NC #859 HDMI and Fast Charging, What if Your Stove had Dedicated Burners, New Mac Decision Tree, 11-Year Old Perspective on New Macs

Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Apple Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, October 24, 2021, and this is show number 859. This is going to be a long show, and because of the way things worked out, it will be a very heavy Apple show. I’ve got lots of different angles on the announcements, and I guarantee I’ve got some new perspectives on the topic. For example, I’ve got an interview with 11-year old Armaan Arora to tell us what he sees as the good and bad of the announcements. How many podcasts give you that perspective? I’ll even compare the new MacBook Pros to a stove. I’m telling you, this isn’t your normal show. I’ve also got a cool diagram you’ll want to hang on your wall (if you’re a nerd).

I had the pleasure of being on Clockwise again with Dan Moren and Mikah Sargent and we got to sit around the virtual table with the awesome Anže Tomić, everyone’s favorite Slovenian podcaster. We talked about what might be missing from the new MacBook Pros, how we feel about the notch, whether we use Active Noise Cancellation on our headphones, and my favorite subject, pivot tables in Number. You can find Clockwise in your podcatcher of choice and look for episode 421.

Tom Merritt on HDMI and Fast Charging (no blog post)

I was delighted when the M1 Pro and M1 Max were announced because, as I’d hoped, the 14″ MacBook Pro is not a compromise in performance and specs vs. The 16″ MacBook Pro. I have a 16″ MacBook Pro and while that giant screen is glorious, it is really heavy. I’ve carried 15 and 16″ MacBook Pros to Paris, England, Belgium, Ireland Italy, Peru, India, Nepal, Australia, and New Zealand and countless conferences in the US. I am SO ready for something lighter.

This brings one sadness, though. This is the fourth time that Tom Merritt and I have bought laptops at the same time, and we’ve bought nearly identical laptops each time. There was that one year when Tom got the high end graphics card when I bought the middle one, and he always held it over me. This year he’s sticking with the 16″ as I slim down to 14″. We both bought the M1 Max with the 10 core CPU, 32 core GPU, and 64GB of RAM. He bought the 2TB model but since I need something to hold over him, I bought the 4TB drive.

Just so wingman Kevin doesn’t give me a hard time, note that Steve bought the same exact model as me, except with the 2TB drive. His 5-year old 13″ MacBook Pro definitely could not run the live show on the road so this will be awesome for us when we do the show from out of town.

Tom, Steve, and I all have delivery dates of this coming Tuesday so we’re super excited.

I bring all this up though because Tom made some really interesting observations on the Daily Tech News Show about the HDMI port, and the fast charging options for the 16 and 14″ models. Because his content is under a Creative Commons license, he agreed to let me play a two-minute clip from the show for you highlighting these observations.

== insert Tom ==

Remember where I said the two sizes were the same, just one had a bigger screen? I replayed this clip a couple of times and took close notes and there was one bit that sounded very curious to me. He explained that the 16″ with its massively powerful 140W power supply could do fast charging over MagSafe because the MagSafe connector meets the USB Power Delivery (PD) 3.1 spec. Then he said it can’t do fast charging over USB-C because the ports are not USB PD 3.1. I was with him up to there. But then he explained that the 14″ could do fast charging over USB-C.

This confused me so I chatted with him for some clarification. He explained that since the 14″ doesn’t need more than 100W to fast charge, the USB PD 3.0 which tops out at 100W will meet its needs for fast charging. That made sense. But the other surprise buried in the audio clip was that he said the 14″ models come with either 67W or 96W. Tom is very precise so I was certain that wasn’t a mistake but I went to Apple’s tech spec page to find out why. It turns out the 14″ M1 Pro only requires the 67W charger but the M1 Max requires the larger 96W charger. Stay tuned for more on this later.

One of the things I was looking forward to on the smaller laptop was a smaller power brick, but because Apple did not bring GaN to the smaller laptop’s charger, I’ll be getting another massive charger block. The good news is that I already have a 100W GaN charger from HyperJuice with two USB-C ports and two USB-A ports so that will probably be my travel charger. Heck, the 14″ is supposed to get 17 hours of battery life watching video, why am I worried about charging speeds? Probably because Tom’s 16″ will get 21 hours on a charge.

Now let’s talk about those ports…

Blog Posts

What if Your Stove Had Dedicated Burners?

M1 Pro and M1 Max Decision Tree – a Diagram of Every Configuration

Support the Show

This week I’d like to celebrate the rest of the five-year club of supporting the NosillaCast on Patreon. Barry Fulk, George Smith, Jaimie Harris, Doug Ingram, Desmond, Steve Davidson, Trevor Drover, Joop, and Charles Hall have all been sending their hard-earned money to support the show all these years. I can’t thank them enough for this and it’s about time I recognized them. After last week’s announcement of the first set of five-year members, I started to get emails from people who either hadn’t ever written before or hadn’t written in ages, so this is super fun for me too. It’s a long-overdue thank you. If you’d like to join the club and help pay the expenses of running the podcast (I do not run a profit by the way), go to podfeet.com/patreon and pledge your support to the Podfeet Podcasts.

Armaan Arora Weighs In on the Unleashed Event (no blog post)

That’s going to wind this up for this week. Did you know you can email me at [email protected] any time you like? If you have a question or a suggestion just send it on over. I’ve left Facebook (at least for now) so Twitter is a good place to follow me online at @podfeet. Better yet, join our Slack community at podfeet.com/slack where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely NosillaCastaways. Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com/. You can support the show at podfeet.com/patreon or with a one-time donation at podfeet.com/paypal. And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com/live on Sunday nights at 5pm Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.