557: Grading the Intel Era

Yes, I vote this to be one of the greatest presentation moments by Steve Jobs right up there with the first iPhone introduction

I’m glad they didn’t. When I first saw that I put my MacBook (non-Air) into an interplant envelope and it fit fine. No big (or small) deal with the MacBook Air.

And they still do today with the Space Grey keyboard and mouse.

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Great episode! Stephen was like a kid in a candy store the whole time haha. Loved it.

@ismh86 Thanks for the recommendation of Mimestream in the More Power Users segment. I’m giving it a try now – it is as you described it, a native Mac mail client customized for Gmail, with labels instead of folders, etc. Nice!

I’ve been meaning to separate my employer and personal email since an unfortunate incident last week when I mixed the two up. My personal email is on Gmail (or, more precisely, G Suite or whatever they’re calling it now.)

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I still have my white MacBook running the old version of Ulysses app. I think version 2 is what’s running on it. Although I have to keep it plugged in as the battery is long depleted. Would love to use it as my ā€œtypewriterā€ but it’s a slog to use.

When waxing nostalgic about the old monitor that could ā€œconvertā€ their laptop to a desktop, I was surprised they didn’t mention the Apple 4K LG UltraFine Computer Monitor. Mine has a bunch of USB-A and Thunderbolt USB-C ports on the back. I plug in my mechanical keyboard, wired ethernet (via adapter), and my 15-inch MacBook Pro. So the MBP has only one cable attached to it. No separate power connection or power brick needed to the laptop. Disconnect one cable and it’s a notebook. Plug in one cable and it’s a desktop. I had expected to have to buy an expensive dock to get one-cable convenience. Really cuts the price of the monitor if you consider the money I saved not buying a dock.

I’m having a Tiny Brain Day – won’t ANY external monitor convert your laptop to a desktop? What was so special about Apple displays for that?

I’m still using my 2010 27" Apple Cinema Display. I’ve promised myself a nice upgrade as a reward for decluttering my office. Hopefully that’ll happen before this display is old enough to vote.

I believe they were discussing and sadly recalling the demise of the Cinema Display which was the first (?) and and for a while the only (?) monitor with Thunderbolt?

Don’t you need Thunderbolt to turn a MBP into a desktop using only one cable from the Mac?

P. S. I turned around my Apple 4K LG UltraFine Monitor to check my memory, which has proved to be faulty. There are five ports on the monitor, all with USB-C form factor connectors. No USB-A. Two are Thunderbolt 3 and three are USB 3.1.

My Cinema Display has one cable that splits into three ends. From memory (I’m in the other room now):

MagSafe power, useless for several years more)

Mini-DisplayPort for display, which requires an adapter to work with modern MBPs

USB

The variety of connection options in the Apple universe is a mess. Too many varieties for the average intelligent person to make sense of

This was a really delightful episode and I very much enjoyed it. Thank you! :smiley:

So you had to plug three connectors into an Apple laptop from the Cinema Display in order to give the laptop power, data, and video? That’s not what I would call one-cable convenience. It does not matter to me if the three connectors all came out of the same so-called single ā€œcableā€. I really enjoy the advance that Thunderbolt allows to have a single cable with one connector from the 4K LG UltraFine monitor to the MBP laptop.

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This was a fun episode, and if you liked it you might also really enjoy Jason Snell’s excellent mini series, 20 Macs for 2020. It started well, and it’s getting better as he gets more excited heading towards number one.

Also available as a podcast and a video series!

I’ve been enjoying the podcast personally, including Jason enjoying his moment besting you with a portable (iirc) :slight_smile:

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Yup. 20 charactersss.