February 2021 – Swiss Army Geek

Locally, we have many options for take-out food, from Japanese-esque, French Inspired, Seafood, Italian, Chinese, and simple diner affair. What we don’t have is much choice for Fast Food… basically, we only have a DQ. I typically stick with a Flamethrower and Blizzard, and my fiancée gets chickstrips and a Blizzard. However, on the app, a new item appeared, Chicken Bites. As a lark, I picked some up this week, and I was blown away. They are incredible. They have tons of flavor, without a dipping sauce. They aren’t breaded, and they are literal bite of chicken. The number included in a meal seems small, but with the fries and Texas Toast, it is plenty of food for most people.

Definitely an improvement to the menu, and hopefully something that sticks around.

Rumors are flying full force about new Apple Silicon iMacs and MacBooks coming in March. Everything from an iMac, without a chin, in larger sizes, and in multiple colors. All of which sound great, although I am quite fond of the chin, and I feel it helps distinguish the iMac from a monitor. As for MacBook Pros, new 16″ and 14″ machines sound good, but people are expecting the touch bar to be dead and ports to return. I do not see Apple doing that across the line. I believe that there will be options with and without the Touch Bar on the 14″ and 16″, and I can see Apple adding the SD card slot back into the machines, and maybe a single USB A connection, but that would be about it. I expect 4 USB/TB 4, USB-C connectors. WiFi 6 is a given, but I actually expect these new machines to support WiFi 6E.

iMac Colors and more

Rumors are swirling about the iMacs coming in multiple colors, similar to the 2nd generation iMac G3s. I would expect color choices similar to the iPhone 12, and they would feature an anodized aluminum chassis, and a more angular design, somewhat similar to the Pro Display XDR. It is also possible that they would appear in larger sizes (although I use a 21.5″ at work, and find it nearly perfect), 24″ and 32″ are the currently rumored sizes. At those sizes, I would almost expect the displays to be 4K and 6K respectively, possibly miniLED. But needing to drive that number of pixels, and support external display(s), I would expect the machines to either come with 16+ GPU cores on die, or to have their own dedicated GPU to handle the graphics. I also hope, that with it being Apple Designed, we and perhaps see the return of Target Display Mode. I am also hoping that we will see not only integrated RAM on these new designs, but the ability to upgrade RAM in the future, as Apple used to do with their machines in the 90s. An M.2 port inside would also be nice, for expansion, not to replace the boot drive.

MacBook Pro

Bring back the ports? Not likely. USB-C has been the standard for Apple for 5 years now, and I don’t see them going too far back. I would like to see an SD card slot, perhaps with microSD support. A USB-A port would be nice, but anything beyond that would take us backwards. I do see 4 USB-C USB4/TB4 ports in the future of both sizes.

The Touch Bar has been a sore subject for some people, since its introduction. I don’t see it going away, but I do see it being something that can be deleted from a BTO option on both the 14″ and 16″ machines.

Much like with the iMacs, I suspect that Apple may be upgrading the screens, to 4K (to compete with PCs in that space), microLED is a possibility, and at the very least more GPU cores, if not a discrete GPU, to drive them.