John
7UP is will do in a pinch but not really. I mean I like 7UP. I do I like it but it's it's like saying is it just chocolate or vanilla. Like, I like both of them but when you wanted vanilla and you get chocolate like oh, but I wanted vanilla right so even though they look the same and people will say the tastes kind of the same, you know anyway, I have no Sprite or 7UP in the house and I never do.
John
Well, here's the thing. The only reason I'm known for this drink is because when I go out to a restaurant and you know either the thing comes with a drink or I don't want to just have water because we're doing everything fancy but I have to pick something to drink it's not water and when I'm at home I'm not forced to make that choice so does water alone.
Casey
Oh man. We're gonna get to that but let's not get there yet. All right. I would like to re air my grievance and I will be very quick about it. Aaron is still having intermittent SMS and we're really group MMS issues. Please Apple for the sake of my marriage please can we fix this for real this time you sort of fixed it and what was it like 14 one something and then 14 three or whatever just came out? It was like "No, no, no, we fixed it for realsies this time." Literally an hour ago she was not receiving group MMS's. I filed a feedback before you all get angry feedback FB8893003 there will be a link in the show notes Apple people Please save me, save me.
John
Either Bang & Olufsen headphones that I mentioned last show there are sort of like Air Pods Max. I think it's an interesting comparison. Because Bang & Olufsen is a similar kind of like luxury fancy brand. And in fact the appearance and construction is very similar, you know metal or the appearance of metal and you know they even have a white model with the white pads and white strap and everything's kind of aeroponic so these are the Beoplay god I really don't understand what they do but it started to be. It's a bad name anyway. The BeoplayH95. They are $800 as you would imagine from Bang & Olufsen is like a little step up in terms of price from Apple because Bang & Olufsen is clearly a luxury brand. It doesn't have any pretense of being a real consumer brand. They're 323 grams instead of 385 like the Max.
A little bit lighter but they do have metal on the open a link in the show notes these they come with the hardcase and they are symmetrically folding but they do fold the the ear cups into the negative space made by the headband so they get smaller than the Apple ones. And they come with a hard case two things that Apple chose not to do and or blew it on including depending on your stance on it. And they come with a regular 3.5 inch, or 3.5 millimeter audio cable thing plus the two prong little airplane headphone adapter plus a USB-C, what looks like CD a charging cable and Bang & Olufsen also makes a bunch of different models they make this $800 one they also make a $300 one and a $500 one which dropped various amounts of features from the $800 one.
Marco
I believe that the swiping thing I think it actually turns I don't know, most of B&O's headphones, they have like light touch panel controls, which frankly I've tried a bunch of people keep asking me about whether I've tried the H25's and B&O made a wonderful wired headphone. The H6 second gen was one of my favorite wired headphones ever. But I have tried almost all of their Bluetooth models up to about two years ago, and they were all garbage to me like and I couldn't believe that the company that made that amazing wired H6 second gen could then never follow up with anything that sounded nearly as good as it in their wireless segment.
And they've always had really finicky controls. However, I think they have more premium materials than what Apple's going for. I think they are by some tastes including mine I think more attractive than the air pods max. But you know, like I see what they're going for. But as far as I know they have not yet made a great sounding wireless headphone. But I have not yet tried this model but honestly, they burned so much credibility with me over the years that I would not drop $800 to buy this even if I thought I could easily return it
John
I just double check these ones they do actually have a physically turning dial I'm not sure how hard it is to use but like the reason I'm bringing it up is just because they look so much like the Air Pods and because Bang & Olufsen being I don't know more experienced more practically minded than Apple which sounds strange for a company that is known for its impractical looking, you know electronics, having a compact folding headphone with a hard case that comes with the accessories you would expect in an $800 headphones so I feel like Apple really needs to learn something if they want to play in this space. It's okay to include the cable and not make you pay 35 bucks but it's even okay to make a hard case and an adapter for airplanes. It's fine, it doesn't diminish your brand to do that.
John
The other button there has been confusion about this. Marco will be able to clarify but here I'll lay out the confusion. Then you will give us definitive clarity in the review section which is coming. Don't worry everyone. So the confusion about the AirPods Max and battery life last time like "Oh, do you have to put them out stupid case to make them to go to sleep?" If you don't do that they'll be on all the time. And we're like, "Well, why would they be on all the time? They have a million sensors, they can tell when you're wearing them, wouldn't they go off?" Matt Panzarino said that they fall asleep. We read that in the last episode his tweet about that, that if you take them off, they do you know, go to sleep or go into an off mode or other people like "No it's going to drain your battery." Right?
So this was a twist on this as the reviews are coming out that the button on the top, the one that normally toggles between transparency and noise canceling. There's a preference in Bluetooth settings. And I think you can get through it through a control center as well, where you can change that to cycle through three things. You would press it once and it goes to transparency, press it again, it goes noise canceling press the third time and it goes to a setting called off, right? So it's like okay, well, I guess you don't have to use the case for that because it goes through a setting called off. But that doesn't mean off as in the headphones are off. All it means is that it's not transparency and not noise cancelling. At least that's what we know so far.
John
Oh, well, maybe you can't tell us about the battery life things. But I will just add now that everyone who's had them for a little bit longer has said if you're freaking out about the idea that you can't turn these things off, don't worry because if you wore them all day long and played music really loud all day, they would still asked all day, so it's more of an academic concern than the a real one. I would say that fairly definitively. At this point. If you get these and never want to use that stupid case, you'll probably be fine until I mean maybe the batteries go off a cliff in two years and they get this dark and terrible battery life you have to replace the battery but anyway, there's that and ... again about this thing. This is one of the tweets "There are several states obviously they pause right away then a few seconds later they shut down the connection they aren't just on forever when you take them off."
Casey
All right. Some follow up that bug about SMS has not been received properly I just got a like three hour late group MMS so it's happening to me too. I'm over at Apple over it so over it. Okay, so Marco last we heard our intrepid hero was about to make his walk of shame with his extremely large computer presumably in your bespoke carrying case. What's going on with your setup? You've been talking about the LG 5K your favorite monitor of all time can you update us on what the world is? What the world is going on here?
Marco
So yeah, I brought my iMac pro into the Apple store. I brought it in my giant case on top of the dolly I bought for it so I wheeled this giant case from the Apple Store I'm amazed they let me in the door but yeah and they were very nice the stores limited operation because of quarantine and so they just had like a few Genius Bar stations spread across like the front right as you walk in the whole rest of us are shut down so it's it's kind of a minimal operation but they handled everything really well. They first said "Oh that sounds like it might be software ran a little diagnostic." But then the lead genius oversaw was like hey, you know what this might be some other kind of weird thing let's take it in. So they I don't know they use the term admitted it like in a hospital like they whatever is it they they took it.
They took it like you know for a few days and then have called to say that it indeed failed some kind of firmware level test so they could rule out software, whatever that means. And they have determined that it needs a new logic board and parts for that are a little slow right now it seems the logic board could be 14 days out.
Marco
So, here I am. As my temporary solution which I knew I would have to use this for a little while and this is part of the reason why I did this around Christmas because we you know we don't really do much for Christmas week so I don't have like heavy computing needs. So I knew this would be a good time to not be with my main computer. But in the meantime, I have this Ultra fine LG 5K monitor plugged into my quite wonderful and pleasant new M1 MacBook Air. And I have it in clamshell mode. I'm not using both screens. I'm only using the LG, the Air is closed and on top of a speaker over there with two cables plugged into it because the Ultra fine LG monitor is just so bad.
And like you know, as a screen, it's fine. It is one of the only screens that has ever existed. And I believe the only one currently for sale. That is 5K resolution at 27 inches. As far as I can tell there are no other ones. There's one by a Planar, which it gets even worse reviews and use a display port instead. And it's seems to be out of production, or at least in very low production. And then there's this one. And that's, that's it. All the PC people are like, "Oh, just there's 1,000,027 inch monitors." Yeah, they're all 4k, because that's what gamers want. That's what Windows users want. And none of them by Max and Mac people don't buy them. And so it's a whole different world. And that doesn't cover this and the DPI is wrong. And screen elements would be all wrong sizes and everything. So I'm not interested in any of those.
Casey
Let me just interrupt you real quick because I can hear the typing of this. Saying to you, what is wrong with you get one of the 97 inch curved displays or one of those god awful things that I don't want to speak for you Marco but as a fellow old man, I probably can. I don't want a curved display. I don't want a 30 some inch display. I want something that's like by iMac. Well, I mean, I have my iMac. You know, in this hypothetical, I want something that's like my iMac. That's nice and flat, and rectangular, and 5K. Now I could alternatively and this is what I did in my jobby job, I could get smaller 4k monitors.
But in my personal opinion, you need to be at 5K, if you're going to be a 27 or more inches. That's just my opinion. But that's why I like it. And I think I speak for you in saying that. I have zero interest in one of these 96 inch curved displays, none, do not care. I know people love them, they are not for me do not want please do not write us because we know they exist. We do not want.
Marco
Well, I mean two things. Number one, like those are almost always not high DPI. So if you're what you're going for is like the Retina look for Max, they usually don't have the density to do that. But number two, this is very much not just your opinion. There's a range of DPI that monitors can have, where screen elements on Max will look like they're in roughly the right size range, like how many pixels does it take to or like how many square inches does you know a thing of this size take up? That's like, that's an a fixed range. So we have these ranges of like, what's the correct resolution for 27 inches? And the answer is either 2560 by something, which is one X and non retina, or 5120 by something which is two X retina.
And no one makes three x and in this range. Interestingly, Dell makes an 8K monitor. But it's actually too high density to be two x but too low to be three X. 8K and like it's like 32 inches, I think and 8K at two X would have to be about 40 inches to get to have the right DPI range. But anyway, so there are, you're right there are some 4K monitors that are in the right DPI range, which at 4k is roughly 22 to 24 inches. There are some of those that exist but not a lot even if that and one of them is the LG Ultra Fine 4k. Anyway, so the LG man, I haven't used this monitor full time in a number of years. And I've forgotten like how mediocre it is. Like, to me the two biggest problems are the stand is total garbage that it's very, it's very wobbly, like talk about like typing on your keyboard and having your monitor wobble. This is way worse. It's a terrible stand for wobble, way worse than like an iMac.
Even on the same desk with the same keyboard and the same person banging on the keys. Also, it has the like most PC monitor mounts, it has a 360 degree rotating things, you can rotate the monitor to portrait orientation or landscape if you want. But it doesn't like latch in very well to those even 90 degree rotations. So the most common thing of having it just regular in portrait orientation, it's really hard to get it exactly level. Like, it feels like it's slightly off all the time. And you can like move it slightly and it stays like it's a crappy cheap stand. And the monitor is wrapped in a crappy cheap enclosure with a crappy cheap backlight. And there's tons of backlight leakage around the bottom edge. And so if you have like a very dark screen in a very dark room, you can see the bottom edge kind of glowing a little bit and it looks like gray instead of black.
So yeah, definitely huge. But besides the stand the other major problem with this monitor is that the USB ports that are on it, you basically can't use for anything that matters because they are unreliable, extremely, extremely unreliable. And you can't use them for things like audio or keyboards. I'm not even sure what you can use them for, I guess like charging your phone, you could use it for that. But that's about all you can do reliably on those on those USB ports. So I have ordered the CalDigit Thunderbolt Dock because it has by far seemingly the best reviews for Thunderbolt docks because I'm relying now on.
