318 I'm sure they are sensitive about their ears

Drew 00:00

How the hell are ya? I wanna talk about I wanna talk I wanna talk about work for a second.

Paul 00:05

Okay, okay, let's talk about work.

Drew 00:08

I've been in the workforce for uh how old am I? Twenty. God

Paul 00:15

dude, you're you're a couple years younger than me, so.

Drew 00:23

I've been in the workforce for over thirty years, in some form or another. And I have a fancy job title.

Paul 00:33

What is your title?

Drew 00:34

My official title is Senior Solutions Architect. Which is kind of a big deal. Like a lot of organizations, you know, you sort of have the entry-level stuff, the junior level, the regular level, the senior level, the leader principal level. Yeah. I've been on a career trajectory uh probably longer than I should have been for like a principal type title. Um that's not what I'm bitching about. What I'm bitching about is I have this really fancy title, but what I really am is a janitor. That's what I am. I'm a janitor, Paul. I'm a janitor who cleans up messes that I create this giant sign. I create this giant sign. It says, don't shit here. It literally says just don't don't poop here. Don't poop right here. This is a no-shitting area. And I love I love the people I work with and I love the things that I do. But you know what they do, Paul? Do they shit there? They shit right there. They shit right in the exact spot you told them not to shit in. And then you have to first clean up the shit, and then you have to have a post mortem on the shit. And you have to talk about why it was a bad idea to shit there. Yeah. And you know what you're not allowed to do? You know what you're not allowed to do? Say don't you say tell everybody that you told them not to shit? You're not allowed to point that out. You're not allowed to be the guy that says that you told him not to shit there. That should never come up. Everybody should just ignore that And focus on not repeating the shitting. It's like 88% of my job. It's like 88 % of it. So when somebody who's been doing this for a long time makes that suggestion. At least acknowledge it. Acknowledge it. Acknowledge it. That's all. That's all. It's not it's not people being smug. It's not people being Jerks about it, it's just ston't don't shit where I tell you not to shit. You know? And I What I've realized is that at my advanced age of forty-six, that if if my company were to say, Hey Drew That's enough. Go go away. Go away. Go do something else. I think what I would basically tell people is people aren't gonna hire me for what I know. People are gonna hire me for what I've seen.

Paul 02:59

Okay.

Drew 03:00

Yeah. Yeah. At that is that is a certain kind of experience that is useful because Th there 's only so many ways to design something. There's usually one really bad way to do something There's lots of bad ways to do something, but there's like the ultimate bad way to do something. And I've seen a lot of those. And I feel like if I can help organizations just not do that I could eke out a living until retirement. I really truly feel that way susceptible. How are you?

Paul 03:39

I am Just utterly I'm I'm exhausted. I'm drained is what I am. I'm completely, completely drained. Let's talk about it.

Drew 03:49

What's going on with it? No.

Paul 03:50

It's just that uh So okay, I work from home because that's my that's my choice. Uh I enjoy not having to spend over an hour in the car every day. Ah well for last week and this week and then a few days next week. I have been in the office every day this week. We're doing a big project. It's actually very exciting. I'm the project itself is really good. I'm super excited to be there and do it. It's just like the whole like getting up and you know like getting ready and putting on a polo shirt and taking my coffee to go and sitting in the car for 30 minutes and then being, you know, like when I'm home, if I need to like step away for a bit, like there's nobody around. that's not the case at work. There's people around all the time. Oh and it's just it's just like I'm at my heart I'm an introvert, or at least I'm like I have those tendencies and I just haven't not had enough time to recharge. My batteries, you know, so I'm really looking forward to this weekend and relaxing and uh Yeah, but

Drew 04:59

Yeah, I'm taking tomorrow off. I'm taking tomorrow off. Yeah, I would I yeah, I have I had a really uh eventful week last week. I was I was actually working last week, but I had to go to Florida, I had to go to South Carolina, had to take care of some family stuff. Not not that I really want to go into right now, but uh we can talk about it offline. But it was it was a really draining week. Um I did get to spend some time with family, which is always good, but it really wasn't time off. Let's just put it on.

Paul 05:27

Depends on the family.

Drew 05:29

I think that's fair. I think that's that's fair. That's fair.

Paul 05:32

Yeah.

Drew 05:35

Okay, so since we last talked, Apple Apple made some news. They sure did. They sure did, Drew. Yep. I want to talk about it.

Paul 05:46

You want to talk about the iPhone Duo? I want to talk about the iPhone Duo. Okay. I also want to talk about the iPhone duo. So

Drew 05:53

before we get into this I am due.

Paul 05:57

You are due.

Drew 06:00

For a new phone. And I actually always forget what kind of iPhone I have.

Paul 06:05

I believe you have the 16 Pro.

Drew 06:06

I have a 16 Pro. I just I oh I had to open up the actual settings app to confirm because I couldn't remember if I had a 15, a 16. I know I didn't have a 17.

Paul 06:14

One of my many skills is trek keeping track of what phones people that I know have. I can tell you somebody that I know who has an iPhone 10. So

Drew 06:24

Yeah. Yeah. I have uh I I have a friend. He's not a listener to the podcast, so I guess he's not really a friend. But he he was actually forced to upgrade his phone for work Because the the newer version of like Intune or something didn't support that version of iOS and he couldn't upgrade.

Paul 06:42

So your phone is two years old, which is typic that when the typical American upgrades their phone is every two years, every two to three years, but we're nerds. I mean, I've been upgrading my phone every year since the 10th, so I have a problem I can't quite commit to a yearly upgrade. Okay. Yeah. This I have not ordered anything. I'm still on my 17 Pro because it is Orange and I loved it so much. I love it so much I took the case off of it. So you can see orange phone all the time. Now granted the orange phone. I did this because I can put my pop socket on there and have a nice nice little handhold. I cannot believe you're a pop

Drew 07:18

socket person.

Paul 07:19

I cannot believe you're a pop socket person. My wife was right on this case. Pop sockets are great. Okay. Okay. The magnetic pop suck in particular. The ones that stick on permanently suck. But you gotta get the ones that are magnetic. Don't put stickers on your phone.

