crimguy

“Dalrymple goes on to say that an upcoming update will deliver 5.1 surround, 7.1 surround, and Dolby Atmos support to HomePods connected to an Apple TV 4K. HomePod's directional audio is required for the simulated surround sound feature to work, so those looking to replace their home theater system will have to spring for the more expensive model. HomePod and HomePod mini can't be connected to an Apple TV at the same time, though two HomePod mini units can be paired to achieve stereo sound. “

I am also skeptical.  All of this talk about virtualization, Rosetta, etc.  Very reminiscent of when we went from PowerPC to Intel.  The difference is, going to Intel was a boon because suddenly we had Macs that could run linux, Windows, etc.  It was great, and I promptly tossed my Windows machine out a window.

Now?  We're going in the opposite direction, hoping all of these virtualization technologies won't take a bit performance hit (I've got news. They always do!).  He's talking about getting linux running on a mac, which is great, but are we talking about custom ARM builds?  There are only a limited number of distros (granted, all my favorites are there) and even then having ARM support doesn't by any means guarantee compatibility with your arm processor.  Nothing has been built for Apple's chips that I know of (yet).

And graphics performance?  Anyone here really think Apple is going to magically be able to compete with nVidia hardware, with on-the-fly ray tracing support? I find it hard to swallow.  We will need to get AMD or nVidia to create drivers for OSX I suppose if we have their gpu's at all.

Then we have the question of native performance.  Until I see some benchmarks I will reserve judgment.  I'll be very happy indeed if they can get their chips to compete with the latest Ryzen cpus.

Just so I'm not sounding too negative, I am very excited for the common development across iOS and OSX.  This should bring a ton of software across both platforms.  

While xCode is huge with iOS development, I am not aware of those outside of that ecosystem being big fans.  This turns on getting everyone to use it, no?  Otherwise we aren't going to see as many apps from Windows developers who wanted to go cross-platform, but don't want to switch IDE's. 

lkrupp said:

DWillyReyf said:

The tvOS app has always been incredibly buggy, particularly with their Live TV.  The stream regularly crashes when one time slot ends and the next begins.   Audio will start from one show and continue in the background even as you switch to another.  It’s the only app I regularly force close and relaunch.  

No it’s not. I have had no problems with Hulu on my Apple TV HD. I was watching a movie last night with no crashes, no hiccups. The only complaint I have with Hulu is their audio stream which is often only 2 channel stereo.

Yes.  It is.  It's been buggy for me on all of my devices.  Not unusable but buggy.

On iOS frequently live TV won't broadcast when I select a station.
On all of my apple tv's, after a while live tv stops responding, forcing me to relaunch.  

Respecfully, just because you don't have problems doesn't mean the rest of the world is wrong when they do.

Why 23?  Why 21.5?  There must be some wonderful source of these sizes when the rest of the industry had 20" and 24" monitors. 

This is a genuine quesiton btw.  Not trying to be snarky.

I don't think it's a hater crowd.  If it was a HP with a lousy keyboard no one would mention it.  People love the Apple hardware and software, and having a keyboard that's sub-par for what you do most - writing - is unacceptable.  I bought a Lenovo for about $500 for work and, despite the inferior operating system, touchpad, and screen, find myself grabbing it over the macbook whenever I have to compose more than an email.  For basic computing/web browsing etc. I still use the macbook tho, despite the fact it's a lot slower.

I've yet to try the 16" macbook pro, but have heard good things about it.