shamino

About

Username
shamino
Joined
Visits
100
Last Active
Roles
member
Points
559
Badges
1
Posts
537

Reactions

244Like44Informative

  • It's time to drop apps that don't support Apple Silicon natively

    shaminoshamino
    So the author is saying what?

    Apple will someday cut off support for apps that don't upgrade, so you should summarily stop using them today.

    To what purpose?  Make sure you suffer today instead of waiting for some unspecified time in the future when you might (or might not) be forced to?

    That sounds pretty counter-productive to me.  Especially when Apple hasn't even completed their hardware transition.
    elijahgroundaboutnowarthurbawilliamlondonosmartormenajrdewmegodofbiscuitstyler82macplusplusshareef777

  • Apple's legendary Clarus the dogcow returns in macOS Ventura

    shaminoshamino
    I also miss flying toaster. Not sure if that’s the Apple thing or Toast thing. 
    Neither.  Flying toasters were a part of the After Dark screen saver software, made by Berkeley Systems.


    JWSCravnorodomdarkvaderwatto_cobramaltzmknelsonjeffharris

  • Apple provides instructions to erase and restore unresponsive M1 Macs

    shaminoshamino
    randominternetperson said:
    This possibility has existed for every Mac (at least since Mac OS X?) and it's incredibly rare.  I expect it's incredibly rare with these new Macs.  But if you're the one in 10,000 who bought a new Mac and then f'ed it up, you want a knowledge article about how to get it restored.  Now that article is available.
    This isn't a case of a rare bug triggering.  This is one very specific case - where the new owner immediately tried to perform a system restore on the new computer, possibly even before booting it even once.  From what I've read, some owners do this in order to manually de-select optional installations (e.g. iLife applications) and minimize the footprint of the system software.

    There was a bug in macOS 11.0 where this procedure bricked the computer, requiring Configurator 2 (or other procedures mentioned in the article) to recover from.  Apple fixed the bug in 11.0.1, so anyone who upgrades to 11.0.1 before doing this system restore should be safe as well.

    This bug is an embarrassment for Apple, but ultimately no more than that, since they have patched the software and published recovery procedures.  I suspect that nobody on their internal testing team considered the idea of performing a system restore on a new computer that still has its factory image installed.  I'm sure they will be adding this to their test suite in the future.
    cat52Fidonet127ronn

  • Apple releases MagSafe Battery Pack for iPhone

    shaminoshamino
    How much thicker does that make the phone?

    And wouldn't it look a lot better if Apple would just make the whole phone a bit thicker and fill the extra space with a bigger battery?  And as a happy side-effect, get rid of the camera bump as well.
    muthuk_vanalingamelijahgwilliamlondonpscooter63Beatswatto_cobra

  • How to connect just about any vintage Mac to a modern monitor

    shaminoshamino
    Just a nit to pick.  The DIP switches on an Apple RGB-VGA adapter are not because of the sync mechanisms.  Apple RGB provided sync in the same way that most analog monitors at the time do - either with separate pins (VGA style) or by multiplexing sync with the green signal.

    The DIP switches exist because the DDC standard for plug-and-play monitors didn't exit at the time.  Apple's monitors were all fixed-frequency, so the Mac needed to know the correct frequency and resolution used by the connected monitor - and you can't use a control panel if you can't see an image.

    In order to avoid this chicken-and-egg scenario, there are three "sense" pins on the DE15 video connector.  By connecting them to power, ground, or each other (possible with diodes), a monitor can identify itself.  The DIP switches on the adapter is used to make these connections so you can tell the connected Mac what frequency/resolution you want to use with your monitor.
    netroxwatto_cobraappleinsideruserAlex1N

  • Apple blames Beats headphones explosion on third-party batteries

    shaminoshamino
    tundraboy said:
    Headline is inaccurate. The headphones did not explode. The batteries did.
    That's a critical piece of information that this article failed to mention.  Since you mentioned it, I did a Google search and found that I believe to be the original article from when the incident actually happened: http://www.atsb.gov.au/newsroom/news-items/2017/battery-explosion-mid-flight/

    They clearly state that the batteries are what exploded.  In which case, I agree - Apple has nothing to do with this.  And it has nothing to do with "approved" brands.  Most batteries - even no-name ones - don't explode.  The fact that these did means that they were manufactured very poorly.

    They are the ones who need to be sued, but (as another reader pointed out) it may be impossible if they are a fly-by-night operation in a foreign country.
    StrangeDaysStrangeDayspscooter63boredumb

  • iPhone gets USB-C thanks to creative robotics engineer

    shaminoshamino
    I don't think it's so much a matter of want to as one of see a clear benefit.

    USB-C is very trendy right now, and the new EU law is definitely going to have an impact on Apple's business logic, but there are other things that they need to consider in addition, including:
    • Cost to add higher speed communication to the iPhone.  If a USB-C iPhone continues to use USB 2.0 data rates, that eliminates much of the technical advantage.
    • Other Lightening capabilities.  Lightening was originally designed to replace the 30-pin Dock connector, which had several things like analog A/V, that Lightening later incorporated.  I don't know how many of these features are still used, but they will be important to any transition plan.  For instance, a Lightening headphone adapter only has to (as far as I know) identify itself as such (via the ID chip) and then connect the analog I/O pins to the connector - so it can be a cheap and simple adapter.  But a USB-C adapter needs to include a full USB audio interface into that adapter.
    • Ticking off existing customers.  People over the years have bought a lot of Lightening-based devices.  When Apple dropped the 30-pin connector, there was a lot of complaining from people who had to toss out peripherals or buy adapters.  The Lightening-based ecosystem is even bigger and will probably generate an even bigger wave of complaints.
    Ultimately, it is (as you wrote) a business decision, but there are a lot of factors involved.  It's not just a matter of whether Apple management "wants to".
    williamlondonapplguybaconstangFileMakerFellerFidonet127watto_cobra

