dewme

badmonk said:

Maybe it will allow Apple to make room for noninvasive glucose monitoring by 2025.

What do you mean by "make room for" with respect to noninvasive glucose monitoring? There is a small army of companies that have been working on this problem for more than a decade. If only if was a matter of finding more real estate inside the iPhone's chassis. If Apple had a working and approved version that required them to put a humpback protrusion on the iPhone like the old iPhone battery cases they would have already shipped it and reaped the massive rewards.

IRS: “C’mon MSFT, just write us a check. Just think about what it will do for your country.”

MSFT: “Ok, we thought about it. The US government has spent about $5,495,977,156,207 USD this year, so far. We’re at day 285. This means you guys spent about $19,284,130,373 USD per day to keep everything going in the US so far this year. You know, just to maintain the status quo, keep the lights on.”

MSFT: “Tell you what guys, Microsoft will fork over the $29 billion. You’re welcome. This will keep the lights on in the US government, and especially in that dark stinky black hole of incompetence called the US Congress, for about 1.5 days at your current spending rates.” 

IRS: “Thanks, MSFT. Much appreciated.”

IRS: “Oh crap, now all we have to do now is figure out who is going to pay for the other 363.5 days.”

IRS: “Hey Tim Apple, let’s have a little chat.”

mikethemartian said:

I just received an email that NI is part of Emerson now. I would have expected NI to be the larger company.

Emerson has more than 10X the number of employees as National Instruments has. Emerson has grown substantially over the years through large acquisitions. They are a major player in industrial automation, process control, power distribution, etc., which generally don’t touch much of what Apple does. 

Eric_WVGG said:

The iPad Mini is my favorite device and I will buy any new model sight-unseen (I'm staring at one in "sidecar" mode right now), but I have no idea why they'd bother with a mere spec-bump so soon after the current model. The performance is… fine?

Sure do wish they'd switch to OLED though.

I also do not find the current iPad mini to be sorely lacking in any major way. It's noticeably faster than my 10.5" iPad Pro. I also use the mini both in SideCar mode and Universal Control mode alongside my Mac. I think Apple purposely treats the iPad mini as a niche product for folks who specifically need or prefer the smaller form factor and are willing to pay for the privilege of owning one. From a bang-for-the-buck perspective the base iPad on the lower end and the iPad Air on the higher end are much better deals. But if you're walking around with an iPad as a mobile interactive terminal for hours on end, for example, in an appliance, furniture, or automobile showroom and want more display or demo space than what a large smartphone offers, the iPad mini is a great fit. It's also a great book reader and couch computer.

I used to think that the iPad mini could be an awesome mobile gaming platform, a scaled up iPod Touch so to speak, but I think the latest iPhone Pros easily satisfy that need, especially with younger people who are now biologically and permanently attached to their smartphones. For schools and kids, the base iPad is much more affordable and compatible with keyboard + trackpad cases that you can actually type on. I've tried a keyboard + trackpad case for the iPad mini and it wasn't a pleasant experience. Because of the mini's niche status the makers of higher quality keyboard + trackpad cases, for example Logitech, have abandoned their efforts to produce such products for the mini. Logitech did a decent keyboard case for the original iPad mini but it was a one & done deal. 

About the only thing that slightly annoys me about the iPad mini is the odd proportion of the desktop space allotted to icons and widgets. I'm looking at my iPad Pro and iPad mini side-by-side in landscape orientation and they both have what appears to be the same amount of "gutter" around the area that contains the icons and widgets.  While it looks okay on the larger iPad, the same gutter on the mini makes everything look squished together. Fortunately, it doesn't impact Apps.

What makes sense to me for an iPad mini upgrade would of course include a newer and more capable processor, increased storage options, and either Face ID or under-screen Touch ID. Putting the Touch ID in the power/home button was clever and it works very well for me - but only in portrait orientation. In landscape it's very clumsy (for me) when the mini is propped up with the cover. Touch ID wants you to cover the entire button with your finger but doing so is weird unless you are holding the mini in your hands and have associated fingers from both hands with Touch ID. Not a showstopper, but it could be better. 

jcbigears said:

I've never experienced a more bug-riddled update than iOS 17, and I'm pretty sure I've been through them all. I have had nothing but trouble with Siri, contacts, and watch-face complications. I would like to see an option of being able to roll back to a previous iOS but alas it isn't possible. Is it unusual to get three supplementary updates so quickly after the 17.0?

Great question.

I'd say that in the past it would be unusual to see so many updates rolled out so quickly because doing releases used to be a lot more work and more costly. They probably would have waited a little longer and accumulated more bug fixes before releasing a bigger update. Today, a lot of software development organizations follow a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD or simply CD) model which, in theory, means that every build or every daily build is in a releasable state. In other words, if they had to ship the daily build, it would be good to go and fully tested. That's the goal, but I'm not sure Apple or very many software development organizations hit that goal perfectly. Getting closer to the goal still represents a significant improvement.

For CD to work software development organizations have to use a lot more automation, especially around regression testing, but in all aspects of their process from compilation, understanding dependencies impacted by code changes, code signing, integration, version control, change management, installation packaging, etc. There are usually still some processes that require manual testing and verification, but anything that can be reliably and predictably automated without sacrificing the fidelity of the entire software system or introducing variation helps speed up the process is fair game for automation. 

So the simple answer is: because they've made the whole update process easier, faster, and less risky they can release far more often without sacrificing quality. While we are annoyed by the frequency of these updates, we are now exposed to the negative side effects of bugs for much shorter periods of time. In a world of zero day security exploits, this model has become a necessity for survival. This is why Apple has spent a great deal of effort on refining their CD process to the point where they can support their Rapid Security Response (RSR) update model. So far, so good. But like everything software related, it's still not perfect. Perhaps AI will help move us closer to perfect.