Reviewing the PS5 Pro and Apple’s M4 Macs

Devindra: [00:00:00] What’s up, Internet? And welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I’m Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar. This week, I’m joined by podcast producer Ben Ellman. Hey, Ben.

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Ben: Hello.

Devindra: Hello. We are here a lot. A lot can change in a week, apparently for us at Engadget and for us in America. So, if we are a little you Not as funny this week, folks.

It’s because we’re reeling from the results of the election and please bear with us. But Hey, there’s new stuff happening. There’s news. I don’t know how this happened, Ben, but apparently three of the biggest actually four of the biggest devices to come this year all review embargoed within the same week.

So. I ended up having two days

Ben: after election day,

Devindra: two days after election day, but also that’s literally the only thing I can think of. So in this episode, we’re going to be talking about the PlayStation five pro, which I spent the weekend with and spent a lot of time with for Spider Man two apples and four max, in particular, the Mac mini.

And the two MacBook pros, thankfully, [00:01:00]Mr. Steve Dent over in France our wonderful correspondent there is doing the iMac review. So we were able to get that one out there. So yeah, that’s what we’ll be talking about. And a little bit about, you know, the state of the world and what we’re thinking. As always folks, if you’re enjoying the show, please subscribe to us in iTunes or your podcatcher of choice.

Leave us a review in iTunes, drop us an email at podcastengadget. com. And yeah, we typically do live streams around 10 45 AM Eastern on Thursdays. We didn’t do it this week because I fear the pressure of an audience when all of this is so fresh would have just destroyed me. So that, that is what’s happening there.

But yeah, Ben, I hope you’re okay. You know, the day after the election, I was reeling. I had this conversation with my daughter, Ben, where. My daughter, Sophia, who’s six years old, was, we were like, okay, she should know who Kamala Harris is. She should know what is happening and why this is potentially a monumental and history changing election for America.

Didn’t go out that way. So she know who Kamala Harris was. She is [00:02:00] heard to sound true. So the

Ben: way that you were explaining it to her was like, Hey, Kamala Harris has a similar ethnic background to us. And okay. All right.

Devindra: So women can be president. Like maybe maybe a lady president could be a thing that she could put all of that wrapped together.

It’s all that wrapped together. Anyway, I have not been anti trump to her, but she has just she’s heard him on the news She has heard words. He said and he was like she was like, that guy Why why is that guy running for president or why people going for him? So to explain to her that donald trump won She said, well, I guess I’ll have to do it then.

Wow. So that was an immediate response. Like not, not, not even prompted by me from the mouths of kids. Oh my God. But also some of her friends in town to some of the little girls she goes to school with same response to their parents, apparently like all unprompted. So who knows what this is going to all trigger, but yeah, folks, we’re going to have a longer discussion about what this means about Trump [00:03:00] 2.

0 and another Trump. You know, term and what it means for tech because he has been so buddy, buddy with Elon Musk, it actually does intersect a lot with the tech world. And we can talk a lot about what Elon Musk means there too. We also talk about science stuff occasionally too. And the, the whole thing about RFK junior being in charge of the FDA, and he’s already threatening to deregulate a large swath of stuff that is kind of within our wheelhouse when it comes to like science.

So that’s terrifying. There’s just a lot of terrifying things going on. But We’re just, we’re just going to focus on the gadgets folks for now. I want to talk about the PlayStation 5 Pro, which is a very curious thing. And also I guess dear Sony, don’t, don’t launch a major product right. The day after the election.

Cause you do not know how people are going to be feeling or what they’re going to be doing. Yeah. Maybe some people will just stress by this thing, but yeah, this is a 700 game console. We had talked a bit about when it was announced and I have some thoughts, but Ben I don’t know if you saw the review or saw, you know, other coverage of this thing, what are your initial thoughts on the [00:04:00] PS5 pros?

It’s something you would want to get.

Ben: I mean, when we were talking about it a few weeks ago with Jess, I was like, Oh my God, this is something that I might actually buy because right now I have a PS five under my desk. I have a combined work and play situation where the PS five is connected to the same screen that I use for.

for all of my work stuff. Also, that is my best 4k screen.

Devindra: Do you have a TV or are you one of those one of those folks with no TV at all?

Ben: I don’t have a TV right now. There you

Devindra: go.

Ben: That’s why, but okay.

Devindra: Okay.

Ben: But this PS5 is something that I’m borrowing from my girlfriend. Okay. And I was like, Oh, I really want to play hell divers.

And wow, all of a sudden I don’t really want to play hell divers. I don’t know. Managed democracy. I dunno. Yeah. . But when Jess was talking about the PS five Pro, I was like, okay, well eventually I’m going to have to get my own PS five mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. . And this seems [00:05:00] really good. This seems like a great platform on which to play control yet again.

Devindra: Yeah. Or Alan Wake too. Which, or Alan wake too, because it’s all in the same

Ben: universe. Yeah. And, but I was also like, I. I cannot justify this. It is really hard to justify because it’s so expensive. I also think that it’s interesting that you positioned this article as a super powered 700 console for gamers who won’t.

That’s exactly Keyword there. I think Buy a PC. I think that’s Tell me more about that.

Devindra: So, I’ve been a PC gamer for a while, especially since I I’m the one who has to test out our video cards and stuff like that. So just by nature of my job, I ended up with these things and I have tried folks to send these things back to Nvidia and they literally do not respond to my emails.