While that gets here which isn't here yet. I'm relying on my USB-C hubs that I have. I have two USB-C hubs. One I've never talked about because it's weird and boring and doesn't seem to exist anymore. And the other one is like you know like one of those that everybody has their laptops that has like the Ethernet and the two USB-A and the card reader, you know, an HDMI like that thing, the thing that everybody has a cost about 50 bucks, like I so I have one of those. And another weird thing that has USB-C upstream ports. But they're both unreliable in different ways. And at one point to get everything working, I had to daisy chain them both, which is not a good idea.
And I had to then the second one didn't have enough power to to power USB devices off of it. So I had to use its input port to like to plug in a separate USB C power adapter. So now I have this big like square of power routing, and I'm like this, there's no way this is going to work. And it actually kind of did for a while, but it caused weird noises and things not even just ground loops, like weird other electrical noises in various things. I'm like, Alright, I can't on audio. I have all these all this noise everywhere.
But anyway, this is just an unreliable setup. And what I ultimately want, I am so far temporarily, okay, with having the laptop as my primary computer plugged into a monitor, it's not ideal, I would rather have a desktop. But right now, you can't get the new M1 Mac Mini at any reasonable amount of time. If you want 16GB's of RAM, I still totally want more GB's of RAM than that, and more disk space than two terabytes for my desktop solutions here. So ultimately, I think I am going to wait for an iMac or higher spec Mac Mini or Mac Pro before I totally replace this desktop. But in the meantime, using it temporarily. As you know MacBook plus monitor, it seems to be fine. So far, I haven't ran into any major issues that have to do with like the laptop interfacing with this crappy display.
The only issues I've had have been with peripherals and you know, just getting all these terrible ports to work reliably. And the only thing that I think is going to fix that is if the CalDigit Thunderbolt thing is of the quality that everyone seems to think it is and say it is then I will plug the laptop directly into that. And then plug everything else into that and not even use the monitors ports or any of these terrible USB-C hubs that I have at all. And that should theoretically fix my problems if it works. Now, I was tempted instead of ordering the CalDigit thing on Amazon and having it take almost a week to get here because this island, I was tempted to island slash COVID slash Christmas by the way.
I was tempted to just set money on fire and just go to the damn Apple store and get the XDR and the Apple Store also sells the CalDigit so I was I was looking like "Hey what stores have this in stock tomorrow? And what's the boat schedule that could possibly get me there but enough time to get back before the last boat" and I was looking into all this stuff and looking into it. You know what? What does the XDR seem like in practice? And what is the 5K seem like the LG 5K? You know seem like in practice. And do I really want to be looking at like, I'm a professional. Like, I am an Apple commentator and a professional developer. I am 38 years old goddamnit, do I want to be looking at this screen that I hate every day?
So I looked but ultimately like I basically like you know made made a pro and con list between the XDR and the LG 5K and it's not as clear cut as I would hope. You know the XDR has some things about it that are significant downsides to me. And you know, price is the biggest downside. I mean, you know, the configuration I want would be $6,000 plus $500 for Apple care plus tax. So just under $7,000
Marco
Yeah, I have a very hard time justifying that for what it is and for what I need. Because I don't need the HDR side of it. I don't need that at all. I really don't like that it has a fan. I know John, I know you said that you never hear it in practice and you're probably right. But I really dislike that it has a fan at all because for something that expensive that I would hope would be so long lasting and so long lived. Having a fan is a warning sign for me. It's that like I don't love that. There also is like practical dance. I was like I couldn't do my one cable solution with that because 6K takes up so much bandwidth over the Thunderbolt 3 connection, that there's not enough speed left.
And like I know there's like the weird display compression thing, but there's not much bandwidth left for those ports on it. That's why the ports are not Thunderbolt, they're USB, and they're in many configurations USB two speeds that have USB three speeds. And you can't plug the 6K into Thunderbolt docks, or Thunderbolt base stations or whatever they're called, like the CalDigit you have to plug it directly into the computer, at least as far as I know, it seems like no Thunderbolt dock supports it. So that now there's two cables instead of one going to the laptop and two cables, I have to keep plugging and unplugging everyday as I take my laptop upstairs and then bring it back downstairs like so. So there's a twist, it adds a lot of downsides.
And I also, I don't like the backlighting method of having those 576 LEDs that can all be individually controlled, because that creates the potential for non uniformity in the backlight. And that creates the potential for like those halos where you have something bright in the middle of a bunch of dark, and you have like a big halo blob around it. To me that's incredibly inelegant. I don't like when TV started doing that. I don't like Apple doing it. I'm not looking forward to the rumored micro LED screens that are coming in higher end products, I guess next year sometime, because that's probably gonna be the exact same thing. I don't like that, to me that's inelegant I would rather have every pixel be individually controlled and totally independent and totally consistent and uniform with every other pixel no matter what they are showing.
I don't like display technologies that rely on hacks like that. And I know why they do it to get their XDR, you know, dynamic range. I know that, but I don't like that. And I don't want that. I want uniformity and elegance across the entire display panel. And I don't have that with the XDR. It comes close but there's that there's that giant asterisk on that. And I don't like that.
John
If you're worried about it from an elegance perspective, like that's your prerogative but I can tell you that at none when you're not showing HDR video, you will never see like that's, that does not manifest if I just told you "Oh, the back lights on 100% all the time." You would have to believe it because there's nothing you can see on the screen with your eyes without like an instrument to show the dynamic backlighting. Now, if you put it in HDR mode and show a starfield or black background with a white square moving across it, maybe then you can pick it up. But even then, you know, it's hard to say but for regular like desktop computer mode, which is the only way you're going to use it because you're not doing HDR video, you can't see any blue, you can't see any of it.
In fact, for all I know, when in this 500 nits mode, the backlight is on 100% all the time, I don't even know. I just I can tell you that you don't see the halo. So I know that sounds gross to you. And you could worry about the you know, electronics sophistication that causes that to happen. But I'm gonna say in practice in regular 500 nit, I'm using my thing as a Mac mode, it is a non issue visually speaking.
John
No, I don't think. Even in the so when you see the thing where people do like when they do reviews of dynamic back like television sets, and they do them HDR mode to show this exact effect like, "hey, it's a black background with some white text, I'm going to show you the haloing" Even when they do that, for televisions, which exhibit this much more. They have to adjust the exposure on the camera because with the naked eye, it's actually a little bit tricky to see. I don't you know, I had a very do very little HDR with this as well. I play Destiny in HDR occasionally. And have some HDR videos that I watch. But none of them really show off haloing.
But I'm absolutely sure I could see it if I give it the worst case scenario of 100% white square moving across a black screen in HDR. But in any other mode and I'm staring at my screen right now. Like there's black against white all over the place, and I cannot see any bloom whatsoever. So yeah, it is I don't like it either. I would never buy it in my television set. But I didn't worry about it for this monitor because monitor levels, it just doesn't show up.
Marco
Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So anyway, so I've decided based on my these concerns and these inelegances for me, I'm not going to get the XDR for now I'm going to stick with the stupid LG as long as it continues to work asterisk, but I just have to not use the LG's built in ports and hope that works well through this CalDigit thing that's on the way. And if it doesn't, then I'll reevaluate. And I'm I'm not excited at all about the LG for long term use. I'm tending It now to be just a bridge between now and either when I decide to switch back to my iMac Pro, which I might do whenever it comes back, or if I decide not to switch back to it, if I get too hooked on the M1 lifestyle.
Then this will just be a temporary thing until I figure out what my next desktop will be. And then we'll see what happens. But if the LG like if the LG breaks, or if something like if something goes wrong with it that I haven't hit yet, in the last few days that I've been using it so far. I would not replace it. Like I can't bring myself as much as I have a hard time spending $7,000 on a 6K. I could not bring myself to buy another one of these. So it's here temporarily, but I don't anticipate this being a permanent solution.
Casey
You know, I understand that you are trying to stay within a $7,000 budget and I'm happy to tell you that on Craigslist here in Richmond, you can get a 2011 Chevrolet Cruze at Carmax here in Richmond, you can get a 2012 fee at 500 pop. There are all sorts of automobile options that you can oh actually here's a $7,000 2005 Jeep Grand Cheroke.
Casey
I agree that, you know, truth be told, I know that you don't particularly do the two monitor thing. But at my jobby job, I had two I think they were LG, if I remember correctly to lg 4K monitors that were like 22 inches, something like that. And truth be told, like if you can get over the fact that you have two monitors on your desk, which for me isn't a big deal. It actually was really, really nice. They were both retina for all intents and purposes. And you know, when you have two of them, you get roughly equivalent amounts of real estate as a 27 inch 5K certainly in a perfect world, I prefer a 27 inch 5K but if you don't want to set $7,000 aflame, you can do this for like 500 bucks or something like that. Now I'm sure you'll hate them for some reason or another. But I mean, it's another option.
Casey
That's funny. All right. So one last piece to follow up an anonymous Apple genius writes, "When taking product into Apple to be service, please just ask them to run the full service diagnostic suite available to all Genius Bar technicians for this particular issue. We do have a cooling diagnostic that will assist with determining the amount of spider eggs in an iMac Pro. The other two recommended diagnostics are FST EFI and FST OS." I'm assuming full service diagnostics for the EFI which is, what does that actually stand for? It's the BIOS right? But what does it actually stand for?
Casey
And then whatever the OS, I presume that's like a software thing. As we are technicians, we do rely on diagnostic tests to advise how we proceed and have troubleshooting guides made available by Apple engineering. On a personal note, I'm sorry for your previous experiences that have caused you to audibly groan at the thought of having to come see us. But I can assure you there are a number of us who are fans and supporters of the tech media slash influencers in your audience. And most this individual said they bought the ATPT with wheels, which means they are the right kind of person. And this person additionally says suggest that we do find it discouraging that the geniuses do find it discouraging to hear those we admire thinks a little of us.
First of all, real time follow up somebody added I think John is extensible firmware interface. So thank you for that John. Second of all, I assumed your groaning was not about going to see an Apple genius necessarily, but just about the fact you have to carry the stupid 27 inch computer on a boat to an Apple store. But correct me if I'm wrong.
Marco
Yeah, like for me, like, the reason why I don't like bringing in my desktops for repair has almost nothing to do with the people I'm going to be interacting with, I've had almost entirely positive experiences there. It's all about just the logistics of getting it there. And then the inconvenience of being without it for all the time in the meantime. And then if I get it back, and it's been, you know, wiped out because, you know, either because they restored it themselves or because they had to replace something that caused a data loss, like replacing the SSD or T2 or whatever, which I think is gonna happen if they're replacing logic board, I assume.
Then I assume that the T2 modules go with it because of the encryption key isn't everything so I assume I'm going to have an empty Mac on the way home. So that's going to mean like not only that I have to bring it there, which is an ordeal, bring it home from there, which is an ordeal. But then also, I'm without it for probably two weeks at least. And when I get it back, I have to restore from everything and deal with all the, you know, little tiny nitpicks and paper cuts that come along with having restored a computer. So you have to do it, which takes a lot of time. And then all the things that didn't have like that stored things in ways that doesn't restore properly, or like, whatever, all that I have to deal with for the next weeks after that.
So it's just a big ordeal for my primary computer. And I'm not looking forward to doing all that. And it's, you know, it sucks, like I depend on these computers. And part of the reason why I buy things like the Mac Pro, and the iMac Pro is that they tend to be pretty reliable over time. And that decreases the chances that I need to do this. Another part of the reason why I don't keep computers for like, five, six years, usually, is that I want to get rid of them before they need service. So I don't have to deal with this. Because I'm running businesses here, I can't afford tons of downtime. And it's very costly to have to deal with all this crap. So I want to minimize the time that to deal with it. So it's nothing to do with the Apple people who are largely great.
