bsimpsen

digitol said:

Caution! Apple watch and it’s measurements/monitoring is often inaccurate. This should not substitute for a Doctor. In fact, it’s almost criminal how horrible these devices are. Many things to account for, that isn’t taken into consideration for health, which may hurt certain individuals with underlying health issues or other circumstances. Apple watch is more of a toy. 

By your logic, clinical measurements and monitoring are often inaccurate because they don't take into consideration what happens outside the clinical setting. This is actually often true, as demonstrated in this story. Do you consider clinical tools to be toys?

I'm retired from a long career designing diagnostic ECG equipment, including ambulatory (worn-at-home) monitors. The Apple Watch is certainly no toy. Both of my parents have had A-Fib for years, and my Apple Watch was able to detect it in both of them. I routinely throw PVCs and I've been able to capture them via the watch.

When it comes to understanding the value of various kinds of medical monitoring, there is real understanding and toy understanding.

winston2010 said:

If I were Apple, I would make a x86 instructions compatible processor with ARM core.  Modern Intel processors used the same technique with RISC-like core and x86 microcode.  This way, no transition issues, if not 100% compatible with existing software.

Apple does not have a license to use the x86 instruction set. They'd need one to do as you suggest.

arlor said:

Short key travel and lack of wrist elevation both reduce comfort and the latter is a well-studied cause of repetitive stress problems.

I don't know what studies you've seen, but my personal experience with carpal and radial tunnel irritation led me to look pretty deeply into the ergonomics of my own workstation. The occupational therapist who visited my office was, for lack of a better term, incompetent. Virtually everything she suggested was contrary to my own engineering intuition. I continued my experimentation with monitor/keyboard placement/geometry and finally settled on a configuration that has allowed me to continue working, symptom free, for an additional 20 years.

One of the therapist's suggestions was to elevate the back of the keyboard to achieve greater wrist extension. That was exactly the opposite of what I'd been doing to alleviate my symptoms. My continued experimentation after her short visit ultimately resulted my my placing the keyboard on a tray just above my legs when seated, with the keyboard slanted down to match the angle of my forearms. Subsequent research has shown that wrist extension is a cause of carpal tunnel stress.

Here's a study... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2649727/

Here's the graph of carpal tunnel pressure vs. wrist angle. Notice that minimum pressure unsurprisingly occurs at zero extension, the natural position of the wrist.


My greatest difficulties during the peak of my RSI problems were with mice. I tried trackballs, vertical mice, joysticks... everything. When Apple introduced the Magic Mouse, I was skeptical. With no tactile feedback, I was certain it would exacerbate my mouse hand RSI. Imagine my surprise when, within days of using it, I was able to stop taking ibuprofen. I am now a Magic Mouse fan of the first order.

I have a 2018 MacBook Pro as well as an iMac Pro and find both keyboards comfortable to use. They do not offer the tactile feedback of old Apple mechanical keyboards, but they also don't aggravate my RSI. I recently spent an afternoon at an old Apple Extended Keyboard, which I'd always thought was the best I've ever used. Within minutes, though my fingers were delighted by the feel, the rest of my arm began to revolt. I can't go back again.

Everybody's situation is different and I do not recommend my particular ergonomics to anyone, yet I find Apple's march towards thinness to work well for me.

AppleInsider said:

"For pay, we seek a minimum $30 for all workers, built up on a matrix based on role, tenure, and performance," the organizers wrote.

Nowhere in that statement does it say that everyone would make $30, regardless of performance. Quite to the contrary, it states that wages would start at $30 and build from there, based on role, tenure, and performance.

$30/hr would certainly be too much to pay for the kind of critique being leveled here so far.

Siri-HomeKit has been a dumpster fire for our family since inception. Since iOS 17, our Siri capable devices are erroneously waking more often than ever before, even though we've not removed the requirement for "Hey". I can issue a command in the kitchen, and hear the response in the garage, 50 feet away on the other side of a closed door. I can ask Siri what time it is and get "Sorry, I'm having trouble connecting to the Internet". Two seconds later, I can ask for tomorrow's weather, and get it.

I understand that distributed databases are difficult to manage, but Apple should have understood that too and implemented a layer of checks to prevent Siri from looking like an idiot.

Beats said:

I highly disagree with adding an SD card when they could have added an extra USB port. Why please 2% of your users when you can have pleased 98%? This is Apple
going backwards post-Jony.

You can always find a USB-C to SD adapter but try to find an SD Card to USB-C Cable.

After years of lugging around a USB SD adapter, I can finally leave it home. I am routinely in the field with my MacBook Pro, a drone, and my camera. I can now move cards between them without hassle. Back at my desk, I need only one USB/Thunderbolt port for my dock.

I might be in the 2%, but so are 100% of my colleagues.

I have at least a dozen little USB chargers piled in my kitchen junk drawer, along with a half dozen pair of corded earphones. While Brazil fines Apple for not including usually unneeded chargers, might the EU eventually levy fines for including them?

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Kopfschmerzen said:

Still not sure why others can’t achieve what Apple can in chip design. And, while every editorial praises Apple’s approach (concentrating on premium devices only), there must be companies making cheap devices. There’s nothing wrong with being a cheap device producer. You obviously can’t make more money from cheap devices as they priced less than Apple’s margin on iPhones.

Other chip manufacturers can't obtain Apple's focus. They must serve the needs of various customers who may not be able to elucidate those needs as clearly as Apple's internal teams, and may have needs that are in conflict with each other. Those customers may also be loathe to reveal their product road maps, thereby hampering the chip manufacturer's design teams long term planning. Any Qualcomm/Samsung chips that achieve manufacturing volumes comparable to Apple's are necessarily compromises designed to appeal to a wide range of customers.

Apple benefits from a singularity of focus and free collaboration across hardware, software and marketing groups. This allows for planning over longer time horizons and greater depth than possible for mainstream chip vendors.

Also remember, Apple acquired Intrinsity, PA Semi, Authentic, Intel's modem team, portions of Dialog Semi's power portfolio and significant bits of Imagination Technology's GPU talent as well as other small acquisitions over the years. Apple's singular vision is a competitive advantage.

AppleInsider said:

Whether the New MacBook Air would have the M2 chip or an enhanced version of an M1 chip is unclear. Perhaps Apple might introduce an M1X processor, similar to various iPad chips.

Why would Apple revert to M1 anything? That would be a terrible marketing blunder.

9secondkox2 said:

Mac Pro m3x probably not until February 2024. 

Apple has settled on Mn, Mn Pro, Mn Max and possibly Mn Ultra. Throwing "X" into the mix seems unnecessarily complex.

I don't see how Apple's 30% would apply to Tesla's $10/mo. Tesla charges that fee through their own payment system, for a service that runs independently of Apple. That's entirely as it should be. Amazon doesn't give Apple a slice of Prime membership fees, even though my phone's Amazon app accesses Prime services.