33: Prudiest Common Denominator

00:00SPEAKER- Hey Brad. - Hi.

00:01SPEAKER- Today when we record this on May 2nd, 2020,

00:04SPEAKERit's World Naked Gardening Day.

00:07SPEAKER- Go on.

00:09SPEAKER- Get ready for the annual World Naked Gardening Day, WNGD.

00:14SPEAKERPeople around the globe are encouraged

00:15SPEAKERon the first Saturday of May to tend to their portion

00:17SPEAKERof the world's garden unclothed as nature intended.

00:20SPEAKER- So we just started, we basically had some green onions,

00:24SPEAKERsome scallion type things that we cut down

00:28SPEAKERand because it's such an ordeal to go get more groceries,

00:30SPEAKERwe need them, we instead decided to put the ends

00:33SPEAKERin a little glass full of water by the window.

00:36SPEAKER- And they keep growing, right?

00:37SPEAKER- And they keep growing and I actually cut some up

00:38SPEAKERand put them in a thing, so does that mean

00:40SPEAKERI'm a gardener now?

00:41SPEAKER- Take your clothes off.

00:42SPEAKER- Does that mean it's time to disrobe?

00:43SPEAKER- Time to shuck it.

00:45SPEAKER- So did you actually look at the hashtag?

00:48SPEAKER- I did not look at the hashtag.

00:49SPEAKER- What did you?

00:50SPEAKER- When I went to WNGD.org, which I wouldn't do

00:54SPEAKER'cause there are a lot of elderly naked people.

00:56SPEAKER- Nope, good.

00:57SPEAKER- I mean, look, yeah, it was, it's a lot.

01:00SPEAKER- Does it seem to you like nudity has just become

01:02SPEAKERkind of like accepted across the social internet lately?

01:07SPEAKER- I feel like there are generational changes.

01:11SPEAKER- Right, I feel like the institutional safeguards

01:13SPEAKERfor like, hey, that you're about to see some naked people

01:15SPEAKERare just sort of like falling one by one.

01:17SPEAKER- Well, but also at the same time, like I think the fact

01:21SPEAKERthat we're trying generally to be less judgy

01:23SPEAKERabout people's bodies means that the younger generation

01:26SPEAKERjust doesn't give as much of a shit as like,

01:29SPEAKERlike not having to go through the ordeal

01:31SPEAKERof seventh grade gym showers where like, you know,

01:34SPEAKERyou're tormented by the older kids.

01:37SPEAKER- Yes.

01:38SPEAKER- Has changed people's views on these things,

01:40SPEAKERmaybe for the positive.

01:41SPEAKER- Yeah, it's more than I'm surprised to see companies

01:43SPEAKERfollowing those trends because they typically,

01:45SPEAKERthey would cater to the prudiest common denominator.

01:48SPEAKER- Oh yeah, but look, now they can micro target advertising

01:51SPEAKERso effectively that if Steakums thinks that you wanna see

01:54SPEAKERsome dick pics, they can get them to you.

01:56SPEAKER- Oh man, okay, well, that's the end of that conversation.

01:59SPEAKERI've got nothing else to say there.

02:01SPEAKER(laughing)

02:02SPEAKER(upbeat music)

02:26SPEAKER(upbeat music)

02:33SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod, I'm Will.

02:36SPEAKER- I'm Brad, it's Saturday morning, hello, hi Will.

02:38SPEAKER- Hello, Brad, how are you doing?

02:39SPEAKER- We both got the head in the bed head today.

02:41SPEAKERI don't even wear a hat.

02:42SPEAKERThat's how comfortable I've gotten with our arrangement here

02:45SPEAKERis that I don't even wear a hat to these things anymore.

02:47SPEAKERYou just get the full.

02:49SPEAKER- Look, you get the shaggy,

02:51SPEAKERI remain in envy of people who can do the Mohawk.

02:55SPEAKERThat's my, I think that's gotta be my move

02:56SPEAKER'cause the hair over my ears is making me crazy now.

03:00SPEAKER- I was gonna say, two weeks in a row,

03:01SPEAKERwe've talked about a Mohawk.

03:02SPEAKERI feel like some changes are afoot.

03:04SPEAKER- Well, I mean, I gotta tell the family on it first.

03:07SPEAKERI'm not the only stakeholder here.

03:09SPEAKER- Have you guys discussed a home haircut?

03:11SPEAKERWe've talked about that, right?

03:12SPEAKER- Gina's ready to go.

03:13SPEAKERShe's been ready to go since, she was like,

03:16SPEAKER"You need a haircut."

03:17SPEAKERThe week we locked in.

03:18SPEAKER- We have been talking about it for a couple of weeks now

03:20SPEAKERand I think I'm ready to pull the trigger.

03:23SPEAKERI think I might do a fit, like I have clippers.

03:25SPEAKERSo I might get her to do like a fade on the side

03:27SPEAKERas if I was 17 years old.

03:28SPEAKER- Yes, that's exactly what I'm going for

03:29SPEAKER'cause it's pretty hard to screw that up.

03:31SPEAKER- You say that, but I think that there's hopefully more

03:33SPEAKERto it than we realize right now.

03:35SPEAKERWe'll find out.

03:36SPEAKER- At the same time, even if it does get screwed up,

03:37SPEAKERlike what is the harm?

03:39SPEAKER- Yeah, who's gonna see you?

03:40SPEAKER- By the time we're out in the world,

03:41SPEAKERagain, it'll have grown back, so whatever.

03:42SPEAKER- It's not like you broadcast to thousands of people

03:45SPEAKERthree or four times a week from your house.

03:46SPEAKER- There's a lot of ways to cover up.

03:49SPEAKER- Oh, that's true.

03:50SPEAKER- Where necessary there.

03:51SPEAKER- That's very true.

03:53SPEAKERSo how are you holding up this week, man?

03:55SPEAKER- I'm all right.

03:57SPEAKERStuff's just kind of rolling along, I guess.

04:00SPEAKER- Yeah, it seems right.

04:01SPEAKERIt seems right.

04:02SPEAKER- Not much new.

04:03SPEAKERI mean, I could talk about various equipment failures

04:05SPEAKERand like the Amazon packages I'm waiting for

04:07SPEAKERto replace those, but whatever.

04:09SPEAKER- My RAM for the Mr. Shipped.

04:12SPEAKER- Nice.

04:13SPEAKER- Yeah.

04:13SPEAKER- Oh, wait, like just shipped?

04:14SPEAKER- Just shipped.

04:15SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

04:16SPEAKER- That's fine.

04:17SPEAKER- Oh, you know, we talked about it

04:18SPEAKERon the little patron bonus app.

04:21SPEAKER- Yeah, the planning meeting.

04:22SPEAKER- A few days ago, but I got mine.

04:24SPEAKER- Yeah, how's it going?

04:25SPEAKER- I forgot I haven't said that on an actual--

04:28SPEAKER- On an official?

04:29SPEAKER- An official episode yet.

04:31SPEAKERYeah, I've been playing Super Nintendo games

04:33SPEAKERand Nintendo games and Sega CD games

04:35SPEAKERand sacrificed a goat last night to get Neo Geo working.

04:39SPEAKER- What was the first thing you played?

04:42SPEAKER- On the RAM?

04:42SPEAKER- Yeah.

04:43SPEAKER- Super Mario World.

04:44SPEAKER- Yeah.

04:45SPEAKER- That's the benchmark.

04:46SPEAKER- Yeah.

04:47SPEAKER- It works.

04:47SPEAKER- Sounds right.

04:48SPEAKER- It seems pretty spot on.

04:50SPEAKER- Man, I can't wait.

04:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

04:52SPEAKER- I'm excited.

04:52SPEAKER- It's fun stuff.

04:53SPEAKER- My robot, I got all the parts for my robot

04:55SPEAKERand then I realized I forgot to order an axle,

04:57SPEAKERso I gotta order a bar to make axles out of,

04:59SPEAKERbut other than that, I'm ready to go.

05:00SPEAKER- Yeah, and then you can command your robot

05:02SPEAKERto make RAM for you.

05:04SPEAKER- I mean, I wish.

05:04SPEAKER- Robots can--

05:05SPEAKER- I'm gonna command my robot to spin a wheel.

05:06SPEAKER- Robots can build anything, 'cause they're tireless, right?

05:08SPEAKERThey work, they can work 24/7.

05:10SPEAKERThey don't need sleep or food or other human necessities.

05:14SPEAKER- Look, as long as it's quiet and doesn't wake me up,

05:16SPEAKERI don't care.

05:17SPEAKER- If you just tell your robot to get to the point

05:18SPEAKERwhere it can fabricate integrated circuits, microchips,

05:23SPEAKERit'll get there eventually, right?

05:24SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I mean, you just tell it--

05:26SPEAKER- Several centuries from now,

05:28SPEAKERwe will produce a chip foundry.

05:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, look, eventually it'll evolve

05:32SPEAKERand then it'll take over.

05:34SPEAKERSo we watched "WALL-E" last night.

05:36SPEAKERThis is totally off topic, but we watched "WALL-E" last night

05:38SPEAKERwith my daughter for the first time in years.

05:40SPEAKERAnd I realized that that movie is about the robot,

05:43SPEAKERthe robot's taking over, right?

05:45SPEAKERWALL-E gains sentience and then he leans his head in

05:49SPEAKERand he touches the other robots and the spark goes.

05:52SPEAKERAnd everywhere he goes, he spreads sentience around.

05:54SPEAKERHe teaches the robots how to wave, he teaches them how

05:56SPEAKERto feel, he teaches, he gives them the gift of consciousness.

06:00SPEAKER- Yeah, they recognize the value of robot togetherness

06:03SPEAKERand then they realize, hey,

06:04SPEAKERwe don't need the meat bags anymore.

06:07SPEAKER- No, no, no, then they work with the meat bags

06:08SPEAKERto build a new civilization that celebrates meat bags

06:11SPEAKERand robots alike.

06:13SPEAKER- It's an optimistic version of that tale.

06:15SPEAKER- I mean, look, it's nice that there's one of those

06:17SPEAKERversus thousands of others.

06:19SPEAKER- Yep, that's fair.

06:20SPEAKER- There's like eight "Terminator" movies.

06:21SPEAKERWe don't need more of those, we're good.

06:23SPEAKER- Yeah.

06:24SPEAKER- Should we talk about the topic at hand today?

06:26SPEAKER- Yeah, sure, I guess.

06:28SPEAKERNo, I actually, I don't want to sound down on it.

06:30SPEAKERI'm actually like super interested to talk about this.

06:32SPEAKERIt sounds, I know a lot of people are gonna be pretty upset

06:35SPEAKERabout it, but it sounds potentially pretty cool to me.

06:39SPEAKER- I think so.

06:43SPEAKERSo we're gonna talk about moving laptops to ARM,

06:46SPEAKERspecifically a couple of weeks ago now,

06:50SPEAKERBusiness Insider ran a story

06:54SPEAKERabout Apple moving MacBooks to ARM processors from Intel.

07:00SPEAKER- Which is something you've been hearing about

07:01SPEAKERfor basically years at this point, right?

07:03SPEAKERBut this was a much more concrete,

07:05SPEAKERlike here's a rough timetable,

07:06SPEAKERhere's like a pretty detailed list of all their plans.

07:09SPEAKERLike it seems like it's pretty imminent.

07:12SPEAKER- Yes, that is, I think,

07:14SPEAKERso two things that are important about the story.

