rcfa

Fine. I miss the old QuickTime where third parties could simply provide format plugins, allowing support for any media type in any app that was adhering to QT standards, provided anyone cared enough about a format to provide a plug-in for it.

Apple e.g. doesn’t support .amr audio, and my mobile carrier sends me voice mail as e-mail with .amr (adaptive multi-rate audio format) attachments. So each time I first need to export the file to VLC just to listen to it.
In the old days, someone could have written an .amr plug-in, and the problem would be solved. Now for years I hope that either Apple supports the format finally, or the carrier switches to .mp4 or something like it that Apple supports. No such luck.

Apple certainly took a step backwards with QTX

georgie01 said:

Unsurprising, but also surprising. 5G isn’t even of particular significance right now. I keep 5G off on my iPhone 12 Pro to save battery because there is currently no gain from using 5G.

I know technologies are developed well before they become useful, but I feel like this charade is getting old. LTE never lived up to the potential in the US but they pushed into 5G. And 5G isn’t generally reaching LTE+ potential speeds (except for mmWave). Maybe 6G will live up to the promises of LTE+

The problem isn’t technology, it’s the way spectrum is auctioned off in the US: it only requires deployment/coverage, it doesn’t mandate services quality. And as such TelCos make cells as big as possible to reach the contractually mandated coverage, and then only improve service quality when and where absolutely necessary.
As a result people are stuck with crowded cells with sub-par performance.

Other jurisdictions set not only coverage but also service quality standards, as part of the frequency auctions; if telcos don’t meet both, they forfeit spectrum for which they paid a lot of money. That properly incentivizes them to actually live up much better to the promise of a technology.

Similar issues with road construction: in many jurisdictions a company bidding for building a road has to warrantee it for a certain amount of time, e.g. a decade. If it doesn’t hold up and requires maintenance, the company must provide it free of charge (and likely has to be insured to prevent shell companies from conveniently going out of business after construction is done). At least in many US jurisdictions the company with the lowest bid gets the job, no warranties required. Correspondingly shoddy/cheap is the road construction, with a few years later already having cracks and potholes all over.

In short: Blame the political process, not technology…

Any conversion utilities?

A sign of things to come, and that without taking into account Apple’s proprietary neural engine, GPU, etc.:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16073/arm-announces-neoverse-v1-n2

pulseimages said:

What about iPhone SE 3? 

You mean the iPhone 12 mini?

Names change, positioning doesn’t.
There’s no point getting hung up on a name.
Positioning is decided by products management, naming is decided by marketing.
Product management deciding they need an iPhone SE replacement doesn’t mean marketing will name the resulting product iPhone SE.
If your leak is from product management, you may hear about a new iPhone SE, which may never hit the market under that name. That doesn’t mean the leak was inaccurate, it just means marketing decided on a different name.