cgWerks

That doesn't sound so substantial compared to some of the other price raises of things I subscribe to. A few have been a bit troubling when all combined at once (seeing as wages aren't really going up). I do get that companies might need to raise prices from time to time, but I fear the timing of these points to bigger overall financial concerns.

This one is more painful, though, as I only use the apps a few times per year currently, so it's a lot of money for the actual usefulness to me. My wife uses them a bit more often, though, so maybe overall we're slightly justified in keeping it (I hope).

AppleInsider said:
... In an effort to lure content creators to the platform, Spotify is letting podcasters keep 100% of subscription revenue -- minus processing fees -- ...

Note, if you're luring to YOUR platform and charging a subscription, etc. it isn't a podcast any longer. It's a Spotify Show. Same with Apple. The 'podcasts' behind their paywall are Apple Audio Shows, not podcasts.

This might sound like semantics to some, but it is really important to maintain this distinction for the future of podcasting. None of these 'podcasts' will be available in your favorite podcast app (unless that app is that particular platform's), and they won't have the coming Podcasting 2.0 features unless those particular platform/players ALSO add them. They won't have 'value block' aspect of their RSS feeds (because they don't have RSS feeds) which allows direct listener to producer financial and communication transactions. And, maybe most importantly, they won't be cancel-culture immune (or privacy protecting).

If you love podcasting, run, don't walk, away from this crap!

tenthousandthings said:

This is an important, newsworthy change, but it’s also common sense. So whether it’s an actual leak or just a good guess, if it’s true, then Apple is probably not unhappy with it at this late stage. It’s a selling point for the Pro Mac form factors — you get the same power no matter the size — a stark contrast to what has come before, in all PCs. Indeed, I’ll go there: “paradigm shift.”

Combined with the rumored Pro Mac mini, it’s all good. Three form factors, all with the same “M1X” SoC specs.

Probably also an M1X iMac line, with options for more unified memory than you can get in the mobile/mini form factors.

The next step would be to do the same with an iMac Pro and the modular Mac Pro — both with the same “M1Z” SoC specs. 

Agreed, I think we're going to see essentially 3 'platforms' with some variants going forward. And, you're right that it is kind of a 'duh' thing, but it is important to state as it is so foreign a concept for anyone who isn't following all this really closely.

Consumer (ie. M1)
Prosumer (ie. M1X)
Pro (? M1Z ?)

They might have a bit different characteristics based on binning (ie. 7 vs 8 core GPU) or maybe options like 16 or 32 core GPU or RAM amounts, depending possibly on design and cooling capabilities. But, in general, those 3 categories of chips.

sdw2001 said:
I would also think the 16" will have SOME performance improvement options.  

Probably a binning difference, or more RAM, or possibly higher core counts if cooling is greater for the 16" design, would be my guess. They might be the exact same though too. The screen size really *should* be the differentiator. Kind of like iPhones and iPads too, form-factor *should* be driven by use-case, not bigger or smaller is lower or higher end with increasingly more features.

If I do a lot of flying, for example, I might want the smaller machine, even if I'm a more Pro user with $ billions in my bank account. This whole idea of the big machine (or small) being the top model has been rather ridiculous if you ask me.

blastdoor said:
I hope you're wrong about not updating every year, though. The competition between AMD and Intel in the PC space (and maybe eventually Windows ARM SOCs from Qualcomm and Nvidia) looks to be pretty fierce for a while. If Apple only updates every two years they could end up with about 6 months out of every 2 years where they are trailing the PC guys. I want total domination, dammit! 

Yeah, same here. But, unfortunately, companies that have a big advantage often seem to 'pace' out that lead to stay just enough out ahead, but not too far. Hopefully Apple is different, but that has been my experience over the years.

crowley said:
The iMacs draw somewhere around 70-80W of power, meaning that if it was powered by a USB-C cable (currently a 100W maximum) you'd be limited in power supply to any attached devices.  Possibly not a problem for many, but it'd be a bit of an embarrassing limitation for a desktop machine.  Not to mention that they probably want the same or similar design for the bigger iMac that is surely coming, which will likely have a significantly higher power draw.  The PSU that they're shipping is 143W.

Yeah, I'd have never even thought of something like this, except the other day, I plugged something into one of the USB-C ports on my mini (Intel) and a dialog popped up about not enough power. (I think I had plugged in a Lightning <-> USB-C cable and was going to charge my iPhone up a bit.) I don't have a lot of power-hungry devices except maybe a Samsung T5 SSD, but apparently I went over the limit.

Luckily, I have my Blackmagic eGPU, so I just moved it up to that and no problem. But, I hadn't ever encountered anything like that before (even though it makes sense).

Calamander said:

Admittedly a hacker would be stupid to keep 600M worth but they could be distributing the hoard to tens of thousands of lucky winners including themselves or other shenanigans like that, chances are they could easily keep a few Million of that if they wanted to.

True, but since it is all precisely tracked in the block-chain 'forever' they wouldn't be able to exchange for a fiat currency (ie. play money) or even buy anything major (as I'd imagine crypto-receiving pay systems would/could flag those wallets, etc.). Yeah, they would have to just endlessly hold or exchange between a bunch of wallets, break it down, etc. until the transactions became so small they weren't worth trying to track them anymore. (Of course, that is assuming the authorities cared enough to keep hunting them.)

They could keep, but the problem is using/benefiting from what they have.

StrangeDays said:
Doesn’t sound like it to me. They had the chops to crack into Poly, returned the tokens, and refused the offers. Sounds to me they wanted to prove their point that this system was unreliable, or pull off the biggest crypto heist, etc.. It sounds like a personal objective was met. 

That's quite possible as well.