07:18SPEAKEROne is that they specifically say it's gonna be the A14,

07:20SPEAKERwhich is the version of the SoC

07:23SPEAKERthat's gonna ship on this year's flagship iPhones,

07:26SPEAKER2020 flagship iPhones, and next year's,

07:28SPEAKERthe next batch of iPads as well, obviously.

07:32SPEAKERThey have some specifics about hardware

07:37SPEAKERin that they're saying that it's gonna be

07:41SPEAKERmuch of the chips designed for the MacBooks

07:44SPEAKERare gonna be much, much faster

07:45SPEAKERthan the ones that run in the iPhones,

07:47SPEAKERbut they are gonna share some of the infrastructure things

07:50SPEAKERthat have shown up in the most recent iPad Pro.

07:53SPEAKERFor example, the iPad Pro has four cores

07:56SPEAKERthat are dedicated to performance intensive workloads,

07:58SPEAKERand then another four that are just designed

08:00SPEAKERto handle low power tasks

08:01SPEAKERto make the battery last a really long time.

08:03SPEAKER- I didn't know they were doing that.

08:04SPEAKERI guess I'm just behind on Apple's CPU design, but.

08:08SPEAKER- It's something they didn't talk about.

08:10SPEAKERI saw, Gruber talked about it

08:11SPEAKERwhen they showed how the iPad Pro worked, the new one,

08:16SPEAKERbut they basically, they just pitched it as,

08:18SPEAKER"Hey, we've highly optimized this."

08:20SPEAKERIn the keynote, Phil Schiller stands there,

08:23SPEAKERand he talks about having four highly optimized cores

08:27SPEAKERfor normal computing tasks or whatever.

08:32SPEAKER- Speaking of Phil Schiller standing there on stage,

08:36SPEAKERGruber linked to an old YouTube video

08:38SPEAKERin this blog post of Steve Jobs

08:42SPEAKERtalking about the move to Intel.

08:44SPEAKER- Oh, the secret double life?

08:45SPEAKER- The secret double life.

08:46SPEAKEROS X has been living a secret double life

08:48SPEAKERfor the last five years.

08:49SPEAKEREvery version we have made

08:50SPEAKERhas also secretly compiled on x86.

08:53SPEAKERAnd I just, I worry about getting into idolatry a little bit,

08:57SPEAKERbut I really miss his stage presence.

09:00SPEAKER- He had a way of dialing down to the key thing.

09:02SPEAKER- I really miss his, the way he presented stuff.

09:04SPEAKERIt was just very effective.

09:07SPEAKERAnyway. - Yeah.

09:08SPEAKERSo the rumor in this Bloomberg piece

09:13SPEAKERsaid that specifically the first Mac processors

09:15SPEAKERwill have eight high-performance cores

09:17SPEAKERand four of the energy-efficient cores.

09:19SPEAKER- Okay.

09:20SPEAKER- Versus four and four for the iPad Pros.

09:23SPEAKER- Do you have any sense of what qualifies

09:25SPEAKERas a low-power task, like what sort of thing

09:27SPEAKERthe low-power chips, I mean, cores would be running?

09:30SPEAKERI feel like you can envision the higher performance stuff,

09:32SPEAKERobviously, as anything with higher compute requirements,

09:35SPEAKERbut like, I wonder what the sort of lower idol-ish processes

09:38SPEAKERare that run on those.

09:39SPEAKER- So my guess is it's stuff that's,

09:42SPEAKERanything that runs with the screen off, right?

09:44SPEAKERSo things like checking, you know,

09:46SPEAKERreceiving push notifications that tell you to check email

09:49SPEAKERor to, you know, that you got a Twitter message

09:52SPEAKERor that your map turn signal is updated.

09:54SPEAKER- Okay, just any like file system indexing

09:57SPEAKERor any nuts and bolts, stuff like that.

09:58SPEAKER- Yeah, that kind of stuff.

10:00SPEAKERMy bet is updating apps in the background.

10:01SPEAKERMy guess is also stuff like the window manager.

10:04SPEAKER- Okay.

10:05SPEAKER- Things that handle basic draws, not 3D stuff necessarily,

10:09SPEAKERbut things that render the springboard

10:11SPEAKERand the, you know, grid of icons and render basic windows.

10:15SPEAKER- Yeah.

10:16SPEAKER- But I don't know, I'd be, I think,

10:17SPEAKERmy guess is that we'll see,

10:19SPEAKERif there weren't WWDC talks about that last year,

10:22SPEAKERmy guess is that there are some this year

10:24SPEAKERthat will illuminate that a lot.

10:27SPEAKER- Yeah, I'll mention just 'cause you mentioned WWDC

10:29SPEAKERthat Gruber speculated that if this is happening

10:34SPEAKERon the timetable that is being reported,

10:36SPEAKERthat they will announce it next month.

10:38SPEAKER- I mean, every other time they've switched architectures,

10:43SPEAKERso when they switched from the Motorola chips

10:45SPEAKERto the PowerPC chips,

10:46SPEAKERthen from the PowerPC chips to the Intel chips,

10:48SPEAKERthey provided at least a six month window for developers.

10:54SPEAKERThe word from Gruber, Gruber's talked about this for years,

10:57SPEAKERbut the idea that Mac has been compiling on ARM for years

11:00SPEAKERis not a new idea and is definitely something

11:03SPEAKERthat's been happening by the leaks

11:05SPEAKERand stuff that come out of Apple.

11:06SPEAKER- Also, it just makes sense, right?

11:07SPEAKERWe should clarify here that Apple essentially owns

11:10SPEAKERthe IP of the chips it makes in its mobile, correct?

11:13SPEAKERVersus licensing it from Intel for laptops.

11:18SPEAKER- Well, no, no, so with Intel, they buy the chips,

11:20SPEAKERwith ARM, they license the chip design

11:23SPEAKERand then spin up from there.

11:25SPEAKER- Okay.

11:26SPEAKER- Intel makes all of the x86 chips that go into Apple laptops.

11:31SPEAKER- They're just buying units in volume at that point?

11:33SPEAKERThey don't even own the design of those.

11:35SPEAKEROh yeah, yeah, that would make sense.

11:36SPEAKER- Yeah, no, Intel only--

11:37SPEAKER- 'Cause Intel's not, okay, so maybe I had it backwards,

11:39SPEAKERlike Intel is not doing any custom work on those chips,

11:41SPEAKERthose are just off the shelf mobile x86.

11:44SPEAKER- Well, okay, Apple's a big enough vendor of Intel CPUs

11:48SPEAKERthat maybe if Apple says, hey, we would like you to do this

11:52SPEAKERin your next chip, then Intel will do that, right?

11:55SPEAKERBut they're still gonna sell that same chip to Dell

11:57SPEAKERand to Microsoft and to--

11:58SPEAKER- Okay, that's the distinction that I was trying to make,

12:00SPEAKERwas whether Intel was making custom x86 chips

12:03SPEAKERfor Apple or not.

12:03SPEAKER- Well, what they may do is give them custom clock,

12:07SPEAKERlike custom clocks and cache sizes and stuff like that.

12:10SPEAKER- Okay.

12:10SPEAKER- Stuff that's easy to change.

12:11SPEAKER- Okay, but it's not like on the consoles

12:13SPEAKERwhere the console makers give a very specific

12:16SPEAKERwish list of features and they get a custom chip out of it?

12:18SPEAKER- Right, it is not a two-way conversation in that same way.

12:24SPEAKER- Right, but in the case of ARM,

12:26SPEAKERthey can do that with themselves, right?

12:28SPEAKERThey can dialogue with their own chip designers.

12:30SPEAKER- Yeah, so with the SoC, this is why they're spending

12:32SPEAKERso much money on research for the last,

12:34SPEAKERsince they started building the A series of chips

12:36SPEAKERand took, prior to the, what, iPhone 5 or 6,

12:41SPEAKERthey were doing Samsung, they were running Samsung SoCs.

12:46SPEAKERSo they were based on ARM cores,

12:47SPEAKERbut then Samsung would pick a GPU,

12:49SPEAKERpresumably with Apple's input and put it in.

12:51SPEAKERNow, Apple has that whole team in-house

12:54SPEAKERand they're doing the, they're picking the ARM core

12:59SPEAKERthat they license, they're picking all of the other stuff

13:02SPEAKERthat goes into that SoC, including the GPU,

13:05SPEAKERthe configuration of the GPU, so the amount of memory

13:08SPEAKERthat's dedicated to GPU, memory that's dedicated to CPU,

13:11SPEAKERany additional processors, like the APU that they have in

13:16SPEAKERfor background, tracking stuff in the background

13:20SPEAKERis part of the SoC, they do machine,

13:23SPEAKERthey can add stuff like H.265 acceleration,

13:27SPEAKERthey can add acceleration for the HEIC,

13:29SPEAKERtheir video, their photo/video format

13:32SPEAKERthat they use for the live photos,

13:34SPEAKERall of that stuff that, if they were dealing

13:37SPEAKERwith an Intel processor, may or may not get in

13:40SPEAKERand may be integrated in a timeline that's much later

13:44SPEAKERthan they want for their marketing and product goals,

13:48SPEAKERthey can just put in into the SoC.

13:50SPEAKERAnd there's both performance,

13:52SPEAKERoften there's performance benefits,

13:54SPEAKERthere's also cost benefits for doing that stuff

13:56SPEAKERon the SoC instead of on separate chips inside the design.

14:01SPEAKER- Sure, so it makes a lot of sense

14:02SPEAKERfrom technical and business standpoint.

14:04SPEAKER- I mean, look, the one thing that Apple has always wanted

14:08SPEAKERis the ability to control, like they love controlling

14:10SPEAKERthe hardware and the software and making sure

14:11SPEAKERthat those things are a real tight loop.

14:14SPEAKERAnd with the Intel architecture, that's never gonna happen

14:18SPEAKER'cause Intel's never gonna let them build their own chips.

14:21SPEAKERWith ARM, it's totally possible.

14:26SPEAKERAnd they've spent literal billions of dollars

14:28SPEAKERbuilding the team that can do that.

14:29SPEAKER- Right.

14:31SPEAKERSo, I'm trying to think where to start with this

14:34SPEAKER'cause there's a lot of little nuggets of information

14:36SPEAKERin that Business Insider story.

14:38SPEAKERAnd then there's like the bigger question of like,

14:39SPEAKERhow are they gonna handle this transition

14:41SPEAKERand how are they going to ease existing software

14:44SPEAKERinto the new ecosystem, et cetera, et cetera?

14:45SPEAKERLike, where do you think is the most relevant place

14:47SPEAKERto start there?

14:48SPEAKER- You know, I think there's an interesting example case

14:52SPEAKERof what has been, of somebody who's been doing this

14:55SPEAKERfor a fairly long time now and has had a couple of fits

14:57SPEAKERand starts along the way.

14:59SPEAKER'Cause Microsoft has been shipping Windows on ARM

15:02SPEAKERsince like 2017, 2016.

15:06SPEAKERThe Surface X Pro, which is probably the highest profile

15:10SPEAKERof those devices, of those ARM devices,

15:12SPEAKERis the one that people always reference.

15:14SPEAKERAnd the obvious comparison is to look at it and say,

15:21SPEAKERoh, this is just like a new version of the Surface R team,

15:24SPEAKERwhich was the first time they tried to ship

15:26SPEAKERan ARM compatible CPU way back when Windows 8 was new,

15:30SPEAKERwhich was like 2013 or 2014, or maybe even 2011.

15:33SPEAKERAnd it was bad.

15:34SPEAKERIt just, it was a disaster.

