tenthousandthings

faceted said:

They won’t update their AppleTV app to support interactive content or integrate with the AppleTV platform and they keep putting the price up. 

Sorry but if you’re a giant company that can’t be bothered to support all your users, then I can’t be bothered to give you any more money.

We cancelled Netflix last month, yesterday was the last day for us. I’m sure we will come back one day, but not for a while.

Agreed, a year or two ahead of you. I get what Netflix thinks it’s doing, a world unto itself, but their content is out of sight, out of mind (on the tv, at least) once you stop subscribing. The most arrogant and foolish thing they do is to not allow browsing if you’re not subscribed.

Other services that don’t allow Search and Up Next to see their content (MHz Choice, for example) still allow you to browse without being subscribed. So we go on there to check and see if there are new seasons of exclusive shows we like (Art of Crime, for example). But Netflix makes this difficult to do, so as a result, even though the Netflix app is sitting right there at the end of the first row on my tv, my brain doesn’t see it. That’s a serious miscalculation, partly because we’re bad at remembering to unsubscribe after we’re done watching the content we subscribed for, I’m honestly not sure what services we are or aren’t subscribed to at the moment, but that doesn’t happen with Netflix because it’s off by itself.

In short, you won’t miss it. You will go back when you hear about new seasons of things you want to watch, but once you are out of the habit of checking the app (which atrophies quickly when you can’t browse), it’s like it doesn’t exist.

This looks like something I’m going to do — been waiting for an extensible system like this. Need to do a bit more homework but seems right.

programmer said:

tenthousandthings said:

Interesting set of comments above. I can't see the Mac Pro getting capabilities that can't also be acquired via external Thunderbolt/PCIe enclosures for the Mac Studio and MacBook Pro. I think that's the unspoken, as-yet unrealized message that the 2023 Mac Pro sends. Its place in the lineup is about convenience, having everything inside a box. It's not about having capabilities no other Mac can reach.

Maybe at one point, early on in the development of Mac silicon, Apple thought an Extreme, quad M-series variant for Mac Pro only would make sense. The original "Jade" leak, which was otherwise 100% correct, suggests that. But that is ancient history now. It dates to before the Mac Studio and, more importantly, to before the A17/M3 graphics architecture. Apple has been driving toward this since at least the A12X in 2018. That October 30 presentation in Brooklyn ("More in the Making") for the iPad Pro is important, and with the benefit of hindsight we can see it is the first major event that foreshadows the transition to A14/M1 -- the executives on stage, which include Anand Shimpi (for the first time, I think, I could be wrong), know there is no turning back. It's a very different feel from 2017, in retrospect. 

If they abandoned the M1/M2 Extreme in favor of a different approach, a change in direction that may have been hinted at by Anand Shimpi less than a year ago (February 2023), then Apple has displayed an ability to adapt that is heartening. The whole trajectory from 2017 to the present looks really good in that respect.

I think there's no rush. They need PCIe 5 (let alone 6) and Thunderbolt 5/DisplayPort 2.1 to build this structure, and the industry shift to these standards will progress slowly. But I think it's pretty clear that Apple knows what it is doing. There are signs. For example, there were people all up in arms about how Apple uses PCIe lanes in the 2023 Mac Pro, but those criticisms were all predicated on expectations for PCIe 3 lanes, not PCIe 4. The whole thing was just unbelievably stupid. 

I still don't think going beyond Ultra (i.e. 2 Maxes fused together) is going to happen as its a very hard problem that only applies to the high end where its not worth the silicon design and packaging expense to Apple.  An external chassis is limited to the performance of Thunderbolt, which is fine for some uses but not ones that require all of the chip's available PCIe lane performance.  So a MacPro with internal slots still offers something.  I still think that shipping a PCIe card with an M3 Max or Ultra on it so that a MacPro could become a multi-M3 monster is a compelling idea.  Especially if they can figure out how to do UMA over PCIe, but potentially even without that by using virtual memory and/or frameworks.