I think because if people started sending the review gear back to them, they would have to deal with it just like I have to deal with it. Cause I have a closet full of old gear that I can’t do anything with right now. So anyway, I have video cards. That’s why I’ve just [00:06:00]been leaning on PC gaming more.

We’ve talked about how the consoles have essentially just become PCs. You know, they’re running AMD Hardaware. They’re running AMD GPUs. They have a lot of the same graphical features as PC releases. So the whole notion of releasing a game across PC and consoles is much more of a reality now. Something even Sony has started doing.

But the reason you go for PCs is that you get, at a minimum, 60 FPS gaming, guaranteed, usually at decent resolutions too. So even a middling video card will get you like 1440p at 60 FPS. And the thing about the PlayStation 5, and the Xbox Series X, and this entire console generation, is that they existed within a world of compromise.

You know, Spider Man 2, a lot of the major games usually have two different modes. They have a fidelity mode, which is typically trying to render at 4K or close to 4K with like ray tracing and the good stuff. But at 30 FPS, which to my eyes now. Looks like trash. I’m sorry. Unless I’m playing on a [00:07:00] Nintendo Switch where I’m like, okay, you are somehow running on a chip from like 2016 yet Tears of the Kingdom still visually looks incredible.

I, I can, I can stomach a short or a low frame rate there. I cannot do that on something like Spider Man where I know Sony had hundreds of millions of dollars to produce this game. And I know there’s Hardaware capable of running this game in 60 FPS. So this compromise is less of a thing with the PS5 Pro.

That’s pretty much it. There’s a pro mode in Spider Man 2 and a lot of these supported games, which is just, hey, you want. You want 60 FPS? Great. Do you want a lot of those ray tracing features? Great. Do you want close to 4k rendering which they do with the thing called the PlayStation super sampling thing.

We just call it pisser, but it’s upscaling a lower resolution to to look like 4k using AI similar to NVIDIA’s DLSS. If you want all of those things, Now you can finally get it. It just costs you 700. The thing is, if you had a gaming [00:08:00] PC over the last decade, you’ve had this capability for a long time too.

So I feel like it’s, this is not a major selling point or a console. I think even PC gamers will want to get, unless they want to be first to those Sony exclusives. But for everybody else, if you just want to sit down on your, in front of your couch, you don’t want to deal with steam or updating drivers or whatever.

And you just want a really powerful console that can make your nice TV look good. You know, to give you the full glory of Spider Man, then that’s why, that’s why I’m saying this is precisely the console for the people who want fidelity, but do not want to deal with the mess of a gaming PC.

Ben: So what would you say to the idea that maybe this is proof that game consoles Are the thing for kids.

You just buy it. It’s self contained. You don’t need to worry about upgrading it or maintaining it all that much. And maybe this is the best option to get a kid into 4k 60 FPS. I

Devindra: think you’re grossly [00:09:00] overestimating the capabilities of adults in this situation. So

Ben: I don’t,

Devindra: well, first of all, yeah, kids will not be buying a 700 or parents will not buy a 700 nozzle for their kid, for a

Ben: kid in most cases.

Devindra: It was already a stretch to be like, Hey, mom, can you get me the PlayStation five, which is close to 500? That was already five

Ben: is for 500.

Devindra: Yeah, that was already a tough stretch. I don’t think it, no, not necessarily for kids, but it’s for most people who do not want to deal with the guard, like the annoyances of PC gaming.

Just, just yesterday I started trying to play because

Ben: PC gaming is an enthusiast thing and it leads to a bunch of other enthusiast things. You know, building a PC is A enthusiast activity in its own right. Even

Devindra: if you buy a PC, even if out of the box, PC gaming is more annoying because you’re dealing with multiple storefronts just yesterday.

I want to start playing dragon age, the veil guard, right? Watch that thing. It spent maybe five to 10 minutes processing the what do you call it? What you call it? The textures. It does like a texture. Pre packaging thing [00:10:00] before you launch a game for the first time that took a long time and then I had, okay, I was like, okay, I’m ready to play now.

My game controller was not for some reason, not pairing correctly to my PC. So I was like, okay, I guess I have to go find another controller. I guess I have to go make sure it’s charged. I got to add to Bluetooth. Oh no. The Bluetooth is not good. I guess I got to go find the receiver to plug into the Bluetooth or plug into the USB.

So I have better reception for this. Like it’s a whole thing. 30 minutes later, after I sat down and start playing, I could actually start playing. And that would not happen on the PlayStation 5. You know, you will wait to install the game and download it. But that whole process, that comedy of errors would not be a thing.

I do it because I want to be like, I want to play a lot of games at the best quality possible. Right now, I have an RTX 4080 Super in this computer. That’s a killer ass GPU, but like I could, I could do 4k gaming and crazy ray tracing features, but you have to stomach [00:11:00]all these annoying setup things. So anyway, that is the setup for the PlayStation 5 Pro.

I really like it as a machine for this specific audience. But I was very clear in my review that it is not something for everybody. It is not a replacement for your PlayStation five. If you can find, if you don’t, if you have an older TV or you do not care as much about the whole 60 FPS getting all the graphical flourishes thing, get a normal PlayStation five, get one used even cause you could probably get a decent deal on it.

Jessica Konda also contributed to this review and she put down some of her thoughts on, on some of the games to wifi speeds, things like that too. And I think we both came down. With the with the takeaway that this is a really good system for the people who are like PlayStation die hard to want to play the last of us part two in the best possible way.