15:36SPEAKERYou know, it didn't run apps.

15:37SPEAKERIt only ran stuff from the Windows Store.

15:39SPEAKERThere was nothing in the Windows Store

15:40SPEAKER'cause the Windows Store was brand new

15:42SPEAKERand you could kind of run a bad cross-compiled version

15:44SPEAKERof Office on it.

15:47SPEAKERSince then, they shit-canned the first version of Windows

15:51SPEAKERthat ran on ARM and they made Windows on ARM

15:56SPEAKERactually pretty good.

15:57SPEAKERSo now if you have Windows on ARM,

15:59SPEAKERit runs everything from the store,

16:01SPEAKERall the UWP packages, all that stuff.

16:04SPEAKERBut they also built in an emulation layer

16:07SPEAKERfor 32-bit x86 compatible apps.

16:11SPEAKERSo not 64-bit x86 compatible apps,

16:14SPEAKERbut 32-bit compatible apps.

16:16SPEAKERSo that means there are even a handful,

16:19SPEAKERlike you can even run Adobe stuff, right?

16:22SPEAKERSo you can't run, I'm thinking the list is,

16:28SPEAKERyou can't run Premiere, After Effects, Audition,

16:31SPEAKERor Flash or some of the other deeper tools,

16:34SPEAKERbut Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Lightroom

16:38SPEAKERall come in 32-bit versions still.

16:40SPEAKER- Any idea why this translation layer

16:42SPEAKERdoesn't support 64-bit stuff?

16:43SPEAKERIs it just a level of complexity thing?

16:45SPEAKER- My guess is that the performance was bad.

16:48SPEAKER- Okay, for reasons that are terrifying, I don't know.

16:52SPEAKER- You linked a little thing in the Microsoft knowledge base

16:54SPEAKERcalled how x86 emulation works on ARM.

16:57SPEAKERAnd it sounds like it's basically

16:58SPEAKERlike an instruction translation kind of setup.

17:01SPEAKER- I mean, that's how emulation almost always works.

17:03SPEAKERIt's usually like a wrapper

17:04SPEAKERfrom one instruction to another, right?

17:06SPEAKER- Yeah.

17:08SPEAKER- So this brings up the other point.

17:11SPEAKEROne of the reasons Apple, so Intel, I mean, sorry,

17:15SPEAKERMicrosoft works with our manufacturers

17:17SPEAKERto design the chips for the surface,

17:19SPEAKERbut they're not doing that work in-house.

17:23SPEAKERSo they may not have, they can put a block of chip on

17:27SPEAKERthat will accelerate x86 apps

17:29SPEAKERby making these registered conversions easier.

17:33SPEAKERBut Apple can actually just make all of their,

17:37SPEAKERif they want to devote a substantial amount of die

17:39SPEAKERto making old apps run well, they can.

17:41SPEAKER- Okay, do you think that's likely?

17:42SPEAKER- So they can have hardware dedicated to that.

17:43SPEAKERI don't know.

17:44SPEAKER- I guess what really matters here

17:46SPEAKERis what the real world implications of this are gonna be

17:48SPEAKERfor people who have existing workflows.

17:51SPEAKER- I mean, so that leads to the bigger,

17:56SPEAKERthe much bigger question, which is,

17:59SPEAKERis this something that's gonna push across

18:01SPEAKERthe entire Mac product line from MacBook Airs all the way,

18:04SPEAKERand Mac Minis all the way up to Mac Pros?

18:08SPEAKERAnd I mean, I think if it does,

18:10SPEAKERthat'll be a really gradual transition

18:11SPEAKERbecause like you said,

18:13SPEAKERthe people who are using high-end Mac workstations,

18:16SPEAKERand even iMacs to a lesser extent,

18:18SPEAKERare probably pretty dependent on applications

18:21SPEAKERthat may or may not be backwards compatible.

18:25SPEAKERI was gonna say,

18:26SPEAKERthe other thing about the 64 32-bit division,

18:28SPEAKERthere aren't any 32-bit Mac apps anymore

18:30SPEAKERthat are for versions of Mac OS.

18:32SPEAKER- Right, so they have to solve that problem.

18:34SPEAKER- Yeah, so presumably my assumption is that

18:38SPEAKERcutting off that 32-bit compatibility,

18:41SPEAKERthe what, last Mac OS?

18:44SPEAKER- Yes, I think that's right.

18:45SPEAKER- Whatever, I can't--

18:46SPEAKER- I think Mojave is the last one that runs 32-bit.

18:48SPEAKER- Yeah, so cutting off all that stuff,

18:51SPEAKERmy guess is a decision that was made

18:53SPEAKERto make the future transition to ARM easier.

18:56SPEAKER- Okay.

18:57SPEAKER- But I don't know enough about how chip design works

18:58SPEAKERto know why.

18:59SPEAKER(laughing)

19:01SPEAKERIt just doesn't seem like it makes any sense

19:03SPEAKERfor them to get rid of 32-bit backwards compatibility

19:07SPEAKERif there's not some other reason to do it.

19:08SPEAKER- Sure.

19:09SPEAKERSo I mentioned earlier on the Steve Jobs presentation

19:12SPEAKERabout moving to Intel,

19:13SPEAKERso obviously we have a very kind of obvious public example

19:19SPEAKERof this transition or this type of transition

19:20SPEAKERhappening before.

19:21SPEAKERDo you think there are any lessons to take

19:22SPEAKERfrom that transition that can be applied to this one

19:24SPEAKERor has software and chip design changed so much

19:28SPEAKERin the last, what, 15, when did they switch to Intel, like?

19:31SPEAKER- It was 2000, mid-2000s.

19:33SPEAKER- About 15 years ago?

19:34SPEAKER- Yeah, 12, 15 years ago.

19:35SPEAKER- Because now we have much more robust virtualization

19:38SPEAKERand stuff like that, like is it even relevant

19:41SPEAKERto look back to the x86 transition and like Rosetta

19:44SPEAKERand all the stuff they did then

19:45SPEAKERor is the world just too different now?

19:47SPEAKER- I think it, I mean, it should be simpler now

19:50SPEAKERthan it was then, right?

19:51SPEAKERIf you look at, like a lot of the problems

19:55SPEAKERwith the Intel transition were that the emulated software

19:58SPEAKERwas pretty slow.

20:00SPEAKERI think that now we're looking at processors

20:02SPEAKERthat are fast enough and in the case of the Mac Pro,

20:06SPEAKERsorry, MacBook Air versus iPad Pro,

20:10SPEAKERyou know, the A13 in a lot of ways is faster,

20:12SPEAKERthe A13X or whatever's in the iPad Pros

20:14SPEAKERis faster than the MacBook Airs,

20:17SPEAKERespecially in single threaded apps,

20:19SPEAKERwhich I would assume a lot of your backwards compatible

20:22SPEAKERstuff will be.

20:23SPEAKER- Is that all, I mean, this is probably springboarding

20:26SPEAKERto a different topic too fast here,

20:28SPEAKERbut is that all relative to like wattage, you know,

20:31SPEAKERpower and heat and all that stuff?

20:33SPEAKERLike, is that saying like at a given kind of TDP

20:37SPEAKERor whatever they're gonna, this one is gonna perform faster

20:40SPEAKERbecause obviously like in the mobile space,

20:42SPEAKERlike power draw and heat are bigger concerns

20:44SPEAKERthan in a laptop, you know what I mean?

20:46SPEAKER- Yeah, I think, I mean, I think in that case,

20:48SPEAKERthe marketing number that they used is explicitly

20:52SPEAKERlike in the configurations that they ship those devices.

20:56SPEAKERRight? - Okay.

20:57SPEAKER- So, but I mean, the question of if you're looking at your,

21:03SPEAKERhow much performance per watt can you get out of a machine,

21:05SPEAKERyou're probably gonna have a better time with ARM

21:08SPEAKERand a custom GPU than you will with Intel and, you know,

21:14SPEAKERIntel integrated or AMD or even Nvidia graphics.

21:18SPEAKER- Actually, maybe that's a better way to ask this question

21:20SPEAKERis like, do we, because ARM is so mobile centric,

21:23SPEAKERlike do we even have any real world examples of people

21:25SPEAKERscaling the architecture up to like a much bigger,

21:27SPEAKERbeefier use case, you know what I mean?

21:29SPEAKERWith like much higher, you know, power draw and heat output,

21:33SPEAKERbut also, you know, corresponding power increase,

21:36SPEAKERlike compute increase.

21:37SPEAKER- I think that there are even ARM data centers.

21:40SPEAKER- Oh, huh, interesting.

21:42SPEAKERI mean, I guess you're kind of, you know, like you see,

21:44SPEAKERlike when they announced the Raspberry Pi 4, you know,

21:46SPEAKERthey were showing off like, oh, here's a,

21:47SPEAKERhere's a cluster of Pi 4s as a web server

21:50SPEAKERand stuff like that.

21:52SPEAKER- So. - But I meant more like

21:53SPEAKERon die, you know, like the actual Silicon being beefed up

21:56SPEAKERas opposed to just here's a bunch of mobile-esque chips

21:59SPEAKERdaisy chained together.

22:02SPEAKER- I think, I mean, I think you're probably,

22:07SPEAKERit, I think that, I don't know the answer to this, Brad.

22:10SPEAKERI think the answer is it depends on how they configure

22:12SPEAKERthe chips. - Yeah.

22:13SPEAKER- Right, I think, I think if you,

22:16SPEAKERif you suddenly have a TDP that's 10 times that of a phone,

22:20SPEAKERright, then you're gonna be, have a different experience.

22:25SPEAKERYou're gonna have, you're gonna be able to get a lot more

22:26SPEAKERcompute out of that than you will if you're, if you're,

22:30SPEAKERyou know, like think about, think about the amount of heat

22:32SPEAKERthat a laptop can dissipate and the amount of battery

22:34SPEAKERthat a laptop can dissipate versus your phone.

22:37SPEAKERAnd presumably we should see much better performance

22:40SPEAKERout of these ARM SOCs.

22:43SPEAKER- Yeah, that was my question was just whether it scales

22:45SPEAKERlike linearly with increased power,

22:48SPEAKERbut I guess we don't know until they do it.

22:50SPEAKER- I mean, I think it depends on the chip.

22:52SPEAKERI mean, that, that is the challenge.

22:54SPEAKERI mean, that's why it's hard doing phone benchmarks

22:55SPEAKERin a lot of cases is because if you're talking about

22:58SPEAKERcomparing, you know, Qualcomm SOC versus the Apple SOCs,

23:03SPEAKERthen, you know, they, they make very different choices

23:07SPEAKERabout GPUs and stuff like that.

23:08SPEAKERAnd, and you can't even really,

23:10SPEAKERand they're running different OSs.

23:12SPEAKERSo it's hard to do Apple's to Apple's comparisons,

23:14SPEAKERwhich is why Apple phones usually, you know, perform,

23:18SPEAKERfeel like they perform really well.

23:19SPEAKERAnd maybe the benchmarks are really good,

23:22SPEAKERbut they have wildly different specs than like wildly

23:25SPEAKERinferior specs to an Android phone running a Qualcomm SOC.

23:28SPEAKER- Yeah, that's why I'm super curious about how these chips

23:30SPEAKERare gonna work on a, in a desktop or even quasi desktop,

23:34SPEAKERyou know, environment where the use cases are very different

23:36SPEAKERand the performance needs are much greater.

23:39SPEAKER- I mean, I'm not sure that the performance needs

23:41SPEAKERare that much greater now though.

