Categories
Tech Guesses

Apple Silicon Coming Soon…

It appears that we do have a date for the Apple Silicon Event, November 17. But what are we expecting…

What are we expecting?

The logical thing would be a small form factor, lower power Apple Laptop, perhaps a 12″ MacBook, 13″ MacBook Air, and/or a 13″ MacBook Pro. I believe that this is exactly what Apple is planning, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Apple wouldn’t want to introduce only a low-end machine, or just a smaller form factor machine to the world with their new processors. It would feel odd for Apple to introduce a 13″ (or 14″) MacBook Pro, without also refreshing the 16″, so I feel that is off the table at this point. Doing the MacBook and/or MacBook Air would be perfect, as I can see them complementing each other. Release both, with the MB running a 4×4 Apple Silicon chip (4 power cores, 4 efficiency cores) and basic graphics power. Then an MBA running 6×6, 6×4, or 8×8, with some more advanced graphics, something akin to the current Intel integrated graphics or better. I would expect slightly different form factor from the existing machines. However, I would hope that they maintain their good resting areas for the wrist, as that is a major advantage that Apple has over its competition.

Surprises?

It also wouldn’t surprise me to have Apple sneak in the new Mac mini at the same time. The Mini is usually focussed on the same people that would buy the MBA, but I can see it having more powerful graphics and even a more power hungry CPU, thanks to the wall connection, than the notebook/laptop versions. Maybe something with GTX980 or GTX1080 level graphics, something we basically saw during the WWDC preview. It would certainly give us hope that there will be power behind the new iMac and Pro machines. By integrating all the needed components into the processor, it is possible that a Mac mini could simply be the size of the current AppleTV, just need to ensure it has the appropriate ports on it to make it a useful computer.

The Name

I have serious doubts that Apple will use the AxxX numbering scheme for their desktop class chips. It just seems like it would be too easy for pundits and haters to compare costs and performances between the products, and that would be really bad for Apple. I almost expect the Apple Silicon chips to actually continue the Tx naming scheme, like these first generation will be T3 chips, or perhaps Apple will have paid some marketing company to come up with a name like “Pentium” for their processors. Something that is uniquely Apple, maybe the Braeburn Chips or Fuji.

What else?

The last few announcements seem to bundle different items together. In September it was iPad and Apple Watch. In October it was iPhone and HomePod Mini. So perhaps in October there will be Apple Silicon Macs and… Apple TV? It would be the perfect time for a new Apple TV. More storage, more power, perhaps some more gaming options. I have an AppleTV 4K, and I have a game pad for it. At present, I’m only playing Sonic The Hedgehog on it, but it is quite fun, but I would love to see what could be done, either for casual gamers, or given some of the power that the A14X is likely to have, full blow power to rival the Switch, or even the PS5/XBSX. Of course, if the MacMini is updated, perhaps AppleTV turns into a service on the Mac, much like we had Pre Snow Leopard. One can dream.

Final Thoughts…

I believe we will see Apple Silicon Macs in November. I do believe they will blow away people’s expectations, and I believe, strongly that they will make people less nervous about this transition. I also believe that Apple may even be able to lower the prices to the point where you will laugh when someone mentions “Apple Tax”.

Categories
Shopping

How to Save Retail

Amazon.com, Zulilly, and others are drinking the milkshakes of most brick and mortar stores. They have already driven some long time names to the brink, and closed others. However, the suits that run these stores don’t understand why people are constantly going online.

