anome

vannygee said:

If my 3-month old 15" touch bar is outdated I'll be pretty mad..
They should update the 12" and wait for coffee lake for the rest

If there's an MBP update at WWDC, it's unlikely to be more than a speed bump, just upgrading to equivalent Kaby Lake processors, and maybe some cosmetic tweaks, like "fixing" the keyboard (so certain tech journalists shut up about it).

On the other hand, if they do a complete redesign again, then your current MBP will be worth a fortune on the collectables market in ten years time. Think of it as an investment.

I haven't thought about creating separate vaults before, but this might be a good reason.

The really interesting thing is that only Acer, Asus, and the nebulous "Other manufacturer" numbers went down. Lenovo, HP, Dell, and Apple all went up. Apple didn't even have the most growth.

It kind of implies that it's the low end that's shrinking, eaten by the tablet market. The high end PC market seems to be growing, just not as fast as the low end is shrinking.

The IDC figures don't include Asus as a separate listing, and show Acer slightly up, although still behind Apple. The top 5 there are all up, with the "Others" down substantially. Again, suggests that the low-end PC and also cheaper tablets, are what's dragging the market down. Must be that 2-in-1s aren't as popular as people think.

JanNL said:

SpamSandwich said:

A reminder that any documents you want to remain secure and away from prying eyes should not be locked using Touch ID only.

Can you please explain? Why is Touch ID not sufficient? Thanks.

I would guess that it's because of the grey area around whether the police can require you to unlock Touch ID without a warrant. Or that you can even be physically coerced into unlocking Touch ID. (Although I doubt many people have to worry about someone grabbing their thumb and forcing it onto the sensor.)

Aside from the legal issues, Touch ID is pretty secure. Whether you need to worry about law enforcement access, or someone using coercion of some sort is for you to decide.

Soli said:

What is the rationale behind Apple skipping the iPhone 7S for the iPhone 8? I understand why Samsung has to jump to a new number after their Galaxy Note 7 debacle, but why Apple?

There doesn't seem to be one, but people are speculating they'll do something special for the 10th anniversary release, and having it just be an "S" model isn't enough for them. The thinking seems to be that the 8 will be released alongside the 7S and 7S+.

As for the port, I can easily see Apple will switch the iPhone (and iPad) power bricks to USB-C, and stop selling the USB-A versions. They'll keep the USB-A Lightning cable in stores during the transition, since not everyone will have USB-C ports available, plus USB-A has become a standard for charging and data beyond personal computing (Cars and planes have USB-A ports to hook up your devices for charging and to access your media, for example.) At the same time, I expect they'll push (more) towards wireless sync.

I give a 50/50 chance that we'll see the new USB-C iPad charger (12W) at the proposed March event when they're supposed to be showing off new iPads. (If not in March, it will be whenever they do announce the new iPads.) And it's a no-brainer that any new computer (iMac. Mac mini, Mac Pro) will have USB-C/TB3 ports (whether they have other ports remains to be seen, but it's more likely than on the portables).

Still, I have no inside information or knowledge, so I could be completely wrong on this. It is just wild speculation at this point.