theothergeoff

friedmud said:

Also: I bought the Netgear DOCSIS 3.1 modem to go with the Orbi.  My local cable company can't use it yet... but as long as I was buying a cable modem I don't see why you wouldn't get DOCSIS 3.1 gear.  I do think it's odd that Netgear went with 3.0 for this...

Market forces.   It's the same reason why Honda sells most of their cars with 2.0 liter gas engines, vs fully electric cars.  Even if  people can afford a $35k+ EV car, they can get where they need to in a new Civic  at the same speed (because rates are limited) with a 4 cylinder gas engine for < $22K.


realistically 3.1 doesn't really buy you anything until you get in the 300mbps+  cable internet speeds (or you have really crappy cable plant with lots of multi bit errors).   Few users (I would be surprised if 10% of Cable Modem users are using more than 75Mbps) are paying for that much bandwidth,  and few  cable providers sell that much bandwidth (and fewer sell 3.1 capabilities yet, for a myriad of reasons), and fewer have the backhaul to support it.  

If most people want to to spend less than $75 a month on their Cable bill... why would anyone spend nearly $300 (or more) for a cable modem/router, when you can get a decent one for $99 bucks, that can handle 99.9% of your bandwidth needs (if you doubled your 75mbps every year for 3 years, you just crack 600mbps).   and in 3 years, when 3.1 starts taking over, that $300 will then be  $99, be 2nd or 3rd generation (better code, better interoperability), so you save $100 over that time period, and have a better 3.1 modem.

When does Apple care about peripheral producers....

with Qii charging becoming a std, and wireless backups/updates also a direction Apple is driving, one would think the number of cables sold for charging/data-xfer will drop in general.  Yes, one will need a cable, and using a USB C to C cable would make total sense (and changing the wall wart to a USB-C as well).  iPads, iPhones, Macs would all share the same cable.    dropping the C-Lightning cable is one less SKU.  

Heck, if they built a Mac mini with an SSD, they could probably live well within a 100W cable and likely a 65 W wall wart, which seems to be a great way to simplify/shrink  a lot of systems (Apple TV as well) and lower repair costs (power supply failures are a thing).   Yes, the cable would be $29.99, but it would be 'one cable' that you could use on everything from your laptop to your charging mat to driving a Monitor, or even a sound subsystem. 


One Cable to Rule them All.

If I were building a dock, I'd build one with a 120V 2A (150W) power supply with 4 powered USB C connections, able to drive a Mac Laptop (60W), a monitor (30W), and an external disk storage (40W)., and have a powered port for charging other devices.  

rfrmac said:

Sorry, this means little to me.  Anything passed 5 years is just guess work or nice to haves.  Things are changing too fast for anything longer to make any sense.  Apple's upping it's R&D budget and continues to make acquisitions that I hope change things a great deal.  Others are not standing still either.  I don't care about VR much, what I care about is speed and quality.  I hope there are no more "hobbies" in any of their plans.  Do it, do it right, keep it up to date until you have something else that is really better.  People get depended on products in their work flow and Apple doesn't seem to care about that. , 

It means little to you translates to:  'I'm the only Market Apple should Care about, spend money on my requirements"

I'd be more surprized/shocked to hear the exact opposite ("Apple has no plans past 2019")   The lead times for 'insanely great' HW&SW integration is measured in years, not months, and especially 90 day financial quarters.    

At this point... your 'faster' Mac/iDevice for 2019 is probably 'designed' on the inside, and 2020 is probably being prototyped in computational models.  And that's for stuff we know about.  Wearables (glasses are going to be a thing...  just when and where...   When does "Apple Watch" turn into "Apple Undershirt" (All I need is a LTE connection, airpods that vibrate  for notifications, and body interface).   When does your iPhone/iPad become just a 'brick' in your wallet, and a wireless  Pad of various sizes is supplied as the interface, with a pencil.  Why not extend the watch/airpod model and go back to modular computing, all you need to do is lay all your equipment in a wireless 'bin' and have it recharge over night (or charge from the light electrical energy from your body (ala the matrix).
I hope they are thinking 10 years out....to 'where the puck will be...' [as a hockey fan, the real Gretzky gift was  not in the fact he skated to where the puck would be, but he and his Oiler line/Coaches could strategize their skating a couple of shift changes ahead...]

Hobbies at a corporate level is probably better than allowing 200,000 employees to spend 20% of their time working on 'hobbies.'  As you can explore capabilities while the market matures, and have already 'been there done that' and understand the pitfalls of particular paths of solution (or started moving the base technologies to a point where your hobby work tells you where the optimal intersection work will be).   

Even building a faster Mac/iPhone requires years of effort to do it profitably (can they stick a CRAY 8 on a chip and make your phone faster... maybe, but it's likely not going to matter much if the touch screen response doesn't align well with the CPU speed... it's the 'system,' stupid.).  Like 64bit processing... Apple didn't need to do that, but it basically paved the way to ARKit and FaceID stuff, and it got all the bus pathways laid out 2 years before the real 'heavy duty traffic' passed through the pipes.  Did it speed up the iPhone 6 and 7... yes... but did most people need 64 bit CPUs ... no.

Korea!   Seriously, that a serious attack on the home turf of an adversary.  (not _the_ adversary). 

appleempl said:

Apple should reopen the ability to downgrade back to iOS 10.

Not for a battery problem.  having the hardware fault due to overdrawing a worn-out battery is likely more damaging to _YOUR_ computer, than 'oh, my 30 time upgraded game seems a bit laggy on this 2.2 year old hardware on the latest version of the OS'

Now, for other reasons not mentioned here, I would entertain a more complete argument.  but 140 posts into this thread's context, your idea is well past wrong.