And everything to do with just the hassle of doing all this. Finally, I wanted to clarify a number of people have written in to tell me that they have some kind of, you know, business service or Applecare service, where they will send a technician to your house to pick up your desktop and take it away and service it and bring it back to you. And while that sounds fantastic maybe, that only eliminates some of these problems. And I guarantee you they don't serve where I live. Once the steps to get here include get on a boat. I think that's where their service contract with Apple ends. And I think that's when they say sorry, we can't serve your area.
Marco
Well, maybe not. So Alright, so here we are. I got my AirPods max. I've had him for about half a day. And so I can't give any useful information on battery life or obviously travel or anything like that. But I can't tell you how they sound. And I was comparing them all day listening to different music and comparing them to every pair of headphones I have in this house. And so I have a number of opinions on comfort and sound and control and things like that. So just very quick terms I'm going to be using a lot in this I assume everyone's familiar with the concept of bass and treble.
I'm also gonna be talking about the mid range a lot. The mid range is what's between bass and treble. If you ever played with the mid range control, or the middle part of an EQ, you know, it kind of boosts like vocals and the kind of like middle range of the frequencies. You know, it's vocals, electric guitars, some instruments like pianos kind of like live in that range. So that's what I'm talking about here. And then finally, I'm gonna be talking about the soundstage, which is an audio term for like how wide it sounds like the music is coming from or like how big of a room it sounds like you're in.
So anyway, moving on to the actual information here. The first thing you notice, besides the comical packaging in case and oh my God the case. It's as bad as you think it's as awkward and clumsy to get them in or out as you think. It would not surprise me if a number of the people who buy these who aren't nerds and don't follow the reviews, mistake it for packaging and throw it away when they throw it with a box.
John
The best thing I saw on one of the reviews is that when it's in the case, like they have a little notch cut out so you can see the lightning thing like through that little slot the little slits that are at the bottom unexplicable slits to allow scratches to get in I don't know. They made, they didn't even line this slits up with the lightning thing. So they had to put a notch in the slit. But the notch doesn't always line up exactly with the lightning port that is supposed to be on it just if you know it's shoddy all around just doesn't like ill fitting, like an ill fitting suit.
Marco
Yeah, everything about the case is as bad as you think it might be. It's a shame, it really is because it really puts a damper on this product and in a pretty big way. If it is indeed intended to be like traveled with in any capacity. Whether it's even if it just like you know to and from work or something like it's just, it's not. The case is hilariously awkward and bad. It's ineffective as a case, it's annoying to get them in and out like it's not good. So anyway, we talked a lot about the weight, and everyone was kind of worried. The weight I actually don't think is that big of a problem for me in practice.
Granted, these are not my heaviest headphones, like my big plainers are like 500 grams, so these at 350 or whatever is less than that. But they certainly are heavier than than most headphones that people be comparing to things like the common noise cancelling headphones for planes, most portable headphones for like portable music walking around in fashionable ways and fashionable cities for fashionable people. They're generally heavier than those, but I didn't really notice the way as being a problem. Comfort wise, they do have a bit more clamping force, like how hard they squeeze your head than I would like. And part of that is just necessary because of the weight. I wish that was a little bit nicer.
The ear cups themselves leave a lot of room for your ear like compared to other headphones in this category. So other small fashionable portable over ears. Not compared to like giant, you know, the flagship headphones from the big brands that now have all these like nice kind of raindrop shaped ear cups. compared to those they're still small, but compared to their category of like portable ish trendy looking headphones, they do have surprisingly deep and roomy ear cups. Significantly nicer ear cups, or at least more spacious ear cups than the Sony's and the Bose is that people will be comparing them to and that I will be in a minute.
The downside for the comfort for me is that the ear pads themselves are not super comfortable pads. Now some of this, ear pads do break in a little bit over time. And headbands do kind of stretch and loosen limit over time. So the comfort might improve over time. But I think the major theme is gonna stay the same here, which is that it's a little bit heavier, and that therefore causes a bit more clamping force on your head. And the ear pads are not that soft. And they're not that, they don't spread the weight over a very thick rim. If that makes sense. What makes super comfortable headphones super comfortable, is like you can imagine the opposite, you can imagine if like the ear pads formed little like triangle ridges that just ringed your ear with the thinnest thing possible. Like a piece of cardboard that would like that would be uncomfortable because it would be putting all the way to them on a very tiny little circle around your ears.
And the opposite would be like some like giant thick rim, you know looks like a fat tire kind of you know that kind of pad that puts a huge surface area against your head so it spreads the weight out the AirPods Max are too close to the former that they don't have a wide enough earpad rim to distribute the weight evenly. And so it ends up being uncomfortable primarily because of that, because of the ear pads themselves. And the ear pad covering material. You know on most headphones, it's either real or fake leather. Some kind of you know vinyl or you know something like that. The ear pad covers here are this kind of almost rough fabric that's almost itchy. It's not particularly comfortable and I would not, I would never describe it as luxurious.
So if what they're going for is luxury materials. I think they've achieved the look but not the feel like it does not feel luxurious at all. And there are other competitors you know Bang & Olufsen as we mentioned earlier and even the other noise cancelling with the Bose and Sony noise cancelling models have way nicer feeling ear pads than these. And I think if Apple chooses to, they could dramatically improve the comfort of the AirPods Max which is different ear pads and they're replaceable like they're magnetic, you pop them off in two seconds and put new ones on so they could actually replace like released revised ear pads for these down the road that could fit this I don't know if they will, but they could and I think they should because that could dramatically improve comfort with a few design tweaks and maybe materials changes on the ear pads.
Moving on to sound. The AirPods Max is a headphone that is not afraid of treble. Now this is kind of a divide in the headphone world whether you want to hear treble response and treble detail or whether you don't whether you want it to be like you know, quote "roll it off" treble sounds crisp and sharp, but it can be a little bit fatiguing for some people. The rode off reduced treble sound is very popular among high end headphones because it sounds like warm it's a very you know, old radio voice warm feel, but kind of not a lot of detail, you know, and the treble is like yeah, right in your face.
So, this has kind of been a split in headphone tuning for a while. The Max likes treble, it gives you a lot of it. This is you know if you're if you like Beyerdynamic headphones or HiFiMAN headphones, this is for you. If you like the you know Sennheiser or Odyssey sound, this is probably not for you. Fortunately, I'm in the treble lovers group
Marco
Yeah, it's for me it's great for almost any other headphone in this category. This is gonna sound like too much treble. But if you've heard, if you've heard headphones with good, well done, treble response, like my beloved HE-6, it sounds you know right in line. It's also, it's closer in line to what you'd get from like, quote, "fun headphones", which I'll get to in a minute. Because what that involves basically is a sound that is not trying to be completely flat frequency response, but is aiming for something that is just a little bit more pleasing. Imagine if you had a bass and treble dial, imagine if you turned up the bass and the treble each a little bit, not too much, but just give them give the bass and the treble a bit of a boost from neutral.
And it makes it a little bit more live a little bit a little bit more fun sounding to most people. That is headphone people call a V-shaped sound signature. Because like if you imagine on the EQ like the the left is the base and the right is the treble and they're boosted but the middle is not. So it forms like a little bit V with the controls. These have that, but it's not like super aggressive about it, it's not really in your face about how much treble and bass it is boosting, you know, usually that kind of toning of a headphone means the bass especially is usually really overpowering. And that the mid range is so withdrawn by comparison that the vocals are kind of hard to hear overall the bass like you know, the vocals are almost withdrawn into the background. Electric guitars are often you know, falling into the background.
Because the bass is pushed so high, the Max does not have that problem it is it is a little bit V-shaped a little bit fun, a little bit boosting and treble and bass, but it's much closer to neutral than we usually get with that kind of boost. And the mid range does not feel buried or overpowered or withdrawn. So mid range is, I'm a mid range snob. And what converted me to a mid range snob was Planar headphones. And you know the way headphones work, they have to move air somehow. And very quickly, I don't want to waste too much time on this very quickly, they can move air by having this cone with a magnet that drives that forward and back, which is how almost all headphones work.
Those are called dynamic headphones speakers usually almost all work that way as well. You've seen these speaker shaped cones, it's in the volume icon, it's everywhere. A different way that some high end headphones work is called planar magnetic or ortho dynamic, same thing. And what they do is suspend a very very thin diagram with some conductive trace on it between two grids of magnets. And by running current through the trace on the diaphragm it induces motion with those magnets and that's how they move. And what that results in is less mass of the thing that's moving than the typical like cone dynamic driver that you see in most speakers and headphones.
And what that does when you have less mass moving, it allows it to have usually not always, usually not only better bass response for reasons physics and stuff and such but also a more smooth frequency response. It doesn't have as many like weird peaks and valleys usually as dynamic just because again, like the physics when you're moving less, it's easier to better control how it moves. What this results in, in practice for me when I've tried most these kinds of headphones. Planar magnetic headphones usually have much smoother mid range. What I mean by smooth, it's kind of hard to explain but you would know it if you heard it.
When you hear bad mid range, it almost sounds like the vocals are crunchy, or like distorted like a crunchy or kind of harsh way on your ears. That's a very, very common flaw in cheap, dynamic headphones. And that's one of the reasons why so many of them are tuned to boost the everything else and withdraw the mid range, because they can't reproduce it well. And so they kind of bury that in bass and hope you don't notice. I notice and I care. And the mid range is my favorite part because that's where all the guitars and vocals are. And I'm a guitars and vocals person. So I want that to be awesome and smooth. And it's very unusual for a dynamic headphone as opposed to the planar to achieve a smooth mid range.
Casey
And here's the thing like it's funny you say that John because I don't want to make it sound like I think any of Marco's opinions are wrong, but it is important listener that you understand that Marco has a very particular kind of music and his preferences match with that kind of music as your preferences match with your kinds of music and I'm not saying that's bad or wrong or indifferent or otherwise, it's just when you said it was planar headphones that got you to love the mid range and treble Oh no, sir. It's Fish that got you to love that. It's just a planar headphones match it well.
And so for me, like for example, and I don't have AirPods Max haven't listened to them yet. I tend to like when I listen to music, I tend to be drawn to music that had and I think we've talked about this like a year or two ago, I tend to be drawn to music that has a stronger like bass or rhythm section and drums than I am wowed by you know, really strong guitars. It's not always true but often true. And so for me the kind of boominess that Marco would not care for. Of course, everything has limits, but I think I would be more receptive to it because I tend to focus on that part of a band more than Marco does.
And so none of this again, Marco's was not wrong by any stretch of the imagination. It's just if you're making a decision about whether to spend money on what is the $600 headphones, just consider that Marco's opinions are based on the someone who to his own ambition really likes a particular kind of music and if you'd like a different kind of music, take that into consideration.
Marco
Anyway, but like, you know, so like one of the bands I test with, for all iPhones I test is The Avett Brothers, because not only are they one of my favorite bands, but also Avett Brothers their earlier stuff before they had like really fancy expensive producers, their earlier stuff is a little bit more rough. And I think in my opinion, better for that like that gives it a level of like personality and realness that I feel like it's sanded off a lot as they increase their production levels and later albums. But their earlier stuff like their voices are almost harsh, and they go right up to that edge, but they don't cross it.