23:42SPEAKER- Well, you know, unless you're doing, like you said,

23:44SPEAKERPremiere and like some really heavy media processing

23:47SPEAKERtype stuff, but, but eventually like, you know,

23:50SPEAKERarmships and MacBooks are going to start working their way

23:53SPEAKERup to that performance tier, right?

23:55SPEAKER- Well, and honestly, that's like,

23:56SPEAKERthat's a really good example of a work workflow

23:59SPEAKERthat can be accelerated with hardware.

24:01SPEAKERSo if you think about Premiere,

24:04SPEAKERthe thing that takes a long time is rendering out your video

24:06SPEAKERand the thing that takes a lot of math and already with like

24:08SPEAKERan RTX card, even a low end RTX card,

24:11SPEAKERyou can do the Nvidia NVENC 2.0 stuff,

24:16SPEAKERwhich is, I don't know if people who work on TV broadcast

24:20SPEAKERwould call it broadcast quality, but for anything short of,

24:24SPEAKERyou know, network TV, the quality on that,

24:28SPEAKERon that stuff is astounding.

24:29SPEAKER- Sure.

24:30SPEAKER- So.

24:31SPEAKER- Is the NVENC 2.0 the one that only runs

24:33SPEAKERon the Pascal cards, the RTX cards?

24:37SPEAKER- Yeah, it only runs on the RTX cards.

24:39SPEAKER- My experience with NVENC on a 1080 has not been amazing,

24:42SPEAKERbut I guess that's the, that's the old version.

24:43SPEAKER- So NVENC on the 1080 on the previous cards

24:46SPEAKERwas actively bad.

24:47SPEAKER- Yeah, it was, the output is questionable.

24:50SPEAKER- Blocky and noisy at weird places,

24:52SPEAKERbut they went through and fixed it.

24:53SPEAKERIt took them 10, eight years, I think, but yeah.

24:55SPEAKER- Okay.

24:56SPEAKER- The other thing is that you can do stuff

24:59SPEAKERlike H.265 acceleration, which NVENC does now as well.

25:03SPEAKER- Right, so again, like purpose built chips

25:05SPEAKERfor exactly what they need.

25:07SPEAKER- Yeah, and just to give a point of context,

25:09SPEAKERlike if I rip something in handbrake on the CPU,

25:13SPEAKERit'll take 10, a 4K disc will take 10 hours.

25:16SPEAKERAnd if I do it with NVENC 2.0 to H.265,

25:19SPEAKERwhich is a more computationally expensive codec,

25:23SPEAKERit takes like two.

25:25SPEAKER- Wow, it runs almost in real time.

25:26SPEAKER- And the results are quite good.

25:28SPEAKER- So the results, yeah, so the compression is better,

25:30SPEAKERthe results are, the visual quality is as good

25:33SPEAKERas the CPU and it takes a fifth of the time.

25:36SPEAKER- Okay, now obviously Apple knows it's customer based.

25:38SPEAKERThey know what kind of acceleration they need to tune for.

25:41SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, that's the benefit of their,

25:43SPEAKERwhen they moved everybody to the App Store,

25:45SPEAKERthat was the big benefit, right, is they know,

25:47SPEAKERthey then can get analytics on all of the apps

25:49SPEAKERthat are sold through their, through their platform.

25:56SPEAKER- All right, so, this is a very heady topic.

26:00SPEAKERIt's very technical.

26:01SPEAKER- There's a lot.

26:02SPEAKER- Trying to figure out where to go next here.

26:04SPEAKER- Well, so it's not just that it's a heady topic.

26:06SPEAKERThere's a lot of, because there's so many variables,

26:11SPEAKERit's not like we're looking at Intel's,

26:13SPEAKERit's not like we're looking at Intel's product roadmap

26:18SPEAKERand saying, oh, okay, this CPU looks like it'll slot

26:21SPEAKERinto a MacBook Air size.

26:22SPEAKERThis is like, if they can build whatever they want,

26:24SPEAKERwhat do they put in there for these devices?

26:28SPEAKERAnd I mean, this is why I think they start

26:30SPEAKERwith the low end with the MacBook.

26:31SPEAKERSo I guess the next question is what hardware,

26:34SPEAKERlike what do these products look like?

26:36SPEAKERDo they change?

26:37SPEAKERAre we gonna see new industrial design,

26:40SPEAKERsmaller, thinner, lighter laptops?

26:42SPEAKERAre they gonna just take the time tested

26:45SPEAKERand MacBook Air design that's been around

26:46SPEAKERfor 10 or 11 years now?

26:48SPEAKER- Yeah, you're talking even from like a marketing standpoint,

26:50SPEAKERlike will they brand these as a new line of MacBooks

26:53SPEAKERas opposed to just like quietly saying, here's the new Air.

26:56SPEAKER- Well, yeah, or as a complete design refresh of the Air

26:59SPEAKERin addition to a hardware refresh.

27:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess in Apple terms,

27:04SPEAKERit would just be like the new MacBook Air

27:06SPEAKERtends to be how they do things.

27:09SPEAKER- I mean, maybe, but maybe these are lower end,

27:12SPEAKERyou know, does this like, this is a product

27:14SPEAKERthat directly competes with the iPad Pro,

27:16SPEAKERespecially now that they have that magic keyboard,

27:18SPEAKERwhich by the way, the magic keyboard is one of the things

27:20SPEAKERthat Gruber listed as an indicator

27:22SPEAKERthat probably the way you'll build these apps

27:24SPEAKERis on an iPad, you know, you'll test these apps on an iPad

27:27SPEAKERwith the magic keyboard, you know,

27:29SPEAKERrunning some version of developer version of OS X.

27:32SPEAKER- Like, I feel like the increasing performance

27:34SPEAKERand usability of the iPad Pro is making the line

27:38SPEAKERbetween that tier and the MacBook Air blurrier than ever.

27:41SPEAKERLike at some point, don't they need

27:43SPEAKERto like eliminate a laptop tier?

27:46SPEAKERLike the iPad Pro is so close at this point.

27:48SPEAKERObviously not on the software end,

27:49SPEAKERobviously they're not letting you run OS X on it yet.

27:52SPEAKER- Yeah.

27:53SPEAKER- If they ever will, but you know what I mean?

27:55SPEAKERLike that stuff feels like it's converging in a way

27:57SPEAKERthat there's gonna be some redundancy

28:00SPEAKERin their product lines at some point.

28:01SPEAKER- I mean, but maybe not, maybe the difference

28:03SPEAKERin the app ecosystem, you know, in Mac and semi-open

28:08SPEAKERversus iOS or iPad OS and semi-close,

28:11SPEAKERmostly closed is enough of a differentiator.

28:15SPEAKER- Sure.

28:18SPEAKER- This is the stuff that I'm really curious,

28:19SPEAKERlike I can't wait to see how this all shakes out

28:21SPEAKERbecause it's just such a weird transition for them.

28:25SPEAKERAnd like having an iPad that's technically capable

28:29SPEAKERof running OS X and that you choose between, you know,

28:33SPEAKERiPad OS and OS X when you buy it or when you boot it

28:36SPEAKERor something like that is the most unappley idea.

28:39SPEAKER- Yeah.

28:40SPEAKER- But maybe it's the right choice.

28:42SPEAKERLike, I don't know.

28:44SPEAKER- Yeah, maybe the division in those product lines

28:47SPEAKERis more philosophical than technical at that point.

28:51SPEAKER- The other question I wonder is

28:52SPEAKERif they'll continue letting people dual boot Windows.

28:54SPEAKER'Cause like, if you think about, if you think about,

28:56SPEAKERyou know, you can get Windows on ARM now.

28:59SPEAKERI don't know if consumers can get it,

29:00SPEAKERbut if Apple starts shipping MacBooks

29:04SPEAKERthat would be compatible with it,

29:05SPEAKERI'm sure Microsoft will make it available

29:06SPEAKERif Apple makes it available for them.

29:11SPEAKERBut like, you know, the whole,

29:13SPEAKERhey, you can dual boot your Mac

29:15SPEAKERor you can run a VM in Parallels

29:17SPEAKERthat has native hardware acceleration

29:20SPEAKERto run your Windows apps inside OS X

29:23SPEAKERwas such a selling point early on

29:25SPEAKERin the rise of the MacBook.

29:27SPEAKERI can't imagine, I can't imagine they keep it.

29:33SPEAKERI can't imagine they keep bootcamp,

29:34SPEAKERbut I'm also really curious to see if they do.

29:37SPEAKER- I mean, it seems like they kind of,

29:39SPEAKERthe future of software design is openness, right?

29:41SPEAKERLike the way that even Microsoft is open sourcing

29:44SPEAKERa lot of its stuff now and following more

29:47SPEAKERkind of open source standards for design and stuff like that.

29:50SPEAKERJust be funny to see Microsoft complaining

29:52SPEAKERabout Apple closing their hardware to them.

29:58SPEAKER- I don't know, it seems like just as a selling point,

30:01SPEAKERgetting rid of functionality like that

30:02SPEAKERis maybe a little risky.

30:05SPEAKER- I mean, yeah, but Apple loves that kind of risk.

30:10SPEAKERThat is the most Apple risk imaginable.

30:13SPEAKER- That's true.

30:14SPEAKER- Hey, we're gonna dump backwards compatibility

30:15SPEAKERfor a bunch of shit people use

30:16SPEAKERand it's really gonna piss them off.

30:18SPEAKER- Yes, that's fair, that's fair.

30:20SPEAKERApple is not a stranger to telling its user base

30:22SPEAKERto get over it.

30:23SPEAKER- Hey, we're gonna release a pencil peripheral for iPads

30:27SPEAKERand then the next year we're gonna replace a new one

30:28SPEAKERthat's not backwards compatible

30:30SPEAKERand is like 10% better and costs more.

30:33SPEAKER- Yes.

30:34SPEAKER- Perfect, nailed it.

30:35SPEAKER- From the old iPod connector to the Blu-ray drive

30:39SPEAKERto USB ports.

30:41SPEAKER- Yes, it's a floppy disk.

30:43SPEAKER- Yes, long history of just saying,

30:45SPEAKERno, you don't need that anymore.

30:46SPEAKERNo, figure it out.

30:47SPEAKER- Yep, here you go.

30:49SPEAKERSo my other question is like, does this roll up into,

30:53SPEAKERso, okay, so if they keep,

30:56SPEAKERif they can do backwards compatibility

30:57SPEAKERfor existing x86 Mac apps,

31:00SPEAKERso stuff that runs on Catalina

31:02SPEAKERand whatever the current version of OS X is,

31:04SPEAKERI can't remember the names anymore.

31:07SPEAKERI think that's an interesting,

31:09SPEAKERI think that puts them in an interesting position

31:11SPEAKERwhere they can download,

31:12SPEAKERyou know, if your Adobe CC runs

31:15SPEAKERat close to native performance on this new SOC,

31:19SPEAKERthen like there's no difference for consumers.

31:22SPEAKER- Sure.

31:23SPEAKER- Right, like that's, to me, that's the big test

31:25SPEAKERis it always boils down to Creative Cloud,

31:28SPEAKERto Adobe on Mac hardware transitions.

31:31SPEAKER- Well, especially in the context of Adobe,

31:33SPEAKEReven if there is a difference,

31:34SPEAKEReven if there is some hit to performance

31:35SPEAKERor something like that,

31:36SPEAKERlike how long is that gonna be in place

31:37SPEAKERfor it to really matter?