Drew 07:32

Don't do that. You can put stickers on your laptop. Don't put stickers on your phone. Okay, so Apple has this new thing, the iPhone Duo. It's a foldable phone. Okay. So Where ya at on this?

Paul 07:48

Is this for you? I don't know yet. I c okay. If we're talking about ordering, is i is there gonna be an iPhone duo purchase in the Baylor household? I think the answer to that question is yes. Okay. I think my wife would love it.

Drew 08:18

Okay.

Paul 08:19

She is uh she is a big phone person. She's a big phone she's a big phone girl. She likes the she likes to Pro Max. She's on a 16 Pro Max. She' at the same same age as you, she did not upgrade last year I think the iPhone duo will be purchased and offered to her first. If she declines it, then I may use it, and if I do not like it, I can always return it. I am not committed to this. I have literally like a month in between when the pre-orders start to think about this and change my mind. I am I do not know if I'm a folding phone person. And to be completely honest, like the hardware, hardware leaks. Almost everything about the hardware leaks. The only thing that didn't leak was like the nanotexture display. Everything but the hardware leaks. Looking at the hardware, when I'm looking at all the rumors and leaks, I was like, meh. And then Samsung announced their or the release their passport style folding folding phone because everyone knew what Apple was gonna do, the aspect ratio, so all of the Android manufacturers came to market with Passport the put the folio, the the short and squat folding phones first. And while I'm not I'm not very big into the Android rumor or news. I'm a big fan of The Verge. I do listen to some of The Verge's podcasts. And they had some Android folks on there. And they and they basically said, like, we've been using folding phones since they came out. That's this size, this passport style short squat book kind of thing is the best folding form, best folding phone form factor they have had they have experienced. They're like, yeah, they're copying Apple. Apple figured out what the size of a photos phone should be. This thing is great. So when that happened, I was like, oh, okay. And then I watch the keynote, and god damn it, does that software not look freaking amazing? Yeah. Yeah When they had the little animation of opening it and it looks like it's translucent and you can see through the like looks like you can see through it and then it like I was like Huh. Well look at that. And the fact that they didn't just port iOS. They're like, oh, we considered we consider the whole design paradigm. We moved a whole bunch of stuff over to the side instead of the bottom. And I was like, well, god damn it, Apple, you did it again. You did it again. Now what are what are you feel what are your general feelings about the folding phone, Drew?

Drew 10:55

So I have never been a proponent of a folding phone. I want a phone that fits in my pocket well. I want to be able to pull it out, open it up, look at it, unlock it, use it, whatever. So there's a there's a few things that immediately put me off about the foldable phone. Not to mention not to mention the design of the fold, right? So the first thing is there's gonna be no uh it's it's all gonna be touch ID. It's not gonna be

Paul 11:22

Yeah, there's no face ID, it's just touch ID on the button. Or if you wear an Apple Watch, it'll unlock if you're wearing your watch.

Drew 11:29

Yeah. Is that the end of the world? No, it's not. It's not.

Paul 11:33

And I get it because for it to work well, they would have to put two face IDs, one on the inside and one on the but the front. I get it. I get it. Yeah.

Drew 11:43

The other thing the other thing when I'm kind of looking at the specs and and reading all of the press that's come out about this, I don't think it has a good camera like the 18 Pro is going to. have

Paul 11:54

it has no it does not and it has the pretty much the exact same phone as the the camera as the seventeen E, which is like this year's low-end phone. It's it's a perfectly f fine camera. It's just it is it is not the best. It only has the the normal camera and the wide angle. It does not have a telephoto camera at all. Yeah, so the cameras are a little yeah.

Drew 12:18

There was a period of my life where I had a nice DSLR camera and I would take that around and I would take pictures. I don't think as a society we have to do that anymore. I think we have really, really good cameras in our pockets. And I like to take pictures of my sweet precious angel Vito and I like to take pictures when I go on vacation and I like to take pictures when I'm out about with friends and at the range. So I don't I I I kinda want the better camera. Do I need the 18 Pro camera? Maybe not. Maybe a regular iPhone 18 camera would be fine for me. But I d I do like the extra bells and whistles of The 18 Pro. The one thing that I couldn't figure out and I didn't have time to research before the the show is the last few iPhone Pros have had um Not variable refresh bait, but what is it what does Apple call it? Promotion. It's not promotion.

Paul 13:08

Yeah. Promotion. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 13:10

The duo doesn't have that, right?

Paul 13:12

No, it does it does. Oh it does. Okay. Every phone every phone Apple sells currently has it.

Drew 13:17

Okay. That was the other thing too, because now that now that I've seen that, I don't think I could unsee it.

Paul 13:21

Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 13:23

And uh friend of the show, Brent Ozar, you know, he does a lot of travel to Asia. He goes to China, he goes to Japan a lot Apparently, foldables are kind of a big deal. Kind of a big deal overseas.

Paul 13:35

They are a much bigger, bigger percentage of the market in like Asian countries than they are in the United States. Yeah. Yeah, so even even Europe. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 13:44

I I don't I don't know but I I I can't speak to Europe, but his in his travels uh in, you know, Asia. Seems like that's a really popp uh popular thing. And as much as Samsung was I think the first kind of company in the States to break into the foldable phone market, I think Highway or Hawaii or however you say them. Yeah. I think they were technically the first Yeah.

Paul 14:04

I would say like right now, like yes, Google has them, but if you have a foldable phone in the States, it's a Samsung device. Like nobody buys the pixel phones. I'm sorry Google, but nobody buys your phones.

Drew 14:13

Nobody really buys one. Except except my former AU who worked at Google.

Paul 14:18

Yeah, yeah. I'll give it back. I mean they sell some of them, but compared to Samsung, they're they're not.

Drew 14:22

Oh yeah, no, they're

Paul 14:23

yeah, they're not they're not anywhere.