If you're listening on good equipment. And it sounds incredible to hear someone's voice that's almost too harsh. But then just it walks right up to it and it just doesn't cross that line. It's an amazing energy to hear. Like the early Avett Brothers records are murder on bad headphones, because they will reveal every flaw in mid range reproduction at that headphone can offer. It's one of the reasons I use them as test tracks, because not only do I like them, but like it's very clear when you have bad mid range reproduction, the AirPods Max, but do not achieve a level of smoothness of good planar headphones. But they get damn close. And that is incredibly impressive.
They're not the only dynamic headphone to get that close, but they're one of very, very few that alone is worthy of praise like is very, very good at not having that kind of crunchy sound, not having any kind of weird distortion that I can identify in any obvious place like across the frequencies. It's just a nice, smooth, pleasant sound that is a little bit aggressive in the bass and treble to make it sound a little bit more fun and honestly, that's probably not like a flaw that's probably by design. That's what most people want.
I'm very happy about the sound of these. I spent a lot of time with open back headphones because open back headphones. They leak sound like crazy in and out. And so they're unsuitable whenever you're near anybody or any noise sources. But they usually sound way better. It's hard for closed headphones to sound good to somebody, once they're accustomed to open headphones, because they just have so much better. But there again, there are a few models of closed headphones that I've ever tried that are that are really good sounding, in absolute terms, not just like reading on the closed headphone curve.
And the AirPods max are one of those, they are one of the best closed back headphones I've ever heard, possibly even the best. And they're one of the best dynamic headphones I've ever heard again, possibly even the best. So sound quality, I am extremely happy with them. They don't beat my favorite, you know, my HE-6. But they really, they beat almost everything else I have in sound quality.
Marco
I'll get there. In one moment. Before I do direct comparisons, I want to talk about control. The Digital Crown we were talking about last week, I speculated that it was the same part as the watch, John, I believe you said it was it must have been much bigger. You were right, it is much bigger than the watches Digital Crown. That being said, because of like where it is, you know, and the fact that you're not looking at it, as you're operating it, it actually feels a little too small still.
And it feels a little bit fiddly as a volume control. And it's not actually great as the like primary button, which is like tracks skipping or play pause. It's not great for that either. Because it's a Digital Crown, there's a lot of travel to push it in. And way more traveled than like the regular button that's next to it to control the noise cancellation modes. And it's actually because again, because the digital crown, it's a little bit difficult to click it in without accidentally changing the volume slightly.
So I think, actually add another button would have served this role better. And if they're going to only have a Digital Crown on one button, I would argue they should flip the roles of them, that pushing in the Digital Crown should be the noise cancellation toggle, and the much easier to press much easier to double and triple click button. That's right next to it should be the play pause and skip and everything. Otherwise, we covered earlier, you know, the A&C has the same, you know, three modes, the transparency, you know, A&C and off modes as the AirPods Pro, they work very similarly, automatic head detection.
Which is basically what activates the AirPods max automatically when you put it on your head, and it makes it take over the current audio playback route. That works fine, it's also an option that you can turn off. One thing that I don't think you can turn off yet that I hope they add the ability to turn off is the automatic pausing when you take it off your ear, for whatever reason, like you know, AirPods Pro, it makes more sense to like taking it out of your ear, that kind of makes more sense.
But on this, sometimes I like gotta like put my finger under the ear cup slightly to maybe he might hear something during a long recording. And if you do that with these the audio pauses, like if it's away from the ear at all, even just like to you know, move a finger or maybe adjust your glasses or whatever, like it'll pause. And that's kind of annoying. So I hope that becomes an option down the road.
John
One of the good things about these headphones, speaking of all these things, you're talking about the buttons and all the different things that they perform is that my assumption is that all the buttons are essentially programmable. And that if they change their mind about what the buttons want to do, or even something as dramatic, as you just said, oh, let's switch the the noise cancelling versus the crown button to do opposite functions, that they could in theory, do that because it's all software controlled. Right?
John
And that leads me to a question that came up. Actually, we should have talked about and we missed. And I'm not sure you know the answer to this. Maybe I fix it, No. Is there any electrical connection between the ear cups? Like, is there a wire essentially going from the left ear cup to the right ear cup? Or are they essentially two completely independent little computers? Because there are two little H1 chips in there that like on your AirPods where there's no wire between them. They just communicate with each other and coordinate to be a pair of headphones together for you.+ Or is there actually a wire connection between them?
Marco
Yeah. So like, there is a power cable between them at least and I would guess like, there there is probably a wired audio coordination between them as well. Because otherwise Actually, there would almost certainly have to be because as I'm about to get to the wired mode is indeed zero latency. And so it would be nearly impossible to do that, like wireless or sending it across your head without introducing any latency anywhere. That would be, that would be very difficult, if not impossible, so at least doing it in the digital domain. So that's that would be very unlikely. So yeah, it's almost certainly that they are wired together, just you know through one of the sides of the headband. But anyway, wired mode speaking of which, yeah, works great.
Marco
No, because the comfort is just not good enough for me for long listening. Like, but I could and that's the important thing. If I was on a trip or something, and I wanted to just bring you know, a small. A well traveling, maybe these aren't the right ones because of their stupid case. But yeah, I could bring these if I wanted to. And I could use the cable for that. The cable like the little you know, the $35 backwards wire is kind of comical that it cost $35, talk about luxury. This is the thinnest crappiest feeling cable that I think I've ever seen Apple sell. It's so bad that had I not ordered it directly from Apple, I would assume it was counterfeit.
So, because I'm pretty sure like I'm guessing that you know that this is only analog audio. So it's only three conductors. It doesn't even have TRRS with the remote pin. It's only TRS like the regular old three pin or three conductor cable without the remote control. So like, it's just, you know, those three wires in there. And it is such a thin crappy feeling cable. It's also very short. It's only one meter. And so at a desk, it's too short. it you know, if you're like plugging into a laptop on a trip or something, it's probably fine for that. Or if you're plugging it into something in your pocket for some reason, somehow, if you still have anything in your pocket with a headphone jack, then it would be fine for that as well. But it is too short for desks
Marco
Yes, exactly. The cable does not have a microphone or remote on it, you have to use those things in built in the headphones. It's also weird to when you're using the cable mode, the headphones still have an independent volume control on them. So they don't just run at you know line volume level of whatever you plug it into. They have their own volume control that you have to turn up and down separately from the device you're plugging it into if you want to, which confused me at first, I thought they were broken because it was just super quiet.
And it took me a while to figure out "Oh, I should turn up their volume as well." Anyway, so comparing it to other headphones. And just a quick thing. This is a very important thing to do when you're comparing audio quality or even comfort because it is so hard to remember how something sounds, our brains play tricks on us. Our memory is not that good. And the only way to really compare headphones is to compare them like side by side immediately like try this now quickly switch try this and quickly switch back and try that try to listen to the same thing same segment of the songs on both like it tries to turn us any other way trying to like do any kind of testing by memory or by comparing frequency response graphs like it doesn't really work.
Our brains are not good at that you have to do it this way. And this is what I did. So this is why I'm only gonna compare it to headphones that I actually had with me and tested today. Also people talk about a break in or breaking in speakers and headphones and this concept that they sound better over time as they break in. This has been disproven there's no science to back this up by anybody ever the headphones aren't breaking in your brain is breaking and your brain is getting accustomed to their sound profile. So anything you get after listening to it for a while your brain is accustomed to it, it might be doing a bit of correction. And you know it'll sound good to you so that's fine.
So anyway, and also note as I compare this to the Sony noise cancelling headphones that the current Sony model is the WH-1000XM4 I don't have the XM4 I have the XM2, two versions back. It is very similar in most ways. The main things they've changed between the two and the four are they switched to USB-C and they've changed some of the smart features and some of the available audio processing features but there's not much else that's different between them as far as I can find, as far as I can tell. Anyway so first comparing them to full size wired headphones.
Which is not a fair comparison in many ways but you know my my beloved HiFiMan HE-6, my big flagship, my favorite headphone of all time. It has, its open backed you know it's not, this is not a fair fight at all you know the HE-6 is first of all discontinued many many years ago. Cost twice as much wired open backed requires ridiculous amps to supply enough power to it. But you know it does the HE-6 does sound better, but not as much better as I would have thought for all those all those trade offs.
Marco
I tried it both ways. I did some of the testing with the wire and some without honestly I could not tell a difference. Bluetooth as a codec and as a thing like audio files argue about this all the time about what it does to their sound quality. The reality is it's complicated. There's been multiple Bluetooth codecs over time, multiple codecs that different devices support. If you're using like the old a A2DP codec, it does indeed sound kind of crappy with good enough headphones like you can hear the difference. But no modern headphone communicates that way.
The Android and Sony camps for a while use something called aptX which was like a higher end codec. Apple has always used AAC. So they're simply as far as I can tell, they're still doing this simply encoding on AAC on the device, sending it over the air as AAC and then decoding in the headphone. They've done that for a long time now. Whatever they're doing is at a high enough bitrate, that it's pretty transparent, I cannot tell the difference. Anyway, I compared it to my current close headphone favorite the one I'm using right now the Dan Clark Audio AEON 2 closed. AEON 2 is way more comfortable.
It's a huge headphone like it's one of those teardrop shaped ear cup things, a massive headphone, huge comfortable pads. But it's also the AEON 2 is tuned for one of those warm sound signatures with with relatively weak treble response. I actually thought the sound from the Max is more fun, because it has that increased treble. But AEON 2 to is a little bit smoother, has you know more refined mid range and everything. But anyway, moving down the price range a little bit the wonderful venerable headphones. I think Casey's probably wearing right now the Beyerdynamic DT-770 Pro.
The way they sound, the tonal balance, you know, treble, bass, everything that is actually very similar to the AirPods Max the DT-770 Pro has a you know, V-shaped EQ curve kind of boost treble and bass a little bit. But the 770s bass is a bit weaker, the treble is a bit stronger, and the mid range is very slightly more crunchy on the 770. So overall, a surprisingly similar sound. Of all the headphones, I tried it against the DT-770 sounds the most similar to the Max.
But the Max sounds like a slightly better, a bit smoother and a bit more refined, and a bit better balanced version of the DT-770. So that it actually sounds significantly, you know, it sounds better. But like, if you have to, like try them back to back to really even notice most of the difference. So it's basically a Wireless DT-770. And I consider that a very good thing,
Marco
Yeah. But you know, it's wireless, it does noise cancellation, like I wouldn't want to travel with my 770s I have, but it's not fun because they're so big and bulky. But certainly like for you know, at a desk, you know, the 770s put up a pretty good fight. Now compared to the AirPods Pro, the AirPods Max have a worse transparency mode. And I don't know if this is just the physics of you know, having these cups that sit over your ears that don't quite maybe seal as, as uniformly or as evenly as the AirPods Pro which are going partially in your ears. And the AirPods Pro benefit from like having your ear itself as part of the thing that is adjusting the noise on the way in like the shape of your ear actually changes sound on the way in.
And so over ear headphones, where their microphones are outside of your ear don't have the benefit of knowing how your ear is going to shape the sound on the way in. Whereas the AirPods Pro, the microphones are like partially in your ear. And so they are getting some of that ear processing that your ear is doing on the sound. They're getting some of that on the way to their microphones. So they're able to have, I think, a better transparency mode as a result. Transparency on the max, honestly is not very good.
John
Everybody, everybody loves it. All the reviews are saying "Wow, transparency mode is amazing." And I'm hearing these views from people who have used the AirPod Pro, right? So it's not like people who have never been in the Apple ecosystem and haven't tried the other Apple products. So that's a little bit surprising. But you know, it makes me think that what Apple needs here is to talk to the Sony folks, because what you want is your own personal head related transfer function.
