john-useless

mike1 said:

To be honest, I'm waiting for a compelling reason to upgrade my Series 4. I suspect it may be when the battery finally gives out, but I still easily get a full-day between charges. Maybe the 9 will surprise me with something.

Yes, me too. I owned a "Series 0" and waited for the Series 4 to upgrade — and with features like fall detection, a bigger screen, ECG, raise-to-talk, vastly better processor and improved battery, it was worth it. Four years later, it still has fantastic battery life; it's very rare that my usage takes me to low-power mode near day's end.

The always-on, even larger displays, crash detection, and health features in newer models have tempted me … but not enough yet. I have zero doubt that I will upgrade eventually … but it's not clear whether the Series 9, 10, or 11 will be what gets me there.

Assuming Disney would willingly sell, I'm in favor of Apple buying ESPN under two conditions:

1. I don't want the monthly cost of Apple TV+ to automatically increase by $10 or $15 for all subscribers regardless of whether they watch sports. ESPN's (and Disney's) profits over the years came from the fact that cable/satellite/streaming bundle subscribers pay for ESPN whether or not they watch it. I like the price of Apple TV+ where it is now (even accounting for the price hike in late 2022).

2. Post-acquisition, ESPN should be an optional monthly add-on to Apple TV+, but the price needs to be reasonable. I would be willing to pay, say, $9 or $10/month for ESPN during college football season. The problem with this idea is that other recent media reports speculated that Disney would need to charge consumers $15 to $20/month to make ESPN available on its own (or as a new part of the current ESPN+ streaming service) just to break even on exorbitant sports licensing costs. Presumably Apple would have to do the same.

An even better thought is for Apple to make certain broadcasts available to regular Apple TV+ subscribers without a price increase or add-on requirement. For example, it would be fantastic if I could watch College GameDay on Saturday mornings and the national Saturday night college football game on Apple TV+ as a regular part of my subscription. Such an offering might entice a portion of Apple's subscribers to buy an ESPN add-on that would pay extra for access to every live football broadcast on Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays.

I'm a sports fan … but I no longer subscribe to any cable/satellite/streaming TV bundles because I don't want my money feeding into the unreasonable escalation of the cost of college and professional sports. Yes, it means I miss seeing a lot of games unless they're on over-the-air TV … but that was the only choice I could make. Unfortunately, it would probably take another 100 million people making the same choice to actually change things.

Intel's goals kicked off in 2012, and, since then, the NUC has been a stable, if not super popular, option.

I changed careers nearly a decade ago after more than two decades in information technology, mostly doing end-user support of Windows PCs (though Mac always was and is my personal choice). Even though I've been away from most things Microsoft & Windows for that long (thankfully!), I still read various technology-based websites daily. But in all that time, I had quite honestly never heard of the Intel NUC until this story.

Despite countless "Intel inside" ads during the last decade, did Intel ever throw any marketing support behind the product? That the NUC even existed was apparently a well-kept secret.

tenthousandthings said:

The part of this story that catches my eye is “Apple is working on multiple new monitors” — that is the lede, IMHO. The promise of Mac Studio and the enhanced Mac mini is they give Apple incentive to provide more choices when it comes to displays.

Apple can’t possibly be sitting still.

I agree. A good chunk of Apple's Mac customers are willing to pay a (reasonable) premium for Apple-branded products like monitors, despite the fact that there are plenty of third-party alternatives. I certainly am — because Apple's products typically have superior build quality and I can easily trust that Apple will be around years from now to support the product, both with software updates and hardware service, if needed.

I would like to see Apple offer a 4K version of the Studio Display, for example, at a price that's few hundred less than the existing (5K) Studio Display but presumably more than the best-quality 4K monitors from Dell, HP, and Samsung.

Eric_WVGG said:

I was just lamenting that the Studio Display doesn’t work as a HomeKit hub… I was going to fire off a Feedback suggestion, when I realized that there’s no Wi-Fi in there. 

Pity for all that A13 power to mostly go to waste. What a bizarrely over-engineered product.

I have tended to think of the A13 chip in my Studio Display as providing the smarts only for Center Stage (for the webcam), spatial audio (such as it is — not sure how "spatial" it feels to me, although the speakers sound fantastic) and the like. As such, yeah, it's not unreasonable to call it over-engineered.

That said, didn't Apple have some chips in early iPhone models whose functionality wasn't used, or at least wasn't fully utilized? I wonder if this is just part of the normal development cycle for hardware. "Version 1.0" of a product line (the Studio Display, in this case) has a chip that can clearly do more than the product needs it to do. But if & when Apple releases a "version 2.0" of this specific monitor, or a different monitor entirely — perhaps a 4K display with smart home capabilities, for a price point that's less than the 5K Studio Display but more than competitors' 4K monitors — maybe that's when we'll really see what Apple silicon can do in an Apple monitor.