Spider Man two in the best possible way. Spider Man two was a game. I never, I spent like maybe five hours with it when it came out, but now I’m just like, I’m ogling this game, Ben, because it’s like. I’m, I’m back in New York. I see reflections off of buildings. [00:12:00]The water is reflected perfectly moving, swinging around.

The city is just beautiful. I am like and this one goes into the other boroughs too. So it’s I’m just, I’m gliding around Queens looking at potential neighborhoods where I’d like to move back to eventually the real humble brag for me is that I’m, I’m playing games on my projector folks. That’s just how my basement is set up.

So I’m playing Spider Man to you at 120 inches in 4k. With all the beautiful stuff and it’s an incredible experience. So for me, that’s worth 700. I think for gamers who care about Fidelity. That is totally worth that price for most other people know and yeah, if it’s The start of my review is essentially if you’re happier with your ps5 If you think 700 is too much do not buy the same seems pretty simple to me.

Ben: Yeah Yeah, so it is a set it and forget it or buy it and no not worry about upgrading it or anything But if you are already very happy with PS5, then I don’t know. Also, I’m looking at [00:13:00] the list of games that are enhanced on PS5 Pro launch day. And it’s basically anything that you could imagine. You know, it’s the big games.

I’m seeing Alan Wake. I’m seeing the most recent Assassin’s Creed game. I’m seeing yes, all the Spider Mans, but also all of us, all of the, all the sports games to Madden and 2k and all of that stuff. And so I’d also be interested to see how much it grows. Because. The last time we were talking about the PS5 Pro, I was asking okay, how long is the lifespan of this going to be before the PS6 comes in?

So I’d be really interested in seeing how much this list grows between now and when the first rumblings of the PS6 come out. I think now that this exists, Ben

Devindra: Here’s the thing. Sony and a lot of these third parties are also putting their games to PCs. So it is, is basically [00:14:00] not that much more work to just target a slightly higher powered machine now that they know this exists and they can support it within the whole PlayStation pipeline.

So I think we’ll for big budget games, they’re certainly going to do it. It’s going to be a big calling card for that. Sony wants more people to buy these things. I, this system probably has three years, maybe to be the leading PlayStation until we hear more about the PlayStation six or something like that.

That’s a pretty good amount of time. Sure. And especially if you’ve held off and you’ve not bought a PlayStation five of your own yet, then you were intrigued. This is a good machine, you know, it is actually similar. smaller physically than the original PlayStation five. It’s a little denser too, cause it’s using a newer processing or a newer chip set.

So all that stuff, like it’s just a less annoying machine and a lot less compromised. There’s still some compromise though, because it’s not as fast as like a RTX 4070. I don’t think it’s as fast as something like that, because even Spider Man two has a pro fidelity mode where they’re like, Oh, you want more ray [00:15:00] tracing We got you.

We got all the ray tracing. How do you, how do you like 30 FPS again, though? How do you, are you, are you okay with that? The compromise is still there that exists in PC gaming too. If you’re trying to eke out power from an older video card, you’re always making those choices. So that’s just the way it is.

But as a, as a normal machine, I think it’s, it’s pretty good as a, as a console for gamers who need that sort of thing. Yeah.

Ben: And especially if you’re coming from the console world where 30 FPS is still more common, You don’t really miss what you’ve always known. So if you go to a friend’s house or something and you see the 60 FPS performance, you might be like, wow.

Okay. That’s amazing. I think a lot of people remember all of the fun that you had with your. 30 FPS thing. And think about your bank account. And you can still do 60

Devindra: FPS just with like less fidelity. And I think for most people, you could still play Spider Man 2 and it looks pretty good on a normal PlayStation 5.

I still play in performance mode, [00:16:00]but you lose all those reflections. You lose like a lot of the nice touches that make you feel like, wow, this is the next generation machine. So deal with that what you will check out the review by me and Jessica Condit over at Engadget. Let’s talk about those Macs. Ben cause it just keeps coming, just keeps coming guys.

I have written maybe 10, 000 words. Like not all of them are in their views, but I’ve written a lot of words since last Saturday. So it was a really, this week is a weird head space for me because it’s sort of like we’re barreling towards the selection. Which is very consequential, still working, still working, still typing.

I don’t get to see my kids like a lot this weekend. Cause I need to spend time with these things.

Ben: Okay. Election day, which just means that you were like stuck in your own basement and you could probably hear them going

Devindra: Oh yeah, like running

Ben: around upstairs. That’s

Devindra: my life. But also election is happening.

I was like, still got to write, still got to do stuff. Oh, those numbers do not look good. Late on election night. Okay. I’m, I’m still writing. Yep. There’s, there’s. This is a crazy week that I’m pretty sure I will remember is just like how, how weird it is. But [00:17:00]the new Apple Macs the Macs with the M4 chips are here.

Specifically I reviewed the Mac Mini with an M4 Pro chip and the two MacBook Pros, the 14 The 14 inch had a base M4 chip. The 16 inch had an M4 Pro chip as well. I was a little disappointed by that because last year Apple sent us the M4 the M3 Max on the 16 inch MacBook Pro. And that thing, like just to see the wide swath of power that those chips covered.

That was a really interesting thing to see. We didn’t get an M4 Mac system this year. That’s a shame. I’m just going to like project forward from what I think that’ll be, but I will say extrapolating, extrapolating. And you can go see, if you go look at gig benches Benchmark comparison sites and other places, there are publicly available benchmarks to see how fast those machines are.

