twolf2919

danox said:

twolf2919 said:

"Apple's M-series of chips are primarily based on chip architecture from ARM" - is there any basis for this claim?  Apple has an architecture license from ARM and has been adding to the basic ARM blueprints for more than 10 years.  So, at this point, is the word "primarily" still valid?  For instance, Apple has been including a neural engine in its processor for the last 6 years - this is a huge part of the chip and, as far as I know, has nothing to do with ARM (although I believe ARM's newest architecture specs may also include neural engine specs?  But, if so, Apple's work predates ARMs offering by years).  Similarly, I'm not sure the GPU - another big component of the Ax and Mx chips - falls under the ARM spec.  Apple bought a whole company to include its graphics designs into its chips.  The Secure Enclave is another part of the chip unrelated to ARM, AFAIK.  And in the near future, Apple will be including 5G hardware (maybe not initially on-chip, but surely at a future point in time).

Apple’s arm chips are heavily customized. They are not the same chip that Microsoft, Samsung, or Qualcomm or anyone else currently uses, they are Apples own custom designed and engineered chips. (A fork in the road)

That's what I suggested, including giving specific examples where they differed, so a 'like' would have sufficed.  My question was simply whether the author had any basis for his use of the word "primarily [ARM architecture]" - which implies > 50% of what's in the chip is ARM-designed.  I was doubtful.

I was a very happy customer of the Roborock S5 Max.  It did an excellent job cleaning and, more importantly, after initial setup never had an issue.

Two years later, I was wooed by the Roborock S7 MaxV's suction power - supposedly twice my S5's.  I didn't want any part of the auto-emptying, auto-mop-cleaning dock since the former simply meant you'd have to start buying bags for the robot (cleaning out the onboard dust bin is simple and requires no bag) and the latter meant more mechanicals that could go wrong and, potentially, a stinky mop.  Anyway, to each their own when it comes to the dock.

Robot reviews are great in that you get to see the features of a robot.  But reviewers rarely spend enough time with the robot to give long-term feedback on these devices.  The reviews for the S7 were great - just like this review for the S8.  But they didn't help discover any of the shortcomings that reveal themselves over time.

For me, the S7 MaxV has been a lot more hassle than its predecessor.  I really don' know why - it has a lot more sensors than the S5 did - but the robot gets lost or stuck on a regular basis.  It usually happens after a few weeks - not right off the bat.  I am pretty sure it's some sort of software bug: I've noticed that over time, the map starts deteriorating: it starts showing little non-existent artifacts (like dark grey dots and lines that the robot avoids but which don't exist as anything real in the house) - and walls that were previously pretty perpendicular to one another start skewing one direction or the other.  As a result, the robot begins making nonsensical decisions about where to go - or try to go as the case may be.  I've contact Roborock about this on numerous occasion, but their stock answer is that I should delete the map and let the robot recreate it.  And this is what I'm forced to do periodically - and it's annoying as heck.  Mostly because the earlier version of the Roborock had none of these issues, but also because my house is one of those "open concept" houses where some rooms - e.g. kitchen, dining room, family room - aren't distinct rooms as far as the robot is concerned.  So you have to manually divide up the space in the app - a laborious activity in the app consisting of dividing and combining things successively.  Then there are the floor-ceiling windows or sliders that, without manually creating "invisible walls" the robot constantly runs into (and gets stuck at when there's also a sliding door track).  So it takes a good half hour of time every time I have to recreate the map because the Robot f*&ked up the map again :-(

I love the fact that the S7's mop works better than the S5's and that the quiet mode is indeed pretty quiet and lets us run the robot every day.  I'm not sure that our all-hard floor house needed the extra suction power of the S7 - and combined with the map headaches I've been having, I would not have upgraded from the S5 had I known this up-front.  I'm glad the reviewer thinks the S8 is a good upgrade from the S7 - he must have never had the mapping errors I saw - or he's recommending the S8 because they fixed them there?

