AppleZulu

avon b7 said:

AppleZulu said:

avon b7 said:

AppleZulu said:

avon b7 said:

AppleZulu said:

avon b7 said:

geekmee said:

What problem does the foldable iPhone solve again?

Doubling the screen size while not losing portability. 

Multi-tasking with side-by-side apps. 

More immersive gaming. 

Options to use the main camera for selfies. 

Option to use main camera view for subjects to see themselves. 

And of course the option of the best of both worlds in screen options (folded or unfolded). 

Apple will definitely use all of these points in marketing if they release a folding phone. 

These suggestions notwithstanding, there really isn't a compelling use case for a folding iPhone. "Ooo look! It folds!" is good for about twenty minutes of very expensive amusement, but Apple has never been a bells and whistles sort of company. If a folding screen comes from Apple, it's most likely to be an iPad, where greater portability for a larger device could be useful, and a second screen on the outside of the device isn't needed as would be the likely case for a folding phone. 

I think it's safe to say that we are now beyond the novelty effect as the market has spoken. People want larger devices in a smaller form factor. 

Almost five years into the folding era demand is still growing with the main thing holding folding phones back being price. 

A folding tablet will inevitably arrive along with probably triple folding devices.

Scrollable devices will achieve the same goals. 

The market has spoken? Other than your personal advocacy here, I’ve seen no evidence for that. 

The numbers speak for themselves. Almost five years in, there is still plenty of demand and YoY that demand has increased. 

Don't take my word for it.

I'm sure you're a swell person, but don't worry, I'm not taking your word for it. You say "the numbers speak for themselves," but as far as I can see you're not sharing any of those numbers, so they're not speaking at all. If you want anyone to take your claims seriously, you'll have to cite the numbers you say are there, and also the sources for those numbers. Please note that "plenty" is a subjective term, and that year-over-year statistics are garbage, because a) two data points don't actually represent a trend, particularly when b) those two numbers show "big change" between two small numbers. If you are looking at actual numbers that you're not sharing here, your wording is interestingly descriptive: "almost five years in, there is still plenty of demand and YoY that demand has increased." With no other information, whatever your definition of "plenty" is, you're describing five data points, with only two , perhaps the the fourth and fifth, cherry-picked to show an increase. What do the other points show? Volatility? A flat line? A decrease? You'll have to show your work on this one.

I posted a link to Honor sales. I didn't post market based links because I have yet to see a single report that has claimed growth has stalled. Quite the opposite. Everything has claimed strong YoY growth. That is is why I say there is plenty of demand in that segment. It's been like that from day 1.

This a mid 2023 report:

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/global-foldable-smartphone-market-continues-expand-underpinned-china/


New players entering the market. New designs. Competition on pricing.

Two points on your data. First, it indicates that you're defining "plenty of demand" as demand that represents a tiny fraction of a percent of global smartphone sales. You're talking exactly about a niche novelty market. This reinforces what I wrote above: a "big change" in tiny numbers doesn't really represent much. In the context of the smartphone category, a 64% increase in sales of something that that represents a fraction of a percent of the market lives within the statistical margins of error. Sales of foldable smartphones have no statistical impact on the global smartphone market. It is probably less of a blip on the radar than the results of a major cellphone carrier's holiday sales promotion for any given device. Second, if you read to the end of your own linked source, the quoted experts indicate that they have no expectation of a foldable iPhone entering the market any time in the near future. Pronouncements based on fluctuations within the statistical margins of error are tales signifying nothing, and they don't even generate any sound or fury.

There are no analysts at Apple Park looking at those numbers and saying "Holy crap! We need to jump on this one quick before we get swamped and left behind by foldable phone sales!" No, as always, the Apple folks are asking (if they're even asking) "What is the compelling use case for this technology? How does a folding screen on a smartphone become an indispensable device?" As far as I can see, there really isn't one.

mikethemartian said:

I assume this process is similar to artificially converting a 2D movie to 3D for older recordings that were originally recorded in stereo.

Generally speaking this would mean going back to the original multi-track studio recording and remixing the recording from there, rather than creating a simulated three-dimensional output.

For old-school "normal" mixing of multi-track recordings, the engineers are quite literally assigning what sounds will come out of which speakers, whether mixing for stereo or 5.1 surround or whatever. In that case, no matter where the listener places their speakers in the room, the assigned sound comes out of the assigned speaker. This has always put audio mixing engineers at a disadvantage, because every single listening setup will be a little different and less than the ideal, depending on the actual placement of speakers as well as the acoustics of the room used as a listening space. 

For Dolby Atmos, the mixing engineer assigns from what direction each sound should come, and the listener's Atmos-capable system determines on-the-fly what sounds will be assigned to which speakers. The step in between is this: If you have a multi-speaker surround sound system, you will run a setup procedure at least once after arranging your speakers around the room. Using a microphone attached to the amplifier, this setup will emit test tones from each speaker and measure their relative position in the room. Once that's established, if an Atmos recording has been mixed with instructions that a violin should sound like it's 25 degrees to the right of center and 8 degrees above the horizontal plane, the system will know how much of that sound must come from the center speaker, the right speaker and and elevated right speaker in order to create that positioning in the listener's actual space. (Original and second-generation big HomePods do this room-measuring thing on the fly, so they can also do Dolby Atmos playback.)

So ideally, a Dolby Atmos mix will start with the original multi-track recording in order to fully implement this object-oriented mixing process. Short of that, for an older recording where that multi-track information simply doesn't exist, an engineer could perhaps simply use the technology to create the acoustics of stereo speakers in an ideal listening space. The imagined left and right speakers are here in this direction and there in that direction and the natural reverberation off a high ceiling and walls of a perfectly dimensioned imaginary listing room can all be simulated through the seven or more speakers in the Atmos-capable listening room.