Let me just say, these chips are, are something like the M, the base M four is a pretty nice upgrade over the M three and certainly over the M1 and the M two, and I really like the base 14 [00:18:00]inch. MacBook Pro, because it’s still 1, 600, but now it comes with 16 gigabytes of RAM. Now it has actually three USB C ports, whereas last year it was just two on one side.

So it is a lot less compromised than the last

Ben: model was. Yeah. Did you say that the base was the same price now, even though it has 16 gigs of RAM where Otherwise it would have been more expensive. Yeah, dude. Like that. We, you, you were here. We just talked about that. That, that is the new I’m just surprised because like, why were they trying to extract another 200 from you before then?

Devindra: Because they could, man. Come on.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah.

Devindra: This is, this is how it all goes, but I will tell you, they, they are ready to extract more money for you from you. If you want to upgrade that Ram the Mac mini in particular, like the Ram upgrade prices are just, just, so anyway, everything comes with 16 gigabytes standard, they did not increase the base prices of those machines.

So I think that’s pretty useful. I think these are fast chips, but the M four PRO chip in [00:19:00]particular on the Mac Mini and the MacBook Pro 16 for me is kind of astonishing. It is just so fast. It is faster. In Geek Bench six and cine bench 2024. It is faster than the M three max was last year. Wow, it is so fast.

Wow. In terms of multi-threaded geek bench, six scores that the gulf between was super high. It was like 22,850 points in both the Mac Mini and very similar to that on the 16. That is an incredibly high number, Ben, because the base M four model got like a 14, got like 14,000 points. Most computers we tested this year.

Typically get multi threaded scores around 11 to 12, 000. The M4 Pro is so fast. It is as fast as two laptops put together. Wow. Two modern laptops put together. That’s just insanity. And also Apple’s cores, like their CPU cores, even the single threaded benchmarks are way, way higher than [00:20:00] everybody else.

So that’s, this is just kind of how they grow these chips. You know, the M4 and M4 Pro, they just have more cores. Then the base M4, the M4 Max. Adds more cores, adds more GPU cores. The M4 Pro is just insanely, insanely fast. So on the Mac mini, that means if you spend the extra money for that version, which I believe is 1299 for 1399, that’s the Mac mini.

The Mac mini starts at 599 with the base M4, but for 1399, it is a full on workstation and much more powerful GPU and everything. What were you going to say?

Ben: It seems to me like Apple has really hit its stride. Maybe with the M3, but seems definite with the M4, because, remember, it was just a few years ago that they said, okay, we’re moving to this completely different ARM based design.

It also came out pretty slowly, because, I think it was, there were some growing pains with the arm based design, but also it was the pandemic and it was just difficult to fabricate.

Devindra: They announced this. Yeah. I [00:21:00] think building was a hard thing, but when they launched that in late 2020, when I reviewed the 13 inch MacBook air or the 13 inch MacBook pro and the MacBook pro, the MacBook air with the M one.

Insanely fast and the MacBook Air had no fan and like they were delivering speeds beyond laptops and intel systems that we were seeing up until that point Apple’s just continuing to grow that I’ll also say about the mac mini. We’ve talked about this like this thing is adorable It is very very small measures five inches by five inches across.

It’s just two inches tall It looks more like an oversized apple tv 4k Then it doesn’t. I took pictures of them side by side. They, they’re very similar design wise. The only difference is the Mac mini has a metal case and the Apple TV has a very plasticky shiny case, but it’s a very similar thing. They’re USB C ports up front, which is something we complained about last time.

Finally, finally, finally headphone jack is up front. I also complained about that last time because I know video editor also

Ben: amazing that A Mac mini has a headphone jack [00:22:00] when you haven’t had a headphone jack on any iPhone for years. Sure.

Devindra: I mean, the Macs have not dumped headphone jacks yet. Other people have Dell has but Apple has not even on the MacBook Air.

Right. So.

Ben: Well, and if you think about it in the context of Oh, this is supposed to be the machine for like creative professionals creative professionals such as myself use wired headphones. Now I would say that I use. Wired headphones only when I’m out, because right now I’m plugged into an audio interface.

Headphones are plugged into the audio interface, which then plugs into USB. Which

Devindra: is also the thing I saw some people complaining. Well, well, if you have speakers and your speaker cable has to be upfront, right? And I’m thinking. No, actually the video editors or audio editors who really need speakers are going to have studio monitors that are plugging into an audio interface or something that just plugs into a USB C port on the back.

There are also USB speakers I think that Mac people have really liked. So I don’t think you’ll really need the headphone jack for [00:23:00] speakers. Is my thinking, or at least I don’t think most Mac users would. But anyway, this thing is super, super tiny, super cool. The only thing is you know, physics you can make it super hot.

If you turn on the high performance mode, when I was running the Cinebench multi threaded benchmark, It sounded like it was ready to take off. It sounded like it was a little drone because there’s a big fan at the bottom that sucks in all the cool air. That’s just something you’ll get. You’ll have to get used to.

I’ll also say that is maybe the differentiating factor between going for this and going for Mac studio, which I believe costs a 19. 99.

Ben: I also wonder if there are going to be any third party things, you know, like everybody I know has a pad that they put the gaming laptop on that has its own fans as well to help with.

