they do have a free plan where you have three accounts, so it's great. So check out Buffer. It's on iOS. Sure. It's on android, right?
Yes, sure is.
But I don't know why I brought up Android, because I was thinking Iacast, and we don't speak of such things here.
I mean, you could have people just like us that like both iOS and Android and might be interested in is that on? Yes, it is on android.
So check out Buffer great app. And you could find me on mastodon at Mike DOE's at Techopolis social, Facebook. I'm Michael Doeies. Same. On LinkedIn. On X. I'm Mike Doeies. So that's M-I-K-E-D-O-I-S-E so you can find me all over the web. And this is going to be a very different episode of the ICAST because it's going to be dropped in several places. So it will be first put on the ICAST feed, and then it will also go to unmute and the Iacast feed. So Iacast network folks, you may get this several times, but this doesn't happen often. This is kind of a huge event that we want everybody to know about that subscribes in different places. So get ready for that. And it's going to be very exciting to hear y'all's, feedback. You could send us feedback at feedback@iacast.net. And you could also use the Iacast hashtag unmastodon.
If you like the content. Share it with your friends.
Yes, share with a friend. Share with your enemies. Share with your frenemies. Share it with your best friend, their best friend. Share it to everybody. The more people that know about the podcast, the better the more conversation we can have and the more we can educate about Apple because that's why we're here. We love our stuff. So all right, that's going to do it for this episode of the ICAST. Thank you so much, everybody. And I want to thank Marty, Alicia and Taylor, who is a first time contributor on this show.
So.
Thank go, Taylor. Yeah. So thank you all for being here. Thank you, everybody who's on YouTube and on Iacast radio. And we will see you all next week.
Bye, everyone.