Maurizio

I think that for an object that does Fletcher-Munson loudness compensation,and that does beam forming analyzing the environment where it is (and this do not necessarly include only frequency response compensation, it may include phase, delay compensation and what not), measuring frequency response just make no sense, either in a real room or in a anechoic chamber. Result depends, by definition, on the environment you are measuring them.

An objective, scientific approach would require a lot of work, if only to define the reference framework you are defining.

And anyway, this kind of approach, while heralded by hifi equipment producer, doesn't really correspond to the final user experience; it is useful only for places like recording studio, where you design a complete system (room, electronics, speakers, etc) by an high end professional.

For example, the artifact of compression will have a stronger effect on the sound than the speaker frequency response.

I strongly suggest every body relax and go back to good old subjective strategy: if it sound ok for you, it is ok. If anything in this price range sound better for you, buy elsewhere.

Maurizio

Most of the code of a iOS application compile and run natively on macOS; most of the libraries are the same, and large part of the UI infrastructure is also the same.
Actually, from a developer point of view, iOS and macOS are already very very close.

What is different: everything that deals with file, because of the iOS sandbox, and the actual UI code, that is different, the toolkits are  different, with a different hierarchy of Objective-C/Swift classes.

My personal guess (as an experience developer) is that this project concern a new User Interface toolkit, either on macOS, on iOS or probably on both, that allows to write user interfaces that run on both platforms, plus some other limited stuff, mostly support in XCode to allow building for both platforms.
My guess is also that this will not be transparent and automatic, but it will allow a developer, with a explicit design decision, to target both platforms at the same time, with the same code base, but ossibly with custom code and functionalities on each of the two (or more) platforms.

Maurizio

FaceID and the related technology took probably a few more than one year to develop; it may be very well the contrary, that touchID was kept for a while as a backup while giving FaceID the last year or two of developement.
*And* the technologies around FaceID allows a lot more than identification, so it is more a strategic move on a medium/long term plan.

Maurizio

A missing data that would be interesting (implied but not explicitly given) is how much of the profits in the Chinese market Apple is getting.

Maurizio

jurassic said:

Finally! Apple is making it desirable for users to listen to music using digital headphones, rather than using the 4 decades old analog headphone jack. Digital not only provides better sound quality (wider and flatter frequency range, wider dynamic range, no static or interference) but it also allows for many features such as software based noise isolation.

Ehm, without any intention to offend the original poster, this is bullshit.
Headphones *are* analogue; the transducers that produce sound close to your ears *are* analogue.
So, while what you says it is true in a domain where we process and store sound, it simply false when you move to earing music; you need somewhere a digital to analogue conversion in order to drive a transducer; if you move the DAC out of the smartphone, it will be somewhere else; problems with frequency range and dynamic range will be there as well.
Probably less interference problems, but interferences in a smartphones are probably happening at a frequency that touch less the audio range than in other case (I.e. AC power supply).
If Apple moved out the DAC, it just means that we will have to spend more money to have a DAC somewhere else; either in the headphone or in a separate component; if Apple just changed the connection, using Lightning to send out analogue audio (there were some rumors a while ago about this solution) we will just have to have an adapter more, and the whole discussion is pointless.

By the way, jacks are a bit older that 40 years, they were used in the 30s in telephone companies. And they are not obsolete: all the music you hear is produced using jacks : there is no standard, reliable, widely used digital connection for musical instruments; the instrument to recording equipement connection is mostly always analogue and done using jacks, even for digital equipment (like high end delay pedals for guitars); from there on, the processing is digital. And the 3.5 mm jack is universally used, and so very far from being obsolete, in professional and consumer audio equipment, where a Lightning or USB connection would just not make sense. And most of high end headphones, earpods and similar have analogue connections using jacks, that do not look very obsolete.

Maurizio