I was vague about what that “as-yet unrealized” approach would be, because I don’t know how to guess. I just think the 2023 Mac Pro commitment to PCIe gen4 sends a message, which I’m interpreting as something like, “We don’t need a different interface. PCIe will support what we plan to do.” That got me to look at the upcoming PCIe generations and, wow, yeah, seems like doubling everything (gen5) and then doubling it again (gen6) should be enough.

Your ideas sound good, it’s got to be something like that. 

Interesting set of comments above. I can't see the Mac Pro getting capabilities that can't also be acquired via external Thunderbolt/PCIe enclosures for the Mac Studio and MacBook Pro. I think that's the unspoken, as-yet unrealized message that the 2023 Mac Pro sends. Its place in the lineup is about convenience, having everything inside a box. It's not about having capabilities no other Mac can reach.

Maybe at one point, early on in the development of Mac silicon, Apple thought an Extreme, quad M-series variant for Mac Pro only would make sense. The original "Jade" leak, which was otherwise 100% correct, suggests that. But that is ancient history now. It dates to before the Mac Studio and, more importantly, to before the A17/M3 graphics architecture. Apple has been driving toward this since at least the A12X in 2018. That October 30 presentation in Brooklyn ("More in the Making") for the iPad Pro is important, and with the benefit of hindsight we can see it is the first major event that foreshadows the transition to A14/M1 -- the executives on stage, which include Anand Shimpi (for the first time, I think, I could be wrong), know there is no turning back. It's a very different feel from 2017, in retrospect. 

If they abandoned the M1/M2 Extreme in favor of a different approach, a change in direction that may have been hinted at by Anand Shimpi less than a year ago (February 2023), then Apple has displayed an ability to adapt that is heartening. The whole trajectory from 2017 to the present looks really good in that respect.

I think there's no rush. They need PCIe 5 (let alone 6) and Thunderbolt 5/DisplayPort 2.1 to build this structure, and the industry shift to these standards will progress slowly. But I think it's pretty clear that Apple knows what it is doing. There are signs. For example, there were people all up in arms about how Apple uses PCIe lanes in the 2023 Mac Pro, but those criticisms were all predicated on expectations for PCIe 3 lanes, not PCIe 4. The whole thing was just unbelievably stupid. 

tht said:

tenthousandthings said:

Interesting, basically a hybrid 5K/4K -- 5K horizontal and 4K vertical. Extended 4K or Truncated 5K. Take your pick! 

Good to see movement, finally, in the desktop display space. Started last year with the Dell 6K competitor and the Samsung 5K copycat. After years of 4K being mostly good enough.

Your tease about "8K monitors" expected at CES has me interested...

There's no movement here. If it is a Thunderbolt 4 monitor, it's bandwidth limited to 32 Gbit/s bandwidth, whatever combination of pixels and refresh rate gets you there. These new Dell 34 and 40 inch monitors are 136 PPI displays or so, using typical resolutions we've seen for a long time now.

Contrary to the article title, these Dell monitors are not aimed at the Studio Display. Time and again, Mac users want 220 to 250 PPI external displays to match their laptop displays, or the native pixel density that macOS is designed for. Since they are 136 PPI, it's the same story since Thunderbolt 3 came out, almost 8 years.

The 40" 5K2K isn't even that original. The LG 5K2K 34" has been around for what, 6 years?

Oh, I see. I didn't grasp that this is what "5K2K" is. I haven't had much interest in a 21:9 display, so didn't realize that is what that is, a 21:9 4K display.

I will buy a single-cable Thunderbolt 4 8K display pretty much on the first day it becomes a reality. I won't wait for Apple, hoping for something like that or a mind-blowing, budget-busting Apple 10K (2x 5K, exactly)...

For fun, I'm going to cut-and-paste my old list of the progression of 16:9 resolutions: