ascii

About

Username
ascii
Joined
Visits
195
Last Active
Roles
member
Points
772
Badges
1
Posts
5,936

Reactions

461Like0Dislike44Informative

  • How to use the new Stacks feature in macOS Mojave

    asciiascii
    kesem said:
    How will stacks affect memory usage.  I have been told not to keep a lot of files on the desktop because it is a memory hog.
    Yes I remember this from back in the days of 10.1 and 10.2. The early versions of Mac OS X weren't designed to have icons on the desktop, so as a workaround, every time you dropped an icon on the desktop they created a little transparent borderless window to hold it, so if you had 100 icons on your desktop you effectively permanently had 100 windows open, which used a lot of memory. But that hasn't been the case for many versions.

    Regarding this feature in general, I think people put files on their desktop because its instantly accessible, in two ways. The first way is that because it's on the desktop you don't have to drill down through folders. The second way is that it stays where you leave it so you can use muscle memory to remember that your expenses spreadsheet is always in the top right, your notes document is always in the bottom left, all your TODOs are roughly in the middle...

    That is why I'm not sure this stacks feature will be generally popular, because while it looks very slick it sacrifices instant, muscle memory accessibility for the sake of tidiness, which is generally a bad trade. Unless you're someone who really, really values tidiness and is willing to hunt and peck each time in order to have that, in which case those people yes they will like it.
    Alex1Njony0

  • Next-gen Apple Watch models to integrate solid-state buttons & EKG functions, report says

    asciiascii
    StrangeDays said:
    ascii said:
    roake said:
    ascii said:
    I wish they would add some kind of feedback (taptic or otherwise) to the AirPods buttons, those are horrible.
    The AirPods have buttons?
    If you double-tap on them it can launch customisable functions (such as Siri).
    Not a button. The entire units themselves are respondent to impact/taps. 
    Mine must be faulty then because they only work if I tap right on the accelerometer.
    GeorgeBMacAlex1N

  • Next-gen Apple Watch models to integrate solid-state buttons & EKG functions, report says

    asciiascii
    roake said:
    ascii said:
    I wish they would add some kind of feedback (taptic or otherwise) to the AirPods buttons, those are horrible.
    The AirPods have buttons?
    If you double-tap on them it can launch customisable functions (such as Siri).
    Alex1N

  • Video: Changes to the MacBook Pro we want Apple to make

    asciiascii
    cgWerks said:
    ascii said:
    Your collection will still be just as excellent as your start to add downloads to it.
    Well, not really, because if you stop paying, your content goes away.
    There's no ongoing cost for movies purchased in iTunes. In fact if you maintain a local collection of ripped DVDs you probably have ongoing costs in terms of time and maintenance of your storage solution. 

    Furthermore Apple treats you well if you buy a movie from them! In the time I've owned my 100 or so movies in iTunes, many were upgraded from 720p to 1080p for free, and more recently about 7 or 8 have been upgraded to 4K HDR for free. You also notice new cover art downloading occassionally which is not a big thing but still nice. 

    Also, since newer Macs (Kaby Lake onwards) have 10-bit HEVC decoding hardware I suspect Apple will start re-encoding a lot of these movies from from H.264 to HEVC soon (to reduce their streaming costs). That saves me doing it! Also they will probably use professional video people who will re-encode from a lossless source and know the best codec parameters for different kinds of movies, which beats me fumbling around in Handbrake.

    And never has a movie been removed from my iTunes collection. There are several that they no longer sell on the store, but Apple must have done some kind of deal with the studios whereby people who have already purchased something maintain access even if the studio removes it from sale. Those movies just remain in my collection and can be downloaded or viewed like any other, though I don't expect future resolution or codec upgrades for those ones.

    Certainly for subscription services like Netflix you would lose access if you stopped paying. But even then, the cut throat competition in the subscription space means that the ongoing cost of a subscription is still probably less than maintaining a storage array.  Unless like Macike you have everything on optical. Or, perhaps in your case you have a personal movie collection and are paying for storage for that anyway, so storing the commercial movies might not add much marginal cost. But in any event I don't think its clear cut that local collections are better.
    cgWerksfastasleep

  • Benchmarks hint at MacBook Pro with Intel's powerful six-core Core i7-8750H

    asciiascii
    Mike Wuerthele said:
    DuhSesame said:
    I guess they finally understand that Intel were just as slow as their current speed of refresh...  Their 10nm were way too ambitious, which is why they just keep optimizing the 14nm ever and ever.  Then again, 14nm have its limit, and every new processors are just getting hotter and hotter.  Their microarchitecture haven't change since Skylake either because the same reason (Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, (and refresh?), Cannonlake), making it the longest cycle in their history.
    I'm not certain that these specs are legit. There is no i9 support in 10.13.5, let alone 10.13.4 as specified in the benchmark. I guess we'll see.
    Yep the build number does seem suspicious. If it was 10.13.4 you would expect it to be a custom build but 17E199 was the general release.
    doozydozen