John
So that knows the shape of your ears. And because the AirPod Max doesn't know the shape of your ear, you know exactly like the actual sound landing on your head is hitting giant aluminum cups with pinholes. It is not bouncing around in your ear. And so Apple probably has some sort of best guest standardized head related transfer function to try to make transparency sound more or less normal, but the AirPods pro have your literal actual ear there.
Marco
Yeah. And to be clear, like the AirPods Pro transparency mode totally destroys the Bose's and the Sony's. It's not even close. But the AirPods Pro is a little bit better. Like the transparency on the Max, I was able to notice it sometimes. Whereas I use it all the time on the Pro and I I almost can never like notice artifacts of it. Whereas on the Max they're actually pretty clear. Like you can't forget that you're using transparency mode in the max. Whereas in the Pro you can, that's how good the Pro is and the Max is close but it's not quite there.
Also compared to the Pro, the Max just sounds way better you know it's much larger soundstage stronger bass, much smoother mid range. The AirPods Pro sound very good for what they are, but in this case physics wins and the max of sounds way way better but that's to be expected I sure hope so for that for the price difference. Moving on to one of the most commonly recommend alternatives the Bose 700, this is Bose's current flagship noise cancelling headphone, very similar overall size. It's a very similar bad folding where they only fold down they don't fold in.
But Bose has like a normal case and that is far more useful. You're gonna like throw it in travel bag or something. Bose also has significantly better comfort. Overall out of all these headphones I've tried the Bose is my favorite for comfort. Just barely edging out the Sony's, the Sony's are also excellent but the Bose has a bit of an edge for me. Bose has noise cancellation that I think is a little bit stronger. You can also adjust how max it is from 0 to 10. Like it's it's very adjustable. It's very nice on the Bose.
It has useful voice prompts, like when you connect the device, "the Bose has connected to Marco's iPhone." Sony's actually have a similar feature. It tells you like "Noise cancelling 10, noise cancelling five," it'll tell you battery 57% like it announces that all in the ear cups, which is just a nice feature. And Apple has the tech to do that obviously. They choose not to they choose to use like play tones instead. And have you look at your phone for all this info. I wish Apple would go a little bit more in this direction. That's a very useful feature in practice when you're actually using these actually traveling.
Marco
Yeah. So unfortunately my Bose love fest ends when it comes to talking about the sound. Bose has the worst sound in the group by a mile. It's not even close. Talking about like a crunchy mid range. Bose is the worst. I'm pretty sure Bose audio engineers don't listen to any music with the vocals. I don't know how they would possibly think that sounds okay. It's terrible. Mid range is the worst, treble response is significantly weaker than everything else. Yeah, by far the worst sound in the group. But that being said on planes that isn't actually that big of a problem.
Anyway, compared to the Sony's WH-1000XM2 is the one I have very similar to the three and four and the MDR1000X which is the one. Sony has by far the best folding the best travel case. They have excellent comfort. The ear cups are a little small, it could be a little room here but overall excellent comfort. Sony has my favorite ear pads like just like how soft and pliable and how much they spread the weight, they just are awesome. The Sony's today like before I at least before I got my AirPods Pro, the Sony's were my headphones of choice while traveling.
You know, I wouldn't use them in normal circumstances, but like on planes, I would go for those instantly. Sony has a much bass heavier sound. It's kind of it's a little bit too boomy on the bass a little more crunchiness in the mid range, and a little weak on the treble response compared to the AirPods Max but way better sound than the Bose like the Bose you play it and you just are sad like you can't believe like man I'm really doing a disservice here playing his music through this right now whereas the Sony.
Marco
Where as the Sony's are like okay, yeah, I think Neil would be mildly okay with this. Whereas you had the Bose you're just like you're sad, he's sad, everyone sad. The Sony has a pretty rough transparency mode. This is like a constant hiss that you hear and it sounds like it sounds like you're listening to the world through intercom but otherwise Sony is very good overall great all arounder I think if you need noise cancelling headphones and you don't want to spend the AirPods Max premium and you don't want AirPods pro to serve that role.
John
How is the the noise canceling on the Apple's? I've heard a lot of people say that people who find the noise cancellation on Bose and Sony's a little bit oppressive or they get it feels like this is pressure in your ear that somehow the Apple ones were less pressure though obviously if the Bose one has an adjustable, adjustability for the noise cancelling. Maybe you can dial that down but how did you feel the noise cancelling was in terms of ability to cancel noise If you're one of those people who feels that sort of pressure effect.
Marco
It's hard. So I am one of those people who has historically not like noise cancellation that much. That was like with some of the older ones with the QuietComfort 35 II and stuff like that. I didn't like those as much. Ever since the era of the Sony, you know, 1000 series. I've liked it when I'm on planes, and similar AirPods Pro, I have found to be fantastic for noise cancellation, because like, it's not too much, it doesn't feel or sound unnatural to me. Same thing with the Sony, the Bose I don't keep it level 10 I keep it level five. And that's I found that to be okay, when I used it. The AirPods Max seem overall with noise cancellation, this is hard to test because I'm not flying anywhere right now.
So it's hard to test but I tested it, like you know, tip was vacuuming in the other room. And so I kept switching between these ones like the vacuums going and I like played a podcast out of a speaker also nearby to kind of see how I would you know, compare to that and, and overall it's very similar sounding in noise cancellation to the AirPods Pro. I expect it to be much stronger. And I think it's a little stronger but it's not a massive difference. But as for like the unnatural feeling. In my again, limited testing so far, it seemed fine. I think if you're okay with the way the AirPods Pro do it, you'll be okay with the way these do it. Finally, what would I use this for?
Like, what wins these battles and you know, compared to like, what would I use at a desk, I really enjoy listening to music on the Max at a desk and if I walked around listening to music, which I don't I walk around listening to podcasts, but if I can't listen to music, you know, maybe but at a desk, it was fantastic. I love the Bluetooth integration. if I was going for like a more minimal setup to like get rid of my desktop headphone amp and get rid of the wire and just have wireless headphones I listened to like or if I like was going to an office and I wanted something for the office that I didn't want like a big setup there.
Then maybe the problem for me though, is that they don't offer all day comfort, when I'm listening to them and they feel great. But every time I would listen to for a while and then take it off it would be kind of a relief that it was off my head and that's not good. It's the comfort is not good enough. Ideally, if you're going to have headphones at a desk, you're probably going to be there a while and in that case you probably want something that has better long term comfort you know like the DT-770 or the AEON 2 or if you want to go wireless probably the Sony's for that use. and I think there's a reason why so many tech people probably many of you listening to this right now use the Sony headphones all day at work when you know when that's the thing.
Because they're just they're comfortable if you need noise cancellation all day at work which I've never been a fan of using it that often but many people do the Sony's are probably way we would go for that as well. Because again, they are better for long wearing comfort. If the AirPods Max had better ear pads and a little bit better maybe a little bit lighter weight a little better ear pads they could take over that market. But the comfort is just not there.
John
But I mean, I thinkwe heard that before anyone had worn them so it doesn't seem like that is a rumor is a reaction to people trying them and thinking they're a little uncomfortable was like before anyone had even touched them. That was a rumor so it makes me wonder if there was some sort of comfort adjustment stuff going on. I would really like to hear his explanation of the case. Like how did we get that?
Marco
what happened there? Yeah, so at a desk, they're a good option for sound quality and for the integration with the OS and everything. I just wish they were more comfortable for long wearing. While I'm walking around I'm gonna pick AirPods Pro every time, they're they're pocketable, they're less conspicuous if that matters to you. I even like for the conspicuous angle I wouldn't even I don't think I'd even want to wear the Max is like on a zoom call or something because it would just feel conspicuous to me. AirPods Pro also for walking, having the better transparency mode matters to me I'm always using transparency with them while walking.
And the Pro are also you know, less sweaty in the summer. They fit under hats in the winter. It's wonderful. The AirPods Pro are great for walking and I don't know if the Max is gonna change that for almost anybody. On a plane, what would I use? Guess what I'd use the AirPods Pro still, because sound quality matters far less on planes. Than comfort and like travel practicality, travel logistics. So the Max having this amazing sound quality. That doesn't matter so much in a plane and all the Max has been disadvantages like the long wearing comfort, the terrible case, those are the highest priorities on planes.
Marco
I don't know if she likes him yet. We didn't have time for her to test them today yet, but it's just, it's a shame. I really want so badly to like these because I love the way they sound. I really very much enjoy their sound. But I have a hard time thinking when I'm going to use them. You know? So as far as like, whether I'm keeping it or returning it. The answer is I don't know yet. I wish they were more comfortable. And I'm going to try wearing them a little bit more, you know, we're in the holiday extended return period now.
I think I can return them up till January 15 or something. I'm going to wear them a lot over Christmas and just kind of see like, you know, does it break in, do the ear pads get a little bit softer? Does the headband loosen up a little bit to matter? I don't know. But ultimately, I hope I can make these work because I do love the way they sound. But the comfort has me concerned enough that I think I wouldn't give it a high chance.
Marco
Well, ultimately, I think try them. And if they're comfortable on you, great. Like you know, headphone comfort varies because people are different. We have different shaped heads, we have different shaped ears, we have different preferences, we have like, some people are going to probably find them comfortable enough. Some people aren't. Comfort is going to be the biggest limiting factor once you get past the massive price a terrible case. But like, again, they sound great.
And they function pretty well in most ways. I wish I could wear them more often. But But ultimately, the comfort is a pretty big problem for me. But again, I'm just one person, they might be comfortable on you, I don't know. So all I can say is go into it with you know, with that potential warning in mind that the comfort might not work for you. Or it might and see if it works for you. And if it works for you, good, you know more power to you.
John
It sounds like the target market is someone who values audio quality. So all right away, you're willing to spend more money even though these are only, you know, marginally better sounding than say the DT-770s. Right? And maybe doesn't like things in your ears, which I don't like so that that rules out the AirPods Pro, right? And so that's, you know, like if you if you're in that realm, and you're like, well, I'm not super bargain conscious. I don't like things in my ears. I do like the sort of wireless experience. And I want him to sound really good because the only ones that have the headphones you listen to you said you like the sound better, are the way more expensive open back, which is totally different category. I'm not gonna use that in office, right? Because its loud.
John
Right and mostly rules out travelers because of all the travel issues or whatever. So yeah, so I mean, like, the thing I was afraid of with these headphones is that everything we had previously surmised about them would be true in the sound quality would just be like meh, right? But it sounds like the sound quality is better than meh. So now they do have, they do have a place in the market, maybe not a place for Marco, who you know, is got his green eggs and ham thing going on because he's got too many other headphones.
And he's got other headphones that he already likes for the other purposes, right? But most people don't already have like their three favorite headphones for different contexts. Like Marco, you know, he's got the AirPods Pro for walking the dog and for being away from his desk, and also on a plane, which is weird, but that's what he likes. And for at the desk, he's got his fancier, you know, open back ones when no one's around, or whatever. So this thing doesn't have a place in his life. But if you have zero over your headphones, or you have just let's say you'd have just the Bose ones for an airplane.