Drew 14:26

Okay, so anyway. Um I saw the keynote, I saw the announcement, and I'm just like, I don't think I really need a foldable phone. But over the past few days Everybody has their hot takes on YouTube now. People put out reviews and have had the device and have given impressions. And I gotta say, it doesn't look bad. Yeah. And I will say Apple

Paul 14:47

Apple does something really smart because usually what they do is Generally speaking, on keynote day, there's like no embargo. You can get your hands on the device, you can put anything you want on there. Then after that day, you're basically embargoed. Because they may give you a test device and you're embargoed until whatever date they say. So your view will all come out the same time. What Apple did is they gave key content creators a loan time. In rooms, not inside the big area. Oh, oh. You're be you've been you've been uh yeah. Am I back? I was trying you're back now. I'm at 99 % chunks. Yeah, I'm at ninety-eight. Your video's been a little jagged for me. Uh, but I don't know, Riverside's being Riverside. Uh Basically, they gave these content creators like, uh-oh.

Drew 15:34

No, that was me. That was me. I did that. I did that. I was trying to figure out if I could like adjust my um Yeah. If I could adjust like my settings or something to make it.

Paul 15:46

This is gonna be a 1080p episode because I forgot to change it to 4K. God damn it. That's fine. That's all right. Nobody watches. This isn't for you. They gave basically they gave the key content creators like alone time in little quiet rooms for them and their teams to get some really good videos and hands-on time with the duo that they can record and stream. And I have watched a lot of those. Pretty much that they're pretty much that's my TikTok on them these days is people just with hot takes on the iPhone duos. I think that was really smart on Apple. They knew they had something special. They wanted a media since they wanted all the content creators to produce videos and stuff. So yeah, so far it's yeah, it's Their marketing has been really spot on for this. Yeah.

Drew 16:28

And I would say that, you know, most of the reviews I've watched have been pretty favorable. Yeah. I mean people people have some complaints and that's I think natural. But I think overall impressions have been really good The one thing that I've heard multiple reviewers comment on is like, hey, I have tried foldable phones and there's always like that little bit of lag when you open it when it has to catch up and everything. It seems like Apple really know what the transition , the different ways you can use the fold for like the alarm clock and the media controls and things like that.

Paul 16:54

Like it's it's very

Drew 16:56

Clever. It's

Paul 16:57

how it works. You can put it as a tent or a little laptop or like yeah. Yeah. It's just cute. Which Android phones do that too. It's not that's not a new idea, but yeah.

Drew 17:06

It's very it's very clever.

Paul 17:08

It is. It is I and all the little yeah, yeah.

Drew 17:12

I don't think it's for me. I I yeah I I want it. I I do want it. I do want it. Yeah. But if this is the year Drew upgrades his iPhone Okay. I I am in the camp now where I'm never gonna subsidize a phone number again. So I'm going to pay cash. I'm gonna buy it flat out. I'm I'm in a position to do that. I know what I report.

Paul 17:32

Welcome to the club. Yep.

Drew 17:33

Yep.

Paul 17:34

It's a precision of privilege, but it's nice. It gives you all the options, all the flexibility you ever have.

Drew 17:39

All the options. You're not playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes with your phone provider. That is the absolute way to do it. It's two thousand dollars.

Paul 17:49

Starting. Starting. I need the five twelve model for what I need. So mine's gonna be like twenty-four, twenty-five. I think I'm there with you.

Drew 17:56

I think I'm there with you, right? It's just Yeah. That's a lot of cheddar. When the 18 Pro Max is starting at uh literally almost $900 less.

Paul 18:08

Yeah. Yeah. And let's be honest, like the Pro phones Are pretty good. Like pretty good. They're pretty good. And and you're coming from a 16. So just I just want to point out, Apple makes incredible silicon. The A20, the chip that is in the 18 Pros has the fastest single core performance of any chip Apple has ever made. I saw that No, multi-core doesn't have as many cores as like the M-Chips, so the multi-core is a little down. The 18 's got the new, like the improved thermals. So like one thing I really noticed going from the 16 Pro to 17 Pro was the thermal management. It does not get as hot and is able to keep sustained performance for longer. They've even improved that even more because apparently the chip is so I guess the 17 Pro, it will essentially The the the processor RAM was on top of the processor and then it was the vapor chamber. Well now they've moved the RAM beside the processor so the vapor chamber is directly on top of the processor. So it just distributes heat even better than before. And it's bigger and yeah, so like apparently the thermals are going to be uh Just yeah, better so it's it'll charge cooler, it'll be cooler, it'll run better. The eighteen pro like it's yeah Chances are when you buy the 18 Pro, it'll be the fastest device in your house. Like that's that's how good these chips are.

Drew 19:39

I don't doubt it. I really don't doubt it. And again Part of the reason that I'm really looking at that is I really want the full I want the full-fledged uh Siri AI experience, which is gonna require newer hardware. I know my current phone won't do it. It'll do like Most of it on cloud versus on device.

Paul 19:56

The smaller model. Yeah. Yeah. The smaller on device model.

Drew 19:59

Yeah. So I'm I'm excited to take advantage of that. Um yeah.

Paul 20:05

I think you should I think you should buy the the Pro or the Pro Max, whichever one you want. I think that's the right phone for you, Drew. I I think it is. I think it is.

Drew 20:13

Yeah. I'm not super thrilled about this year's colors, if I'm honest.

Paul 20:17

I I agree with you on that. I think hold on, let me go to I have another.

Drew 20:28

Glacier,

Paul 20:29

sorry. Yeah. Glacier. I think if I was doing it this year, I think I'd probably go with the the silver or the glacier.

Drew 20:42

I think it's silver. I think it's silver or black for me.

Paul 20:44

Yeah. I would do the I would just do the silver. I like the white devices. I do. I do

Drew 20:52

I think it's a good idea. Mine is the natural titanium.

Paul 20:56

And I I love this. I wish they made this color more. I love the titanium. I think the Burgundy is gonna sell gangbusters. I don't think it's gonna be as popular as Cosmic Orange. That but also I'm biased. I love Cosmic Orange. It's the reason I haven't. That is a great phone. Yeah, I love it. I love that color. It's such a great, it's a great. I love, I mean heck, I'm using orange headphones right now. I love orange. It's one of my favorite colors, if not my favorite color. Oh the pre-orders for this start tomorrow. The pre-orders no deliveries. Pre-orders for the S 18 and the 18 Pro or the 18 Pro and Pro Max was last Friday. They 're the first deliveries arrived tomorrow. Oh, okay. Okay.

