atonaldenim

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atonaldenim
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  • Fear of Nintendo's wrath is keeping emulators off of the App Store

    atonaldenimatonaldenim
    Update: Delta emulator is now available on Apple’s App Store!
    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/delta-game-emulator/id1048524688

    The developer’s AltStore is also live today in EU featuring the Delta app. 
    lolliverwilliamlondonwatto_cobraAlex1N

  • OWC reveals Express 1M2, an ultra-fast USB 4 NVMe SSD enclosure

    atonaldenimatonaldenim
    Nice. Looks like the bus-powered offspring of their ThunderBlade enclosure design. 

    I have their previous fastest space grey Envoy Pro FX TB3/USB3 enclosure, and the photo Respite posted shows this new Express 1M2 should be an upgrade in terms of cooling.

    The previous Envoy Pro FX had the top of the SSD blade facing downward toward the bottom of the enclosure, so only the aluminum cover plate on the underside of the enclosure is able to contact the SSD blade as its primary heatsink.

    And the underside of the SSD blade has no heat dissipating contacts. At least on the 240GB model I got which came with a single-sided SSD, which I upgraded with a larger double-sided WD Black SN850X 4TB SSD. Easily done although OWC doesn’t sell it as a user-upgradable enclosure.

    The top part of the Envoy Pro FX’s aluminum case (which is the vast majority of its mass) doesn’t really make any good contact with the SSD blade, and so seems more for aesthetics than any functional benefit. It does get warm, so I guess there is some heat transfer happening, but it could be better. (photo attached)

    On the other hand this Express 1M2 design shows the SSD blade facing upward so the chips on the top side of the blade can contact and benefit from the large heatsink cooling fins in the top of the enclosure. Unfortunately I still don’t see any affordance in that photo of the 1M2 for cooling the underside of the SSD blade on double sided SSDs. 

    But given that the bus-powered Envoy Pro FX is marketed as Intel Evo + Thunderbolt certified with speeds up to 2800MB/s, I gotta say it’s pretty strange that OWC’s marketing copy claims: 
    Up to 2X Thunderbolt Performance
    Don’t Get Fooled
    Because we’re widely considered the Thunderbolt experts, we must know all the little details that others purposefully overlook or hide. For a bus-powered enclosure to be Thunderbolt certified, it must meet Intel power certifications. As such, speeds are limited to 1500MB/s. While many no-name brands claim to be USB4, they are in fact Thunderbolt 3 solutions that do not follow Intel specifications. Unlike those budget brand pretenders that will leave you feeling fooled and disappointed…
    Not sure why they want to claim this enclosure is 2x faster than other Thunderbolt SSDs, when they advertise speeds only like 12% higher than their own previous Thunderbolt SSDs. Typical OWC hype, they’d be a lot better off if they toned down the exaggerated marketing. 

    I also just noticed that on any Intel Mac, the Express 1M2 will only run at 10Gb/s USB 3.2 speeds, that’s a big caveat. It requires an Apple Silicon Mac or PC with USB4 ports to run at full speed. For anyone who might need to connect to an Intel Mac I’d recommend their Envoy Pro FX instead, which runs at 28Gb/s TB3 speeds on Intel or Apple Silicon Macs or PCs with TB3/4 ports, and is also USB 3.2 compatible at 10Gb/s speeds on any computer’s USB port that doesn’t have Thunderbolt. Despite its less effective cooling design, in the end Thunderbolt speeds are less than half of the top speed of the latest PCIe 4.0 SSDs anyway, so it’s not like they’re running at full throttle. 



    watto_cobraroundaboutnow

  • RIP Touch Bar -- Apple sends the 13-inch MacBook Pro to the grave

    atonaldenimatonaldenim
    called it! 😊
    watto_cobrawilliamlondon

  • Meta leaks its AR four-year plan before Apple can beat them

    atonaldenimatonaldenim
    Grabbing some popcorn... curious to see how the VR wars play out once Apple steps into the arena...

    Clarification on the code names:

    Stinson Beach is a popular beach town in Marin County, Northern California, north of San Francisco and Facebook's HQ in Menlo Park, often shortened to just "Stinson" by locals. Marin County could be considered the northernmost part of the "tech region" of California. (Apologies to Santa Rosa and Sacramento.)

    Ventura is a beach town in the Los Angeles area, several hours south of Stinson Beach.

    La Jolla is also a coastal town, in the San Diego area a few hours south of Ventura, which is the southernmost part of the tech region and California itself.
    larryjwlolliverStrangeDayswatto_cobrabadmonk

  • Apple Music violates EU antitrust laws, $39 billion fine possible

    atonaldenimatonaldenim
    I have to say I agree that Apple’s ban on any mention of purchases or accounts outside the App Store does harm Apple users. 

    As an Apple user wouldn’t you want to know if there is a cheaper option available before making an in-app purchase? I know I do!
    williamlondon