I mean, I don’t, I don’t. Would there be something that you put your and for Mac mini on?

Devindra: No because those are laptops and because you can just like. Those have trouble sucking in air. This thing has sort of a contoured base. It’s sitting on a little bit of the fan [00:24:00] base and it has a big fan. The problem is the, some workloads are just really, really powerful.

And I think if that is the case for you, if you think you’ll be stretching it a lot of time, a lot of times, like daily in a shared office or something where it’ll be annoying, then you probably need a Mac studio. If you are a super high end video editor, that’s just the way. But if you’re just editing on the weekends or you’re mainly a photographer who occasionally does videos, I think this is perfectly fine for most people.

So that’s the Max the Mac mini. It’s great for 599. Also comes with 16 gigabytes of RAM. Like just what a wonderful little desktop that would be. I think for a lot of people, like Ben, you, you said you were considering it, right? Even the base. I was

Ben: considering it. Considering it because, well, not the base model, but the M4 Pro, again, because I just want to future proof as much as possible.

I don’t

Devindra: even think you need the M4 Pro, is the thing. Like the M4 chip is still really, really, it’s pretty good. As I told you, the single threaded score is still pretty good. So that’s most of the [00:25:00] work you’re doing. The M4 score I got on the MacBook Pro 13 inch, or 14 inch, It’s still faster than most other laptops this year.

It’s actually, yeah, it’s still, it’s faster than every other system this year. The second fast and multi threaded Geekbench score I saw this year before I started testing these was the it was the Surface Laptop 7 with the SnapDragon X Elite, and we talked about like what, what good performance that chip was.

You would be fine with the bass M4 is the thing.

Ben: The thing I really want to see that is so specific to me is a comparison between maybe an M1 Pro, because that’s the one that I’m using right now and a M4 or M4 Pro, hopefully both on the specific tasks that I frequently ask them to do, which is like isotope RX, like spectral D noise.

or something like all of the stuff that makes the podcast sound just a little bit better. You know, [00:26:00]if you’ve ever recorded something off of, you know, just straight off of a mic or on voice memos or something, you’ll hear just like a little bit of fuzz in the background. That’s called a noise floor.

And so all of the stuff that I’m doing at the very beginning, as I’m starting to edit is stuff to remove the noise floor, remove hums that are in the like background dev. I have to say for you, there are a good number of homes just because you’re in the basement, probably near the machinery of your whole house.

No, no, I’m not here. It’s

Devindra: where you’re probably hearing. I am the kid that our camera has a fan, like the camera he says fan or something, but yeah, go, go,

Ben: but whatever. Yeah. So I’m, Doing a lot of noise floor removing, hum removing, and I remember how drastically different it was between the 2012, yes, it was a very old chip, 2012 Intel chip that I was using.

versus this M one that was [00:27:00]a 10 X difference. And I know for a fact, because some of the processes I was doing in this audio cleanup were 10 minutes and they went down to one minute or so. So what I would really like to see what I’m hoping like, Hey, isotope the company, just make a YouTube video comparing the render times between these different chips, I would love it and I bet at least a hundred thousand other music and general audio workers would also love it just so we can compare and see, okay, you know, maybe we might want to upgrade now.

Are those things

Devindra: GPU bound? Are they using MPUs? Do you know what is powering those filters? If it is GPU stuff I think you’ll see a big benefit here too. If you just type in M1 Pro versus you know, Mac M1 benchmarks, you’ll see, you’ll get to like the Geekbench comparisons and things like that too, to give you a sense of how it would be.

I think Cinebench is probably a good one for you. Cause that’s very encoding heavy that would [00:28:00] just happen to both the CPU and the GPU anyway. I think you actually, speaking of the

Ben: Cinebench score, you said that the M4 pros graphics were in line with Nvidia’s RTX 4070. That’s a graphics card that came out last year.

That’s pretty great. I forget if it’s

Devindra: last year, but it’s the laptop version of that card. But still I

Ben: went out and looked because I was really curious when the 4070 came out and it was released on April 13th, 2023. There you go.

Devindra: But yeah, that was last year. And. I think that’s pretty impressive for because these graphics cores are tied to a little mobile chip and NVIDIA’s graphics cards even in laptops are still in a big dedicated chunky spot.

Like they’re drawing a lot of power. They’re doing a lot of work. It is impressive. Like what Apple has been able to accomplish here. I would say, anyway, for you, Ben if you got a base Mac mini, I think you would be fine. I think it would do similar work and honestly better work when it comes to some of the AI processing.

Mac Whisper, I did some of those comparisons, definitely noticed some big big gains over the M3 chip and [00:29:00]the M4. So, yeah, This is just a great computer. Mac mini, you could put this anywhere. You can make a little server. You can make a little family computer. If you already have a monitor keyboard and mouse, kind of a no brainer.

And it’s also kind of weird how there were just like no good windows alternatives to this. I know they exist. I saw the HP elite mini that people were talking about. That is a business computer that, that is for it workers. You know, like they’re not really. Microsoft and other people aren’t really hyping up.

Oh, here’s a cute little Windows PC that you can plug your monitor into No, it’s all lap. It’s all laptops and it’s all surfaces for them the MacBook Pros Nothing special there like nothing majorly different, but it’s the same thing with these chips The m4 is pretty good the m4 Pro on the 16 inch MacBook Pro So freaking fast.