Drew 21:33

I wonder if they'll be available in the store.

Paul 21:35

They that will as of tomorrow they'll be in the available in the store.

Drew 21:38

Mm-hmm.

Paul 21:39

Yeah, you may be able to put one in now for a pre-or to pick up tomorrow if you're so if you're if you're lucky. Yeah It's a possi distinct possibility. Distinct possibility. All right.

Drew 21:50

I'm just gonna leave I'm gonna leave this tab open and we'll see what happens.

Paul 21:53

Yeah. Uh the only thing I did buy is I did purchase a new pair of AirPods. I bought the AirPods 5. Okay.

Drew 22:02

You're not a big fan of in-ear stuff. I do not

Paul 22:07

I used to use the pros. I like the post. As listeners remember, I had a panic attack when when the ear tips came off in my ear. And then and and I'm just generally I'm very sensitive about things that go in my ear. So I just do the regular pros. I have the I have the fours with the ANC. They're a couple years old. I mean, I these things are almost if I'm not talking somebody, chances are These things are in my ear and I'm either listening to a podcast or or or music. People ask me how many how do you listen to so many podcasts, Paul? It's because I said I'm always listening to podcasts. That's the thing. Uh The battery is getting a little like I can tell the case justn't holding the charge anymore. I'm right there. Yeah, my pros are doing the same thing And then when I saw the the f the 15s, there's like two models. The higher model has the wireless charging case, which is a must-have. And it also has the volume control by like swiping on the stem. And when I saw that, I'm like I want that. That's I I would want that. I hate reaching into my pocket or forgetting my phone. Like I walk away with my AirPods in and I want to adjust the volume. Like I fucking can't. We're my phone's my phone's over there. So yeah, that was an instant purchase instant purchase for me. Uh, but I haven't ordered any phones yet, because I don't know. I'm just

Drew 23:23

But you don't have a compulsion to I mean you do upgrade every year. So are you are you saying that you will either get a folder in 18?

Paul 23:32

I will either get a fold or stick with my 17 Pro.

Drew 23:36

Okay. So if an upgrade happens, it's going to be the fold.

Paul 23:39

Yes. Yeah. The duo. Excuse me. The iPhone Duo. Sorry. Yes. Yes. Oh that the Apple police will come and hit me over the head if I say it wrong too many times. Right, right. That's But I honest I really think I really think my wife would love the duo. I think I think that is I think she could be now granted the cameras could bot bother her, but we're at a point now where like our kids are older, we're not taking as many pictures in general So she probably would be fine. I think like for my wife, her phone is her primary computing device.

Drew 24:11

I would say

Paul 24:11

I would say that's my wife as well.

Drew 24:12

That's

Paul 24:13

that is my wife's use case as well. well. Yeah. And she likes the Mac, she likes the big phone, and I think this would I think she would really enjoy the the duo. So I don't know. Uh the problem is here's here's the problem Drew. The colors for the duo are either it's either what? It's a black or white. I think that's essentially yeah. Uh I think that's the two colors. Uh night sky, which is a bluest black, or the star white. If I was buying it for me, it'd be I wouldn't even think about it. It's star white. It's star white. I like I like the white phone. I like it. My wife does not like white phones. She likes dark phones. She always gets the darkest color. If there if there's the blackest black, that's what she would get. So if I buy one, I'll probably buy the black. Hoping that she would take it. I don't know. I don't know.

Drew 25:18

The only thing I will tell you is that if I was gonna do it, it the night it would be night sky and it wouldn't even be close because it takes away a little bit of the bevel.

Paul 25:26

Yeah, yeah

Drew 25:29

The white, the the black on the white with the bevel and the lenses, I I think it's a nicer look. I I'm with you. I gravitate more to the lighter colors.

Paul 25:39

I like the look of the white. I like the look of the white. I like that I like that the s the edges are silver. I mean, I don't know. I'm basic like that. My my Macs are silver and my phones are white. Except for this phone, my phone's orange.

Drew 25:54

Orange phone true and it is an orange phone. I like that. Okay, so here's here's my here's the last thing I'm gonna ask you about this topic.

Paul 26:02

Okay.

Drew 26:03

As a developer How do you feel about this?

Paul 26:07

Okay, Drew. All right, here's here's the thing. Okay, here's here's the thing. So In the Xcode 27 betas that had shipped, there was a little bit of hint of this. There was a mode that you can put the simulator in that allowed you to kind of like drag and resize your iOS apps to see how they behave. That it was clearly only part of the story. The other part of the story is like, hey, uh, all of your interface elements are on the right now. Deal with it like toolbars and like all that stuff. Okay. So there's gonna be a lot of work. And like There's gonna be a lot of work and I think it's gonna be a lot like if you're did you have the 10 when it came out? Because that was their first like button. And there was like a period of a couple months where like applications did not respect the fact there was no home button and they put content underneath the little grabby area where you have to swipe up so sometimes you couldn't tap a button correctly. I think there's going to be a lot of that the first couple of months. I think it's going to be a rough start as developers start to figure out what they need to do or heck even I don't know if you've seen, but if you like if you take an app today that was not compiled on the like 27 SDKs It's basically letterboxed on the side. It's a regular iPhone app in the middle of the screen with black bars on the side, right? They don't do anything to it Uh if you compile with the the 27 SDK, you at least get it to be resized, but you don't have any of the controls in the right place. Okay, so anyw, anywho. We know that the duo is going to come out with 27. 1. Everybody is waiting for for uh Apple to release the beta the beta versions of 27. 1 and the beta version of Xcode, which is their dev tools. Today, Apple released the betas for 27. 2. Not 0. 1, 0. 2. And it has none of the duo stuff in it Uh oh. Uh-oh. So I'm guessing there's still some last-minute refinements or there's some secret stuff that they want people realizing this soon as they get their hands on the duo simulator. So as of today, a month before pre-orders, no developer can even start trying out user interface design specifically for the duo. It is impossible. You can't think of the thing. Okay. Yeah, like they showed Netflix in the thing. Yes. There are probably are some big developers who already have access to it who've gotten stuff like yes, you are correct. Like up clearly Netflix has. They showed some other stuff. But like a lot of your apps Might not work right. Yeah, exactly. It's gonna be if you get this phone on launch day, heck, if you get this phone in the first month, it's gonna be a bumpy ride for a bit. I I really do think it is. And Yeah, I mean not to get too nerdy, but like I follow along with Swift Development. I can't I keep trying to write an app, but it stalls and starts. Whatever, it's fine. I still enjoy doing it. You can like looking at some of the stuff that they introduced in the SDK 20 like for uh iOS 27, you can look at that and go, oh, I see what you did. Cause like used to be when you set like toolbar items, you would say like, hey, this is the this is the first and this is the second And they changed it all to be like, well, this is your primary toolbar button, and this is the default action, and this is your secondary toolbar island and your and toolbar item and your tertiary. So kind of removing position and kind of importance. And you're like, oh, they did that because on the duo, they're not at the top, they're on the right. Right? Uh So there's the developer stories I think is gonna be interesting, but I really do believe it's gonna it's if you remember the iPhone X and having the frustration of apps not having not figured that that form factor out yet. It's gonna be a lot like that. Probably even worse, because this is the significant UI change as far as like uh iOS goes. So yeah. Gotcha. We'll see. We'll see.

