Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
A classic Mac Pro bench would be awesome. Goals for my next home.
As for the menu bar, this is kind of an extension from Upgrade but I use TinkerTool to futz with the spacing of the items in the menubar as an added way of making it easier to manage. Specially useful on a device where I do not have a lick of admin powers and it’s so locked down I cannot even remove Microsoft Defender from the menubar. So I make the spacing very small to make it at least all fit
MS makes a version of Defender for Macs?
Yeah. It’s with Microsoft managed systems Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on macOS overview - Microsoft Defender for Endpoint | Microsoft Learn
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I wonder if they will cover this next week:
This is crazy!
Reading it further…. maybe not as crazy as I thought. I thought maybe they worked in tandem with Apple but they didn’t. They just mimicked how the iPhone does things Google Online Security Blog: Android Quick Share Support for AirDrop: A Secure Approach to Cross-Platform File Sharing
If nothing else, I’m curious to hear if Alex is going to try and justify the Mac Pro’s existence or not. In my line of work (web development) I can do everything on a flipping Air, nevermind even needing one of the ‘pro’ machines. Every office I go into these days has Thunderbolt docks at every desk. If you need a ton of IO, doesn’t Thunderbolt 5 cover it? CalDigit docks are no slouches!
Where do you plug in the PCIe cards? 
The main purpose of the Pro over the Studio isn’t power, they should be similar, but in the use of internal cards, until the manufacturer makes a Thunderbolt version available, although with TB there is still a big performance drop in some cases.
But that’s exactly the point of my question. Leo brought up on the show that you’re not plugging in a GPU since none are compatible with Apple Silicon. So, what PCIe cards does your Mac need?
Apple has always been willing to do something that benefits 90% of their customers at the expense of 10%, and we’ve reached the point where folks needing PCIe are that 10%. What even are the things that can only be done with PCIe that Apple is clearly willing to give up in favor of TB5?
All sorts of things, frame grabbers, DeckLink from Blackmagic, for example, controllers for scientific equipment, although most use a serial port or some kind these days.
Many things are transitioning to Thunderbolt or USB, but there are still many applications that need PCIe for raw performance, or, because Windows and Linux boxes all have multiple PCIe ports, they simply make the cards out of cost grounds - making the devices slower and more expensive, just so you can plug them in externally doesn’t make sense for many people, you need a power cable, a power supply, a data cable and a case, all things the internal card don’t need.
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I had a 2020 MacBook Pro that I found I wasn’t using much with my IPad Pro, more portable and well most of what I do is managing webpages. Didn’t really need all the power of the pro or the bulk. I use the Magic Keyboard case with the iPad Pro and I’m set. I thought about buying an MacBook air, so I could play with some desktop software on it again, but at the same time, the iPad meets all my needs so do I want to waste that money?
Interesting, and you would think those are markets Apple wants to keep. Clearly they don’t see a lack of PCIe as something holding them back. The current Mac Pro is now 3 generations old, which I feel like makes it a complete no-go for anyone needing the kind of performance where you can tell the difference between PCIe and TB5.
I think that, as far as Apple’s concerned, traditional towers are dead. A relic from the past only needed by a virtually insignificant percentage of the consumer market. Thunderbolt and the Mac Studio are the future to them.
I would think that the consumer market doesn’t need them at all. The customers are Hollywood studios and companies like Alex’s that do video production.
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especially I/O - some people need tons of I/O for bandwidth
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