  1. The Experience
    In most cases, people don’t like to be harassed by employees trying to make a sale. This is why Best Buy basically destroyed all of its competitors in the electronics space. But they also enjoy knowing where there is someone who can help, and having the lower shelfs at Best Buy, makes it easier to locate people that can theoretically help. It is similar to people’s experiences online. They can search for what they think they need, given a few non-intrusive suggestions, but can easily chat with an expert to find what they are looking for.
  2. The Sales
    For some reason, people are easily tricked by “sales”. Even though, 90% of the time, the “sale” price is the regular price, as JC Penney experimented with and found that the psychology of sales is just too powerful. Amazon does something similar, as their prices are often “sale” prices. Dell does this as well. The only online retailer that doesn’t resort to this chicanery is Apple, but they are a unique player in both the online and physical retail space.
  3. The Space
    Most of the more successful online retailers have very clean an modern websites. The same can be said for successful physical stores. Apple and Nortstrom both keep their store free of clutter, and keep most of their inventory behind closed doors. Whereas Macy’s, JC Penny, Sears, and Walmart seem to put 10 gallons of inventory in a 5 gallon store. They are all cluttered and difficult to navigate, especially for the typical American. My local Walmart is so bad that they have pallets of inventory in the middle of the main walkways and interfering with access to the check stands. Retailers, if they wish to survive need to cut back on putting excessive inventory on the floor, and focus on making the experience better.
  4. Self Checkout
    Regardless of your opinion on Self-Checkout, you can certainly agree that being able to, as the puppet Walter says “get your shit, and get out”, is refreshing. Not having to wait in line, as a cashier slowly scans every item, then struggles to either deactivate the inventory tags, or remove them, then tries to sell the customer on their store credit card. Younger people and savvy shoppers just want to take and go. Stores like AmazonGo and the Apple Store make it easy for you to get your items and either automatically pay as you leave, or pay via your phones. Many self-check systems are no better, requiring the customer to perform the same actions that the cashier would perform, but not being skilled, it takes longer. Adopting AmazonGo or Apple like systems as an option in most stores, would be quite helpful and make the shopping experience much better.
  5. Bottom Line
    In the end, most of these existing retailers won’t heed these lessons, and will die, only for others to come back in their place, although, history may already be repeating itself, as Sears started as a catalog service, only to open retail stores; Amazon is starting to open retail stores of their own. It is a strange world in which we life.
Categories
New

iPhone 12

October 13, Apple unveiled the iPhone 12 lineup. The Mini, Standard, Pro, and Pro Max. I was honestly, given the conservative nature of Apple’s adoption of new technologies, that they added 5G service to all of the devices. I was equally surprised that given their liberal stances on employment policies, they spent a lot of the keynote with a union busting company like Verizon touting their useless mmWave 5G.

5G

5G is an interesting package of technologies, the most interesting of which, is unlikely to actually be useful to most people. 5G is still a wireless technology, which is susceptible to easy interference and wastes a lot of power. We haven’t even gotten close to saturating LTE/4G, and given the lower frequencies that 4G work on, it may continue to be more reliable for decades to come. Copper and Fiber connections are still the best for most applications, and will be for the foreseeable future.

MagSafe

I was quite surprise to see Apple resurrect the MagSafe brand for their update to the Qi system on their devices. One hopes that they would actually be smart and provide the specs to Qi, and see the entire industry adopt it as a standard not only for charging, but for the accessories as well. I have been using a magnetic mount for my iPhone since 2016, adding charging will be great, for those with Bluetooth CarPlay (or Android Auto) compatibility. I also love the idea of using MagSafe for the cases, which in theory means that they don’t have to be skin tight on the phones, and perhaps much easier to swap between.

Cameras

I not a huge camera person, but I can certainly understand that some of the camera upgrades are positive, and one, the telephoto lens on the Pro is, meh. LIDAR coupled with the new camera arrays on the Pro may bring some very interesting new abilities to the phone. The new low-light and night-mode options will certainly help to bring the iPhone back to being the best casual shooter.

Accessories

I can totally understand Apple’s desire to ditch the EarPods from the iPhone box. I seem to be the only person on the planet who loves them, mainly because they are the only headphones that actually work reliably in my ears. But most people I know, either have a Bluetooth headset they prefer, or other headphones/earbuds, that they seem to like better. I can also understand the desire to not include a power brick, since USB is basically everywhere… however they give you a USB-C to Lightning cable. Yes USB-C is the future, but very few people have it available, except on their Mac, provided they bought a new on in the last 5 years (I’m still rocking a 2011 iMac and a 2012 MacBook Pro Retina). I do love that Apple is basically encouraging people to buy USB-C bricks… I’m just waiting for everyone to complain that the crappy, 3rd-party USB-C brick either charges too slowly, gets too hot, or catches on fire, then they’ll blame Apple.

Conclusion

The iPhone 12 is honestly a minor upgrade for anyone with an iPhone X or newer, aside from the faster processor, or if you need a better camera. 5G is not the killer feature, yet, and not worth the upgrade. However, if you are in the market for a new phone, most people with be happiest with the iPhone 12 Mini or iPhone 12.

Categories
Tech Guesses

Hello Speed?

There are plenty of rumors around Apple’s October 13, 2020 event, titled “Hello Speed”.  Most people seem to be content with an iPhone 12 announcement with an A14 Chip and 5G, usually consisting of 4 models.