Drew 30:46

Gotcha. Okay. Is there anything else about Apple that we want to talk about? I mean, I think that's kind of the big news, and we do like to talk about Apple news.

Paul 30:54

I mean, we could just go right into our listener question if we want to talk about more Apple stuff.

Drew 31:00

Yeah, let's do that. Go ahead and set us up here.

Paul 31:02

Okay. So we got a question from a listener.

Drew 31:06

Love that.

Paul 31:07

And by the way, if you want to send us a question, send us an email to contact at doing their best. com. And I guarantee you, unless your question's real dumb, boy, answer it. Uh This one comes from friend of the show Andrew. Hi Andrew. And he says, question for you all. If you're going to vest in local AI, what are you buying? Especially with the newly announced Max Studio. I have one pre-ordered to reserve my spot in line, but I don't know if I'll go through with it or some other setup. I ordered the M5 Ultra 80 Core 2TB and 256 gigs of memory. I'd likely be using it for coding and general purpose agents, maybe some light image generation, but definitely not a focus area to worry much about performance. Thanks and looking forward to a good computer corner. I hope you get everything you want, Andrew. Okay, so first of all, Drew. Do you know how much that computer I'm glad you brought that up.

Drew 32:09

And before we get into that though, before we get into that though, I'm gonna look at my camera. I'm gonna give Andrew a little wag of the finger here, because we've we've talked about this and clearly you don't listen. Clearly you don't listen. We've talked about this

Paul 32:19

Okay.

Drew 32:20

So yes, Paul, go ahead and go ahead and describe this because I before the show started and I saw that you put this in the show notes, I did look this up. Uh-huh, I did.

Paul 32:28

Yeah, so you know the number. Okay. So the the chip that he is getting is the I f I M5 Ultra. 300 max core core. Yep. So it's the M5 Ultra Max Studio. 36 core CPU, 80 core GPU. 256 gigs of RAM, which you can't get that number any higher. That's the most Apple will sell you. And two terabytes. That computer is 11,299 American Freedom Dollars. Before tax. Before tax. With tax, that is a twelve thousand dollar computer. So Andrew, and Andrew, you're nuts.

Drew 33:16

Well, hold on. Hold on. Hold on. We're going to play devil and angel. We're going to play devil and angel here. From me, okay, Paul's? Paul's gonna be the angel and tell you that you're nuts, but I'm gonna be the devil, okay? I'm gonna be the devil here. And I'm gonna say that if you're serious about this, before you drop any money on hardware. There's a lot of other questions you got to ask yourself, right? Let's let's let's look at his email again. So the primary use case here is he wants to do coding. Yeah. All right. So the first question I would ask you, Andrew, is this thing shows up on your doorstep. You're happy. You made an investment. You're ready to take this seriously. You get it down, you get it unboxed, you get it set up. What model are you running? That's a serious question. It's a serious question. Because here's here's the reality of where local LLMs right now. And I'm and I'm telling you this from a position of Semi -authority because over to my right is my AI computer that I do local coding on. Okay? Again, we've talked about this. Be a better listener. First of all, be better. Be better about being a listener. Okay. We're doing this for you. When it comes to local coding models today, you have ones that can comfortably fit into anywhere from 64 to about 128 gigs of VRAM Once you go to the next generation models, you need like 600 gigs of memory. Okay I would say that right right now as of this recording, if if you were gonna go get started with a local coding model right now that can run on most hardware and by the way, run well. Because remember that all these models perform differently depending on the hardware you have. You know, I could this thing fit a big two hundred gig model on it? Absolutely. But if you're getting half a token per second, is it really worth it? Right. Or do you want a slightly smaller model that can generate 12 to 20 tokens a second and give you faster development iteration, giving you all of that speed. So before you drop any money on this stuff. I think the first thing you gotta figure out is what model you're gonna run. I think if you go read Reddit and you go read this other stuff right now, there is a particular model called Quen3 Coder Next. This is the one I use. It is a perfect balance of performance, capability. I've thrown multiple scenarios at it. And it has created workable apps. Does it one-shot things? Absolutely not. But I don't even think frontier models necessarily one-shot everything all the time. So your development cycle is going to look like this. You got to first decide on which model you want to use. You're going to put it through its paces. You're going to come up with a workflow that gets this done and generates the thing that you want to do for local coding. Now, again, whatever skills you throw at this thing, whatever else you have it to to to work with, and MCPs that you plug it into, all of that stuff is fair game. Not I'm not gonna go that deep on it, but you first have to decide like Which model is this? And I think that you will find that the models that really perform right now aren't gonna fit into 256 gigs of RAM. It's not. Yeah. And while streaming from hard drives, there's people out there that are doing little cool science experiments for that. Again Your performance is gonna be awful. Gonna be it's just gonna be awful. So we'll put a link in the show notes to Quen3 Coder next. And you're gonna go down this crazy rabbit hole. about well hold on a second there's multiple versions of Quen 3 coder next and which one should I use and all this other stuff. Yeah. The next thing that I would tell you is again before you drop money on any hardware, what's your harness? What are you going to use for this? And this is where you start to get into differences between OS versions, hardware versions, and what you're able to run. At a minimum, what you need is you need some sort of tool that is able to take a model and run it locally for inference. And your mileage may vary here. I think that there's plenty of open source tools. Like uh Llama CPP is like the most the most common one. It's open source. You can run it on pretty much any hardware. It does take, you know, a lot of configurations. A lot of times you actually have to compile it for your particular system setup, hardware memory. You're gonna be investing some time in that. Or you can go off the shelf with something like LM Studio. All these links will be in the show notes, Andrew. You should know that by now if you're a real listener. You need to first figure that out. Like how am I actually gonna load these models? Then you got to figure out, well, again, what's my hardest? Am I going to use open code? Am I going to like go pay for like an IDE or something that plugs into my local development? How do I set that up? You see how this like starts to snowball a little bit. So I think you I think you first really, and maybe you've already done this, and I'm not trying to cast aspersions, but you really need to go and think about which model am I targeting And I think if you look at it through that lens, I don't think you need to go spend $12,000. I don't. I think that if you if you find the right model and you kind of arrive at a place where you know the amount of uh GPU power that you need, you can make a pretty informed decision. Now having said that. . One more thing I'm gonna offer up here.