Another question for the reviewer: in the video you seem to indicate that with the S8 you can only remove the cloth mop?  In the S7 the whole plastic piece the mop attaches comes out - which is very helpful because it means you don't have to turn over the robot every time you want to put a new mop cloth on.  When I mop with the S7, I put a new mop cloth on for every room I have it mop.  If that's no longer possible with the S8, that's a definite negative - unless you get the S8 Ultra, which supposedly cleans the mop cloth for you.

I wouldn't call that "big interest" - maybe "some interest"!  But I guess that wouldn't serve the same click function :-(  The author should also be using the word "if" rather than "when" to describe Apple's future iPhone direction vis a vis a foldable.  I think for Apple customer to embrace a foldable iPhone, two things must hold: (1) the out-of-pocket experience must be just as good as it is today - i.e. as soon as you pull the iPhone out of your pocket or purse, you should be able to use it; no unfolding required. (2) the folded phone's folded dimensions should not be much bigger than today's iPhone.  The 14 Pro Max is already at the limits of what a jeans pocket or small purse can accommodate - no self respecting Apple customer would walk around with a thick brick.

I think the only way (1) can be accomplished is if the screens are on the outside of the device - a smaller outside screen + big screen inside will not provide enough functionality in folded mode.

gatorguy said:

"...According to new research by VPN provider SurfShark, the US government makes the most requests for user data from Big Tech companies than any other jurisdiction in the world. The company analyzed data requests to Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft by “government agencies of 177 countries between 2013 and 2021.”

The US came in first with 2,451,077 account requests, more than four times the number of Germany, the number two country on the list. In fact, the US made more requests than all of Europe, including the UK, which collectively came in under 2 million."

"The report also sheds light on which companies comply the most versus which ones push back against requests. For all of its privacy-oriented marketing — “what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone” — Apple complies with data requests more than any other company, handing it over 82% of the time.

In contrast, Meta complies 72% of the time, and Google does 71% of the time. Microsoft, on the other hand, pushes back the most among Big Tech companies, only handing data over 68% of the time."

These statistics are meaningless without context.  Apple keeps a lot less personal information - that it has in decrypted form - than any of the other companies mentioned.  So, arguably, it has less reasons not to comply than these other companies.   I.e., it is because "what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone", Apple can comply with requests for data it does have - i.e. unencrypted iCloud data (which, as of iOS 16, the user has the option to also encrypt).

For any product to make sense for Apple it must move the revenue needle.  Not an easy lift for a product in a company whose revenue is upwards of $200b/year.  Aside from the occasional 'flop' (think HomePod, Airport, Apple TV), all of Apple's products sell in the tens of millions and sell for less than $1000.  Macs are a special category for Apple because, although they no longer move the company's revenue needle much, they're the tool its developers use to CREATE Apple content for those other, more successful devices.  Apple does sell them at a much higher price point, but it also sells only relatively few.

So a VR product, if the $2k price point proves accurate, would be an outlier like the Mac.  But, unlike the Mac, a VR set is simply a consumption device like an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch.  But what is the potential market size for VR headsets?  I did a quick google and in all of 2022, there were less than 10m units sold.  If Apple were to magically take over the entire market in 2023 and sell 10m units, it would be a colossal failure.  Certainly Apple Watch was considered a failure when it 'only' sold 10m units the first year.  Of course AW eventually turned into a big money maker for Apple - but that's because its potential market was pretty much every human on earth willing to put down $350.  How many humans will plunk down $2000 for a device that lets them play some games but, more or less, requires them to stay in their home unless they want to get ridiculed?

So how could a VR headset make sense for Apple?  I only see two ways: (1) the price point of $2k that everyone rumors about is way off and Apple sells it in the <$1k range as all its other products and even then, the headset has to look a lot more like glasses than the goggles for it to take hold on any scale; (2) the VR headset is mainly a tool Apple make available to developers for creating AR/VR content for a few VR gamers/business AND for the upcoming real money maker: the AR glasses.  Maybe it'll be a combination of (1) and (2).

The AR glasses that come next will - by Tim Cook's own admission a couple years ago - be Apple's probable next big money maker.  Huge potential there for Apple to sell a pair of AR glasses to every iPhone owner out there (I assume as I always have that most of the cpu/networking/storage will continue to take place on iPhone so the glasses can be light enough and last all day).