Fidonet127

avon b7 said:

Fidonet127 said:

avon b7 said:

tmay said:

radarthekat said:

avon b7 said:

red oak said:

Its not a “significant win for consumers”,   Implementing this can lead to less water and dust proofing, heavier devices,  and less overall quality uni-body build 

It's a massive win all round. 

There was never any reason water and dust proofing had to be done the way the industry went about it. 

Nano coatings have been around for years and have been specifically designed for waterproofing. 

It's also worth challenging the very notion of waterproofing on a device not designed for regular immersion use, as made clear by the warranty of the device not even guaranteeing waterproofing and falling back onto a IP rating that 'should' suffice for the rated level of protection. Splash resistance is all that is really necessary for the vast majority of users.

If a device is actually designed to spend most of its usage time in water, there is a provision for that:

"To ensure the safety of end-users, this Regulation should provide for a limited derogation for portable batteries from the removability and replaceability requirements set for portable 

batteries concerning appliances that incorporate portable batteries and that are specifically designed to be used, for the majority of the active service of the appliance, in an environment that is regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion and that are intended to be washable or rinseable. This derogation should only apply when it is not possible, by way of redesign of the appliance, to ensure the safety of the end-user and the safe continued use of the appliance after the end-user has correctly followed the instructions to remove and replace the battery. Where the derogation applies, the product should be designed in such a way as to make the battery removable and replaceable only by independent professionals, and not by end-users."

The 'quality vs accessibility' argument is not really the best way to evaluate the situation. Batteries should be easily replaceable and designers should be working to achieving that goal.

In fact many parts of modern phones should be easily replaceable, even for qualified technicians. The less time needed to perform a repair and the less good components that need replacing, the better, so now the industry should be moving towards design for repair too. 

Good to see something as simple as information getting some support too. Users should have simple, clear access to what type of battery they have in the phone. 

I’m so much looking forward to your solution for the Apple Watch.  /s

Well, according to avon b7, there is plenty of design headroom available to degrade in today's smartphones;

"It's also worth challenging the very notion of waterproofing on a device not designed for regular immersion use, as made clear by the warranty of the device not even guaranteeing waterproofing and falling back onto a IP rating that 'should' suffice for the rated level of protection. Splash resistance is all that is really necessary for the vast majority of users."

Yeah, the one device that allows people to communicate almost anywhere in the world, in any conditions, and the EU wants Apple, et al, to forget millions of man-hours in that effort that they put into devices over the years to make mobile devices increasingly reliable, resilient, and robust, all in the interest of making "consumer serviceable" devices.

There's a shit ton of people in the world that have unexpectedly found themselves in deluges and floods, snows storms, and hurricanes, emergency of all kinds, and I'll bet that none of them ever wished that their phone was less protected from the elements. So of course, Apple foolishly added the capability to send low bandwidth text to satellites from any region currently supported, for those life and death emergencies that are out of range of any cellular network.

I don't know all that much about the EU, other than it appears to be barely functional, but it seems that the bureaucracy focusses on minutiae, and has long lost the ability to see the big picture, so I'll make a suggestion:

How about the EU use VAT reduction incentives to encourage companies to add "consumer serviceability", and let those companies that are unimpressed with the downsides of consumer serviceability, continue on an evolutionary path of more reliable, resilient, and robust devices.

Give consumers a choice. 

Oh dear! 

No there are not a shit ton of people out in hurricanes or snow storms making calls. 

I've seen plenty of people making calls in a deluge. Strangely, all of them were under umbrellas! 

iPhones are rated for protection, not guaranteed for protection. 

Splash proofing is more than enough for almost everyone. 

Resilience and robustness have nothing to do with any of this and are already covered by 'fit for purpose' requirements anyway. 

And if Apple were truly interested in those two aspects, they would never have put glass on the back and far fewer people would put cases on their phones. 

avon b7 said:

tmay said:

radarthekat said:

avon b7 said:

red oak said:

Its not a “significant win for consumers”,   Implementing this can lead to less water and dust proofing, heavier devices,  and less overall quality uni-body build 

It's a massive win all round. 

There was never any reason water and dust proofing had to be done the way the industry went about it. 

Nano coatings have been around for years and have been specifically designed for waterproofing. 

It's also worth challenging the very notion of waterproofing on a device not designed for regular immersion use, as made clear by the warranty of the device not even guaranteeing waterproofing and falling back onto a IP rating that 'should' suffice for the rated level of protection. Splash resistance is all that is really necessary for the vast majority of users.