Paul 38:54

Okay.

Drew 38:55

As we all know

Paul 38:56

, and then I'm gonna I'm gonna give Andrew my opinion of what he should do.

Drew 38:59

Okay. Alright, I'll shut up here in a second. No, you're fine. You're fine. But what I would tell you is that for that money or around that money. What if I told you you could get 128 gigs of actual RAM. What if I told you that you could get a GeForce 5090 and a two-terabyte SSD? For about a thousand dollars less than you're gonna spend on that Mac. And here's what I would also tell you. Understand that Apple Silicon is a different beast. It is. Yeah. It's a different beast. And having having used generative AI on a Mac, a PC, and a Linux machine right now, it's Linux versus everybody. When it comes to library support, when it comes to OS support.

Paul 39:54

It's Linux and NVIDIA, really, right?

Drew 39:56

Like that's the big

Paul 39:57

yeah.

Drew 39:58

Right. So I don't know what your proximity is to a micro center. But I would tell you for the same same ish price, you could buy a machine that almost is what I have. It's a pa it's a power spec, so it's their house brand, but it has all of that stuff in it. And then I would tell you to go to one step further because if you really want to max out your VRAM, again, without going super deep into Drew's computer corner right now, it's not just about the total RAM in your system. It's about how fast things can access it. And that's why this particular model might be something that's a little more attractive just from an expandability standpoint because This computer has two more PC like full-fledged PCIe ports running at max speed. Running at max speed. That's the key. So now you can go And you can buy, and I thought I had it open here. Let me just grab it real quick. I guess maybe I didn't. Oh, what did I do with that? Hang on a second. You can then go buy two AMD 32GB cards and drop it in here. And boom, all of a sudden, you have basically 96 total gigs of VRAM. And not only that, but you can use the AMD cards for LLM stuff. And when it comes to image generation, I'm sorry AMD, but like the NVIDIA libraries, the support for things like comfy UI and image generation. It's NVIDIA versus everybody else. It really, really is. So if you start pricing all that out, like if you go buy this, it's it's an eleven thousand dollar machine at Micro Center. You're then gonna throw in two more AMD video cards. That's gonna cost you another three. But it but you get that home, you uninstall Windows immediately, you throw Ubuntu or Fedora on it. a desktop version so you can actually use it. Get you know muddle through your first NVIDIA driver install. That's that's an adventure. All right, getting official NVIDIA drivers working on Linux is an adventure. There's a lot of good guides out there. It's better than it was. It still can be a chore depending on which which distribution you take. You can be up and running with an extremely capable system. Extremely capable system for your use case. I th I think, and and the other thing I would tell you before you make a decision is go watch YouTube videos. I'm sure you already have But go watch YouTube videos on like an M4, because the M5 's not out yet, but like on an M4 Apple Silicon, like token generation speeds for some of these common models. and see what they are. Because that is absolutely going to factor into this because yes, you are going to be able to generate code. But how fast can it generate it before you now have to go and, you know, have it do more, have it do more? That starts to add up after a while. So I'm gonna shut up, Paul. What's your advice?

Paul 43:05

Okay. I think unless you are a massive enthusiast and want this to be your hobby, it is too early to run local LLM models. It's just too early. Give it a few years. I think you're much better off. Macs are great. Get the M5 Max with 64 gigs of RAM. And a two-terabyte hard drive. That computer is a little over $4,000. And then buy a hundred dollar a month subscription to your uh AI provider of choice. I think you have a much better experience. With everything around that and that the computer's gonna be a beast, it's gonna last you forever. And you can take the you know $7,000 you saved and just pay anthropic or open AI every month. I think you'll be much I think you'll be much, much happier today. Now in a year, in a two-year, as these models get better But like right now the trend is not can I make a smaller model? It's can I make a bigger model that does more? So right now numbers are just going up. So the the the capa the you know the the you know the frontier models are just getting bigger and bigger. I just think it's too early. Unless you're really big unless you want unless you want this to be your personality. Right? If you want this to be your hobby, you want to be an enthusiast. And if you did that, I'd go Drew's route. I'd go NVIDIA and and Linux and and not but then you you don't have a Mac. But uh my recommendation, spend four thousand dollars on a Mac Studio, use a Frontier, pay someone debt for access to a Frontier model while sh while tokens are still ridiculously cheap.

Drew 44:45

I mean that that is probably the more practical advice. There is a huge cash outlay here to do this locally. And to your point, the models are getting better every day. I get acceptable performance with Qued 3 Coder Dex. I really do. I have I have done several side projects and consulting things with this model. It is perfectly cromulant. It is good enough for my use case. That said, the the outlay for doing this is high. And like reloading ammunition The amount of time you need to spend with this to make up what you would have just spent on tokens from Claude or Codex, that's a pretty long tale. If you're excited about this stuff and you want to do it and you have the means and you want to do it, I I think you're better off not going the M5 route. But I think Paul's advice is way more practical. If you want to save $6 ,000 and use a frontier model to do some actual work. Yeah. I would I would love a postmortem on this. Yeah, I 'm saying

Paul 45:47

let us know what you decide.

