InspiredCode

Announced at CES 2023, I'm most looking forward to the Adata SE920 coming out in April. It is the first external SSD with a Thunderbolt 4 (USB 4) controller. All of the drives that currently claim to be USB 4 are actually just pairing a USB 3 chip and Thunderbolt 3 chip together in a way they can auto-switch, but they don't get close the the maximum speed of the standard. The benchmarks on an Apple Silicon Mac are really close the the theoretical maximum 4000 MB/s with 3800 MB/s read and 3200 MB/s write. It also works with USB 3 (unlike most Thunderbolt drives) or Thunderbolt 3 for machines without Thunderbolt 4. It uses the ASMedia ASM2464PD chip which is much faster than the current top of the line Intel JHL7440. This will be great for creative workflows or adding some fast external storage to a Mac Studio. Currently the top-of-line external SSDs top out at 2800 MB/s because they are limited by the Intel JHL7440 chipset that is now 5 years old. This is as fast as we can get on current Macs. The next spec update will be USB4v2 which will be 2-3 times faster than USB4 and will max out what they can get over a Thunderbolt 3 cable. No spec change to the cables. Older TB3 cables will still work with USB4v2. The range is because USB4v2 will have 4 channels that each run 4000MB/s. You can either have 8000MB/s both ways or 12000MB/s one way and 4000MB/s the other way. USB4 has 2 channels that each run 4000MB/s.

I've never had an issue with Apple's store fees, but there are some rules I'm not fond of. Although I'm a Steam user, I'd like to see Xbox Game streaming allowed at least outside of the game category out of principle. I don't like that Apple requires IAP for things like one-on-one consultations through an app. There are other similar categories where it just doesn't feel right to force IAP. Out of "free" apps, Apple needs to make it easy to tell if it is truly free, freemium, trial with onetime IAP purchase, or subscription.

It is really hard to tell the price of anything on the App Store. Prices shouldn't be hidden under a disclosure button. IAP for freemium games is out-of-control. Angry Birds has $100 IAP. Allowing $100 IAP purchases should not be allowed at least not without specifically opting in to them. Freemium games also make discoverability very difficult since most of them are just reskinned versions of basically the same games and they clog up the store with unoriginal works. Freemium games generally target addictive tendencies and I think the App Store feels pretty toxic these days because of it.

I'd like to see Android-like side-loading with hoops to jump through so it doesn't become the dominant system for some niche situations like emulators, highly sensitive internal software that shouldn't go through app review, or GPL software. Hopefully that is where things are headed, but I'm not holding my breath. If there is another distribution method, maybe Apple could be a little more selective about app quality on the store too. This would also lower the risk to developers that might worry about their app being banned for arbitrary reasons.

It beats the M1 through very selective benchmarks. The raytracing benchmark is testing hardware that the M1 doesn’t even have… The M1 doesn’t boost the clock from 3.2 to 5.2 GHz for short time gains at the expense of efficiency.

lordjohnwhorfin said:

Zoinks! $3000? 

It is basically an M2 Mac with 8K screen. I wouldn’t expect it to cost less then a device with similar specs.

lkrupp said:

I’m thinking it’s time for a return to heavy regulation of the airline industry. The free market and ‘competition’ just isn’t working in their case. Sure, prices will increase but maybe the service and on-time performance will get better.

Good regulation is very hard to do which is why heavy regulation usually has worse outcomes. They might never lose your bag, but the price might be 4 times as high for example. Regulation should be used sparingly and only to fix issues that can’t be fixed using market based policies.