mpantone

waveparticle said:

mpantone said:

waveparticle said:

Any good tv guide app? TV Guide app used to be pretty good for displaying over the air tv programs. Then for some reason, it changed to become not informative. 

Almost all US television schedule apps use the same data source that has existed for decades, PGD (Program Guide Data) from the Chicago Tribune (at least that's where it came from twenty years ago).

The data is provided by the individual companies (terrestrial broadcasters, major networks, etc.). If WTEH doesn't update their PGD feed, no one gets it.

Returning to the original topic, the best weather app I have ever used is Tenki. There are two main shortcomings: 1.) the app's interface is only in Japanese and 2.) the weather data coverage is only for Japan. The basic weather service data is superb, far better than anything I've seen in a US-based weather data source.

I believe all the weather apps fetched data through National Weather Service or whatever it is called. 

This is incorrect.

Multiple weather data providers exist in the USA. The National Weather Service (NOAA) is just one. There are privately operated weather forecasting services as well. The Weather Channel (operated by IBM) is one. Weather Underground is yet another. Go ahead and look at the five day temperature forecast for your ZIP code with all three services. You will definitely see discrepancies.

The NWS (NOAA) does not create detailed temperature/weather forecasts worldwide. If you use an app/service that sources data from the NWS (NOAA), that same app/service is sourcing international weather forecasts from other sources.

NWS/NOAA is the most common weather data source provider for the USA but it is most certainly isn't the only one. And this isn't a new development. Private weather data service providers have been around FOR DECADES.

There are many regional specific/situation specific weather data providers. Surfline provides surf forecasts for many breaks around the world. Stormsurf does so for the US West Coast (focusing on Central California).

22july2013 said:

If there was a shortage of potatoes, that doesn't mean I couldn't buy a potato; it would mean that potatoes are more expensive. If I was willing to pay $100 for a potato, I could probably find one. 

Does this principle of supply and demand not also apply to the global semiconductor shortage? If it applies, I'd like to see the actual price increases for select chips rather than just hear that there's a shortage. If chip suppliers are not raising their prices during a shortage, they are idiots.

Right now there's a shortage of meat in my country, but I can still go buy meat in any grocery or restaurant. It's just that the prices are 20% higher. I guess meat suppliers are smarter than computer chip manufacturers. 

Go price out a PC graphics card. Street prices have gone wild since November 2020.

The silicon supply and demand imbalance has affected prices.

AIB partner graphics cards are nearly impossible to get unless you pay scalper prices, at least 2x MSRP (and most MSRPs have been inflated since the beginning of 2021). There are PC graphics cards marketed as 1080p gaming boards that have current street prices around $600. Realistically they should be $200-250 tops.

Last summer I bought a brand new Radeon RX 580 for my Mac mini 2018 (to be used in an external GPU box). It was $180, below the April 2017 $229 launch price. This card features 4.5 year old graphics architecture. You can't buy this card new today because it hasn't been manufactured for some time and all of the remaining inventory was bought up months ago. You can buy a "refreshed" (read used) RX 580 card for $650. Realistically this card's value is $120-150 tops.

As we head into the holiday shopping season this situation will get worse before it gets better.

This isn't specific to PC graphics cards. Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch OLED, they are all difficult to find and anything you'll find on FleaBay is overpriced thanks to the scalpers and their 'bots. Note that the newest Xbox and PS5 were launched in November last year, 11.5 months ago.

As Waveparticle notes, chip foundries like TSMC have increased pricing. The percentage increase was not equally applied across the board. Apple took lower price hikes than many other customers.

verne arase said:

The weirdest thing is a comparison of specs, but no benchmark data or performance comparisons.

It's unfortunate but not surprising. There are very few multi-platform benchmarks.

The serious PC hardware testers usually compare GPUs with a battery of tests, both synthetic benchmarks (like 3DMark Time Spy and 3DMark Port Royal) and actual games -- recent titles with demanding graphics. There could be 4-6 synthetic benchmarks and a suite of actual games, between 8 to 15 games.

Geekbench is the synthetic benchmark that is most frequently quotes by Mac followers but it is deeply flawed. One glaring problem is that the runtime is too short to subject hardware to an extended workload. Serious PC hardware reviewers frequently ignore Geekbench. 3DMark is a better synthetic graphics benchmark but it runs on Windows, iOS and Android, no macOS.

For real world game testing, the biggest problem is the lack of recent AAA titles for macOS. There should be a variety of games but all of them should be relatively demanding from a graphics perspective. No one benchmarks GPUs with Disco Elysium or with an old game that will run on a potato even if it is an enjoyable classic like Left 4 Dead 2 (which is like twelve years old).

The only two really graphically demanding macOS games from recent years are Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Metro Exodus both of which run under Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon Macs. Some might argue that testing Macs with games running under Rosetta 2 is unfair but others would point out that it IS real world performance.

Games like Cyberpunk 2077, Resident Evil Village, various driving or flight simulations (like Dirt, F1 or Forza Horizon), Far Cry 5, Borderlands 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, or Horizon Zero Dawn don't exist for Mac. All of those -- in addition to Shadow and Metro -- are titles frequently used by PC reviewers.

Testing 3D productivity software would also be problematic. You can't run Final Cut Pro on Windows PCs so you'd have to rely on applications that are multi-platform. Adobe? DaVinci Resolve? Blender?

In the not-too-distant future, much more gaming will be cloud-based. It is creeping that direction every week. Every Thursday Nvidia adds new titles to GeForce NOW.

And GeForce NOW just added a premium RTX 3080 tier for better graphics performance. That's basically Xbox Series X/PS5 performance from Nvidia's servers, no expensive console or PC hardware required.

Beats said:

Is the Apple share drop because they didn’t meet random people’s expectations even though they had another record-breaking quarter?

Random? No.

If you own shares of AAPL either directly or indirectly and you didn’t buy or sell today, you weren’t one of those who sent the share prices down.

The people who sent the share price down were today’s buyers and sellers. Some sellers offered some of their shares and today’s buyers didn’t want to pay yesterday’s prices. Some of those sellers decided to accept lower bids. It’s called a free market economy.

They aren’t random people. They are both institutional investors as well as retail investors. They all have tax IDs. The SEC knows exactly who these parties are and so will the IRS eventually. It’s not just Jimmy Fanboy Investor on AppleInsider, it’s more like some fund manager at FMR or someone who manages the pension fund of your state’s teachers union, hedge fund managers.

While the stock market will punish companies (and not just Apple) for missing expectations, the market is mostly forward looking. The market is also unhappy when the company withholds forward guidance.

Apple hasn’t offered guidance since the pandemic began and today’s market reaction was predictable.