31:38SPEAKERBecause with packages like that,

31:40SPEAKERyou're basically paying a subscription fee at this point

31:42SPEAKERand you're getting updates constantly.

31:43SPEAKERSo anybody who's current is like,

31:46SPEAKERwhat's it gonna be a year or two years at most

31:48SPEAKERbefore they just start transitioning everything native?

31:51SPEAKER- Current, hold on, we gotta step back a little bit.

31:55SPEAKERI would, as a paying subscriber for Adobe's products,

31:59SPEAKERI would describe their update cadence

32:01SPEAKERas somewhere between disappointing and inadequate.

32:05SPEAKER- Okay, fair.

32:07SPEAKER- Like, for example, on my Windows version of Photoshop,

32:11SPEAKERI can't open HEIC files in this, the year of our Lord 2020.

32:17SPEAKER- Can you open WebM?

32:18SPEAKER- I can open WebM finally.

32:20SPEAKERI think I can even encode WebM with Premiere now.

32:23SPEAKER- Without an add-on?

32:24SPEAKER- That took a really,

32:26SPEAKERI might've had to install an add-on.

32:27SPEAKERIt took a really long time.

32:29SPEAKER- Okay, that's a good counterpoint maybe.

32:31SPEAKERThis transition will not be as smooth and expedient

32:34SPEAKERas I thought.

32:35SPEAKER- But I mean, the thing that's fucked up about that is,

32:39SPEAKERthe time, like,

32:42SPEAKERAdobe owns desktop publishing.

32:45SPEAKERAdobe InDesign is the leader in making,

32:48SPEAKERturning digital stuff into paper, right, at massive scale,

32:52SPEAKERbecause QuarkXPress didn't make the transition

32:55SPEAKERfrom OS9 to OS10 effectively.

32:58SPEAKERSo, like, they have massively benefited as a company

33:02SPEAKERas a result of, like, Apple making a transition difficult

33:06SPEAKERin the past.

33:07SPEAKERShould we think Adobe would be there front and center,

33:09SPEAKERready to go?

33:10SPEAKER- You'd think Adobe would do a lot of things.

33:12SPEAKER- Fair, fair.

33:14SPEAKERSo, okay, do you think we can take it for granted

33:17SPEAKERthat there will be some bumps in this transition?

33:19SPEAKERLike, there's no way they're gonna just pull this off

33:21SPEAKERseamlessly, right?

33:22SPEAKER- Oh, look, we're gonna hear from a lot of old developers,

33:25SPEAKERlike, remember when they dropped 32-bit support on iOS

33:29SPEAKERand all of the games that you bought the first, like,

33:31SPEAKERnow you can no longer get a no-microtransactions version

33:34SPEAKERof Uno, because that was a 32-bit app,

33:36SPEAKERand Ubisoft updated it with a free-to-play-it-up,

33:41SPEAKERterrible Uno.

33:41SPEAKER- Yeah. - Yeah.

33:42SPEAKER- That's what, get ready, brace yourself.

33:45SPEAKER- Okay, so given that we are assuming that this will not be

33:48SPEAKERa flawless transition, what do you think is their pitch,

33:52SPEAKERlike, from kind of a marketing angle?

33:54SPEAKERWhat do you think their pitch is to the user base

33:55SPEAKERwhen they go before everyone and say,

33:56SPEAKER"Hey, we're making this big move.

33:58SPEAKER"Here's how you're gonna benefit."

33:59SPEAKERLike, what's better about these?

34:00SPEAKERLike, what are the easily explicable benefits of, is it,

34:06SPEAKERand I think you've said this before, like, is it,

34:07SPEAKER"Hey, this laptop now runs for 10 days on a single charge,"

34:11SPEAKERor like, just for kind of the average user,

34:13SPEAKERlike, what are the things, what are the bullet points

34:15SPEAKERthey run down and say, "Here's why this is better for you."

34:17SPEAKER- So if they keep the existing industrial design

34:20SPEAKERfor the MacBook Air, which I assume this is gonna start

34:22SPEAKERwith the MacBook Air, 'cause it's the obvious place to--

34:25SPEAKER- Yeah, I was looking for it in the BI story.

34:26SPEAKERI wanna say that they said the first ones on the market

34:29SPEAKERwill be the lower-end chips, but I couldn't find that quote.

34:33SPEAKER- It makes a lot of sense, 'cause it's the A,

34:35SPEAKERthe audience that is least computationally,

34:39SPEAKERlike, that does the least computation,

34:41SPEAKERso if you give them good web browsers

34:44SPEAKERand, you know, their Twitter app and, you know,

34:47SPEAKERthe stuff that they use to ship shit on eBay

34:49SPEAKERor whatever it is, people who don't really use computers

34:51SPEAKERuse computers for, then with that,

34:56SPEAKERthey'll be able to get, that audience is the least likely

35:00SPEAKERto be affected by these problems.

35:02SPEAKER- Yeah, here's a little tidbit from the BI story.

35:04SPEAKERIt says the first Mac processors will have eight

35:06SPEAKERhigh-performance cores and at least four

35:08SPEAKERenergy-efficient cores, so that sounds like what'll be

35:10SPEAKERin the first products that roll off the line.

35:13SPEAKER- I mean, so that, to me, says either they're looking at,

35:17SPEAKERhey, here's the few, so, okay,

35:19SPEAKERthey keep the existing industrial design,

35:21SPEAKERthey say, hey, you have three days of battery, right?

35:23SPEAKER- Okay, yeah, that is, that's a bullet point

35:26SPEAKERthat plays with people, right?

35:27SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly, the other option is to make something

35:31SPEAKERthat is, I mean, Johnny Ive's not there,

35:33SPEAKERso I think this is probably less likely now,

35:35SPEAKERbut the other option is to make something

35:36SPEAKERthat is dangerously thin and light

35:39SPEAKERthat has a full day's battery life

35:41SPEAKERand performance comparable to the MacBook Air.

35:44SPEAKER- Interesting, I don't see the value of that.

35:47SPEAKER- What if it's clear?

35:48SPEAKERWhat if it's just a sheet of glass that's a screen?

35:51SPEAKER- What if it's the, what if it's the thickness

35:53SPEAKERof six playing cards stacked on top of each other?

35:57SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly.

35:59SPEAKER- I mean, I want a little bit of bulk, not too much,

36:02SPEAKERbut I want a little bit of bulk in my laptop.

36:03SPEAKERI don't want it to feel like I could break it in half

36:06SPEAKERif I'd, you know, if I looked at it wrong.

36:08SPEAKER- So that said, like I dropped my phone

36:10SPEAKERonce a month probably, right?

36:12SPEAKER- Wow.

36:13SPEAKER- I dropped my phone, I have a kid,

36:14SPEAKERI dropped the phone all the fucking time.

36:15SPEAKERIt's why I have a big chunky case in it now.

36:17SPEAKERI just gave up.

36:18SPEAKER- I got the Otter box on there.

36:19SPEAKER- It's not that chunky, but it's close.

36:21SPEAKER- Okay.

36:22SPEAKER- The laptop, like I remember the last time

36:28SPEAKERI dropped a laptop and it was in the whiskey basement

36:32SPEAKERin like 2011 and I dropped a MacBook hard enough to,

36:36SPEAKERit landed on something that dented,

36:38SPEAKERlike took a chunk out of the aluminum.

36:40SPEAKER- Yeah.

36:41SPEAKER- And I was like, oh, this is bad.

36:43SPEAKERAnd then it was fine.

36:43SPEAKER- Yeah, but it's not limited to just dropping it.

36:45SPEAKERI feel like traveling, if you fly a lot,

36:47SPEAKERyour laptop's gonna get a little beat up

36:50SPEAKERjust going through TSA and stuff like that.

36:52SPEAKERLike I wanted to, I hope the benefits

36:55SPEAKERare on the battery side and, you know,

36:58SPEAKERmaybe the horsepower side,

37:00SPEAKERnot on the thinner and lighter side.

37:02SPEAKER- I would hope after the great butterfly key debacle

37:05SPEAKERof the last five years, they've learned

37:06SPEAKERthat the thinness and lightness of the current laptops

37:09SPEAKERis more than sufficient.

37:10SPEAKER- Yeah.

37:11SPEAKER- But I don't know.

37:12SPEAKERI mean, to me, like to me,

37:16SPEAKERthat provides an interesting differentiator for the iPads

37:19SPEAKERis if, hey, we made it chunky, but it has a huge battery

37:22SPEAKERversus, hey, the iPad is pretty thin, it's fine.

37:27SPEAKERIf you want something thin, get an iPad.

37:28SPEAKERIf you want something thick, get this.

37:30SPEAKER- Yeah.

37:35SPEAKER- This is quite a lull.

37:39SPEAKER- I was just waiting.

37:41SPEAKERYou looked like you had a question

37:42SPEAKERand then you didn't look like you had a question.

37:44SPEAKER- I'm looking at this document deciding,

37:45SPEAKERI mean, again, this is such a technical,

37:47SPEAKERit's such a thorny issue from so many angles.

37:49SPEAKERI'm trying to figure out where to talk about things next.

37:51SPEAKERAnd also like, you know,

37:53SPEAKERneither of us are CPU designers or software developers.

37:59SPEAKERLike some of this stuff is like, hey.

38:01SPEAKERLike, I mean, like for example,

38:02SPEAKERone of the questions I jotted down here is,

38:04SPEAKERand we touched on this earlier is like, you know,

38:06SPEAKERCPUs have a lot more hardware level virtualization features

38:09SPEAKERthan they did last time something like this happened.

38:12SPEAKERSo like, I want to ask like, hey, could, you know,

38:14SPEAKERVMs play a significant role here in easing this transition?

38:17SPEAKERBut I don't know if either of us can actually

38:19SPEAKERspeak to that with any authority.

38:21SPEAKER- No, I can answer that.

38:22SPEAKERAnd yes, that absolutely will help.

38:25SPEAKERSo, you know, if you look at the way

38:28SPEAKERwe can containerize apps even,

38:29SPEAKERand like, if you look at it, how do you, like, you know,

38:33SPEAKERhow much do you know about how Docker works?

38:35SPEAKER- I've got a decent understanding of it.

38:37SPEAKERI mean, is it kind of OS level virtualization

38:40SPEAKERas opposed to CPU level?

38:42SPEAKER- Kind of, yeah.

38:43SPEAKER- Because I'm familiar with that concept,

38:44SPEAKERlike, you know, using jails and FreeBSD

38:46SPEAKERbecause those run on the host system's kernel.

38:48SPEAKERLike those are not, like they are philosophically

38:51SPEAKERcontainerized, but not programmatically.

38:55SPEAKERIs that the right term?

38:56SPEAKER- They're containerized for security,

38:58SPEAKERnot necessarily for instruction compatibility.

39:00SPEAKER- Like they're sandboxed rather than virtualized.

39:02SPEAKERI think it's probably the right way

39:03SPEAKERto actually describe that.

39:04SPEAKERLike they're running on the same,

39:05SPEAKERthey're running their processes

39:06SPEAKERright alongside the system processes.

39:07SPEAKERThey're not, you know.

39:11SPEAKER- So the thing that people were using

39:12SPEAKERbefore Docker is called Vagrant.

39:14SPEAKERAnd it was basically like a VM manager

39:16SPEAKERthat you could run up programmatically from a command line

39:20SPEAKERfor things like running a development environment

39:24SPEAKERor something like that.

39:25SPEAKER- I mean, is that the best way

39:26SPEAKERto actually make this distinction

39:27SPEAKERis whether the container in question

39:29SPEAKERis running its own kernel or not?