If you have been holding off on upgrading to a new Mac if you have an M one system, if you have a fricking Intel system, this is an insanely good time to upgrade because you will notice the [00:30:00]difference, like just hugely powerful stuff. The macro pros are also slightly brighter for SD color.

They get up to 1000 nits now for SD color. You know, the color range I also noticed outside in direct sunlight, they looked a little clearer. It was just easier to see what was going on too. So, I’m a big fan. We like the MacBook pros. The camera is better. The webcam is now 12 megapixel shooter. It supports center stage.

It supports that weird desk view thing where you can tilt it down and it’ll show what’s in your hand, which is great for showing off stuff on, you know, live streams and podcasts. That feature works now too.

Ben: I imagine that that would be really useful when making review videos of something small. It could be.

The first thing that came to mind was the Rabbit R1, even though the tech behind it wasn’t that great. It is a very cute device. It

Devindra: is. I mean, listen, you could just hold your phone over a thing, you know, but when you’re doing a live stream where you can’t be juggling a camera, then, then it’s helpful to have something like that.

So we liked the MacBook Pros, scored them really high. I think the main [00:31:00] thing. The I noticed and my main problem is that the upgrading prices, especially for the Mac mini are just wild. If you want 32 gigabytes of RAM instead of 16 gigabytes, you have to spend an extra 400. 32, like 32 gigabytes of ramp does not cost $400 folks even for laptops.

But it’s expensive because Apple has to build them into its chip. So it’s buying specialized modules. If you wanna get a one terabyte SSD instead of a 2 56 gigabyte SSD, another $400 a one terabyte, S-S-D-N-V-M-E thing, like you can buy that for under a hundred dollars right now. And they don’t need they don’t

Ben: need like the, And that might be the argument.

Like you just have another thing sitting on top of the Mac. Well, I was thinking about doing it for a Mac mini. You

Devindra: could just have a external storage thing. Yeah. It’s, it’s kind of obscene what Apple does here sometimes. I will say it is nice that the pro chips and the max chips have Thunderbolt five support now too, [00:32:00]which is much faster than Thunderbolt three and four.

So there’s that you could get a really fast external enclosure and plug in hard drives there.

Ben: So something I’m curious about with these new MacBook Pros is you said that the screen is brighter. Did you try to turn off all the lights in your little basement office and just turn that thing all the way up and see how bright it is?

It really seemed to your eyes because it’s supposed to be able to fight sunlight, right?

Devindra: I’m surrounded by bright ass screens all the time. So that actually, like the 4k monitor I’m looking at, I think maxes out at 1200, 1500 nits, maybe sometimes in HDR. Going in sunlight is the best way to do it or going to a really brightly lit room because your eyes, if you’re doing a fully dark room, your eyes will just be contracting so much when it starts to get bright that it’s really hard to tell the difference between different bright screens.

But I, I certainly felt like I was outside on my in my backyard working in direct sunlight and I could read a little bit better. I could see the images more clearly. [00:33:00]

Ben: That’s really useful. You often are when you dial into all of our like show planning meetings About 90 percent of the time you’re sitting out on your deck, which is way to go

Devindra: a nice amenity nice amenity listen, there are a lot of downsides to living in Georgia, especially now but It is, it’s going to be 80 degrees today and it is November 7th.

So I take advantage of that. It was

Ben: alarmingly close to 80 degrees in New York also. Yeah,

Devindra: that is a bigger problem. That is a much bigger problem. And I worry about the state of New York. I worry about we would love to resettle in New York city at some point, likely Queens and Zillow and everywhere else is list, they are listing the climate.

Warnings, like the, Hey, flood warning, flood zone, be careful. That’s actually a really good thing because a lot of properties around New York are in flood zones, but it’s something to consider. Apparently

Ben: the topography of the New York city area is just all crazy. Some of it is deep in flood zones and some of it is, you [00:34:00] know, 80 or more feet above sea level.

It’s. Wild.

Devindra: Just,

Ben: just

Devindra: wild. I believe it was the the most recent Kim Stanley Robinson book that was The Ministry of the Future. I think it was that one, but that was the one with the submerged New York City. Right? Or he, he did another one. I forget one of those had a really, it was basically set in a waterlogged, submerged New York city.

And you know, just like the way he, he kind of mapped it out. I was like, yep, below prospect park stall underwater, like naming the streets, like ocean parkway or everything. And we’re like, okay, actually an ocean actually leads into an ocean. People forget this. So. Anyway, where were we? Zillow something.

Ben: We were talking about the weather, but let’s get back to MacBook Pros. The

Devindra: Macs are good. The Macs are good. The Macs are good. It’s a good year for Macs. It’s a good year for the Mac mini. I didn’t really dive too much into the Apple intelligence features cause they’re just kind of there. I did a lot of whisper sync transcription because I need to do that for podcasts occasionally and [00:35:00] it’s certainly better on the M4 chips, but also I think a lot of people will just be recording meetings or something or their own voice memos and that’s the sort of transcription they’ll be dealing with.

So for in all those respects, the neural engine and the transcribing capabilities are also pretty good. So

Ben: yeah, maybe I’ll try and transcribe a. Hour or so long episode of the Engadget podcast with my M1 Pro and I’ll report it to you. We can figure out how much faster the M4 or M4 Pro is. Actually, I

Devindra: have a file, like a single file I’ve been using to do like a constant comparison.

