roundaboutnow

Phronk said:

"iTunes Match is included with Apple Music "

This isn't true. Unless something's changed recently, they've always been separate services. Apple Music has some features similar to iTunes Match, but lacks others, such as DRM-free download of the music you match. I subscribe to both, because I'm dumb and use Match as a backup for all my music, so I can delete it from my local hard drive, but could always, in theory, download it from the cloud at some point in the future.

This was discussed here about a month ago. I looked into it at that time and found that about a year ago, things did in fact change.

According to Apple and the very helpful iMore article, Apple Music includes "all the benefits of iTunes Match" (and it seems without attaching DRM, like it used to):

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146 

https://www.imore.com/do-i-still-need-itunes-match-if-i-have-apple-music 

AppleInsider said:

...
The Sonos chief legal officer also took aim at Matter, a new standard for smart home connectivity backed by Apple, Google, and other tech giants.

"One could imagine, furthermore, a Trojan Horse aspect to all this. Those who control the standard and its evolution effectively control the nature and pace of innovation, including the innovations dreamed up by their competitors. The standard Matter is working on, as I understand it, is basically a creature of Google and Apple code. That is hardly a formula for fair competition or more creative invention. It's a formula for further entrenching the dominance of the very few," Lazarus said.
...

I don't doubt that Apple/Google/Amazon will have major influence on how Matter develops, but it doesn't appear the Sonos guy understands correctly:

1. Matter is an open standard to promote inter-operability, with many other companies participating.
2. The big companies didn't make up Matter on their own, from scratch -- it is "built on proven technologies and guided by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (formerly Zigbee Alliance)."
3. Getting these big guys to agree on any standard is a very positive development that should benefit consumers.
4. Any company -- including Sonos -- is free to join Matter and participate in its development.

Found this graphic on a GitHub page (https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip/blob/master/docs/images/CHIP_IP_pyramid.png) that I got to from a link on the Matter page (https://buildwithmatter.com), which I found from the "Matter" menu selection on the Connectivity Standards Alliance page (https://zigbeealliance.org/about/). (Blue triangle representing Application Layer is still the old name -- hasn't yet been updated to say Matter).

What is the reason that iPads with cellular can't make/take "regular" cell phone calls (without VOIP or when it is not associated with an iPhone)? Is it a carrier decision that limits the iPad cellular connection to data only, or is there some other technical reason?

I realize it's not too difficult to set up Google voice or other VOIP service to provide a phone number to allow an iPad to send and receive calls, but it seems silly to not have the cell call capability built-in.

www.www.www.com said:

roundaboutnow said:

www.www.www.com said:

RCS is now the standard for all Android phones, so it's wrong to say that Android users can't share high-res images by default.

Sure, RCS isn't perfect and is still mid-adoption, but you say it's not the solution to fixing cross-platform messaging without offering any other options. What would you rather see happen to improve how iOS and Android communicate? It's easy to criticize, but you don't seem to have a better solution to offer.

One thing in the article could be made more clear. FTA:
Google says RCS enables higher-resolution images, video, and more things like emoji reactions. However, other messaging services like Signal, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, and even iMessage already have these improvements. It is Google's problem that Android users don't have the same benefit by default.

I don't want to speak for the author, but from the above, it appears that the author did not mean to say Android users can't share high-res images by default at all, but rather it is the combination of multiple features that represents the "same benefit" that other platforms have that Android users don't have.

Also, it's not the author's responsibility to offer a better solution. Reporting the facts are, which I believe has been done in this article.

If the author is going to state, as a fact, that RCS isn't the answer, then he should tell us what the answer is. Otherwise it's just his opinion.

Pointing out why something doesn't work does not require saying what does work. End of story.

Cesar Battistini Maziero said:

I wish it was taller and smaller foot print.

Would be a life saver for table space, and mounting ass well.

Not taller! I still need them to fit with some clearance in 1RU rack space (1.75").

Smaller footprint would be nice. I can fit two existing Mac mini side-by-side in 1RU. Fitting three (or four!) side-by-side would be nice.

On Mac Studio M2 Ultra, I see 4 TB ports on rear, 2 TB ports on front, and 1 HDMI port on rear. So no way to directly connect "Eight displays with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz" ...at least one TB dual-display adapter would be needed.

If I want to drive 8 HDMI displays, it should be possible to install four TB-to-dual HDMI adapters on the 4 rear M2 Ultra TB ports.

I'll be looking into this further, but if anyone has any insights on doing this, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

jSnively said:

The enthusiasts complaining about this machine are justified. The people pointing out that this machine is for an extremely niche and specific market are also correct.

IMO Apple messed up here, and they're going to get a lot of crap for it. This is a form factor that could, and should, have scaled to make multiple market segments happy. Instead Apple went as far to the extreme end as they could, to the exclusion of the middle road, and completely priced out individuals.The enthusiasts just wanted an expandable i7 with like 16-64GB of RAM and a good GPU they could upgrade. That should have been possible with this design.

Feels like a swing and a miss to me. Apple is either completely out of touch with the enthusiast market, or it might be time for the enthusiast market to give up on Apple. I think they probably sold a fair amount of PCs today.

Also, I know it's personal preference but man is that thing ugly. Can Ive stop trying to make every Apple product look like a Braun appliance from the 60s and 70s?

I guess everyone's entitled to their opinion, but I am surprised to see this from an AI Administrator.

As both a pro and personal user, I think the new MacPro is frikkin awesome and looks cool too. And there is a rack mount version! Using one of these to drive huge blended or tiled screens in commercial environments (which there are more and more of everyday) will be amazing.

So what the hell is an "enthusiast" anyway? I thought I was an enthusiast, but the way you put it, maybe not. If you mean tinkerers or gamers, well OK, I'm not one of them, but I think that community has plenty of other platforms to play around with.

AppleInsider said:

• Split View lets you watch your friends as you vaguely follow a movie

 

AppleZulu said:

roundaboutnow said:

Starting price of 14" MBP with M3 being less expensive than previous 14" MBP is interesting. That Space Black looks pretty cool too. Definitely something to think about...

I noted that they mentioned more than a few times how much better things would be for those still on Intel Macs (rub it in, why don't ya!), and in particular, how the 24" iMac M3 was offered as a replacement for either the 21.5" or 27" Intel iMacs. I wonder if that means we won't see a larger iMac any time soon.

They will be drawing a hard line to discontinue support for all Intel Macs in the near future. The remarks about the comparative boost is both marketing to convince people to upgrade from those and also a warning the the MacOS written to use that new speed and capacity will soon be too much for Intel Macs to handle. 

Yep, that's what I'm afraid of...