John
Yeah, I mean, I mean, the comfort i think is also part of the context of comfort is how long do you expect to be wearing them if you're going to be you know, in the olden times at your desk all day long in a stupid open office where you have to wear them for eight hours. Comfort is super important. But if you're just going to wear them, you know to listen to some tunes while you fiddle on your computer for 45 minutes. Comfort maybe, you maybe you're more flexible on that right? Maybe you know, maybe it's not as big a deal that after three hours they start weighing on you, right? And the magnetically attachable headphones thing that makes me I mean, it's probably gonna be expensive, but surely there'll be knockoff third party something or other earpieces.
Because as I found out when looking for your pieces from IDT-770 there's a big market for replacement ear things for headphones. And this sounds like a goldmine because you can just make some knockoff ones that sort of kind of fit in there with the magnets and charge everybody ridiculous amount for them. Someone's going to you know buy the leather wrap or a plush velvet replacement ear cups and the good thing about them is they'll be way easier to replace than your average headphone, you got to do that stupid thing with the little flange rim and you're carefully putting, like, some headphones are better than others. Some is actually doing a mechanical thing.
But these are super easy. Just yank these things off and throw the ones on. And if it turns out that that is your main comfort issue, scratchy fabric or not, doesn't distribute the weight and you get a pad that is a nice fabric or leather that has a bigger contact patch and tire parlance. Maybe that solves the comfort problem for you.
John
The thing I was thinking about when in between these two shows, when we talked about this, like, as I was thinking about the fact that we spent an entire previous episode talking about a product that none of us had, and then people like, "How do you talk about you don't even have it." But there's this phenomenon, you'll experience this if you ever worked for any company that releases anything to the public, or in general and puts anything out to the public.
When you're working on a thing, whether it's a software product, or a real world physical product, or whatever it is, you're like, you're on a small team, or even if you're in a big company, but there's a finite set of people who's working on this thing. And you're doing your best you can, you're trying to make it the best you can within the time and the budget, and you're thinking about all the different features and things that has it whatever. But you're only 10 people, 20 people, 100 people, however many people you are and you have weird, like weirdly aligned objectives.
If you're a manager, if you're, you know, a developer, if you're a product marketer, you're looking at it from your perspective within the context of the people making this thing. That's true of movies, true is podcasts or whatever. And when you put it out into the world, you know, the reason the wisdom of crowds is like we make fun of that thing. But the reason it's a thing is because you put it out into the world. And it takes like 39 seconds, for out of the 2 billion people that see it if you're Apple, because you know, you put out something and everybody sees it, a fraction of a percent look at it and immediately say.
Oh, well, here are some three obvious problems that we think. That case is terrible. The things should fold tighter, your competitors fold tighter, why doesn't it come with a cable? Like, how many people you've met? If you heard us that last week. How many other places did you see that. You saw it on Twitter, you saw on every tech website. You saw it on every review. Right? How is it that Apple developed this product in house for months or years? And either didn't know about this? Or didn't think it was that big a deal? And the second we get to see it not even touch it. Reviewers don't even have it, we just look at it. And you could look at it with your eyes and go,"Oh, no. What's going on with that case?" Because you can look at it. And like we did last show, say, here's my knowledge of the existing market.
Here's how that thing looks like it works. And I can imagine it has problems in the home do people get them and they all say that? And you might think oh, Apple so dumb, don't they know the thing that everyone else immediately realizes that's wrong with their product. But I can tell you as someone who's produced things to put them out to the world. The answer is sometimes No. Like, you're just so you have such a different perspective on it. When you're making it. Very often you can convince yourself that one thing you think is super important. And the other thing you think is not that important, and you get it wrong. Because you're a small set of people with a limited perspective. And the wisdom of crowds is as soon as you put your product out into the real world, if there's some stupid thing about it, they'll find it before they even touch your product. And you know, obviously, the better you are at it, the fewer of those that you have. And it's great when you nail it on the first try.
But there's a reason there are revisions in their durations of products. So, you know, we look at this headphone and we go like Apple before we even released that. Imma let you finish but let me tell you five things that are wrong those headphones, maybe wait and revise like maybe include a hard case maybe include that cable, maybe ditch whatever that case thing is or whatever, right? It's so easy to sort of armchair quarterback that. But that's how we judge a product, right? How many things did they get right? How many sort of unforced errors did they make? And it sounds like these headphones, like a lot of the things that Marco was talking about that he really loved.
Surely people spent a huge amount of time getting that right, doing the dynamic EQ and the soundstage and adjusting it so that essentially sounds to Marco like it is a nice V-shape to EQ of you know, whatever it's doing whatever computerized crap it's doing. They probably spent so much time on that because like this is our number one priority. And maybe we spent less time in the case, right? Maybe we didn't think too much about that or maybe there was some other thing that was you know, like, and even though these flaws are obvious to us that like when you're working on it you're like, "but we did so good on the sound" or like yeah, but if the whole world looks at your product and can immediately see a couple of big problems.
You got to work on those for the next revision. So I have hope, some hope that Apple will take what seems like fairly uniform feedback that like we appreciate the things that you did well, here's some small areas where you can do better and come up with a rev two or rev three of these like all the other products you just described, like the Sony's have changed a little bit in the Bose's have changed a lot. And you know, sometimes for the worse.
But anyway, feed this back in and come up with the second and third revision of these, assuming this product is successful enough for them to have second third revision, to just tweak the few things that are wrong and keep the things that are good about it. And that can really elevate this from a product that has a very narrow appeal, especially at the given price to one that easier to recommend people with fewer caveats.
John
Part of the magic of this program is that very often, we put something into the shownotes. And if you just leave it there long enough without getting to it because you're talking about other things. The story develops and sometimes even almost resolves itself on its own. And here I think this topic benefited from us not talking about it immediately. Do you think now we have more information than we did before?
Marco
Like how like if you just don't answer email, most of the needs goes away after a few days. Before we get to this. Yes, everyone, thank you for telling me about this. I am aware. And while I think it was not the problem on my iMac Pro because they did their firmware diagnostic and found that it's not software related and that something is wrong with the logic board apparently, with controlling its thermals. It is might have actually been the problem with my 16 inch back I did like a full OS restore reinstall on my 16 inch a few months back, which was a huge pain in the butt. Because it was having all the problems that Lauren reports, the his 2015 or his wife 2015 computer having of like.
Just everything slow, like slow keystrokes, even like I was having bizarre problems on that. And I could not figure out why. And unfortunately, I can't test this theory on that because I already got tired of it and blew it away. And it didn't have those problems after I did an reinstall, but it was bad. I've never had to do that on a Mac before or since like to solve a problem like that in that way.
John
You mentioned Lauren, what we're talking about here and for people who have already been following the story is Lauren Victor, developer, a famous developer of tweety inventor of faulty refresh. Generally a technology person was having problems with his Mac. And he turns out that uninstalling chrome and all the crap that Google uses to control and update chrome solves his problem. He made a website chromeisbad.com Chrome is bad. It's all one word. Where he describes his problem he describes how to implement the solution and has a bunch of testimonials from other people with similar problems.
And this whole story set off just as big chain of people discussing it. Many people saying I went to your website I'm having similar problems. My computer seems slow the fans running all the time, it's just generally crappy. I followed your instructions on uinstalling chrome and uinstalled the Keystone updater that Google installs that updates chrome behind the scenes. And it solved my problem. Right? And then other people are like, Okay, sure. But like, what actually is the problem? Right?
What symptoms are you're seeing beyond my computer seems slow? And what is it about the steps that you took that solve that problem? And despite this story, having been stewing for what week now, two weeks, whatever it's been, we don't have a great solution answer to that question. I think they're a couple things at play here.
One is, this is revealing sort of the dark matter of computer dissatisfaction. Where people have Macs, right? And the Macs are unsatisfactory in some way, they always run hot, the fan is always going, they always seem slow. Like they just, they're just unsatisfying, in a way often, and it's in a way, that's a difference from a change. It's like when the doctor asked you, have you seen any change in your, you know, in your health, like recently, they just want to like, is it different than it used to be right? That the people don't expect it to be like this, like Marco said, maybe typing is slow, and you're like, typing is slow, like, like, what's going on there?
Maybe you hear the fans all the time are like, I don't feel like I'm doing anything that's making the fans go. And maybe that's a change from previous behavior, right. So there's, there's this dissatisfaction, right. And then that someone comes along and says, I had similar problems. Here's my vaguely expressed dissatisfaction. My computer seems slow fans running all the time, right? Here's what I did. And it's like, install uninstall some third party program that a bunch of people already don't like for various reasons. And by the way, the final step of this cleansing is to reboot your computer. And if you do all these steps, it's like you have a new computer, your fans don't run high anymore. Your typing is fast and responsive, everything is snappy.
And then a bunch of people follow those steps and write and say, "Hey, I did that. And it worked for me." And for, you know, for the people who did that great. Like they presumably solved whatever problem they were having by doing this thing, right? Now, maybe three days later, the problem came back, you probably don't hear about it then. But at least there was some positive thing. But the question then technically minded person has is okay. But what was the actual problem? And what was the actual solution? I can tell you now that sometimes when the computer gets into a weird state, as we all know, rebooting it, especially if you have your Mac configured not to relaunch all the programs that you were previously running.
Rebooting to the Finder with no apps running, and no swapping use, right? Wow, everything is like the fans are low. And everything feels snapper. Yeah, cuz you didn't do anything on your computer yet. Maybe after a week, when you relaunch all your programs and compile everything and get four gigs into swap. Maybe you're you know, it started feeling slow again, right? We don't know, we want to look for is, what is the cause? and chrome being the idea like I uninstalled and that fixed all my problems. It's like, okay, but what was the actual problem? And I can tell you from personal experience, one chrome related problem I see a lot is, guess what, you've got a million chrome windows, not on my computer, or my wife's computer got a million chrome windows.
John
I do. But here's the important distinction. None of those windows are showing Facebook in any form, or a page with crazy ads that go nuts, like in the middle of the night, some tab in some background window, a background tab, and a background chrome window has some ad in that decides you know, 100% CPU, is it Bitcoin mining, who knows what the hell it's doing. It's always and Chrome itself has like a task manager inside Chrome to tell you which tabs are being naughty, which I feel like if you know which tabs are being naughty, like, suspend them. And there's a Chrome extension that will do that for you and suspend all your background tab.
But anyway, I'll go there, I'll do that. I'll find the three Facebook tags that are for whatever reason are freaking out because some ad running in the sidebar is Bitcoin mining. And I'll close those tabs. And then suddenly, all the fans go back down. Right? So that is a way that Chrome can be a culprit, if you uninstalled Chrome. Or if you simply don't run Chrome, you will never have an open Chrome tab with a crazy Bitcoin mining ad, right? Or just some webpage that goes nuts and starts just grinding your CPU forever. And that will make your fan spin up and so on and so forth. Right?
So that's one thing that could be solving these people's problem. And by the way, Safari is way nicer to your battery is way better on your CPU. If you care about that at all. Do not use Chrome. If you have laptop on battery use Safari. It is better on your battery than Chrome. The other thing is this Keystone thing that updates chrome in the background for you. Some people say look, I'm not even running Chrome. But Keystone is doing something terrible my computer the second I removed Keystone everything got better. And one of the culprits they level the Windows Server which is part of the Mac operating system, its job is like composite the various buffers that you see that make up the windows on the screen, right?
It would be using huge amount of CPU and you're like, I uninstalled chrome and Keystone and Windows Server, CPU usage went down. Lots of people say that lots of people say that my computer is running hot. I'm not doing anything. I open up Activity Monitor. I see Windows Server taking 100% CPU. I uninstalled chrome and it solved that problem. Maybe, maybe it did. But again, it's technically minded people who want to know.