If a device is actually designed to spend most of its usage time in water, there is a provision for that:

"To ensure the safety of end-users, this Regulation should provide for a limited derogation for portable batteries from the removability and replaceability requirements set for portable 

batteries concerning appliances that incorporate portable batteries and that are specifically designed to be used, for the majority of the active service of the appliance, in an environment that is regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion and that are intended to be washable or rinseable. This derogation should only apply when it is not possible, by way of redesign of the appliance, to ensure the safety of the end-user and the safe continued use of the appliance after the end-user has correctly followed the instructions to remove and replace the battery. Where the derogation applies, the product should be designed in such a way as to make the battery removable and replaceable only by independent professionals, and not by end-users."

The 'quality vs accessibility' argument is not really the best way to evaluate the situation. Batteries should be easily replaceable and designers should be working to achieving that goal.

In fact many parts of modern phones should be easily replaceable, even for qualified technicians. The less time needed to perform a repair and the less good components that need replacing, the better, so now the industry should be moving towards design for repair too. 

Good to see something as simple as information getting some support too. Users should have simple, clear access to what type of battery they have in the phone. 

I’m so much looking forward to your solution for the Apple Watch.  /s

Well, according to avon b7, there is plenty of design headroom available to degrade in today's smartphones;

"It's also worth challenging the very notion of waterproofing on a device not designed for regular immersion use, as made clear by the warranty of the device not even guaranteeing waterproofing and falling back onto a IP rating that 'should' suffice for the rated level of protection. Splash resistance is all that is really necessary for the vast majority of users."

Yeah, the one device that allows people to communicate almost anywhere in the world, in any conditions, and the EU wants Apple, et al, to forget millions of man-hours in that effort that they put into devices over the years to make mobile devices increasingly reliable, resilient, and robust, all in the interest of making "consumer serviceable" devices.

There's a shit ton of people in the world that have unexpectedly found themselves in deluges and floods, snows storms, and hurricanes, emergency of all kinds, and I'll bet that none of them ever wished that their phone was less protected from the elements. So of course, Apple foolishly added the capability to send low bandwidth text to satellites from any region currently supported, for those life and death emergencies that are out of range of any cellular network.

I don't know all that much about the EU, other than it appears to be barely functional, but it seems that the bureaucracy focusses on minutiae, and has long lost the ability to see the big picture, so I'll make a suggestion:

How about the EU use VAT reduction incentives to encourage companies to add "consumer serviceability", and let those companies that are unimpressed with the downsides of consumer serviceability, continue on an evolutionary path of more reliable, resilient, and robust devices.

Give consumers a choice. 

Oh dear! 

No there are not a shit ton of people out in hurricanes or snow storms making calls. 

I've seen plenty of people making calls in a deluge. Strangely, all of them were under umbrellas! 

iPhones are rated for protection, not guaranteed for protection. 

Splash proofing is more than enough for almost everyone. 

Resilience and robustness have nothing to do with any of this and are already covered by 'fit for purpose' requirements anyway. 

And if Apple were truly interested in those two aspects, they would never have put glass on the back and far fewer people would put cases on their phones. 

Yes because people can prevent themselves from ending up in emergency situations. I like how you avoided floods being a thing. You know storm surges from hurricanes can flood the insides of houses right? It can be sunny where a person is and they still can get hit with flash flooding from miles away. I guess it is better that people die so we can meet environmental laws. 

Are you suggesting that in any flood situation, people wait until their phones are completely soaked before they call? 

Same logic applies though. How many (as a percentage of all phone users) even find themselves in that situation - in their entire lives? 

Thankfully, very, very few and, as I have just made perfectly clear, only a minute fraction of those will not have made the call before the phone is immersed. And on top of that, a phone call is very unlikely to help if the emergency responders are overloaded anyway. 

Help, if even available, is far more likely to come from people within hearing distance. 

avon b7 said:

tmay said:

radarthekat said:

avon b7 said:

red oak said:

Its not a “significant win for consumers”,   Implementing this can lead to less water and dust proofing, heavier devices,  and less overall quality uni-body build 

It's a massive win all round. 

There was never any reason water and dust proofing had to be done the way the industry went about it. 

Nano coatings have been around for years and have been specifically designed for waterproofing. 

It's also worth challenging the very notion of waterproofing on a device not designed for regular immersion use, as made clear by the warranty of the device not even guaranteeing waterproofing and falling back onto a IP rating that 'should' suffice for the rated level of protection. Splash resistance is all that is really necessary for the vast majority of users.

If a device is actually designed to spend most of its usage time in water, there is a provision for that:

"To ensure the safety of end-users, this Regulation should provide for a limited derogation for portable batteries from the removability and replaceability requirements set for portable 

batteries concerning appliances that incorporate portable batteries and that are specifically designed to be used, for the majority of the active service of the appliance, in an environment that is regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion and that are intended to be washable or rinseable. This derogation should only apply when it is not possible, by way of redesign of the appliance, to ensure the safety of the end-user and the safe continued use of the appliance after the end-user has correctly followed the instructions to remove and replace the battery. Where the derogation applies, the product should be designed in such a way as to make the battery removable and replaceable only by independent professionals, and not by end-users."

