DanielEran

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.

macky the macky said:

I'm wondering, is that a glass roof covering the second floor...?

It appears the stairwells open out into a glass enclosed room, and the deck itself appears to have glass walls, but the finned roof appears to be an aluminum (?) open air structure for shade. 

It was not yet open to the public, although it sits on a public street and nobody stopped me from taking photos. Not sure how long it's been out in the open. Across Pruneridge, one of the last remaining old buildings on Tantau is still surrounded by the tall green metal wall that once ran around the entire site. Apple Park is now exposed on all sides, although there are some smaller fences up (but no more 40' wall!) 

toddzrx said:

vannygee said:

A pretty decent 21.5" iMac actually, been a while since we had one

Agreed.  I'm hoping both iMac lines will support the old Target Display Mode too.

Apple specifically told me Target Display Mode isn't coming back when I asked. Hasn't been supported since the Mid 2014 models.

Apple showed a screening of the pilot at WWDC to an audience of developers. 

It look like everyone sat through it, and enjoyed it. People were laughing at funny parts (and some of the titles explaining what B2B and SKD mean. The drama of Reality TV was just what you'd expect, but (speaking as a non-fan of TV and especially hyper-dramatized Reality TV shows) it was fun to watch and held my attention. It actually is even fun to see stories unfold.

It's about app development and business, not personal drama and fighting.