melgross

atonaldenim said:

Pretty funny how you all want to keep arguing over a hypothetical “OWC” drive, when there is in fact another company that is actually offering storage upgrades for sale right now.

For the Mac Studio currently, for the Mini in the near future. Who cares if OWC isn’t interested, as long as PolySoft is?

And the number of backers on their Kickstarter campaign is a useful metric for how much consumer interest there may or may not be. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/polysoftservices/studio-drive/posts/4247624 ;

Speaking for myself, I bought my Mac Studio in 2022 with the amount of storage that I wanted, as no other options existed then. However now that this potential solution is out there, the next Mac Mini or Studio that I buy, I personally would consider this upgrade route instead. The main drawback to me is the hassle of opening up the case and putting it back together neatly enough.

I would advise people to not put money into this until after the product is released and reviewed. I’ve invested in seven Kickstarter projects over the years. Three never had a product come out and two of the four that did weren’t very good. The other two were fine. This isn’t worth the risk.

the reality is that it’s not a big deal. Tiny, fast enough external ssds aren't expensive any more. Just get one and plug it into the rear. People are making more of this than it’s worth.

I installed the new 18.2 public beta last night in my iPhone and iPad Pro. The first thing I tried was the visual intelligence. It worked surprisingly well. The easy one was a bag of potato chips. No problem. Then I tried a slab of rainbow fluorite which I had bought at a gem and mineral show Saturday. No problem with that either. Then a very small Kingston SSD I use with my iPhone. The side I had up has no name in it, but it recognized it too. I tried several other things, ranging from recognizable to “what the heck is this?”. It recognized most everything other than some odd things. It even recognized several parts of my machine tools I’m cleaning. That surprised me.

it shows you pictures, where you can buy them, if it’s something for sale, information about the item, etc.

i haven’t tried anything else yet.

I keep telling people to not listen to the negative analysts. Three predicted disappointing iPhone sales this quarter, while two reported very good iPhone sales.

meanwhile, the stick went down $4.19during the day and is about $4.50 down after hours. I know the market is down today (Microsoft was down over $26, for example), but still

beowulfschmidt said:

neoncat said:

if apple can produce these for less, then hopefully they can charge less. it would be nice to see the option for cellular drop from about $130 to maybe $50.

On what planet is Apple—king of the upsell and margins so fluffy and plush it'd make a down jacket blush—going to pass along even a nickel of cost savings? Are you completely out of your mind? 

This.  In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if Apple were to charge more for it's own modems.  Because obviously an Apple modem would be superior to Qualcomm's in every way, right?

As for comments about it taking so long, Apple does not want to pay anyone else licensing fees if it can avoid doing so, which means not using anyone else's patented technology, or buying those patents outright (or, cynically, using them anyway and hope they're invalidated).  All that research takes time, and engineering a new modem to not infringe on existing patents is no small task.

I don’t believe Apple would be superior in every way, unless you’re being sarcastic there. All modem makers pay other companies license fees for patents. Nobody has an exclusive on FRAND patents, or other useful, but not required patents. The biggest holders are Qualcomm, then Huawei. But there are others. Apple bought a large number and has developed others. From what I understand about their efforts, they’re very involved about future cell technologies such as 6. If so, maybe they believe that they can get ahead in some of that and be more ready to have a seat at the table. But for now, they’re very involved certainly would have to license more that a few. I’ve read that there are well over 100,000 working cert patents out there, possibly twice as many and they’re usually licensed out in tranches.

bobolicious said:

"Users have ultimate control."

Do all roads still lead to iCloud and Apple servers ?

Will ChatGP ultimately end up being 'Sherlocked'...?

I hate that term, “sherlocked”. Apple comes out with software for System 9, then OS X can’t use it and Apple is taking time to get it working there. A third party developer comes out with an app called Watson, to mimic Apple’s old Sherlock. Apple finally comes out with a version that works on OS X and immediately some people yell that Apple “Sherlocked” him. I always thought that was nuts.