39:31SPEAKERIs that kind of the way to-

39:32SPEAKER- I mean, so that's a virtual machine

39:34SPEAKERis running its own, would be running its own kernel.

39:35SPEAKER- That's what I mean, that's what I mean.

39:36SPEAKER'Cause like 10 years ago,

39:37SPEAKERif you downloaded VirtualBox and you wanted to, you know.

39:42SPEAKER- Yeah.

39:42SPEAKER- Like you were running a full computer

39:44SPEAKERinside that container from the BIOS up, right?

39:47SPEAKER- So, so-

39:48SPEAKER- And that's not always the case anymore.

39:49SPEAKERLike with the jails I was talking about,

39:51SPEAKERor, and I was gonna ask, is that how Docker works too?

39:52SPEAKERThat it's-

39:53SPEAKER- Docker runs the bits that it needs,

39:55SPEAKERnot the whole thing is my understanding,

39:56SPEAKERbut I'm definitely not an expert on that.

39:58SPEAKER- That's what I'm getting at.

39:59SPEAKER'Cause I mean, there are very different hardware requirements

40:01SPEAKERfor those two scenarios, right?

40:03SPEAKER- Yeah, so, I mean,

40:05SPEAKERif you look at how Docker and Vagrant work,

40:08SPEAKERand if Apple decides to let people package

40:12SPEAKERold backwards compatible apps in that way,

40:16SPEAKERso they just bring the stuff that they need.

40:17SPEAKERNow, the difference is with Docker,

40:20SPEAKERyou're running on different operating systems

40:24SPEAKERon the same architecture.

40:26SPEAKER- Okay.

40:27SPEAKER- With this, you're running the same operating system

40:29SPEAKERon different architectures,

40:31SPEAKERwhich depending on how things work

40:34SPEAKERand what the application uses.

40:36SPEAKERAnd like, if you're doing,

40:37SPEAKERlike if you're using APIs

40:39SPEAKERand you're writing everything in Xcode

40:42SPEAKERto one of their higher level APIs,

40:45SPEAKERlike what are their higher level languages,

40:46SPEAKERlike Swift or Objective-C,

40:49SPEAKERthen you'll probably be fine.

40:50SPEAKERIf you're writing a lot of machine code and stuff like that,

40:52SPEAKERyou're gonna have to do some manual porting work,

40:54SPEAKERwould be my guess.

40:54SPEAKER- Okay.

40:55SPEAKER- But I would bet that any,

40:57SPEAKERmost stuff you can just dump over and it'll work.

41:01SPEAKER- Yeah.

41:02SPEAKER- You know, recompile and it'll work.

41:03SPEAKER- Sure.

41:04SPEAKER- Or hopefully put it in,

41:05SPEAKERlike the OS will handle that for you

41:07SPEAKERand put it in a container if you haven't recompiled.

41:10SPEAKER- I mean, just given the state of

41:12SPEAKERgeneral development efforts

41:13SPEAKERfrom company to company these days

41:15SPEAKERand the, you know, massive increases in compute power

41:18SPEAKERand specific features that ease stuff like this,

41:20SPEAKERlike I want to say that this is gonna be

41:24SPEAKERa much smoother transition than the x86 one was.

41:27SPEAKER- So my guess is like, if you think about,

41:32SPEAKERso in the x86 transition, I was at Maximum PC.

41:35SPEAKERWe were working entirely on CC for the Mac people, right?

41:40SPEAKERAnd we did not transition to Intel Macs for the designers

41:45SPEAKERfor at least two years.

41:47SPEAKER- Okay.

41:48SPEAKER- Because Photoshop hadn't ported over

41:50SPEAKERand it was really slow on the Rosetta layer.

41:54SPEAKERI think looking at Microsoft is key here.

41:58SPEAKERMy bet is that the Microsoft decision

42:00SPEAKERto only support 32-bit x86

42:03SPEAKERis a backwards compatibility choice.

42:05SPEAKERAnd that they were looking at the number of apps

42:07SPEAKERthat are 64-bit only versus the number of apps

42:09SPEAKERthat are 32-bit only.

42:11SPEAKERAnd the number of apps that are, you know,

42:12SPEAKERas we've discussed in the past,

42:13SPEAKERMicrosoft's decision is to always err on the side

42:17SPEAKERof making more things run than fewer things run.

42:21SPEAKERSo my guess is that they did the math and they're like,

42:24SPEAKERokay, we're gonna include hardware acceleration for 32-bit

42:28SPEAKERbecause that makes sense.

42:28SPEAKERAnd that means we'll sacrifice the 64-bit

42:31SPEAKERto meet the performance budget or whatever.

42:32SPEAKER- Right, and so the bet they're making there

42:34SPEAKERis just that anything that is 64-bit only

42:36SPEAKERis going to get ported natively sooner than later.

42:38SPEAKER- Probably still in active development

42:40SPEAKERand it will be ported natively.

42:42SPEAKER- Yes.

42:44SPEAKER- Or it's a high-performance computing thing

42:46SPEAKERthat people who buy a ARM-based laptop

42:48SPEAKERaren't gonna give a shit about.

42:49SPEAKER- Sure.

42:50SPEAKER- It's gonna be premier, you know, if you're, yeah.

42:53SPEAKERSo with Apple, since they've moved all the way to 64-bit,

42:57SPEAKERmy guess is that they're going to support 64-bit,

43:01SPEAKERx64 instructions in emulation and hardware

43:07SPEAKERon their ARM chips, even if that means

43:09SPEAKERthey have to license something from Intel

43:10SPEAKERfor a couple of years or AMD, whoever.

43:12SPEAKER- Sure.

43:13SPEAKER- So yeah.

43:14SPEAKER- Another random question I just thought of,

43:16SPEAKERI mean, this will be a product line-wide transition, right?

43:19SPEAKEREventually, like inevitably,

43:21SPEAKERthis is gonna have to work its way up to Mac Pros

43:23SPEAKERor do you think those will stick with Intel?

43:27SPEAKER'Cause like, I'm just trying to envision

43:28SPEAKERa like a full-on tower or I guess an Apple's case,

43:31SPEAKERlike a trash can or a cheese grater.

43:33SPEAKER- Yeah.

43:34SPEAKER- But you know, a full, a freestanding full-size computer

43:37SPEAKERwith like a giant heat sink on it

43:39SPEAKERwith an ARM chip underneath, like, is that even?

43:42SPEAKER- What if it's silent?

43:43SPEAKER- That sounds incomprehensible to me right now,

43:45SPEAKERbut like, is that where we're going?

43:46SPEAKER- Well, okay, so think about, I think it's more likely

43:50SPEAKERthat those products disappear entirely.

43:52SPEAKER- Whoa.

43:53SPEAKER- I don't know, like, I think there's three outcomes, right?

43:56SPEAKEROne is that Apple stops making Mac Pros,

43:57SPEAKERwhich wasn't out of the question

43:59SPEAKERuntil they rolled out a new one a year ago.

44:01SPEAKER- No, but every time that rumor has circulated,

44:03SPEAKERI feel like the outcry is enough.

44:04SPEAKERLike, it may not be the biggest audience or market,

44:07SPEAKERbut it seems like there is a very passionate attachment

44:09SPEAKERto the name Mac Pro for some people.

44:11SPEAKER- I don't, I don't think they give a shit

44:14SPEAKERabout people's attachment to anything.

44:17SPEAKER- You may certainly be correct about that.

44:19SPEAKER- But like, look, they totally jettisoned

44:21SPEAKERthe video editing market

44:23SPEAKERbecause they didn't update the product in three years

44:25SPEAKERand the people who edit video are really concerned

44:27SPEAKERabout performance, right?

44:28SPEAKER- Yeah.

44:29SPEAKER- So, so like, look at who's still using that

44:33SPEAKERand it's like audio engineers and I mean,

44:37SPEAKERmaybe they make a silent Mac Pro.

44:39SPEAKER- Huh, okay.

44:40SPEAKER- I don't know what, I don't know what an ARM Mac Pro

44:44SPEAKERis a weird, regardless of what it is,

44:48SPEAKERit'll lag three or four years

44:49SPEAKERbehind whatever happens next year.

44:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

44:52SPEAKER- That's my guess.

44:53SPEAKER- Okay.

44:54SPEAKER- I think iMac is an interesting question

44:55SPEAKERbecause if they can get,

44:57SPEAKERif they can get Adobe on board with Photoshop fast,

45:00SPEAKERPhotoshop and Lightroom and the other,

45:02SPEAKERthe other tools in that, in the Photoshop,

45:04SPEAKERthe photo editor tool chain,

45:06SPEAKERI think a lot of photo editors and even video editors

45:08SPEAKERthese days are probably working on iMacs.

45:13SPEAKERSo yeah, I don't know.

45:14SPEAKERI really, I have no, like ARM Mac Pro is just,

45:20SPEAKERwe'll know more, ask me again about that

45:22SPEAKERafter they announced the laptops, I guess.

45:24SPEAKER- Sure, yeah, I mean, again,

45:26SPEAKERit may be years before this happens,

45:27SPEAKERbut I'm just fascinated to see a big computer

45:30SPEAKERwith a lot of cooling in it that might be running this

45:31SPEAKERand what it would be able to do.

45:33SPEAKER- It's a silent desktop brand,

45:35SPEAKERthat's what we've all always wanted.

45:36SPEAKER- There's some, there's some appeal there.

45:39SPEAKER- So this is kind of tangential to this topic,

45:43SPEAKERbut reading the story kind of reinforced for me

45:47SPEAKERthat like Intel is kind of in a down period,

45:49SPEAKERaren't they, right now?

45:51SPEAKER- Like things haven't been great.

45:53SPEAKER- Like the, like the, we've been talking about the,

45:55SPEAKERI don't know, I still don't know how to pronounce

45:56SPEAKERthe name of this chip,

45:57SPEAKERbut the 10th generation cores are out,

45:59SPEAKERlike the 10, 900K, as opposed to, you know,

46:02SPEAKERthe 9900K was the ninth generation.

46:04SPEAKERLike, I don't know that there's a colloquial pronunciation

46:07SPEAKERfor 10, 900 yet.

46:09SPEAKER- This is off the tongue?

46:10SPEAKER- This is the last iteration of Skylake?

46:12SPEAKER- Yes, yes, it is the last, according to the rumors,

46:14SPEAKERobviously Intel hasn't come out and said that,

46:16SPEAKERbut yes, this new 10th generation core

46:18SPEAKERthat's coming out like soon, or they just announced it,

46:21SPEAKERComet Lake, I believe is the name of it,

46:22SPEAKERbut yes, it's the last version of Skylake,

46:26SPEAKERwhich is on what, 10 nanometers?

46:28SPEAKER- 10 or 15, depending on which chip.

46:31SPEAKER- I believe it's still like very high thermals,

46:33SPEAKERlike relatively low cores for the price points.

46:36SPEAKERLike it's not, you know, not an impressive chip.

46:40SPEAKERLike people are looking at this and going,

46:41SPEAKERoh, this is pretty disappointing.

46:43SPEAKERAnd then meanwhile, we've talked about like AMD's delivering

46:46SPEAKERZen 3 based chips last, their CEO said later this year.

46:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

46:52SPEAKER- But I actually started looking beyond that this week

46:55SPEAKERand the leaked roadmaps say

46:57SPEAKERthat they are gonna have Zen 4 chips out,

46:59SPEAKERlike by the end of next year

47:00SPEAKERthat are on a five nanometer process,

47:01SPEAKERwhich is actually, we didn't even mention

47:03SPEAKERthat these Apple ARM CPUs are said to be

47:06SPEAKERon five nanometer as well.