The 'quality vs accessibility' argument is not really the best way to evaluate the situation. Batteries should be easily replaceable and designers should be working to achieving that goal.

In fact many parts of modern phones should be easily replaceable, even for qualified technicians. The less time needed to perform a repair and the less good components that need replacing, the better, so now the industry should be moving towards design for repair too. 

Good to see something as simple as information getting some support too. Users should have simple, clear access to what type of battery they have in the phone. 

I’m so much looking forward to your solution for the Apple Watch.  /s

Well, according to avon b7, there is plenty of design headroom available to degrade in today's smartphones;

"It's also worth challenging the very notion of waterproofing on a device not designed for regular immersion use, as made clear by the warranty of the device not even guaranteeing waterproofing and falling back onto a IP rating that 'should' suffice for the rated level of protection. Splash resistance is all that is really necessary for the vast majority of users."

Yeah, the one device that allows people to communicate almost anywhere in the world, in any conditions, and the EU wants Apple, et al, to forget millions of man-hours in that effort that they put into devices over the years to make mobile devices increasingly reliable, resilient, and robust, all in the interest of making "consumer serviceable" devices.

There's a shit ton of people in the world that have unexpectedly found themselves in deluges and floods, snows storms, and hurricanes, emergency of all kinds, and I'll bet that none of them ever wished that their phone was less protected from the elements. So of course, Apple foolishly added the capability to send low bandwidth text to satellites from any region currently supported, for those life and death emergencies that are out of range of any cellular network.

I don't know all that much about the EU, other than it appears to be barely functional, but it seems that the bureaucracy focusses on minutiae, and has long lost the ability to see the big picture, so I'll make a suggestion:

How about the EU use VAT reduction incentives to encourage companies to add "consumer serviceability", and let those companies that are unimpressed with the downsides of consumer serviceability, continue on an evolutionary path of more reliable, resilient, and robust devices.

Give consumers a choice. 

Oh dear! 

No there are not a shit ton of people out in hurricanes or snow storms making calls. 

I've seen plenty of people making calls in a deluge. Strangely, all of them were under umbrellas! 

iPhones are rated for protection, not guaranteed for protection. 

Splash proofing is more than enough for almost everyone. 

Resilience and robustness have nothing to do with any of this and are already covered by 'fit for purpose' requirements anyway. 

And if Apple were truly interested in those two aspects, they would never have put glass on the back and far fewer people would put cases on their phones. 

avon b7 said:

tmay said:

radarthekat said:

avon b7 said:

red oak said:

Its not a “significant win for consumers”,   Implementing this can lead to less water and dust proofing, heavier devices,  and less overall quality uni-body build 

It's a massive win all round. 

There was never any reason water and dust proofing had to be done the way the industry went about it. 

Nano coatings have been around for years and have been specifically designed for waterproofing. 

It's also worth challenging the very notion of waterproofing on a device not designed for regular immersion use, as made clear by the warranty of the device not even guaranteeing waterproofing and falling back onto a IP rating that 'should' suffice for the rated level of protection. Splash resistance is all that is really necessary for the vast majority of users.

If a device is actually designed to spend most of its usage time in water, there is a provision for that:

"To ensure the safety of end-users, this Regulation should provide for a limited derogation for portable batteries from the removability and replaceability requirements set for portable 

batteries concerning appliances that incorporate portable batteries and that are specifically designed to be used, for the majority of the active service of the appliance, in an environment that is regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion and that are intended to be washable or rinseable. This derogation should only apply when it is not possible, by way of redesign of the appliance, to ensure the safety of the end-user and the safe continued use of the appliance after the end-user has correctly followed the instructions to remove and replace the battery. Where the derogation applies, the product should be designed in such a way as to make the battery removable and replaceable only by independent professionals, and not by end-users."

The 'quality vs accessibility' argument is not really the best way to evaluate the situation. Batteries should be easily replaceable and designers should be working to achieving that goal.

In fact many parts of modern phones should be easily replaceable, even for qualified technicians. The less time needed to perform a repair and the less good components that need replacing, the better, so now the industry should be moving towards design for repair too. 

Good to see something as simple as information getting some support too. Users should have simple, clear access to what type of battery they have in the phone. 

I’m so much looking forward to your solution for the Apple Watch.  /s

Well, according to avon b7, there is plenty of design headroom available to degrade in today's smartphones;

"It's also worth challenging the very notion of waterproofing on a device not designed for regular immersion use, as made clear by the warranty of the device not even guaranteeing waterproofing and falling back onto a IP rating that 'should' suffice for the rated level of protection. Splash resistance is all that is really necessary for the vast majority of users."

