mr. h

elijahg said:

Metriacanthosaurus said:

tomahawk said:

McJobs said:

I'm so sick of the Tim Cook era, where every product redesign comes with a substantial price increase over previous model. When Steve was there, products got better at the same price points (e.g. MBP--->unibody MBP), or even were less expensive at the same time (e.g. polycarbonate iMac--->aluminum iMac).

Why wouldn't a new device, with a larger screen, and likely a true "Pro" version of the Pro, cost more? It's going to have a more expensive screen, likely larger battery and potentially more powerful CPU/GPU combos.  It should cost more...  Even if it has the same config as the "better" 15" (8-core, 16GB and 512GB SSD) it would only be ~$200 more than the 15".

Yeah but see...that's reasonable, and not what it will be.

Reasonable would be $2,999 for 8-core, 16 GB, and 512 GB.

Instead it will be $2,999 for 8-core, 16 GB, and 256 GB.

16GB? You'll be lucky. The "best" config of any of Apple's range (except the Mac Pro) still only has an abysmal 8GB RAM.

No. The 15" MacBook Pro comes with at least 16 GB.

alysdexia said:

Crap is a noun;

In British English it is also an adjective; I am British.

alysdexia said:

go what?

"go" definition from the Oxford English dictionary:

verb … informal say: the kids go, ‘Yeah, sure.’

alysdexia said:

and; alumium.

If you are going to correct people, you should really make sure you're not making your own stupid mistakes. If you were aiming for the idiotic American version of the word, it's "aluminum". However, I am British so I will continue to spell the word correctly: aluminium.

alysdexia said:

slower ports

The Dell has a single Thunderbolt 3 port, which is sufficient for the intended purpose of connecting a multi-port dock and power over a single cable. The other ports are actually useful, for example if you need to connect a USB stick that has an "A" connector, or connect to a monitor and the only thing available to use is a male HDMI connector (cable already attached to monitor and monitor ports are inaccessible - this scenario has happened to me twice in the last three months).

alysdexia said:

3-hour shorter battery life

The XPS is available with a 3-cell or 6-cell battery. The price I quoted was for a configuration with the 6-cell version. Obviously battery life depends on usage, but I believe that with a 6-cell battery, the XPS battery life is around 1 hour shorter, not 3.

alysdexia said:

and stupid 3-star-average Amazon reviews?

The Amazon review that you quote is clearly from a customer who did not buy the machine direct from Dell. They bought it from a third-party seller that sold it with an unlicensed copy of Windows 10 Pro. If you buy direct from Dell, you can get a legitimate Windows 10 Pro license.

alysdexia said:

harder -> touher

Again, if you're going to "correct" people, make sure you're correct! Does your computer even have a spell-checker? Do you know how to use it?

cgWerks said:

fastasleep said:
Irrelevant? Explain how any of those things that I described *helps* usability. It's useless, ridiculous clutter. Whether you think iOS 7 was a "UI disaster" is irrelevant to me. It was a major, major undertaking, and yes it had its share of misses as would come with any project of that scope in such a short time, but it also brought some much needed change. That was a long time ago, the pendulum has swung back in most ways, and we've moved on — or at least some of us have.

What I mean, is that when people bring up skeuomorphic design (in a negative sense), they often go to the stuff like leather and felt. Yes, one *can* incorporate stuff like that, but it is the more cheesy aspect of a UI-paradigm that makes more sense on the whole (IMO), than flat-design.

Yes, things are swinging back slowly, but a lot of damage has been done and remains. It wasn't worth it to get rid of felt textures. Felt might take a bit more storage space/bandwidth, but at least I won't delete an email accidentally trying to figure out what some obscure icon means. Or, I can use a UI faster with colorful, memorable icons than a when the delete icon is the same color as the send icon. etc.

The thing is, the damage of which you speak (action of different buttons being difficult to quickly determine due to lack of colour/similarity of appearance) was a problem that started to creep in much earlier than iOS 7 and OS X Yosemite (in OS X at least - see for example Mail in OS X 10.1, then 10.4, then 10.7).