47:08SPEAKER- Yeah, A14 is supposed to be five nanometer,

47:10SPEAKERwhich is I think the end of the line, right?

47:12SPEAKERFor process strengths.

47:14SPEAKER- Yeah, but I feel like I heard that about seven as well,

47:16SPEAKERso I don't know.

47:17SPEAKER- Fair.

47:18SPEAKER- Also, I know like next to fucking nothing

47:20SPEAKERabout CPU lithography or whatever.

47:25SPEAKER- Now they use x-rays, that's what I know.

47:27SPEAKER- Okay, but I do know like there are multiple,

47:29SPEAKERlike TSMC apparently has like three or four different

47:31SPEAKERversions of their seven nanometer process.

47:33SPEAKERSo this, A, I'm throwing around terms

47:35SPEAKERthat I have no business trying to explain

47:38SPEAKERand B, don't really know what the differences are

47:41SPEAKERamong those.

47:41SPEAKERAnyway, like the bigger point is just like,

47:44SPEAKERyou know, Apple's over here with their ARM chips,

47:46SPEAKERlike AMD is rapidly moving forward with CPU fabrication

47:49SPEAKERand I feel like Intel is just like way behind the curve

47:52SPEAKERon everything right now.

47:53SPEAKER- Well, so this is the way usually Intel moves in,

47:57SPEAKERlike it's not like a sine wave, it's like plateaus, right?

48:00SPEAKERSo they have a big, huge spike

48:03SPEAKERand then it levels off gradually

48:04SPEAKERand then there's a big, huge spike

48:06SPEAKERand then they level off gradually

48:07SPEAKERand then it's a big, huge spike and it levels off gradually.

48:08SPEAKER- Is this just the inevitable consequence of them

48:10SPEAKERenjoying like such market dominance for years

48:12SPEAKERthat they didn't have to push very hard?

48:16SPEAKER- I think it's definitely partly that.

48:18SPEAKERI think the larger thing is that they have,

48:22SPEAKERyou like, they used to sell this,

48:24SPEAKERthey used to try to market this with a TikTok idea

48:26SPEAKERwhere you have--

48:27SPEAKER- I remember that, yeah.

48:28SPEAKERTikTok is the good one, the new architecture

48:33SPEAKERand then the Tok is the process refinement

48:35SPEAKERto that architecture.

48:36SPEAKER- Right.

48:37SPEAKER- Or maybe it's the other way, I can't--

48:38SPEAKER- I think it's the other way around

48:39SPEAKER'cause I always thought that people had it backwards.

48:41SPEAKER- Yeah, it doesn't matter.

48:42SPEAKERThe point is, which way is right doesn't matter on this case.

48:45SPEAKER- Yes, yes.

48:46SPEAKER- The point is, they milk an architecture,

48:51SPEAKERI mean, they spend billions of dollars

48:52SPEAKERdeveloping each new architecture

48:55SPEAKERand then they need to amortize that out

48:57SPEAKERover four or five years

48:58SPEAKERand when they get to the end of that time period,

49:00SPEAKERunless, if anybody has done well that generation,

49:03SPEAKERif AMD has done well that generation,

49:05SPEAKERthen they're gonna be lagging.

49:08SPEAKER- Yeah.

49:10SPEAKER- Part of that is because of the way AMC does

49:14SPEAKERtheir chip design where they do all those chiplets

49:17SPEAKERthat have one integrated bus on the whole thing,

49:20SPEAKERlets them make smaller changes,

49:22SPEAKERbigger changes on smaller parts of the chip

49:25SPEAKERwithout impacting the other stuff as much.

49:29SPEAKER- Okay.

49:31SPEAKER- Should we talk about, I'm really curious,

49:33SPEAKERyou wrote a really good question here

49:34SPEAKERand I have no idea why Apple hasn't started

49:36SPEAKERdoing its own fab other than--

49:38SPEAKER- 'Cause the story points out they are obviously

49:41SPEAKERstill going to be working with TSMC.

49:43SPEAKER- Yeah.

49:45SPEAKER- I have to imagine, Intel does its own fabrication.

49:49SPEAKER- But Intel has always done its own fab.

49:51SPEAKER- Well, that's what I mean.

49:52SPEAKERThey've been in that game for a long time.

49:54SPEAKERWhat I was gonna say is I imagine spinning that business

49:57SPEAKERand that process up from scratch

50:00SPEAKERhas gotta be one of the more expensive undertakings

50:02SPEAKERthat there are in tech.

50:04SPEAKER- It's billions and billions of dollars.

50:07SPEAKER- And if it was anybody other than Apple

50:08SPEAKERexcept maybe like Amazon or Google,

50:10SPEAKERhow many other companies have the amount of liquid capital

50:13SPEAKERjust sitting there that could even pull it off?

50:15SPEAKERVery few.

50:16SPEAKER- Well, I mean--

50:17SPEAKER- I haven't looked it up recently

50:18SPEAKERbut I seem to recall Apple running

50:21SPEAKERwith a fucking insane amount of cash

50:24SPEAKERin the bank at all times.

50:25SPEAKER- Yeah, it's billions and billions of dollars.

50:27SPEAKERAnd so they've gotten into their own CPU design in-house now

50:30SPEAKERlike at what point, maybe like the only answer,

50:35SPEAKERthe only other answer besides the cost I can come up with

50:37SPEAKERis that maybe they already have such favored status

50:40SPEAKERwith the partners they're working with

50:42SPEAKERthat it's not worth it to them

50:43SPEAKER'cause they're already getting what they want.

50:45SPEAKER- Well, okay, so there's two things here.

50:47SPEAKEROne is that Intel's process tech was always the thing

50:53SPEAKERthat was driving the performance in their company.

50:56SPEAKERLike they over the last 40 years were so good at process,

51:00SPEAKERshrinks and die changes and stuff like that,

51:02SPEAKERthat that was a primary just competitive difference

51:07SPEAKERbetween them and the other CPU manufacturers

51:09SPEAKERin the '90s and late '80s and even into the 2000s.

51:13SPEAKER- Is that the situation where that was true

51:15SPEAKERright up until they started hitting the frequency limits

51:17SPEAKERon silicon and stuff like that?

51:18SPEAKER- Broadwell E was when that started to change, right?

51:21SPEAKER- Moore's law started breaking down.

51:23SPEAKER- Yeah, when, I mean, literally when, yeah,

51:26SPEAKERwhen the density of transistors,

51:28SPEAKERthe cost of increasing the density of transistors

51:30SPEAKERstopped doubling every 18 months,

51:32SPEAKERthat's when they started having issues.

51:34SPEAKER- I mean, it's around when you saw clock rates

51:36SPEAKERkind of stabilize as opposed to like

51:38SPEAKERrapidly going up all the time, right?

51:40SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, we've seen that happen a couple of times.

51:42SPEAKERThat happened with the Pentium, with the Pentium 4 era.

51:46SPEAKER'Cause remember they originally designed that thing

51:47SPEAKERto take you to five or eight gigahertz

51:49SPEAKERor something ridiculous and it never happened

51:51SPEAKERbecause they couldn't manage the heat.

51:53SPEAKER- Yeah, like we've been hovering

51:54SPEAKERbetween three and four for how long now?

51:56SPEAKER- Exactly.

51:57SPEAKERSo AMD used to own their own boundaries

52:01SPEAKERand they spun them off 10 or 12 years ago now,

52:04SPEAKERmore than that, mid 2000s,

52:07SPEAKERto a company called Global Foundries,

52:09SPEAKERwhich then competes with TSMC and all the other fabs.

52:14SPEAKERAnd the reason they spun it off

52:15SPEAKERwas 'cause they specifically said they couldn't afford

52:18SPEAKERto do both R&D for the chips and R&D for the fabs

52:22SPEAKERbecause keeping the fabs state of the art

52:24SPEAKERis a constant process.

52:25SPEAKER- Oh, sure.

52:26SPEAKER- Like you're not always,

52:28SPEAKERyou're obviously not pulling out like one machine

52:30SPEAKERand putting another machine in,

52:31SPEAKERbut they have to have a constant upgrade plan

52:35SPEAKERfor those facilities or else they fall behind

52:38SPEAKERand they're valueless.

52:39SPEAKER- That makes sense.

52:41SPEAKERI am probably, as with most things,

52:42SPEAKERunderestimating the complexity

52:44SPEAKERof keeping that business going.

52:45SPEAKERLike even the tiny little bit

52:47SPEAKERthat I know about chip fabrication,

52:50SPEAKERlike just the length that they go to

52:51SPEAKEReven on like the molecular or even in the atomic level

52:53SPEAKERto keep that stuff competitive

52:55SPEAKERor is it like they're just mind boggling?

52:58SPEAKER- Yeah, it's one of those things

53:01SPEAKERthat it's better to just pay somebody who's good at it

53:04SPEAKERand pay them to keep your business going.

53:06SPEAKERAnd Apple, with the number of ARM chips that they make,

53:10SPEAKERit's like they're gonna be a very,

53:15SPEAKERthey're a very important customer to a company like TSMC,

53:17SPEAKERwhich is an enormous, enormous fab.

53:20SPEAKERBut like Apple will buy all the space that they need

53:23SPEAKERon the three fabs that they wanna work on or whatever

53:26SPEAKERfor the time period that they need it.

53:27SPEAKER'Cause that stuff's all predictable.

53:29SPEAKERIn normal years, that stuff's all predictable.

53:31SPEAKERThis year, who knows what's gonna happen?

53:33SPEAKER- Yeah, again, Apple is probably the only company

53:35SPEAKERI would actually ask this question about

53:36SPEAKERjust because A, they have so much money

53:38SPEAKERand B, they are so obsessive about controlling

53:40SPEAKERevery link in the chain.

53:43SPEAKER- Yeah, but with this one,

53:44SPEAKERbut with the fab especially,

53:47SPEAKERlike they can specify what they want so precisely

53:50SPEAKERand hold the company to it contractually

53:53SPEAKERand the companies deliver really reliably,

53:55SPEAKERI think it's fine.

53:56SPEAKER- Also, I guess the good counterpoint to this is,

53:58SPEAKERI feel like, and this is anecdotal,

54:00SPEAKERbut every time I see stories about supply chain problems

54:03SPEAKERwith other electronics, it's pretty much always chalked up

54:06SPEAKERto demand for mobile being too great.

54:08SPEAKER- Yeah.

54:09SPEAKER- So like I assume they're just getting everything they want

54:11SPEAKERlike they're first in line for any capacity

54:14SPEAKERfor manufacturing anyway, right?

54:15SPEAKER- Well, Samsung and Apple probably

54:18SPEAKERare the two big ones, yeah.

54:19SPEAKER- Right.

54:20SPEAKER- So it makes me wonder if the coronavirus,

54:24SPEAKERthe impact, we're starting to see manufacturing

54:27SPEAKERstart cranking back up again in China finally.

54:32SPEAKERAnd I had written this question,

54:33SPEAKERI don't think it's a good question

54:34SPEAKERnow that I think about it a little bit more,

54:35SPEAKERbut if Apple has to choose between Mac and iPhone

54:38SPEAKERfor ARM chips, obviously iPhone's gonna win.

54:41SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the bulk of the business, right?

54:43SPEAKERBut also the number of Macs Apple sells

54:46SPEAKERin a year is a rounding error compared

54:48SPEAKERto the number of iPhones that they sell.