Drew 45:49

Yeah, and Andrew and Andrew, I would love to hear what you decide and if you have any questions. And I and if I remember correctly, you are not far from us. I feel like you're in the greater Ohio area. I I know I've met you. If you if you really want to see it in action, I will blindfold you and bring you to my home. And I will unblindfold you. I will not leave you blindfolded. You can you can come see for yourself kind of how I have this set up and and you can see for yourself if it's worth it. This is a huge investment. I I want you to make sound financial advice. I I'm not. I make I'm I'm a big dummy, right? I spend money on stuff that I shouldn't spend money on. So do not listen to me completely. I think Paul's advice is way more simple.

Paul 46:30

I tell the same the same people the same thing about espresso machines If you don't if espresso is not going to be a hobby, don't buy one. They are not easy. They're not they're they're just they're not for they're not for people. They're for weirdos. And I think right now local AI is still for weirdos. So yeah.

Drew 46:47

I do I do make some weird ass pictures. I make some weird pictures that that go on my NAS in the encrypted folder and to never be seen by anybody ever. So and that's all I'm gonna say about that.

Paul 46:58

Alright We have time for one more topic, you think?

Drew 47:01

Okay. Which one is we gonna go? I'm gonna go I'm gonna go with the last topic.

Paul 47:05

Okay, okay.

Drew 47:06

Paul, what's one thing you know about me? That's right. I don't have very good luck.

Paul 47:13

Okay, okay. Wasn't sure where that was going. I mean I did know, but I I didn't know. Okay. Okay. So

Drew 47:20

this week There was a new way to buy something from Valve.

Paul 47:27

Oh, did you did you did you pre order one?

Drew 47:30

Okay. So the Steam frame. Did you get what I think you got? The Steam Frame. Okay. The Steam Frame is officially up for signups. Okay. Yes. For those of you that don't know, Valve is now a hardware manufacturer. And we've talked about things like uh the Steam Deck, which we're huge fans of. We've talked about the the Steam uh Q machine. There's been Steam controllers. The next thing that was supposed to come out is their next generation of VR headset. This is the second go of VR for Valve. They had the Valve index before this. So the Steam Frame was announced a while ago. It's kind of been out.

Paul 48:12

The first reviewers just got their hands on it.

Drew 48:14

Yes, the first reviewers just got their hands on it. And because of scalping, here's what Valve decided to do. So I just put a link in the show notes to the same thing for the Steam Machine. Yeah. Yeah. For the for the for the for the Steam Deck, what you had to do is you went on here And starting Tuesday until basically 10 a. m. Pacific time today on this recording day, which is the 17th. You could basically sign into Steam and you could say, I either want the 256 gigabyte version, which is $1,059, or the one terabyte kit, which is $1,299. You say sign up to join. And the way that it worked was your name went into what I imagine is an Excel sheet somewhere. And what they did is they said, okay, you're in the list. And on the 17th, we're gonna randomize the list. And if you get selected to be able to purchase, you are in the reservation queue. If you're not going to be able to do that, you can't do it. Slots will open up and then the next person in the queue will get theirs. So I've been looking at this for a while and I want one, mostly just because This could be a wireless outside of a power chord. I want to be clear. Outside of a power cord, this could be a wireless way for me to do my VR. And for those of you that listen regularly, you know that I I do play flight simulators in VR and I invested in a PIMAX earlier this year and that Pi Max is phenomenal, I think, in terms of quality and image quality. I don't think this is going to be as good at it, which is I'm a I'm a little worried about But like per eye resolution isn't anywhere near I think like the Pi Max is like 8k or something. It's crazy. This if this is if this is as good or better than the the latest meta quest Maybe not as good as the Pi Max. I think I'll be okay.

Paul 50:20

I think I'll be okay. So the reviewers I've heard is it is better than the stuff Meta has. Uh yeah, well granted it's not super high end. I guess today the software is still a little kind of iffy, but it's valve. This is what they do. They get the hardware exactly right the first try and then software they iterate it and eventually they get it right. So they have a proven track record. Look at the Steam Deck. A lot when the Steam Deck first came out, a lot of people were like, it's gonna be great, but it ain't great now. I think the frame's gonna be the same thing. But the end of the day I think this is gonna be really good for this. I think this is gonna be the most significant thing for VR because it's Valve and they support their stuff. They support it for a long time. They always have a good developer story, and I think this is gonna make developers feel safer in making a decision to invest in VR games. I really do. I think this is gonna be good for VR. I think this is gonna be good for VR in general, not just games. Like, I think this is This is they're gonna do what Meta wished they could do. In fact, meta 's laying off people in their like quest stuff, right? They're kinda

Drew 51:29

And they're and they're just gross. From a privacy perspective, they're just gross.

Paul 51:31

Yeah, meta, it's meta. But yeah, I I think I think this is a guess so Yeah, I so are do says so that says you're lucky. Did you get an email? Are you in the top or are you gonna get a

Drew 51:44

So I am in the reservation you. I have not gotten my email to purchase yet. Okay. So I just got that email today. I did luck out. So excellent one of the I think I think is I think you're gonna be very happy with it. I think it's going to be great. Yeah. I think I am. Uh now w again, the only reason I'm entertaining this is the fact that if I'm reading everything correctly What I'll be able to do is decouple my current setup here from like my VR experience. And by that I mean, and you can kind of see this if you're watching this on YouTube, like I'm in my office right now. It's a decent size office, like you can't see everything. There's another computer over here that I use for work, and then this is like when I go out to like the rest of my basement. But one of the things that and we've talked about this in a previous podcast, go listen to it. I don't give a fuck. It I I really wanna get like a nice comfortable flight sim cockpit. Like I wanna have a nice chair. I wanna have a place to mount my joysticks. So like the idea would be I could put that in my office, but that would be something I'd have to explain to everybody I ever go on video at work with I'm all I'm already the weird guy at work. I don't need another person.

Paul 52:56

I mean, I constantly have to explain.