Others believe that there may also be an iPad Pro announcement, which would be odd given that September’s announcement was for iPads.  I don’t think there will be an new iPad Pro until the new year.

The title of the event is a little odd, if I’m honest.  To me it is obvious what this even will be an Apple Silicon reveal.  I suspect they will use a different naming scheme from the A-Series chips, but may maintain the T-Series name, however I would prefer an actually name/number system, to a letter/number system.  This even will likely be the introduction of both a new Mac Mini as well as a MacBook (12″) and perhaps a MacBook Air.  The title of the presentation is to invoke that all 3 models are leaps and bounds faster than their predecessors, in CPU, GPU, and x64/x86 code emulation.  These machines will likely be available for purchase by the end of the week, shipping the following week.

As a result of the release of Apple Silicon Macs, they will also need to announce a release date for macOS Big Sur.  I suspect that Big Sur will be available either the 14th, 15th, or 16th, for free, of course.

However, like you I will be happy with whatever improvements Apple does announce, as COVID-19 has been especially weird for Tech Companies, as they are seeing higher sales, but for lower tier products, by and large.

Categories
TV Reviews

Scorpion, aka How to Make Smart People Look Dumb

I have just finished watching “Scorpion” (no I will not do the psudo code they decided stylize the title with, it isn’t even right!!!). I think the premise is great; “Smart people are recruited by the Government to solve problems that they can’t handle on their own”. However, if the pilot is any indication, the show is going to be crap. Let me list the flaws:

  • WiFi is a great thing, but any 12 year old worth his salt can set it up, and the time it takes to set it up won’t be worth much money.
  • The most important thing to take into consideration when needing to connect to someone via the Internet, is the speed of the Internet Service, not that the place has “reliable WiFi”, because any tech worth their salt, will use a hard wired connection, when something is mission critical.
    • On top of that, how does a shitty little diner have enough download, let alone enough upload for real-time video of the LAX tower.
  • On that same vein, Installing an operating system is a serious job, can rarely be executed remotely, and certainly can’t be done by clicking a link in an email.
  • Operating Systems are often several Gigabytes in size, or at least 1, given the stated age of the system.  To transfer a file that size would take several minutes to several hours, and they have less than one (down to a few minutes in the end).
  • If you could override security by sending a power spike, that would defeat the point of security.
    • Also, would not the power spike also spike the servers.
    • It would have been easier to disconnect the Internet service, that takes seconds.
  • While Analog Phones have a greater range than Digital Phones, Analog Phone have not been in use since 2009, when the FCC required all carriers to disable their Analog Transmitters in the US (much earlier other places).
  • Airplanes do no have 25′ to 50′ of Ethernet cable just bundled next to the data rack.
  • There are few planes with the ability to get you from the passenger cabin to the cargo deck during a flight.  The 747 and the A380 are the only two I’m aware of, and neither of those planes were used in this show.
  • There is no hatch from the cargo hold to the wheel well.
  • At 200 MPH you couldn’t physically hold on to the landing strut.
  • It is impossible to get an automobile up to 200 MPH in the time and space allotted.  Not even The Stig can do that.
  • Sure, worry about data speeds when you are on an Ethernet connection, but don’t think twice about WiFi being Instant.

That is just a small set of issues with just the Pilot episode.  This doesn’t include the stereotype that smart people look or act dumb, that genius can easily be confused with mental deficiencies, or that parents don’t have the ability to learn about their children in order to relate to them, especially when they care as much as this one seems to.

At the end, I did find who the Executive Producers and Writers were for this show…. Kurtzman and Orci.  The same geniuses that Rebooted and destroyed “Hawaii 5-O”, rebooted and bungled “Star Trek”, and numerous other shows and movies.  If I was a CBS stock holder I would be demanding that their development deal be burned, and they kicked out onto the streets and blackballed from Hollywood until they can learn to write things that don’t leap to conclusions like the “Leap to Conclusions Mat”.

Now, I will give them the benefit of the doubt, and give them a few episodes before rendering final judgement, but this isn’t a promising start.

Categories
Tech Rants

Why do people store data in the Trash/Recycle Bin/Deleted Items?

What part of Trash do people not understand?

It isn’t a difficult concept, things that you no longer want, get thrown away, into the trash, recycle bin, or deleted items. This is not general storage. You don’t place important documents in your recycle bin at home, do you? Why would you put important items in the trash on your computer, or in your email?

Seriously… I’m trying to figure this out, because it is so illogical that it boggles my mind.

Discuss.