Yeah, no, send it to me. I’ll send you that particular one, Ben. But also it depends on the model you choose, you know? And also I learned that apparently, so I paid for WhisperSync, which is this great Mac app that gets you to all the, the, the LLMs. You know, the OpenAI LLMs, I believe, for, for doing transcription work, and you can choose between large, small, whatever, the bigger you go, the [00:36:00]longer the transcription takes, because it’s doing a lot of that big sort of like data, it’s doing a lot of data sorting.

And what I’ve learned is that there is another version of WhisperSync on the App Store that is fully subscription based. And honestly, it feels like a little bit of a scam because you’re paying them like 30 euros. It’s in euros. You could pay them 60 euros for a lifetime thing or 30 euros annually or something.

If you go to their website and just buy Mac Whisperer, it’s the same thing. There’s no subscription. It’s just a wrapper for a open AI thing, right? I mean, that’s really all it is too, but it is just wild to me that this app can exist, that is a subscription thing that will constantly be taking money from some people, but go to their website and you can, you can just buy it like a piece of software that you own.

That’s just wild to me. So anyway, Whispersync is good, but watch out for that app store version, folks.

Well, let’s move on to some other news. You wanted to shout out [00:37:00] something, Ben.

Ben: Yeah. So a lot of other stuff in the world is up in the air, but one thing that I did want to talk about was the New York Times tech workers have been on strike since Monday the 4th. Shout out to them. That’s right. Monday the 4th, right before election day.

People were saying, actually, there was a, I think, semaphore article talking about Wow. The New York times tech workers are going on strike right before the needle is really, they really

Devindra: need that needle was

Ben: the bane of my existence that night. But yeah, I think that the needle might run on a Mac pro or something.

And this might be like an old Mac. Pro too. I remember seeing a picture of the actual computer that ran the needle. And I know that people online, this was back when Twitter was more usable a few years ago, people were commenting under that tweet, just like really shaking their fists at that one [00:38:00] computer because of how much psychic damage that machine did to them.

A

Devindra: lot of emotional damage, yeah.

Ben: Anyway, we’ve got the New York Times tech workers. are on strike because they said they wanted to unionize. They announced it two years ago. The New York times leadership has not recognized the union. It has not agreed to terms of a union contract. So they’re going on strike.

And they’ve asked people to not cross the click it line. Click it line. But it’s very important because what does the New York times tech guild do? It does wordle. It does connections. It does all the New York times games. and the New York Times cooking app. That is the way a lot of people I know interact with the New York Times most often.

They might not be huge, huge [00:39:00]news hounds, but they have a New York Times subscription for these things. Extra fun things and a lot of people I know are also, they’re really concerned about making sure that like workers get their due. So they’re like, Oh my God, I’m letting my you know, very long connections or wordle streak go because I’m don’t want to cross the ticket line.

Yeah, but now you can do something else because the New York Times workers have released their own games that you can play while they’re striking. You can have fun. You can support them. There are also links to their GoFundMe to support the workers while they’re striking. I think it’s a good midway point.

I’m Also, wanted to shout out another couple of games that I’ve heard people talk about in the same breath as, like, all the New York Times games. I know some people like to play Redactal, which is [00:40:00] Wikipedia articles, and there’s just a bunch of redacted words, and you have to guess the words to eventually guess the article.

I think that that’s really cool, that could be fun, but it’s definitely hard, because I’m looking at one of the games now, and I’m seeing, you know, 50 or more words redacted, so you have to be really good at inferring what those might be from context clues. So in addition to Redactyl, I also heard about this other game called Metazua, which is guessing a specific animal based on phylogenetic rankings, so you have to really know your taxonomy.

And, you know, you have to guess if it’s a eukaryote or prokaryote or whatever. And then eventually, you know, you’ll get all the way down to Hey, it’s a garter snake or it’s a, you know, silverback gorilla or something. So if you like, [00:41:00] did a bunch of biology in school and you’re looking for a similar game that also doesn’t have you crossing the New York Times picket line, check that out maybe.

Devindra: Gotcha, gotcha. I, yeah, I don’t know, my wife plays Connection so occasionally she will throw an idea to me and I help her like figure it out, but I’m just not super compelled. I love the sort of ecosystem that has popped up around these. I know for cinema fans and movie lovers there are different ones.

There’s framed, framed. wtf. So those are all fun. I love the idea. It’s just I remember when Wordle first came out too, I would start playing with everybody else. And I just got super annoyed and frustrated with how brutal it could be at times because the whole catch of Wordle was you start guessing, just start guessing the word and hope it, hope it works out.

Let’s move on to our picks of the week. I just want to shout out a thing that has helped keep me sane a little bit. And I forget, did I mention this last week? No, you didn’t. So the second season of the diplomat, the wonderful Netflix series is out. It is fantastic [00:42:00]stars, Kerry Russell and Rufus Sewell, two of the most beautiful people alive, at least to me it’s about a woman who’s sort of a career diplomat is tapped to be the, you know, the America’s chief diplomat for the UK, but also the subplot is they want her to be vice president.

So this is sort of like a trial run to see if she can even handle such a big role. I really love the first season. It’s really smart. I love shows about smart people doing smart things really well. So it’s very Aaron Sorkin y very West Wing esque. The creator, Deborah Kahn, used to write on the West Wing, but she also used to write on Grey’s Anatomy.