Drew 52:59

I don't I don't I don't need that. I don't I don't I don't need that in my life But my PC like my PC is over here to my right, which is near the door. So if the idea is if I could like set up a chair out there And have like I I don't know what the distance is on a USB cable, but if I could have one USB cable connected to a hub that connected all my peripherals and I just ran that out of the office and then the steam frame I have streaming.

Paul 53:25

Yeah, it comes with a six gigahertz wireless adapter. And I've heard like dual adapter. Yeah, that's right. If you're like there's no walls in your line of sight It's flawless.

Drew 53:36

It's like being wireless, right? That's the idea. So that would then force me to turn around and invest in an actual sim rig out there. Where the again, the only wire I would need to send to my computer would be for but the peripherals, right? So like for the joysticks, the keyboard, whatever. That would be the only wire that I could like basically disconnect whenever I wasn't using it And that would be the only thing I would have to like drag into the other room. Could I do that with my Pi Max? No, the cord isn't long enough. Because it's USB-C. It's got a pretty long cord. But that's not actually it's it's two things. The Pimax actually has a USB C th uh you know four or five or whatever or Thunderbolt I don't know and then it actually has an HDMI connector So like it's connected directly to your graphics car almost like a different monitor. But the Steam frame has like these wireless dual radio adapters, so it's like redundant. There's basically a dedicated channel for um streaming the audio and visuals and the other one like does something else. I don't know, but it's it's like to your point, it's supposed to be that that wireless experience. And if that works as advertised, I think it'll be worth the money. Completely worth the money for me.

Paul 54:44

Yeah.

Drew 54:45

Yeah.

Paul 54:45

No.

Drew 54:46

Now it does not come with a power cable, and that'll be something that I will plug in. Yeah. Just power

Paul 54:52

the battery life isn't great, but you know, it's it's there's a lot of processing that happens with VR. Like I get it. It's hard. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 55:00

And and you know, when I'm playing my flight sims, I'm in there for an hour, hour and a half at a time. You know, I don't want the juice to run out. Um I think the only question is do I buy the ergonomic accessories kit? Um there's also a really cool accessory. uh that I saw that you can also order. So there's this thing called Arcturus Vision. Did you hear about this?

Paul 55:20

I don't think so.

Drew 55:22

So Uh VR headsets now do this thing where they do where they do pass-through. So like if you double tap it, the cameras on the front basically let you see what's around you, but usually it's in black and white and it's a lower frame rate. This this is something that kind of like attaches to the front of the headset and give you full color pass-through.

Paul 55:43

Give full color pass-through. Yeah, look at that. That's nice. How much is that separately?

Drew 55:49

Uh so you can order now it's $150 more dollars.

Paul 55:52

That's not bad.

Drew 55:53

That's not bad at all. No, it's not. So if I get my email tomorrow and I end up buying this, I probably will buy this as well. So yeah, I that that kind that kind of stuff never happens to me. I never win contests. I never get in early on pre-orders.

Paul 56:08

I'm happy for you. Yeah, so we'll see how it goes. And hey, just as we're talking about video games, I'll say real quick, we are one week away from Control Resident coming out.

Drew 56:19

Cannot wait.

Paul 56:20

I'm

Drew 56:21

fucking excited for that game. Here's the thing that pisses me off though. I gotta go out of town like the day after it launches.

Paul 56:27

Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't I I'm unable to take time off on launch day and after. So I've got I took like the first couple days of October off. So at the day after I'm gonna go see I'm just gonna spend that day, those two days playing uh first of all I'll be sleepy 'cause the night before is the Smashing Pumpkins concert, but just play that game so much. Yeah. But I'm I'm so excited for this game. They just they just dropped the launch trailer. I saw it. And like it's just oh fuck. I cannot fucking I'm so hyped. I hope I hope this game doesn't duel Wolverine.

Drew 56:57

You know, I don't d did you play it Did you play Wolverine?

Paul 57:01

I have I'm not playing the only thing I'm playing is I'm playing the new season of Diablo 4. I'm saving myself from Troll Resident. No new. I wanna

Drew 57:08

before before we sign off, two things. One, I've seen a lot of people roasting the Wolverine game. Is it that bad? I really don't I'm out I'm out on I'm out on the P PlayStation.

Paul 57:16

I mean, uh generally speaking, it's getting like six out of tens. It's okay.

Drew 57:22

And are you mad about the Diablo 5 announcement and like the seasonal stuff and all the stuff that's going on with Diablo 4? No, not at all. Okay. You're not an ending gamer. Okay.

Paul 57:33

No, I mean I like Diablo 4. I I do. I've put hundreds and hundreds of hours into that game. In fact, I we hang up here. I'm probably gonna put at least 30 minutes, another hour into the season as as well. I'm broken like that I think there are some fun I think they made some fundamental issues like decisions with Diablo 4. The fact that it's online all the time, forced multiplayer, live service-y kind of game. I think That that kind of stuff is just it's more difficult. I don't think they've got a good hand on scaling and and like balance. So I could see them going, well, we try it with the Yablo 4. Diablo 5. Now the problem is when they announced Diablo 4, it's like this is a this is gonna be like Destiny 2. This is a 10-year video game. We're gonna support it forever. We're gonna have expansions every year. Now it's like, well Uh we're actually we're actually done. That was the last expansion, the one that you got. Uh and uh now I will say okay, season 15, this current season Is very interesting. Okay. Okay, look at this real quick. It is basically nostalgia, the Diablo season. You get Deckard Kane is back somehow. And you basically get to like refight bosses from like Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. And it is, it's not exactly the same, but it just pulls enough nostalgia in and like audio clips and and like logs that you can find that are from the old games and it just hits that nostalgia thing so hard and it's it's good. So Yeah, I w I might not play it very long, but I'm definitely gonna play a little bit more of the seasonal storyline to to to to see if there's anything more there. But yeah, we should wrap this up, shouldn't we? Yeah, we should. Good get back

Drew 59:21

to Diablo.

Paul 59:22

Yep. Uh hey, doing their best. com. You can find all the show notes there. The search works, Andrew, so you can search for some of the links we talked about earlier. If you want to send us a question yourself, contact at doingtheirbest. com. Send me an email And hey, thanks for listenin'