sirbryan

Apple's player API is extremely limiting if you want to do custom overlays, play more than one program at a time (2-,3-,4-up), or preview information from other channels or programs, etc. You also have limits on knowing if the content meets the user's content restriction criteria because they don't make that available unless you use their player controller. There's more than one reason there are dozens of custom player API's.  Most of them are lousy.

I wrote my own that supported swiping to scrub through the stream, among other things. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple announces those API's at WWDC next week and all this hoopla is over nothing, presuming the dev teams adopt the new gesture recognizers.

urahara said:

Here is a sequence for you to come down a little: 802.11 -> 802.11b -> 802.11a -> 802.11g -> 802.11n -> 802.11ac -> 802.11ax -> 802.11be

Yahbut... 

WiFi's more of a tree with branches. Some standards are band dependent.

2.4GHz = 802.11b -> 802.11g -> 802.11n
5GHz =  802.11a -> 802.11n -> 802.11ac (WiFi 5) -> 802.11ac Wave 2 -> 802.11ax (WiFi 6) -> WiFi 6E -> 802.11be (WiFi 7)
6GHz = 802.11ax (WiFi 6E) -> 802.11be (WiFi 7)
60GHz = 802.11ad -> 802.11ay

razorpit said:

Certain Windows apps would previously fail because they required hardware that Parallels wasn't able to mimic. Many of these will now work, with Parallels saying its new version can run over 200,000 Windows apps.

Would love to know what one or two of those apps are. I had to run SolidWorks 2020 on a 2010 Mac mini yesterday for some testing. While it was painfully slow, it worked.

Parallels Desktop 16 for Mac also claims to run those apps faster than before, with Windows launching twice as fast, and resuming or shutting down up to 20% quicker. It also improves on the previously significant issue that virtual Windows could request extra disk space, but not then return it when shut down.

My comprehension is a little off. If you are running an older version of Mac OS will you notice these advancements as well? I skipped Catalina, I did have it on one test machine for support purposes. I may be a little more open to Big Sur.

macOS has had "hypervisor.framework" for a while, but offline discussions and tea leaf reading leads me to believe this is the first year VMware and Parallels may have gone "all-in" with it (perhaps the reason for "25 person-years" of work).  Based on release notes for betas and tech previews, it also appears to be the first year that the new version of those hypervisors will not work on previous versions of macOS, likely due to the kext changes.

The keynote also mentioned "the last" M1 chip in the lineup was Ultra.

My bet is Mac Pro gets M2 (Max/Ultra) with each chip having 2 interconnects instead of one and perhaps 128GB per package, supporting quad/hex/octo configs within insane core counts.

I'm guessing a lot of people didn't watch the event.

This will use a thin slice of existing T-Mobile mid-band (PCS, 1900-2100MHz) spectrum, which they have licenses for across the entire US.  This isn't necessarily 5G, and they said "the phone you already have."  I'm guessing that they'll only need to implement the 4G/LTE spec (or a lite version of it), enough to support voice and simple data.

According to Musk, the antennas to support this will be roughly 5-7 meters wide and tall, and there will be serious electronics involved to counteract doppler effect etc. Because cell phones transmit omnidirectionally, cell antennas on towers are already designed to be really big ears to pick up the weakest of signals.  Licensed spectrum is much quieter than Part 15 (unlicensed) bands where WiFi and baby monitors and IoT devices live.  So they wouldn't have put out the "vaporware" if they didn't believe there was technical capability. 

There's also only so much bandwidth available (2-4Mbps) for the whole spot beam, so they're starting with the easy stuff. SMS uses the SS7 signaling network (which runs on most telco phone switches across two 56K channels). They've got oodles of bandwidth to support texting and messaging, and with store-and-forward capabilities onboard the bird, that part's pretty much figured out.

Since T-Mobile already owns the spectrum, the biggest challenge could be regulatory issues.
 

davgreg said:
The only area rough around the edges is the millimeter wave 5G which is still problematic. I was in Nashville near Vanderbilt Thursday and the millimeter wave was up and running but the network not well optimized - crazy fast signals outside and nothing inside a simple brick restaurant. It was like this in Memphis recently as the same tech was rolled out but was much improved within a month or so.

Net Neutrality is based on a bunch of big bad "what if's" that "might" be implemented by Big ISPs. It's a solution looking for a problem. There are only a few Big ISPs with the clout and marketshare to even try to do what they're claiming, while there are over 2000 smaller ISPs (like mine) that'll never be in a position to even consider such things without suffering.  Customers would drop them in a heartbeat.

The problem is nobody thinks about the "what if's" on the government/regulatory side.  Sure, the current majority leadership of the FCC (who are appointed, by the way, not elected, and therefore face no ramifications for their actions from the people/entities within their stewardship--just a bunch of attaboys and pats on the back from the people who are in power) have signaled that they will cherry-pick only "relevant" rules from old Title II 1900's-era (AT&T days) regulation.  But what if a future administration decides to implement more of the existing (old) rules? Or come up with another loophole to add more?  

Or worse: what if the government "Net-Neutralizes" one or more ISPs out of existence for not toeing the line when it comes to the ISP standing up for free speech or other constitutional issues, or trying to exercise its own rights?  The same administration that wants to "Neutral-ize" the Internet has used all kinds of means to try to keep Elon Musk from buying/holding onto Twitter, coerced all the social media platforms to manipulate speech during the pandemic, and they're questioning Apple's "monopolistic stronghold" on their own smaller fraction of the market.

Congress has given so much rule-making power away to the Executive branch's agencies for so long that, before Congress can do anything to solve the problem (do they do that nowadays?), the damage is done.

We should all be very wary of any government entity offering to step in and take more power (i.e. create more regulation) in the interest of the common good, especially based on "what if" scenarios that the free market itself can (and often does) correct. 

You can't legislate against stupid.

Also, rhetorically...

Who hires/appoints these people that work for federal agencies, anyway?  Apple and Tesla are to blame because the driver broke multiple laws and misused/abused technology?

In the world I live in, I have to take responsibility for my own actions.

I totally see the value in this.

When I was teaching software development, all of the workstations had monitors, keyboards, and mice from when the classroom had thin clients. We got rid of the thin clients, stowed the keyboards, kept a couple of mice handy, and put the monitors up on moveable arms.

That's a French AZERTY keyboard.

It's tempting to put in an offer, just to see what the demand truly is.  Unless you're a collector or museum, I think the novelty would wear off and then you'd be wishing it was faster.

I have an Apple IIe and two Mac SE's that boot up beautifully.  I download fun classic games from the Internet via my iPhone and the cassette port to the Apple IIe.  I had a couple hard drives for the SE's, but they're showing their age.  I've considered SCSI to SD-card adapters for those, which would make them fast and silent.

Or I could gut all three of them and put some Mac Mini's, Intel NUCs, or Raspberry Pi's inside, with vMac, SheepShaver, Basilisk, etc.