So there’s a lot of fun soapiness to the show too, that you wouldn’t expect. It’s also set entirely in the UK. So you have a lot of scenes and just like gorgeous, you know, manors and sometimes castles, it is a good looking show. It’s a really well written show. It’s a show about people like trying to do their best to keep democracy alive and keep our society together.

And it could be a little fun and soapy [00:43:00]at times too. Season two, it seems relevant. Season two as Allison Janney. C. J. Craig herself from the West Wing, and she is playing the vice president, the current vice president. It is it is delicious. I had a lot of fun with this. I just finished the second season yesterday, and it ends in such a way that I screamed out loud, and for a half second, I forgot about the world we were living in.

And I think that, that alone, That alone does it, but the show knows how to do those episodic cliffhangers. There are only six episodes in the second season, I think because of production issues and whatnot. But man, is it good. The diplomat is so good. If you want to feel good about, not, not necessarily good about politics because a lot of it is also about how terrible America and the UK can be when it comes to foreign relations, but just about people trying to do good in the world.

I think it’s really, really compelling. Do you have anything, Ben?

Ben: Yeah, and I’ve probably mentioned it before, but I am thinking a lot [00:44:00]about the works of Becky Chambers. Especially thinking about the Monk and Robot series. It is really good solar punk. It is, you know, talking about, you know, A much better world where we’re living in closer harmony with nature.

But also you still have, you know, all of the modern comforts of your phones, computers, and laptops. And that’s what I’m looking toward right now. That’s making me feel better about the world.

Devindra: Oh, I also did read Ta Nehisi Coates The Message. And also, good time. Good time for that. Because I think that is a lot, super relevant to everything.

Ben: So there was a lot that was focused on the section about Gaza. Tell me more about that book in general, though.

Devindra: I mean, in general, the book is about his experience going to going to Africa. I think it was Senegal. But going to Africa for the first time, kind of tracing the roots of the beginnings of slavery, tracing his own connection.

To, to Africa itself, and then also to, to America, you know, I think it was near [00:45:00] Chicago as well. His work traces a lot of roots about America and America’s history and its sort of influence on the world, but also the things that drive us as a country. I think it’s really insightful, unflinching, especially when it comes to the Gaza stuff.

And I think just really, really necessary. So it has also been wild to see him go to, you know, do news interviews where somebody is responding to his books and he just laughs and that’s the most racist thing I’ve ever heard. And that’s just, that’s great. That’s just a review of my book. Anyway, I really enjoyed it.

I also, I listened to the audio book actually. So he is reading the audio book. I love the sound of his voice and the way he reads his own text. I’m getting more and more into audio books because I think a lot of podcasts have just listened. Sometimes we just get tired of listening to people you know, banter around the microphone and they don’t actually know what they’re talking about.

Trust me, folks. I’m aware of it. I do a lot of podcasting, but I also try to be really, really cognizant of that fact. But Audible I actually

Ben: saw something recently about how the podcast subreddit accidentally invents audiobooks. [00:46:00]

Devindra: Yes.

Ben: There’s a self post to the podcast. podcast subreddit that’s I wish that there was a podcast that was just like one person telling a story.

For 20 hours. Yeah. Yeah. For you know, that would really, you know, help me like while I’m doing the dishes or, you know, it’d be a great thing to fall asleep to because like different speakers like might wake me up or something. But hey guys, you want audio books actually. You want,

Devindra: I have been, I think the, I’m still listening to the Power Brokers audio book.

That thing is like 70 to 80 hours long, you know? Yep. Yep.

Ben: Yep. That is two full work weeks. It

Devindra: is. I used to be not super into audio books because what I realized is I was listening to like fiction books or narrative audio books and my brain, because of the way I realized my brain just cannot follow the story as well.

But if it’s sort of like nonfiction or somebody talking about. News or something like that, or scientific concepts. I can follow it more like the way I follow podcasts. So I have been doing sort of like drip feeding actual knowledge into my brain, because I can’t always make time to read full [00:47:00] books. I’ve been doing the audible thing, unfortunately, because they have a corner, they have basically monopolized the entire audio book industry, but it is worth it to get access to some other information.

I’m doing the subscription. Good stuff. And yeah, read the message, however, however you can. I still call it reading. I could say I’m listening to an audio book, but I have still consumed that book and the information in it. But certainly when I read, like when I read a fiction book, like my, the way I process language is different.

So I have bought Jeff VanderMeer’s book. He has most recent one. Which goes back to the world of Annihilation. Reading his language is one thing because hearing that spoken aloud would be even harder to process, I think. So anyway, that’s what’s up with me. I hope folks out there you know, things are tough right now.

Find the things that help you, that help keep you from despairing too much.

Ben: That’s it for our episode. Thank you for listening. Our theme music is by game composer Dale North. Our outro music is by our former managing editor, Terrence O’Brien. [00:48:00] This podcast is produced by me, Ben Ellman. You can find Davindra online at

Devindra: I’m online at Davindra pretty much everywhere, but I’m trying to spend more time on Blue Sky now that officially Twitter is It’s just getting harder and harder to see what’s going on there.

Cause I’m just getting a lot of MAGA spam now. I wonder, I wonder why Elon Musk is letting that get through. I don’t know. He doesn’t run a tight enough ship. But yeah, I’m at Devendra at most places. Find me on blue sky though.

Ben: You can find me at the inbox for the podcast podcast at engadget. com. Send us a nice note.

Leave us a review on iTunes and subscribe on anything that gets podcasts that includes Spotify. Thanks folks. We’re out.