Or, they can use the machine learning tech that the Beatles and Giles Martin have been using to separate multiple instruments and voices from single recorded tracks in order to create a multi-track recording where there wasn't one before, and then mix the whole thing as a full Dolby Atmos deal.

P.S., for all of this, Apple uses the binaural effect to computationally recreate three-dimensional spatial audio surround sound output in your earbuds or headphones.

ilarynx said:

Maybe the AppleTV show will spark a few people to look into the gun violence epidemic in the US. A good start would be a thorough reading of the 2nd Amendment AND the Constitution in total. 

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
- https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript

Reading the 2nd Amendment, the first half cannot stand on its own. It is the first part of the full sentence. The first part is frequently omitted but doing so gives an incomplete and false reading of the Amendment. "A well regulated Militia..." is how the sentence is initiated. Separating the first from the last part creates an error of both grammar and logic.

On the word “Militia” itself, it is mentioned 4 times in the original Constitution:

Article. I.

Section. 8.

The Congress shall have Power...

[Clause 15.] To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.

[Clause 16.] To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.

Article. II.

Section. 2.

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; ...

This gives proper context for how the Founders viewed and defined "Militia" and is a clear description in the wording of the Constitution as to what a “Militia” is and how it functions, as later referenced in the 2A. It is not defined as the personal armory of Bubba and Cletus. 

Also, the 2A states “Arms” not “guns” - taking the “originalist” by-the-word approach, "arms" is everything from pistols, muskets, and canon of that time, to machine guns to bazookas to Abrams tanks to fission arms. Once you conclude that as a society we’ve determined that some “arms” are not appropriate for civilian use, the only question is where to draw that line. 

It will be interesting to see how much the AppleTV program on John Lennon's murder delves into the subject of gun violence in general. If at all. 

Well, sure, but you should read The District of Columbia, et al v. Heller, where the Godfather of Constitutional Originalists, Antonin Scalia, twists himself into activist knots to relegate the first section of the Second Amendment into an inconsequential "prefatory clause" that he claims exists only in service of his creative reading of the "operative clause" in the latter part of the one sentence, where he creates an absolute individual right to gun ownership out of thin air. 

JonG said:

It's not just about being able to use the mouse when it is dead.  There is also interference as an issue.  We have our offices in Times Sq. and have quickly moved all of the "Magic Mouse"s that we own out of service.  Why, you ask?  Of course employee productivity is affected if they are unable to use their computer because they forgot to plug in their mouse, or maybe they did plug it in, but the dock that they use with their laptop doesn't provide charging power unless the laptop is homed into the dock.

In any case, the power scenario is one thing, but now we use decent quality Logitech Mouse(s) that cost 50% of a Magic Mouse and can still use a dongle or Bluetooth and they have a charging port on the front side (like the Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad I might add).  It isn't all about charging, like my Magic Keyboard in my office, I keep everything plugged in almost all the time because when I disconnect, if it is a particularly bad day, then the mouse and/or keyboard lag because of signal interference.  

If you wanted to defend your design like that, saying "why would people ever need to use it while charging," then why do the Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad both function over the hard-line while charging?  Obviously Apple recognizes that this is necessary functionality, they just have a total corporate blindspot when it comes to the Magic Mouse.

I, for one, am glad that almost no product includes it anymore, and those that do I can opt for the a trackpad instead.

Because the time it took you to type that thoughtful piece is longer than the time it would take you to charge a ‘Magic Mouse’ to keep in service for the rest of the day. 

Another fairly easy option to deal with the garage door opener issue is Bond Bridge. (I skipped the MyQ thing altogether because it was expensive and seemed to require a subscription and works through the cloud, which is entirely unnecessary). Bond Bridge is a WiFi device that sends out RF signals to ensmarten dumb ceiling fans. Turns out it can also read and copy your garage door opener signal. Bond Bridge doesn't directly integrate with HomeKit because it's dealing with one-way communications, which is a no-no in HomeKit. Your garage door opener uses a single radio signal to toggle the opener, opens if it's closed and closes if it's open, and it doesn't send any signal back to let you know if it worked or not.

The other two things you need besides a Bond Bridge device, then, are a contact sensor and to write a shortcut that allows you to verbally command the Bond app to run the garage door toggle command. (The Bond app does integrate with Shortcuts.) In my case, I found a good spot in the garage door mechanism to place an eve contact sensor (which does communicate with HomeKit) that will let me know if the garage door is open or closed. If you have more patience than me, you can write two separate "close door" and "open door" shortcuts that will read the contact sensor to determine if the garage door is open or closed, and then decide whether or not to actually issue the toggle command (so it doesn't open an already closed door when you tell it to close the garage door) and then wait an appropriate amount of time to confirm that the door has indeed opened or closed. In my case, I just wrote a simple shortcut that issues the toggle and then if I can't visually confirm the garage door is closed or opened, I can ask Siri, which will tell me via the contact sensor what the deal is.

There is an unintentional but useful security benefit to this setup. Shortcuts live on your iPhone. As such, a verbal command to your HomePod won't run the shortcut if your iPhone isn't connected to the WiFi network because you're not home. As such, nobody can stand outside your window and yell at your HomePod to open the garage door when you aren't there. HomePods are also supposed to be keyed to your voice, which adds an additional layer of security, so it all makes it very improbable that someone can surreptitiously open your garage door without you knowing about it.