Yeah, but how? Like, how did the program that's not running make Windows Server go nuts. And there's one theory and this unfortunately is still on Chrome is bad, I think let me just double check. Yeah, something called Keystone. This is the top of the site which bizarrely hides what it's doing from Activity Monitor. There's a footnote now what does it say?
Hiding from Activity Monitor. Inconceivable. Trust me, I know computers. Correct. The Keystone updater process itself doesn't hide from Activity Monitor. it briefly shows up in disabuse on schedule. That is not the issue. It is causing something else in the system to consume massive CPU leaves no indication that Chrome and Keystone are in fact, the culprits. All right. Hmm. Yeah. Well, that's an interesting theory. But you kind of have to say, but how does it do that? How does the program that runs briefly, and when it runs, it does not hide from Activity Monitor runs, it appears and then it quits.
The whole point is checking for updates. How does the act of running and then not running at all cause Windows Server forevermore to flip out? Is it plausible that can happen? Sure, trigger bug the OS call some private API that makes Windows Server freak out and go into an infinite loop could happen. But we don't know that's what's happening. And there are many counter examples as in everyone else who's running Chrome, where Q server, the Keystone thing runs periodically on its own.
And it doesn't make their windows server freak out. I run chrome 24 hours a day, seven days a week on my computer. Keystone presumably is running in the background, my Windows Server never freaks out, doesn't mean this bug doesn't exist just means I'm not experiencing it. So the people who are experiencing it are, you know, getting this bug, they're getting unlucky, they have a problematic setup. The thing I haven't seen anyone mentioned yet, although if you do some googling, you could find it when Chrome auto updates itself.
At various times, it has done weird things behind the scenes, like archiving previous versions of itself and keeping state around about how many different versions it is updated from and stuff. Or would fill your disk with old versions of Chrome or get its database of what versions it's dealt with, corrupted and flip out about that. So I don't find it entirely inconceivable that the chrome updater and all of its bookkeeping can end up getting into a state where the auto updater itself does bad things or spins for a while, or fruitlessly tries to get an update that is never gonna be able to get.
Or otherwise, you know, spins its wheels. And one thing related, someone installed another chromium based browser, I think it was, that was brave I think and they're like new their default New Tab page was making Windows Server goes nuts. And if you turn on like the courts debug thing, which shows you screen updates, you can see that the the default, like New Tab page and Bray was redrawing itself like as fast as it possibly could over and over and over again, which was basically asking Windows Server "Hey, composite this buffer, hey, composite, this buffer, hey, composite this buffer" Over and over and over again, as fast as it possibly can.
That if you ever see Windows Server going up and CPU, something is asking the Windows Server to composite buffers or do some screen related window compositing thing over and over and over again, if you're looking for screening like but nothing's happening, it's possible that some program somewhere maybe even some things not even visible, is flipping out and doing something wrong with causing the Windows Server CPU to increase right. So unfortunately, maybe we didn't wait long enough. This is not a particularly we don't have a conclusion. No one knows what the actual problem is. No one knows if Chrome is involved at all.
We do know that if you follow a bunch of these steps that can make your computer feel better. So can just rebooting so can just quitting all of your programs. So can logging out and logging back in, right? So can just not using Chrome and using Safari instead? Because chrome in general is more of a CPU hog. Right? But none of that is satisfying. Like we people want there to be a culprit. It's because I had a problem. I took steps the problem has gone. Therefore the steps I took exactly correlate to fixing the problem. Maybe they do. But with computers, and with programmers, you kind of know. Yeah, yeah. But why, but how but what actually happened, right? What is the bug?
Now we don't know that, we don't have the source code to Keystone. And honestly, it's not our problem to figure that out. If there really is a problem with Chrome, it should be the Chrome's team job to figure it out, right? And there have been bugs in Chrome many, many times. There's bugs and all sorts of programs. But when it's a general malaise, as in my computer's is satisfactory in some way, there's so many things that can be from spider eggs to malware to like just, you know, a bad tab open in Chrome to who knows what, like we've all had processes go awry, or things freak out that a part of the operating system or third party software or drivers are flaky USB device.
Like computers are really complicated. So I am immediately suspicious of anyone pinning blame on any particular thing. Especially when they can't tell me what the actual problem is. Again, it's not their responsibility to tell me but if you're going to conclusively say Chrome is the problem uninstall chrome and it will fix your computer and if it doesn't, I don't care because it fixed my computer. I don't know I'm not here to carry water for Chrome, even though I use it all the time, and I like it.
But I feel like this is an unsatisfying, technical mystery, like, the most satisfying ones are the ones where your computer's doing something weird. And someone dimensionally figures out what the problem is. The less satisfying ones are, my computer's doing something weird, and I found solution, but I don't know why it worked. And that's the situation we're in. Now. There is a problem. There's a vaguely specified problem. There is a very cleanly specified solution. But there is no explanation for why it worked. Other than that, the steps I took they must have stopped something from doing something that was bad.
John
I mean, like, what can be true is I did the thing in my computer got better. But that doesn't. That doesn't you can't jump from that to say, therefore Keystone is nefarious and doing something there but you can't even jump to there for Keystone has a bug. We don't even know if Keystone, for all we know the Windows Server has a bug triggered by Keystone doing perfectly normal things like you don't know what the problem is, you don't know where to assign blame.
Marco
I mean, that explanation wouldn't surprise me in the least. Because I have like, I haven't used Big Sur for enough time to know if this is still true on Big Sur but for Catalina, I have never had a Mac OS version have as many problems as Catalina has, in specifically, this kind of area of like, random performance slowdowns for no apparent reason that are solved by rebooting. And oftentimes, you know, correlating to background demons just going nuts for no apparent reason. Like the other day, I posted a screenshot on Twitter like about, you know, like all the high CPU usage and the handful of Catalina background demons that were seemingly consuming all these things for no reason.
And one of them was Dropbox. So everyone's like, "Oh, yeah, Dropbox" Well, I quit Dropbox. and a half hour later, those same system processes were still like spinning 100% CPU each. And so I eventually rebooted. And of course, the problem went away, and this isn't like, it doesn't matter. I don't know whose fault this is. I don't know, as you were saying, John, I don't know if this is like a bug in the OS, or a certain way that certain apps I have installed, like whether it's Dropbox or Chrome or whatever, a certain way that they trigger bugs in the OS, I don't know. But it is a real problem. And these solutions do often fix it.
And so from my point of view, as a user, it's like, well, look, you guys figure this out, like Apple, Dropbox, Chrome, whoever you are, figure it out amongst yourselves. This is your fault in some way. But it becomes my problem as a user and I have to take measures to deal with it. We don't know as shouldn't like we don't know enough to assign blame. But it does seem like there is a real problem here. that many people face that is solved by removing Chrome.
John
I mean, but there's a million problems that potentially solved by a million things, including the rebooting, which is the final step like so we don't even know if it just one thing like you said, if it's an OS level problem, like if there's a little bit of the doctor it hurts when I do this, then don't do this thing. It's like, well, when I use my computer, occasionally background demons freak out and cause high CPU load. It's like, well, just don't use your computer, you won't have that problem. Like, you know, it's like, if you think at some piece of third party software, and you stop using that software, but then it happens again, what do you do, I'll just stop using my computer, I'll just stop using finder, I'll just stop using a web browser.
Like when there are OS level bugs, especially if those OS level bugs are triggered by completely valid normal non nefarious application behavior. Any application you run can potentially trigger that bug, whether it's Discovery D freaking out and not looking up names or whatever. Like, that's the nature of iOS books. And they will manifest essentially no matter what if there's just one program trigger and Chrome triggers it but like Brave or Edge don't or Safari doesn't, then yeah, you solve your problem by saying it hurts when I do this, okay, well, don't do that. Don't use Chrome use something else, right?
But you still don't know what the actual problem is. The thing about like Dropbox and stuff is it's somewhat satisfying to at least have a plausible theory, Dropbox to know when things happen on disk has to monitor changes in the Dropbox folder. And there are a bunch of API's for doing that. But one of them is essentially to drink from the FS events firehose, which is just like, look, you know, Apple operating system, just tell me everything that happens related to the file system, and I'll figure out whether I care about it or not, right?
And doing that is expensive, because you do something that does a lot to the file system, say expanding Xcode, which creates a bazillion files. Every single one of those bazillion files is firing off an FS event and Dropbox is there running and saying, Oh my God, look at all these events. Don't care about this one. No, do I care about this one? No. Okay, but this one, no." And that burns CPU. And so when you're running Dropbox, and you're expanding Xcode, and you see your CPU usage going up, and then you try that same process with Dropbox not running and it gets faster.
You have a plausible, somewhat provable theory of what's happening because you can run strace on Dropbox one is expanding Xcode and watch calling you FS events like that is much more satisfying when it's just like, my computer does weird things, and I can't figure out why, it can be so many things. And that's why the sort of the anecdotes of I followed your instructions, and it made it better is very much like, I mean, you can make up any instruction stand on one foot, touch your nose and reboot your computer. It's like, oh, everything got better. Yeah, rebooting your computer fixes a lot of problems. It's not very satisfying. But it's true.
But if I tell you do anything before you reboot, let's say you don't reboot just quitting program solves lots of problems. Because if you quit the program that was causing a problem, or that one program was using a lot of memory who pushed you into swap, and that was your problem. Everything got slow because it's swapping, right? Even though you have an SSD swapping is still bad. And you can get into a bad way like people aren't equipped and shouldn't be have to be equipped to diagnose their computer anymore they know what that weird noises under the hood of their car, right? They just know that something is wrong.
And that's why you take your car to someone who knows or you hope like apple or the developers figure out how to make it so there aren't problems. But anytime someone comes up with like a, you know, try this one weird trick to fix your computer, the chances of that one real trick being the solution to everyone's problem is very, very low and more likely, literally doing anything to your computer to perturb what you were doing before. Doctor hurts when I do this, stop doing that, hey, it solved my problem. So I don't like the idea that people are thinking this was the solution. I do like the idea that people are having a better experience with their computers. But we won't make forward progress in our computer is getting better, unless somebody's able to figure out what's going on. Right?
Like Apple figured out hey, Discovery D not so good. We gotta we got to fix that. If instead Apple's like, Oh, I don't know. It's just some vague problem. We can't figure it out. We had to be pinpointed had to say, this is the thing that's wrong. Because when I swap it for the old thing, all of a sudden, my whole computer gets better. And it's not because you're running a web browser. And it's not because you're doing this, it's because there's an OS level component that hosts, right? That's the solution I want to see or explanation, right? Either someone's using a private API, someone's doing something to trigger a bug in the OS. But someone has to figure this out, and just not running Chrome, the world's most popular web browser, I think.
Is probably not the best solution. So either Chrome's got to figure it out, or Apple's got to figure it out, or someone's got to figure it out. So I really hope all the people who are following the instructions that I think are on this website, or at least tweeted, of like how to provide diagnostic information to the Chrome team. the Chrome team is like, Look, if you think it's us, like help us help you. We want to fix this too. But we need to know that it's us first. And it's difficult situation because as Marco always says, like it's not as a job to help Apple debug their crap. But on the other hand, if nobody does it, nothing ever gets fixed.
Casey
You know, in our super secret private chat, copyright due by Friday. Marco had said in exasperation a couple of days ago, you know, screw it. Maybe I'll just go get an XDR. And it occurred to me in our super secret private chat and I said to you Marco that you getting the XDR first and then saying well, I mean I have this XDR I've got to get a Mac Pro to match it. That was not the route I expected you to take.
