Marvin

JohnDenver101 said:

I don't understand the appeal of a folding phone. They are:

• More expensive
• More expensive to repair
• Screen is less scratch resistant
• Screen may show fold
• Hinges make it more prone to break or susceptible to dust
• Heavier
• Can be difficult to use with one hand

All just to have a larger screen. I would love a folding iPad. Give me an e-ink display on the outside and it would be the perfect travel companion for movies and books. 

Maybe it would be better to have the folding displays as external displays rather than design the whole product around it. The panels are thin and light and could be built into a case.

Putting it into a phone form factor replaces the need for a tablet as it's the same apps.

If it was on the back of the phone, the middle 1/3rd of the display would be over the back and two other 1/3rds can fold out left and right.

iPhone 16 is 5.81" x 2.82" so if it was turned over and the display folded out, it would have a 8.46" x 5.81" display = 10" diagonal iPad-like display. It wouldn't matter so much if the display breaks because it's external. It would still be an expensive replacement but an instant replacement, just get a new one in store.

Then they can offer e-ink, OLED and ones designed for drawing on.

AppleInsider said:

A handy new feature of macOS Sequoia allows a mounted volume to self-eject once a process copying files from it ends. Here's how to use it.

If the copy is still running, the Finder will throw up an alert telling you it can't eject the volume because it's in use. But now in macOS Sequoia, that alert features a new button: Eject when finished.

This is useful if it works but one of the worst offenders for blocking eject is the Finder's QuickLook process. Clicking a single time on a file, especially if it's a less common format can block a disk eject as QuickLook tries to decode it and it needs opening Activity Monitor to force quit QuickLook. Some processes would be best tagged as interruptible. Non-essential features like QuickLook and Spotlight should always be interruptible by any process.

mpantone said:

Of course, the View-Master unit had a number of shortcomings. The biggest was the fact that the it wasn't compatible with a wide variety of smartphone dimensions. The optics were fixed so were limited to a subset of viewers' eyes. There was no headstrap. Audio was terrible because it relied on the phone's built-in speakers. 

There was a Gear VR for $100 too:



An Apple designed one would fix a lot of the issues.

This would be like a $599 iPhone 14 + $100 case = $699. The resolution here would be bad at less than 1K per eye.

But if the total retail price of these parts comes to $699 and 2K Micro-OLED displays are $300 for a pair, they have enough parts to make an affordable, very lightweight, reasonable quality headset that retails around $1199. Even adding additional tracking like hand/eye tracking, it would be under $1500.

It wouldn't be as sharp as Vision Pro but would give mostly the same experience and would build a platform with a bigger user-base in the millions, which is needed to be sustainable. The display spec can be increased later.

mpantone said:

Since their recent M.O. has been to give event invitees two weeks lead notification, it's pretty much too late for an October event.

Last year they announced on the 24th the event on the 30th:

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/24/tech/apple-october-event-2023/index.html

Toortog said:

The only thing about the new Mac Mini is when is Apple going to annouce the date for the release event.   Time is running out for  October event.  

It's pre-recorded so there's not much planning needed for the broadcast, just an announcement, likely tomorrow and then setup a video stream next week.

If they want to do a Halloween themed event again, they have to stream it next week so the announcement will be any day now.