DanielEran

franklinjackcon said:

AppleInsider said:

I don't remember ever hearing Samsung reviews declare the Galaxy S7 or S8 as "obsolete!" due to the availability of the more expensive S7 or S8 Edge. Nobody feigned confusion at the wider array of options, nor did the New York Times write up a story listing things you could buy if you didn't pay extra for the Edge. That's a pretty stark example of hypocrisy and, well, phoniness of all the concerned handwringing that is so often exclusively applied to Apple.

There is no S8 Edge

That's right, Samsung gave up on the Edge gimmick to launch a new, only larger model called the S8+.

That says something about how useful the Edge actually was, and also how much Samsung really wants to be and look exactly like Apple as possible.

muthuk_vanalingam said

While Apple's SoCs are objectively better than SoCs used in Android flagships for last 2+ years (from A9 onwards), Pixels and other near-stock Android phones (from HTC/Sony/Motorola) do NOT exhibit the same performance issues observed in Samsung's phones. They run perfectly fine with the same high resolution QHD+. 

This is incorrect. Pixel is one of the worst performing Android flagship phones. 

Now, it may be accurate to say it had less junkware and bloat, but Android itself is not an optimized OS in the way Apple's iOS is. From buttery animations to an architecture that lets you rapidly launch, freeze and relaunch background apps, iOS is vastly superior to Android in everyday tasks as well as in performance apps and games.

Despite lots of love from tech media enthusiasts, Pixel is almost always the lowest rated flagship because it uses a middling SoC and limited RAM (compared to what Android needs to compete with iOS) in an attempt to reach an attractive price point.

if Samsung is second rate, Google's vanity projects are solidly third rate. Samsung at least makes money on its hardware sales. Pixel can't even claim to be a functional product launch. It's still a loss leader strategy of desperation after ~8 solid years of successive Nexus flops. 

Its fine to own, cherish and proudly claim to prefer to own Google's latest vanity hardware, but don't mistake it for a real product that materially matters in the industry. It's a vanity cobranded HTC phone built by a company that is commercially failing on its own. It ships in smaller quantities than Apple Watch, without making any money or attracting any new customers. 

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/17/04/17/apple-a10-iphone-7-speeds-past-samsung-galaxy-s8-google-pixel-lg-g6-bbk-3t-with-2x-ram

Rayz2016 said:

danvm said:

Rayz2016 said:

danvm said:

When Samsung, HTC and others later tried to copy Apple's work, they introduced glaring security issues that did things like save an unencrypted photo of the user's fingerprints to the filesystem as world-readable (without setting any file permissions) so that any process could easily read and extract the data. 

Interesting how you use the term "copy" with Samsung and HTC , but there is no mention on how Apple did the same with MS and Windows Hello, which has been part of the Surface since 2015.  

Yeah, but the Surface isn't a phone. I imagine it's hard getting that kind of tech behind a laptop screen, but getting it to work on a phone...

I suppose it's hard, but technology moves always forward, and Apple had two years to improve and make it smaller.  But still a copy of what MS did.  There is a big chance that technology from PrimeSense, which Apple acquired a few years ago, is part of FaceID.  And they are the same people who worked with Xbox Kinect.  Could it be that patents from MS are part of FaceID?  We don't know, but it's possible...

It could be, and FaceID and Windows Hello seem very similar on the surface (that wasn't deliberate), but they do appear to approach the problem from different angles (again, not deliberate).

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/windows-hello-face-authentication

First thing that strikes me is that you need to be facing the camera almost dead-on (+/- 15 degrees) for Windows Hello to work.This would not work for a phone. 

Windows Hello also needs multiple images (a picture of you with glasses, a picture of you without glasses, a plcture of you with hair swept forward etc).

It also needs for you to run through the setup process again if your appearance changes significantly (you grow a beard for example).

What this tells me is that Microsoft is matching data points on stored representation of the user, which cannot cope with minor changes (specs) or views from different angles.

The difference, I think, is that Microsoft is comparing fixed data to decide if it's you.
Apple is applying AI to fixed data to work out if it's you.

I think the systems are quite different.

Yes, all important points. As the article noted, Microsoft developed technology with PrimeSense (on the Xbox Kinect) related to one application of using a structure sensor, but on a very different scale and with an unrelated intent (playing games without a controller, across the room). This was not tremendously successful and it later abandoned it rather than scaling it down for new uses on mobile devices or PCs.

gatorguy said:

I don't recall seeing anyone of note writing that Apple should be spending the money on new products instead of Apple Park. 
What, there's some shortage of disposable cash at Apple?? LOL. Where did you see all those complaints?

The first link in the article explores full articles published by Bloomberg and CBS Moneywatch that castigated Apple for having the nerve to spend money on facilities, especially ones using glass and being large. They were not unique. The "edifice complex" idea has been republished over and over since, despite having no basis in fact. The examples cited were terrible. 

http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/03/31/samsung-could-have-its-own-apple-park-with-5-billion-instead-it-has-the-ashes-of-galaxy-note-7

TEAMSWITCHER said:

randominternetperson said:

TEAMSWITCHER said:

The Mac Desktop Tragedy continues!  This model has the same story every year - poor RAM & storage options coupled with a tiny screen.  The 27" iMac is a much better value, with a larger display and user serviceable RAM.  Apple needs to dump the spinning hard drives on all of these machines and make an SSD standard.  You can hang spinning drives off the USB or Thunderbolt 3 ports if you need them.

However .. I wouldn't recommend a desktop Mac to anyone.  Who wants to be shackled to working in a single place?  Get a MacBook Pro (ANY MODEL), Magic Keyboard, Mouse 2 (or Trackpad), and a Monitor (Lot's of good choices here.)  Then you can have a great Desktop experience and still be mobile.

In what world is 21" inches "tiny"?  Also:  "Both 4K iMac options also now use a faster RAM architecture: 2400MHz PC4-19200 DDR4 (compared to 1867MHz PC3-14900 LPDDR3 in the previous generation). Further, the RAM is no longer soldered in, so it can be upgraded beyond what it was ordered with." 

Aren't you getting bored with the two-sizes-fits-all approach?   I've been hoping that Tim Cook would wake up from his iComa and take the Mac in bold new directions, but it's beyond the time to face a morbid reality .... Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs - those days at Apple are long gone.

I recently built a fast 6-core desktop Windows 10 PC.  The options for a DIY PC are vast and the pricing far more down to Earth than Tim Cook's Upgrade Fun House at Apple.com.   I'm currently using a 40" Samsung 4K TV and I couldn't be happier with the results.  That's 39.5 actual display inches or 18 more inches diagonally than the pathetic 21.5" iMac.  When I place the TV 30" from my face ... with it's 110 DPI ... I get a very pleasing 57 PPD (pixels-per-degree) which by Apple's very own definition is "Retina."

To answer your question... That is the world in which a 21.5" iMac is tiny.  Until Apple decides to embrace larger format displays.. and lower prices. I'm sticking to only buying low end MacBooks for my macOS needs.  I could spend $1000 more at Apple.com and end up with the same experience.

Apple has an old Mac mini for your 40" low-DPI 4K TV, but don't count on the company engineering a cheap PC equivalent for budget users because that market is drying up and blowing away. If there were demand for massive iMacs Apple would be offering them. Producing a TV-optimized +30" screen uses very different tech than producing a high quality monitor that works well for Apple's audience of graphics and video enthusiasts and pro users. Also, calling anything 30" away "Retina" is sort of missing the point.