dewme

I think some retailers were struggling with AppleCare+. When I bought my AirPods Pro at Walmart (on sale) the sales clerk in the “electronics stuff” part of the store had no idea about how to do the AppleCare thing. I had to contact Apple on my own and jump through a few hoops to get it signed up. It was fine in the end but more work than it should have been. Other places like Amazon have been no problem at all. I can understand why Apple would want to make purchasing their products as frictionless as possible and perhaps this will help in those few circumstances where it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. 

braytonak said:

If it’s an internal tool then there’s little point in knowing about it. 

That said, maybe this came into existence out of frustration with the Calendar app’s limitations and will eventually be used to improve it.  

<Anecdote>

I often invite my personal and employer (Microsoft 365 then Google) calendars to events like vacations, or add my spouse’s iCloud calendar for things like doctor visits. Every single time I’m thoroughly disappointed. 

Sometimes invites appear in the Calendar anpp’s inbox view, usually not. A recent invite from my husband came in with completely incorrect time and date. (How do you mess that up without blaming time zones?)

Sometimes you can accept an invite from the email notification, but that’s usually borked. One should not have to know how to use ICS files. 

</Anecdote>

Random thought, why do day-of reminders for all-day events have to be at 9 AM? 

<Opinion>

I have to give Microsoft top rating for their calendar, Google second, and Apple third. Microsoft presents a snippet view of the calendar directly in the email inbox list view, and invites tend to be received and parsed more reliably. 

Apple makes a lot of money on services but they’re don’t focus on making them great. 

</Opinion>

I agree that using Apple Mail with other mail apps seems to be less than reliable. I can usually get what I want to work but doing so requires jumping through a few hoops, like using ICS files. As far as default time for all-day events you can change the defaults in Settings/Apps/Calendar. I set all the defaults to None to allow me to set my own start times. What I’ve done to share calendar events with my partner is to create another calendar with a name like “Share with person’s name.” In my case it’s good enough because all of my calendar events are either just for me or shared with another person or persons. Using different calendar color bars allows me to glance at my calendar and see singular events and shared events easily. But yeah, this could get clunky if you have a lot of combinations of invitees.

Of course, like all things Apple, the built-in tools always work best if everyone involved is using Apple stuff. That’s just Apple being Apple. You don’t have to step very far into the Apple ecosystem before coming to that realization. It is what it is. Some of us like it, at least most of the time.

I’ve used a lot of different email and email plus kitchen sink apps over the years. When I started with Outlook I thought it was a breath of fresh compared to Lotus Notes, which I loathed. But Outlook has gotten very bloated and being tethered to Micrsoft’s Exchange server based applications was never what I’d call a pleasant experience for cross platform users. I personally don’t like having email and calendar bound together for personal use, but for corporate environments it seems to work quite well for a lot of users. For personal use the integrated functions are too cumbersome for me. I tried using Outlook for all of my personal email, including iCloud, and it failed miserably. I ended up losing all of my contacts on all of my machines. I must have done something stupid, but I couldn’t trace my path of stupidity back to the root cause so I decided just to stick with Apple Mail and Apple Calendar as separate tools. Thank you Time Machine. Apple Calendar works for my now-much-simpler needs. If I need a shared group calendar I use Google Calendar.

I actually don’t mind using ICS files for certain situations. For example, I can put links to an ICS files on a web site that lets users put a reminder in their calendar for an event where I don’t know who all the invitees will be ahead of time. All users have to do is click on a “Remind Me” link of some sort and it launches their calendar program that knows how to work with ICS files. This seems to work well across many different calendar platforms.

Re: " Their strength is speculative execution, a feature that guesses what you'll need next to keep things running smoothly."

I suppose you're trying to present this in more broadly relatable terms, but to describe speculative execution as "guessing" is oversimplification. If you look up the word guessing you'll find something to the effect of "an estimate or supposition based on a lack of sufficient information." This does not apply to any of the performance optimization techniques and algorithms developed and implemented since the dawn of digital computing.

The architectural fundamentals for how most digital computers work were developed early. Even then it was important to optimize those computers to best utilize the available resources provided by the underlying hardware. Soon thereafter when computers were actually put to work using programming languages (software in some form) it became very evident through observations, measurements, and statistical and probabilistic analysis that there were many additional ways to optimize both the hardware and software to get better performance and utilization.

Said in simpler terms, once they started using computers they were able to observe and identify where the bottlenecks were and took steps to mitigate the bottlenecks that were found. Applying the theory of constraints, when the biggest bottleneck was squashed or reduced, another bottleneck rose to the top of the list and became the next target to mitigate. Rather, rinse, and repeat, This process has continued to this day. However, this has never been a whack-a-mole reaction because computer architects, engineers, and scientists gained much more understanding of how different design approaches led to bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the first place, some of which are constrained by the current fundamental architecture (Von Neumann architecture) of modern digital computers. Going after these challenges required the application of some very heavy mathematics.

The mathematical basis and proofs for many of the hardware and software optimizations that have been introduced in the past few decades is solidly grounded in statistics, probability, set theory, prediction, physics, material science, etc. The mathematical core of engineering education used to be grounded mostly in algebra, calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, thermodynamics, electromagnetic theory, etc. It still is. Since the advent of digital computing and computer science the mathematical grounding now includes probability, statistics, set theory, queuing theory, algorithms. data science, etc. This emphasis on probability and statistics has grown massively as computer engineering and computer science has advanced. It is no more evident than it is for the advancement of AI. The computer engineers and architects that design Apple's SoCs have to be firmly grounded in all of the above mathematical disciplines. But as we see here with SLAP and FLOP, they can and occasionally do still make mistakes.

There is no guessing going on.

Gary123 said:

So I  was wondering if aluminum foil could be wrapped around cables to reduce RF interference. I googled it. Apparently it might help, but there might be some concern with the cables getting warmer than usual. Having stated this, I wonder if the interference at the plug is the main problem.
Also, if one were really clever, once could experiment with creating a little mini, concave RF reflector out of aluminum foil, to effectively make the Mac's wifi antenna more directional. While making a little pedestal out of Legos the curved strip of foil could be placed under the computer vertically, behind the wifi antenna, and directed towards the wifi router. I can't imagine it would help much, but since the author already has an RF meter, it might be worth the experiment. 

You’re probably thinking about parabolic (best) or hemispherical (ok) dishes used on radio transmitters/receivers, radars, etc. These dishes typically place the transmit/receive antenna at a distance equal to one-half the wavelength of the signal. If the Mac mini had an omnidirectional antenna you might see some improvement in signal-to-noise because it would concentrate and collimate the signal.  You would have to decide which frequency to design it for. 

Very nice write-up Mike. I recently solved my 5 GHz WiFi issue on my M2 Pro Mac mini by placing it on a small wooden box. Most WiFi devices are affected by placement and orientation. It's always a good idea to try different placements and orientations when you place a static WiFi device, whether it's an access point or router equipped with access points) or WiFi devices. 

As far as identifying USB cables that are much less likely to cause EMI/EMC interference look for cables that are "USB-IF Certified." A quick search on Amazon will identify brands that provide USB-IF certified cables. Another thing to look for are cables with shielding and cables that use twisted pairs of wires instead of parallel (or flat) cables.

If you want to measure things like RF leakage with cables you'll need a RF spectrum analyzer like the Osmium WiPry 2500x. These analyzers are very expensive, even the lower priced ones are in the $500-$800 range. And if you're really picky about these sorts of things you'll need an RF anechoic test chamber. Not cheap and not something you'd expect the AppleInsider folks to tackle.