Yeah, the one device that allows people to communicate almost anywhere in the world, in any conditions, and the EU wants Apple, et al, to forget millions of man-hours in that effort that they put into devices over the years to make mobile devices increasingly reliable, resilient, and robust, all in the interest of making "consumer serviceable" devices.

There's a shit ton of people in the world that have unexpectedly found themselves in deluges and floods, snows storms, and hurricanes, emergency of all kinds, and I'll bet that none of them ever wished that their phone was less protected from the elements. So of course, Apple foolishly added the capability to send low bandwidth text to satellites from any region currently supported, for those life and death emergencies that are out of range of any cellular network.

I don't know all that much about the EU, other than it appears to be barely functional, but it seems that the bureaucracy focusses on minutiae, and has long lost the ability to see the big picture, so I'll make a suggestion:

How about the EU use VAT reduction incentives to encourage companies to add "consumer serviceability", and let those companies that are unimpressed with the downsides of consumer serviceability, continue on an evolutionary path of more reliable, resilient, and robust devices.

Give consumers a choice. 

Oh dear! 

No there are not a shit ton of people out in hurricanes or snow storms making calls. 

I've seen plenty of people making calls in a deluge. Strangely, all of them were under umbrellas! 

iPhones are rated for protection, not guaranteed for protection. 

Splash proofing is more than enough for almost everyone. 

Resilience and robustness have nothing to do with any of this and are already covered by 'fit for purpose' requirements anyway. 

And if Apple were truly interested in those two aspects, they would never have put glass on the back and far fewer people would put cases on their phones. 

thadec said:

tht said:

maltz said:

I'd really like to hear some technical elaboration on how Apple Silicon helps to make a BIGGER laptop with less space constraint.  It's going the other direction that's hard.

For Apple, it only means that Apple Silicon allowed them to build a 15” metal laptop that is 0.45” thick, 3.3 lb with a runtime of 18 hrs, and with good all around compute performance.

You can build an x86 laptop to some of what Apple wants, but what is missed is really important to Apple. LG has their Gram series which is thin and light, but it’s plastic, is more flexible, less runtime, etc. Some people are fine with what LG offers, so, perfectly fine. 

Apple’s pricing typically means the device and service has to be better than others. It’s part of the art of product design. They think the MBA15, as an object and a device, is good enough to command its pricing. Apple silicon is part of the whole amalgam that contributes to this. 

Not just the LG Gram 17 (a 17" laptop) but the Samsung Galaxy Book Windows laptops also. But to clarify: it isn't Apple Silicon that makes this possible. It is the TSMC foundry. It is why Apple Silicon is on 5nm where Intel was on 14nm when Apple Silicon launched and is still on 10nm. Meteor Lake devices - which arrive in 4Q 2023 - will be 7nm, have substantially improved efficiency cores and integrated GPUs and will have an integrated NPU. Said efficiency cores perform better than the performance cores in the $999 2018 MacBook Air. The iGPUs are going to outperform the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650, which means they will outperform the M1's iGPU. https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/16/m1-beats-geforce-gtx-1050-ti-and-radeon-rx-560/ Intel's plans for their integrated GPUs and NPUs are here: https://wccftech.com/intel-wants-to-bring-path-tracing-affordable-gpus-igpus-real-time-neural-rendering and are going to basically kill off the cheap discrete GPU market.
 
Meteor Lake is going to challenge a lot of narratives. Most of it was Apple marketing, but the tech media that repeated it as objective truth will have egg on their faces.

Marvin said:

Fidonet127 said:

I can't find where video cards will not be supported.

Finally, Mac Pro brings PCI expansion to Apple silicon. It features six open expansion slots that support gen 4, which is two times faster than before. So users can customize Mac Pro with essential cards, including audio and video I/O, networking, and storage.

Right there in the keynote, Apple says the new Mac Pro will support video card for input and output.

That is talking about video capture and playback like this:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/intensitypro4k
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink/techspecs/W-DLK-34

I think it probably would be possible to support a PCIe GPU in some way, even if just for compute but there may be a reason why they will try to avoid it. 3rd party GPUs have a different rendering architecture and the Metal API has to support both.

https://developer.apple.com/metal/sample-code/
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/metal/metal_sample_code_library/rendering_a_scene_with_deferred_lighting_in_swift

"Some macOS GPUs have an immediate mode rendering (IMR) architecture. On IMR GPUs, a deferred lighting renderer can only be implemented with at least two render passes. Therefore, the sample implements a two-pass deferred lighting algorithm for the macOS version of the app."

If Apple eventually deprecates immediate mode support in Metal, 3rd party GPUs wouldn't be usable with it.

There's not much point in 3rd party GPUs anyway. This is clear with what happened with Nvidia. Despite the Mac Pro having slots, there was never Nvidia support. AMD was supported because those GPUs were used all through the lineup. Nobody will write drivers and offer software support for the 0.01% of Mac users who want to add an AMD GPU on top of the Ultra GPU.