I think the UIs (iOS and macOS) driven by Jony's "flat" design solved way more problems than they created. I share your desire though for more differentiation and colour in buttons.

It's a shame you didn't get this article checked by someone who actually knows anything about power electronics. It's really quite confused in multiple ways.

Firstly, it refers to GaN "chips" implying that it's being used here for integrated electronics (i.e. a single die containing multiple transistors, like a microprocessor), but that's not what's happening. These chargers are using established switched-mode power converter topologies and replacing silicon (Si) MOSFETs (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistors, a Si die consisting of a single transistor, that is able to handle lots of voltage and current, relative to a microprocessor transistor) with GaN HEMTs (High-Electron-Mobility Transistors).

Secondly, it refers to voltage being "conducted". Power transistors do not "conduct" voltage. In power converters like these, the power transistors operate in a "switched mode", being either "off", or "fully" on (where they behave like a very small resistance in the tens of milliohms range). When "on", they conduct current, and when "off" they block voltage.

When conducting, the power transistor dissipates some power (referred to as "conduction loss"), this being equal to the current squared multiplied by the resistance. So, lower resistance = lower losses. However, when making the transistor, there is a tradeoff between how many volts the transistor can block when off, and how low its resistance is. The more volts you need to block (in the case of these power converters, the transistors are usually rated at around 600 V to 650 V), the higher the resistance. The wide bandgap of GaN gives a better tradeoff between voltage blocking capability and on-resistance, compared to Si. Additionally, when transitioning from "on" to "off" or visa-versa, there is a brief period of very high power dissipation in the transistor (referred to as "switching loss"). Crudely speaking, the faster a transistor can perform these transitions, the lower the switching loss will be. GaN power transistors are much faster than Si devices and the switching losses are much smaller.

At a very basic level, switching power converters operate by taking small packets of energy from the source (in this case a mains/grid connection), storing that energy temporarily, and then outputting that energy to the load. The energy is stored internally in inductors and capacitors, and routed/transferred with power transistors and transformers. How often the packets of energy are routed around is referred to as the switching frequency. The higher the switching frequency, the smaller the energy storage components and transformers can be. However, as mentioned previously, each time a transistor transitions from "on" to "off" or visa versa, it wastes some energy as heat. So the higher the switching frequency, the higher the losses. If in each transition you lose less heat, you can afford to increase the switching frequency and therefore make the inductors, capacitors, and transformers in your power converter smaller.

In summary, the key benefits of GaN over Si, when it comes to power transistors, are:

A better tradeoff between on-state resistance and blocking voltage (lower conduction loss)
Much faster switching transitions leading to lower switching losses, allowing a higher switching frequency.

Now, both GaN and Si transistors have an upper limit of temperature that they can safely operate at, typically 150 C or 175 C. Any power dissipation in the transistor is converted to heat, which must be extracted by a cooling system to keep the transistor below the maximum allowed limit. If you've less heat to extract (due to lower losses), you can make the cooling system smaller. So, there's two ways that the power converter can be made smaller:

1. Get the losses down so the cooling system can shrink
2. Increase the switching frequency to make the inductors, capacitors, and transformers smaller

When compared to power converters using Si transistors, a GaN-based one will be using a mixture of these two approaches.

GaN transistors are also smaller than Si ones, but the impact of that is fairly minimal relative to the other effects outlined above.

To learn more, you can get a free book on power electronics here (registration is required, but free). For the avoidance of doubt, I am not Barry Williams.

karmadave said:

Apple's new 6K XDR monitor is cool, but you can buy an 8K XDR monitor, for around $3,500

reference please.

Finally. The price. Comparable PC workstations are a MUCH better value.

Again, reference(s) please. Obviously the only Mac Pro price we know is for the base configuration, and everything that I've read so far is that the equivalent specs from HP, Dell, and Lenovo cost more.