  • First look: Fitbit guns for Apple Watch Series 3 with Ionic smartwatch

    shaminoshamino
    ...Fitbit Pay, an Apple Pay competitor which is still expanding U.S. bank support but should work anywhere NFC payments are accepted. Apple Pay often requires specific support by merchants.
    Let's correct this bit of misinformation.  Apple Pay uses the exact same technology used by contactless cards.  Which is why so many merchants make you sign the PIN pad even though ApplePay is authenticating the user via his fingerprint.

    There are some merchants that accept contactless cards but reject Apple Pay.  These merchants (or their banks) have installed explicit software designed to look for and disable Apple Pay.  Usually for political/ideological reasons (don't want to support Apple, wants to promote a competing mobile wallet tech, etc.)  Convincing a merchant to remove their Apple Pay-disabling firmware is not "requiring specific support", no matter how many press releases to the contrary the merchant may make.

    Are there places that accept NFC payments that do not accept Apple Pay?
    There are.  And every time I've looked closely, I've found that the merchant (or bank) in question is an investor in some competing mobile payment technology and is deliberately looking for, and disabling, Apple Pay thinking it will somehow boost popularity of the tech they are promoting.

    WalMart is one of the worst examples.  To be fair, they are blocking all contactless/NFC transactions, not just Apple Pay, but they definitely fall into this category.  They and 14 other companies explicitly decided to block mobile payments in order to promote "CurrentC", their own mobile payment system (which requires granting the service direct access to you bank account) that after 4 years of vaporware was shutdown and abandoned.  Today, WalMart still won't support NFC, but is instead trying to convince customers to make their in-store purchases through the WalMart app, which doesn't work anywhere else.

    Why not just accept NFC payments?  Because WaMart's CEO has some personal vendetta against Visa and MasterCard and is looking for some excuse to get rid of them, so they are using passive-aggressive BS to try and make customers pay with other mechanisms (like direct debits from checking accounts) instead.
    watto_cobracaliradarthekatairnerd

  • Ex-Apple engineer explains why the first iPhone didn't have copy and paste

    shaminoshamino
    Beats said:

    shamino said:
    Apple may have been the first to deploy these technologies on a consumer device, but they didn't invent it.

    Before there was any iPad/iPhone, we were all fascinated by multitouch UI demos produced by Jeff Han (researcher at NYU and founder of Perceptive Pixel, which was since acquired by Microsoft).  For example:

    I don't think Apple ever used Jeff Han's code, and modern multitouch display panels use a completely different technology from what Han was using, but I can guarantee that lots of important people there (like the rest of us) saw these videos and drew inspiration from them.  Including swiping, scrolling and pinch-to-zoom operations.

    Dismissing the hard work of Steve Jobs and Apple engineers because crappy resistive touch screens existed is ludicrous. I was heavy into futuristic cell phones in 2007 and had the highest rated Windows Mobile Phone and it was absolutely garbage compared to what iPhone brought. None of the ideas of Windows Mobile carried over to iPhone and it had none of the cool iPhone inventions like pinch to zoom. There were arrows everywhere in the UI and there was a “calibrate” setting I had to revisit every few days. This was a super high-tech phone in 2007, mobile keyboard and all!
    You didn't actually read anything I wrote, did you?  I didn't say anything about resistive screens or Windows phones.  Where you did you get the idea that I did?

    Jeff Han was not a Microsoft employee at the time.  He was a researcher at NYU, where he developed a lot of the fundamental research behind multitouch interfaces.  He published video demonstrations of his research over a year before Apple announced anything of the sort.  He was using a unique hardware system involving glass panels, cameras and projectors - which nobody else has ever used - but that's irrelevant.  The point is not the digitiizer but all of the user interface concepts that he developed in order to show the usefulness of multitouch.

    I get the impression that you hadn't actually watched his videos when they were published in 2006 and 2007.  You should go watch them now in order to understand what I'm talking about.

    Again, Apple did a tremendous amount of work to bring the iPhone to market, but to claim that they invented the underlying UI concepts like multitouch interfaces is to deny history.
    sphericfastasleepBeDifferent

  • Apple is trying to reinvent group audio chat with no cell or WiFi needed

    shaminoshamino
    jallison said:

    There are also two levels of 'long range' in Bluetooth 5 - Coded Phy S2 and S8. They increase the range between handsets to ~100m.
    Yes, but as with all things, there are tradeoffs.

    The Coded Phy systems gain greater range and reliability through transmission of additional (quite a lot of) error-correcting data.  So the overall bandwidth goes way down.  The high-speed 2Mbps data rate has a range of about 80% of the "standard" 1Mbps rate.  The Coded S2 PHY doubles the range, but cuts the bandwidth in half - to 500 kbps.  Coded S8 doubles that range (4x the standard range), but reduces the bandwidth by another 75% - to 125 kbps.

    Now, 125 kbps is sufficient for a voice call (voice land lines digitize to 56 kbps), but would that be enough for modern users who are used to the quality of a VoLTE call?




    muthuk_vanalingamjallison