Marco
God I have never wanted more for Apple to just make the monitor I want like there's such a giant hole in the market, especially now as they just released these amazingly compelling laptops and Mac Mini's. And there is not yet a similarly compelling iMac or Mac Pro, like everybody like so many people want to be using these brand new laptops and Mac minis as their desktops all of a sudden and the only option is either this terrible LG monitor or Apple's $7,000 monster.
John
I mean the only reason they all want them is because these are the only ARM Mac's that are out and they're the low end ones and I think everyone who is like I'm going to use a fanless err as my main computer, that instinct that desire that whole thing is just going to go away as soon as Apple releases the presumably much faster much better much much better suited to people's needs PRO ARM MAC's and then you say hey I thought you were gonna use your ARM as your as your main computer like yeah but now the iMac is out.
Marco
Yeah and so like and I right now I am using my amazing little fanless Mac Mini as my main computer and you know there are some things about it that are not as fast as they could be. But I think most of that is most of that feels like software problems honestly it doesn't feel like hardware there's still a lot of stuff that is not optimized for Apple Silicon that I'm that kind of surprises me, like Dropbox. They claim that it works but it doesn't like if you look at Activity Monitor it still says three Intel binaries one password and all of its sub processes are still not.
I can't run Call Recorder at all for Skype because that's that's not at all compatible yet. So there's like there's certain things about it that are weird and not yet optimized. I yes, I am fully aware that my own two Mac apps are also not optimized but that doesn't really matter because they work fine.
Marco
Yeah, but and forecasts like forecasts should matter. But in practice, you know, you're only running it for a few minutes here and there. And it's so fast anyway. And Rosetta is so fast, that in practice, it doesn't really matter for that app. So once it becomes easy to support the encoding library on that on Apple Silicon, then I will issue the update, but it isn't yet easy. And so it's not worth the trouble.
Casey
I want to go back a step though. I think, even though I have used the LG 5K, briefly, but many times because my dad has one. I didn't find it nearly as offensive as you. But again, I've only been using it for 10 minutes at a time once, you know, once every month or two. So this is not extended to use by any stretch. But despite that, and even though I don't find it to be that particularly terrible, it does kind of baffle me that Apple doesn't have something less than the pro display XDr. And I know we've been around this several times, but I just, I keep coming back to and thinking about you know, and you guys said this other people said this.
One of the great things about Apple in the same way like you with Coca Cola, I think John especially said this before that, you know, the President is drinking the same Coke or Diet Coke that I'm drinking and the President may or may not be using the same iPhone I'm using. And yet Apple in certain circumstances is in much to our request is reaching into these ridiculous stratosphere where no normal human other than John Siracuse, is buying a $7,000 monitor for his home computer. Like why would you do that? That's ridiculous. And so I don't begrudge them having the pro display xDr because we told them we want professionals to feel catered and they said, Okay, well Here you go, you know, you're now we're catering catering to professionals.
But that kind of attainable if challenging level that like, I feel like Apple isn't fulfilling that in a lot of spaces right now. And that's very frustrating. And it's like Apple lost a little of that coming back to like prestige and I don't know if that's the right word for it. But you know, Apple is kind of a prestige brand to some degree you know, it's a brand that a regular human can reach out and grab on a regular human income. You know, you don't have to be making $10 million a year to buy a really nice iPhone. And it bums me out that there's no reasonable Apple monitor for these computers that from everything anyone has said are unreal.
They're phenomenally great computers. They're bringing back like I'm listening to my friends. I'm listening to press talk about these computers. And there's that like, I mean, it's not a glint in the eye because I'm listening not seeing these people, but there's that verbal glint, if you will, that this is this computing got fun again, all of a sudden, it's not just incremental every year. This is like, this is fun. This is this is brand new and a lot of ways. And yet we're making it to these god awful displays. And that's just, and it's just it stinks. And I guess it would be less offensive if the market as a whole catered to these needs, you know, if there was some $2,000.
And it's not even about the money, but just for the sake of discussion is that there's some $2,000 Dell monitor that had like a really nice enclosure and a really nice stand. I can still imagine you guys saying, "well, it's still got the tail logo on the front, or Oh, I don't really like that it's black and gray, or it's plastic, not metal." But still, you know what, it's a great panel, it's a great monitor. So whatever, not that big a deal. You know what I mean?
Marco
That's exactly what I did like and the problem is the direction that the market went like for a while pre-retina and pre-high DPI for a while the PC monitor market and the Mac monitor market was compatible. And not only in like, the technical sense of it will work, but they wanted the same things. And the high end was kind of the same, or at least like it was a lot closer. And and so for like for before in the pre retina days, like what PC monitors wanted in the 24 inch LCD range was the same thing that Apple monitors wanted in the 24 inch LCD range.
And then what happened was, Apple went retina multiply everything by two X and the PC World didn't. And things have diverged in how each one of these worlds handles high DPI monitors whether they even want them at all. And then what their priorities are. The PC monitor market is largely like either the absolute worst bargain basement crap for business buyers who don't care and just need screens, or it's stuff targeted at gamers and gamers have very, very different priorities.
Like for gamers, it's much more about high refresh rates, and about yes, high pixel densities, but not as high as Apple goes because those are harder to drive at high frame rates. And so the markets have diverge now. And so now, what Apple users want and need and prioritize is not at all satisfied by what the PC makers are making dissatisfied with their market. So there's basically no one left to solve this need, except either Apple themselves, or in the case of like this LG monitor, and many of their peripherals by say, Belkin some third party manufacturer, where Apple has basically like handed someone the parts and market to make the thing themselves that Apple doesn't really want to make.
Obviously, these LG monitors were designed with Apple's help. And they're obviously there might even be a business deal to where LG makes these for Apple as part of some contract because Apple wanted this to exist, but didn't want to bother having to make and sell it and support it themselves. So who knows how that worked out. But clearly like there were some cooperation between two companies to make this. Same thing with all the stupid little adapters that Apple kind of co-makes with Belkin that Apple doesn't want to sell themselves.
And yeah, so that's that's what I'm with the monitors and it's a shame because if the monitor situation was better if Apple still did what they did forever, which is sell a good monitor in the you know 27 inch to 30 inch range for you know, 1500 bucks 1200 bucks, whatever it would be that would be amazing and the monitor that like and the panel that they could sell is what they've been shipping in the iMac since 2014. Like this is not new this it's not like technology is cutting edge and they can only fit it in an iMac no maybe that that might have been true in 2014 that's not true now because obviously the LG can make it.
So obviously Apple can make it too. And it's just so frustrating that they're just choosing not to like I like what you said about like you know that they are leaving these huge gaps I've kind of thought when looking at certain products you know when looking at the AirPods Pro Max for sure. When looking at certainly the pro display XDR, the Mac Pro, and even you know like their accessories business like the all the weird super expensive iPad cases and stuff the super expensive magsafe double charger thing that duo that doesn't include the power but it almost seems like there's two Apple's.
I think there's one side of the company is getting pretty good or has been pretty good at delivering decent value. And there's the other side. Not only are they not even trying, but like it's almost spiteful, how bad of a value they're delivering or how much of a market they are intentionally leaving totally unaddressed. But I don't think that's necessarily profitable. Like, yeah, you know what happens when Apple charges $129 for a little bedside charger? Most people don't get forced into buying it and go, like, I guess I'll reluctantly give Apple $129.
No, they just buy something else from some third party on Amazon for cheap. Like, that's, that's what actually happens here. If somebody needs a monitor, and the only one Apple sells is $7,000 almost nobody except jerks, like me and John, are going to be like, "Okay, I guess I'll buy that reluctantly." You know, most people are like, well, I'm just not gonna buy that no matter what you say, or do or no matter what I need. So I'm gonna find other options. And it's a shame, because that's really just lost business for Apple at the end of the day, and it's worse product for everyone else.
John
But not much lost business like that's that's the reason like the the thinking that leads them not to make that thing is the same thing that leads them not to make Wi-Fi routers, and all these other things where even WiFi routers were had a bigger market this like most computers Apple sells come with monitors, the ones that don't are the Mac Pro, which is now you're already in the market for a $7,000 monitor. So that's a perfect match set there. There's no discontinuity there, right, the Mac Mini, which is like, well, that's a weird ass computer that nobody uses and, you know, let them fend for themselves. The whole point is you bring your own monitor and keyboard or using a data center or whatever, definitely like a sideshow.
And then those people with laptops, who just buy Dell 4K monitors that Marco doesn't like, because everything is the wrong size, but no one else cares, or they buy those really big wide monitors like that overlap between like what the PC monitor market is, fits fine for people who just who want one of those big curved monitors and don't care and hook it up to their laptop. And so what's left, what's left is weird people. And now weird people like Marco or me, conceivably, where you have this very specific desire, like you buy a monitor to list computer from Apple or you want to use it with your laptop, but you don't want any with a PC ones because you don't like the curves and you want the DPI to be what you expect it to be.
It's like it's getting narrower and narrower. And it's like I feel like Apple learned from making like the Thunderbolt display the 27 inch Thunderbolt display, and 24 inch Apple LED display before that, they just don't sell a lot of those monitors. Because people look at those just like the weird $129 bedside thing they're like, "I'll pass, I'll buy a Dell monitor," right? And who's left, just you know, just the people who want an external monitor, which is already a fraction of a fraction. And just the people who are willing to pay the admittedly not ridiculous Apple premium for a monitor, instead of just buying the cheap Dell that is the wrong shape, or whatever.
So the bean counter perspective on why they don't make this makes sense. Same way it does for getting out of printers or Wi Fi routers, or whatever, because everyone likes the Wi-Fi router. And like I like that one. But I'll just buy the cheaper you know, Linksys router, right? But the the thing that everyone's missing the bean counter perspective missing is sometimes you got to make products that don't particularly make sense on a spreadsheet, just to give a better sort of cohesive product story, right? It satisfies your most loyal, most stupid customers who are willing to spend tons of money they become evangelists for your brand. And even if you lose money, and every single one of those 5K Apple displays that you make.
In the grand scheme of things in the long run, it helps your business and that pitch is the one that you need to make inside Apple to make this happen. And it seems like that pitch has been tougher and tougher sell. I mean, it's the same kind of pitch that made Apple take its eye off the Mac, it's like, "Yeah, but we make money off the iPhone, and we just need to satisfy existing Mac users on some minimal level" and they learn that lesson of like, no, you actually have to, you have to, you have to put more in than you think to the Mac market, even though when you know, when you look the line graphs, like the Mac is in the mix with like, I don't know, like, whatever other products that is in the mix with it, but it's not.
You know, it's like the iPhone, and now services. And then the other products Apple makes, you know, charging bricks and also the Mac, right? Kind of the same level stuff. But it's like you have sometimes you have to spend more than it seems like it's worth to keep the ball rolling, right? And they learned it on the Mac, but they haven't learned it on the sort of accessories thing was sort of the idea that you want to provide a holistic Apple experience. Steve Jobs seem to be into that, because he liked the idea of being able to sell you all the things even though the vast majority customers aren't going to buy all the things, right?
But having all the things on offer, I think makes your product and brand more valuable. I mean, obviously has to draw the line somewhere like maybe probably Apple shouldn't be making printers anymore, right? But a monitor for your computers that matches them that almost nobody's gonna buy that you're already have the panels for that you're using in your IMAX, right? That I feel like is a small reach just making an iMac, no chin, no computer guts like it's right. It's right there. It doesn't it's not that much more and you're like but I can't justify those development expenses.