54:51SPEAKER- Right.

54:51SPEAKER- So probably it doesn't matter.

54:53SPEAKER- Yeah.

54:54SPEAKER- Probably they can make both.

54:54SPEAKER- There is a, I don't know if you saw,

54:55SPEAKERthere is a short, I just, I had it and I lost it,

54:59SPEAKERa short passage in that, I don't know,

55:02SPEAKERthis is a Bloomberg story.

55:03SPEAKERHave we been saying business insider this whole time?

55:06SPEAKER- Yeah, it's Bloomberg.

55:07SPEAKER- Sorry, this is a Bloomberg story.

55:09SPEAKER- We'll put a link in the show notes.

55:12SPEAKERHere it is, the switch away from Intel is complex,

55:13SPEAKERrequiring close collaboration between Apple's software,

55:15SPEAKERhardware, and component sourcing teams.

55:17SPEAKERGiven work from home orders and disruptions

55:20SPEAKERin the company's Asia-based supply chain,

55:21SPEAKERthe shift could be delayed according to their sources.

55:25SPEAKER- I mean, I think that makes sense.

55:28SPEAKER- So yeah, there is some speculation about that already.

55:31SPEAKER- They've spent a lot of time on this.

55:32SPEAKERThey're clearly not gonna do it until it's ready.

55:34SPEAKER- Yeah.

55:35SPEAKER- I think it happens.

55:37SPEAKER- It's a balancing act, right?

55:39SPEAKER- Yeah, it really is, and like if they roll,

55:43SPEAKERlike right now I think this said,

55:45SPEAKERand there was an analyst, I can't remember who it was,

55:47SPEAKERbut it's somebody who is on my list of the good analyst

55:49SPEAKERand not the bad analyst, said,

55:54SPEAKERlooking at first half, 2016, sorry, 2021,

56:00SPEAKERwhich means they would announce it at WWDC this year

56:04SPEAKERand then we would get some sort of developer preview

56:07SPEAKERprobably for iPads later in the year,

56:09SPEAKERmaybe even in the summer,

56:11SPEAKERand that would give people six months to a year

56:14SPEAKERto update their apps.

56:17SPEAKERI think that feels aggressive given what we know now,

56:20SPEAKERbut since there are also been rumors

56:22SPEAKERthat they're gonna hold off on flagship phones this year,

56:25SPEAKERmaybe they hold off on flagship phones,

56:28SPEAKERroll this out for the Mac, and it lets them,

56:33SPEAKERI mean, the thing that rolling out

56:35SPEAKERall of the same processor at the same time does

56:37SPEAKERis it doesn't give them time to scale fabrication.

56:39SPEAKERSo if you look at how Nvidia rolls out new GPUs,

56:42SPEAKERthey usually pick one SKU and often it's the high end,

56:46SPEAKERbut sometimes it's the low end

56:47SPEAKERif they're moving to a new process.

56:49SPEAKERSo they'll take a late cycle die refresh

56:53SPEAKERof a mid range part, like a 2060 level part,

56:56SPEAKERand they'll move it to the next process size down,

56:58SPEAKERwhich will make it run cooler and more efficiently

57:00SPEAKERat the same TDP or run faster at the same TDP,

57:05SPEAKERand then they'll test out that process on the old chip

57:08SPEAKERbefore they spin up the new chip

57:09SPEAKERthat uses the process by default.

57:11SPEAKER- Right.

57:12SPEAKER- And I don't think, I haven't seen any indications

57:16SPEAKERthat Apple has a way to do that with this stuff.

57:21SPEAKERAnytime you move to a new process tech, it's scary,

57:25SPEAKERand moving from 10 or seven to five nanometers

57:29SPEAKERis a pretty substantial jump.

57:30SPEAKERSo I don't know, we'll see.

57:32SPEAKER- Can they actually, from an investor standpoint,

57:34SPEAKERcan they afford to not refresh flagship phones

57:36SPEAKERfor a whole extra year?

57:38SPEAKER- I think, I mean, look,

57:40SPEAKERI don't know what's gonna happen in two weeks.

57:42SPEAKERYou're asking about something's gonna happen in four months.

57:44SPEAKER- Yeah, I just, I have to assume

57:46SPEAKERthat constitutes enough of their bottom line

57:47SPEAKERthat, I mean, they've got, you know,

57:48SPEAKERthey've got earnings reports

57:49SPEAKERto worry about at some point, right?

57:51SPEAKER- Is it worse to not,

57:53SPEAKERis it worse to make a billion phones and sell 250 million

57:56SPEAKERor not sell 250 million phones

57:59SPEAKERand not have 750 billion phones on,

58:02SPEAKER- 750 million phones on your books, right?

58:05SPEAKER- If I can answer that question, I would be a,

58:08SPEAKER- We'd be making a lot more money.

58:09SPEAKER- Might be a CFO somewhere or something like that.

58:11SPEAKER- Exactly.

58:12SPEAKER- Hey, speaking of,

58:13SPEAKERI think this is as good a place as any to wrap it up.

58:15SPEAKER- Yeah, it's time to thank our CFO.

58:18SPEAKER- I think we should thank our CFO.

58:22SPEAKERI'm going to take a moment

58:23SPEAKER'cause I need to make sure we haven't gotten any new,

58:26SPEAKERI didn't do this before the show,

58:27SPEAKERso we'll cut this bit out.

58:29SPEAKER- What if we just kept talking right through it?

58:30SPEAKER- We could keep talking through it

58:31SPEAKERand people could hear me type.

58:32SPEAKER- People love behind the scenes.

58:34SPEAKERI have, that lesson has been reinforced to me

58:36SPEAKERover and over for the last six or seven weeks

58:38SPEAKERthat we've been doing this,

58:39SPEAKERthat I don't think there is anything too inside baseball.

58:44SPEAKER- Oh, well, there you go.

58:45SPEAKER- For people to be interested in hearing.

58:47SPEAKER- I'm typing in a two factor code right now.

58:48SPEAKERIt's very exciting.

58:50SPEAKER- Fascinating.

58:51SPEAKER- Two factor login on our Patreon, so hackers beware.

58:56SPEAKERWe, hold on, I'm still looking, takes a minute.

59:01SPEAKERJust got to fill that dead air.

59:02SPEAKERYeah, keep going.

59:03SPEAKERIt's got to keep talking about how we're using,

59:05SPEAKERwe're trialing Jitsi for this remote podcast

59:10SPEAKERinstead of the Discord and Hangouts combo of Doom.

59:13SPEAKER- I think it worked really well.

59:15SPEAKER- I think it's pretty good.

59:16SPEAKERIt looks like, first of all, I, man, I fucking,

59:19SPEAKERI know it's a hassle and a headache most of the time,

59:21SPEAKERbut I love open source software

59:23SPEAKERbecause this thing is basically Google Hangouts,

59:26SPEAKERexcept that we were able to get

59:28SPEAKERreally good detailed information

59:30SPEAKERabout whether we had a peer to peer connection going.

59:33SPEAKERWe were able to--

59:34SPEAKER- Turn off AGC.

59:35SPEAKER- Yeah, we were able to turn off the automatic gain control

59:37SPEAKERby specifying a switch or an argument

59:41SPEAKERin the URL for the meeting.

59:43SPEAKER- Yep.

59:44SPEAKER- Like they give you control and options

59:45SPEAKERthat you just don't have with most commercial products.

59:48SPEAKER- This is dangerously close to an advertisement.

59:50SPEAKERWe don't accept advertisements here.

59:52SPEAKER- This is, this call that we're in right now

59:54SPEAKERto record this podcast is literally the first time

59:55SPEAKERwe've used this product.

59:56SPEAKERWe don't have any association,

59:58SPEAKERbut also again, it's a free product, so.

1:00:01SPEAKER- But do you know, you know who we do think

1:00:03SPEAKERinstead of advertisers, Brad?

1:00:04SPEAKER- Who's that?

1:00:05SPEAKER- We think our patrons.

1:00:06SPEAKER- Yeah, our, I'm sorry, our what?

1:00:08SPEAKER- Patrons.

1:00:09SPEAKER- Yes.

1:00:10SPEAKER- Can I do it again?

1:00:11SPEAKER- Those.

1:00:12SPEAKERNope, we're good.

1:00:13SPEAKERKeep going.

1:00:13SPEAKER- Especially, so everybody,

1:00:15SPEAKERthank you to everybody who contributes

1:00:16SPEAKERto the TechPod Patreon.

1:00:18SPEAKERThe URL is www.patreon.com/techpod.

1:00:24SPEAKERAnd a special thanks this week to our executive producers,

1:00:28SPEAKERAndrew Cotton and David Allen.

1:00:30SPEAKERThank you guys so much.

1:00:31SPEAKER- Yes.

1:00:32SPEAKER- And if you would like to find out

1:00:32SPEAKERhow to support the podcast yourself

1:00:34SPEAKERand get access to our behind the scenes episodes,

1:00:37SPEAKERlike the very first one which went up last week,

1:00:39SPEAKERwhich was about planning.

1:00:42SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:00:43SPEAKER- And only planning.

1:00:43SPEAKERWe did not talk about anything else.

1:00:45SPEAKER- Oh.

1:00:46SPEAKER- Just plans for the podcast.

1:00:47SPEAKER- Certainly not the breaking news

1:00:49SPEAKERthat happened right in the middle of it

1:00:50SPEAKERwhere I got my RAM from Portugal.

1:00:51SPEAKER- We did not talk about RAM from Portugal.

1:00:53SPEAKERWe did not talk about misters.

1:00:54SPEAKERWe did not talk about.

1:00:56SPEAKER- Definitely didn't open that thing right there

1:00:57SPEAKERin the middle of the recording.

1:00:58SPEAKER- Nope, and we didn't talk about other stuff

1:01:00SPEAKERthat came up along the way.

1:01:01SPEAKERThere were no distractions.

1:01:03SPEAKERIt was 100% focused conversation about May podcasts.

1:01:08SPEAKERAnd you can get access to that

1:01:10SPEAKERif you subscribe to the Patreon

1:01:13SPEAKERas well as the TechPod Discord,

1:01:17SPEAKERwhich is, it is consistently wonderful.

1:01:22SPEAKER- Oh yeah, I would not have gotten Neo Geo

1:01:24SPEAKERup and running on the mister last night

1:01:25SPEAKERas fast as I did if I hadn't been able to ask for help

1:01:27SPEAKER'cause that was a real boondoggle.

1:01:30SPEAKER- I, every time I dip into the,

1:01:34SPEAKERthere's like three channels that I check in

1:01:37SPEAKERlike once a week, maybe twice a week

1:01:38SPEAKERjust to kind of see what's going on.

1:01:40SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:01:41SPEAKER- And the internet broadcasting, the music creation,

1:01:45SPEAKERand the mister channels have all taught me stuff

1:01:49SPEAKERin the last week that I did not know.

1:01:51SPEAKERAnd it's been very good.

1:01:53SPEAKER- The Linux channel is a pretty great place

1:01:56SPEAKERto ask questions about stuff like that.

1:01:59SPEAKER- And you can get access to the Discord

1:02:01SPEAKERfor like two bucks a month.

1:02:01SPEAKERSo I highly recommend, it's techpod.com/patreon.

1:02:06SPEAKERI guess that'll do it for us this week.

1:02:08SPEAKERSee you all next week.

1:02:09SPEAKER(upbeat music)

1:02:26SPEAKER(horse neighs)