saarek

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saarek
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  • M4 24-inch iMac vs M1 24-inch iMac compared -- A muted upgrade for first-adopters

    saareksaarek
    You know, when you consider how crippling inflation has been over the last couple of years this revised iMac actually represents good value.

    With the base model now having 16GB of Ram, which the M1 generation should have had, it will perform well for years to come. 

    I’m seriously tempted to get one for the kids. It’s just a shame that the keyboard with Touch ID is not the default option, I don’t like being price gouged on the accessories.
    williamlondonappleinsideruserkdupuis77watto_cobra

  • Inbound M4 Mac updates rumored to arrive as early as October 28

    saareksaarek
    mpantone said:
    saarek said:
    I wonder what the odds are on them releasing a real Apple Silicon Mac Pro with an M4 Extreme (of whatever the end up calling it) configuration.
    In 2024? About 0.1%, maybe less.

    In 2025? Higher chance as long as they don't discontinue the Mac Pro product. With Apple Silicon there are no discrete GPU add-in cards so the spaciousness and capacity of the Mac Pro chassis is largely useless.

    There aren't many usage cases that favor a Mac Pro over a Mac Studio at this point. If they can put an M-series Max or Ultra SoC in the Studio, that's probably covers over 95% of their high-end market. Note that there have been no credible rumors about the impending release of M4 Max or Ultra silicon. We're probably still 6-9 months away from that. You can look forward to it when the rumor mill starts churning out speculation but we haven't see any of that.

    Heck, we haven't seen any M4 Macs yet with vanilla or Pro chips let alone the higher-end silicon. One thing that's clear, Apple Engineering doesn't have the bandwidth to push out all four M-series chip variants at the same time.
    I’d assumed they would have skipped the M3 line for the Pro desktops. 

    The process being used is having issues in terms of yield and it was a rather disappointing update in terms of performance, at least from the Pro version point of view, where they appear to have severely nerfed it to push people to the Max version.
    williamlondonstevenozwatto_cobra

  • Inbound M4 Mac updates rumored to arrive as early as October 28

    saareksaarek
    I wonder what the odds are on them releasing a real Apple Silicon Mac Pro with an M4 Extreme (of whatever they end up calling it) configuration.
    williamlondonwatto_cobra

  • Apple Pay dominated the world in just ten years -- but it has more work to do

    saareksaarek
    It’s funny how slow the adoption and roll out of NFC terminals and Apple Pay actually was in the US.

    When Apple Pay hit the U.K. we’d had NFC payments for years and it was already a normal part of paying for stuff. The advantage of course was that you no longer had to take out your wallet and tap your card.
    watto_cobra

  • Why Apple's smart home speaker dreams are still falling short

    saareksaarek
    I jumped on the HomePod bandwagon the second they came out and overall I do not regret my purchase. That's because I bought them primarily for music and on that basis they absolutely wipe the floor with both Google and Amazon.

    I gave our old echo dots to the kids, seeing as they are young and don't really care about sound quality. 

    It has to be said that Alexa has always absolutely humiliated Siri when it comes to answering queries or understanding context. As others have noted it, is really frustrating getting the stupid "I've performed a web search and will display on your iPhone" message for something that it should just answer straight away.

    Also, one major annoyance, at least for me, is when I ask for certain songs. Siri starts playing it and it's by a different band to what I want. Fair enough, sometimes the same song name exists with different bands. So, I tell Siri that I do not like this version and then ask specifically for the song with the band of my choice. Not once, despite the fact that I must have told it close to 100 times that I do not like a version, does it just ignore it and go with what should obviously be my choice.

    Who knows, perhaps Apple Intelligence will actually make Siri usable. It's just a shame that Apple will not bring it to the existing HomePods forcing people to shell out ridiculous amounts of money for a voice assistant that should have worked in the first place...
    sflagelwilliamlondonwatto_cobra