roundaboutnow

Marvin said:

Holographic Facetime is a possibility, this would need the glasses to scan the wearer's face or articulate a face from voice. This has some interesting possibilities as shown in the following video:



You would effectively see a person in the same room. This could be used for remote education and would be a lot more effective trying to do a remote classroom. Remote fitness classes would be better with a full body accessory scanner, possibly an iPhone.

For some people it could replace using an iPad or iPhone like students taking notes in classes. They can have a hardware keyboard and be typing but using the view in the glasses instead of an iPad screen.

The "PORTL" display is nothing more than a "transparent" LCD -  a conventional LCD panel with the backlight unit (BLU) removed. Best image visibility is when the LCD panel is in front of a very well lit and evenly illuminated box. I've had several of these boxes built for retail applications. What's cool is that you can put actual product inside the box, and then have some interesting "reveals" and informational content on the LCD.

What Nussbaum did was pay attention to how images look best on the transparent LCD, and then optimizing the image capture side with a matching white background. The slight shadow behind the subject adds an extra illusion of depth, but make no mistake--it is not a 3D hologram by any stretch. The effect looks very good IRL, but these videos and photos of the experience make it look much better than it really is. He deserves props for his attention to detail, but it is not as groundbreaking as it seems.

dewme said:

...
If I'm invested in AutoCAD, SolidWorks, or (full) Visual Studio on a PC I'm not going to even look at a Mac, much less an iPad Pro. 

...

AutoCAD on Mac is actually pretty good these days. I use it almost every day, often on my 10-year old MBP.

There's even an iPad version of AutoCAD. It has some quirks, but I haven't used it in a while, so maybe it's better now (it won't run on older iPads -- needs 13.0 or higher). Last time I checked it was OK for viewing, light editing, picking off dimensions, and doing mark-ups.

Revit, on the other hand, is not likely to ever run on Macs. I'm trying to learn how to use it, so for this and other Windows-only hardware configuration apps, I'm still pretty much stuck with Windows. Right now, I'm running Win10 either on Bootcamp or a VM. (Not having this option on Apple Silicon is another thing I'm having to ponder...)

One of the US "cable partners" is Spectrum:
https://www.spectrum.net/support/internet/get-started-spectrum-tv-apple-tv/
https://www.spectrum.net/support/tv/pairing-spectrum-remote-apple-tv-troubleshooting

I read somewhere that they only charge $19 for the remote, but I don't recall where. You don't have to buy the Apple TV from them, you just have to be a subscriber.

mknelson said:

Quick (and possibly bad) math.

That's over 12A at 120V.

There's a pretty good chance that's going to pop your breaker!

If you mean a stack of 16, yeah, that could pop a typical residential 15A breaker. You are not wrong in saying "over" 12A, but here's the math:

The spec shows a 95% power efficiency, so say the one that delivers 100W draws 105W. That's .875A from a 120V receptacle. (W/V=A, so 105W/120V=.875A).

You'd have to have a stack of 16 fully loaded to draw about 14A, so that would likely pop a 15A breaker.

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.