For context: watchmakers have often used 10:10 for marketing materials because it's symmetrical and it doesn't obscure the brand logo, which usually goes below the 12 position. Apple uses 10:09 probably because they want to be "ahead" of everybody else.
Similarly, iPhones are all set to 9:41 in marketing materials because that's the approximate time Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone back in 2007.
You realize the event wasn't live, right? And Tim's watch clearly shows 10:09 the second he shows up in the video which was 10:01 at the latest "real time".
I know it isn't live, and it shows because they've been sloppy throughout. Check out his watch at the 20 minute mark, it's way off.
In general, Apple's presenter's watches (and demo devices) show the local time for live events, and they tried to do that here but obviously didn't do a very good job.
But they didn't do that, as I just mentioned and gave a fairly exact timestamp (to within a few seconds) for for you to check that they did not in fact do this.
You have a point, now wondering if there was some some memo akin to - pretend you are landing a plane as many appear to be doing just that with their arm flail.
Did you also notice that everyone wears white shoes when on that auditorium stage? I wonder how many other dress code-related tips or requirements every presenter is given?
Is 5G rollout in the US really comprehensive enough at this point to deliver on any of the promises they're making about it at this event?
[Edit: found this benchmark from a month ago: https://www.tomsguide.com/features/5g-vs-4g] basically looks like Verizon delivers on the promised speeds, but it still isn't clear to me what the spatial distribution of the higher speeds looks like.
I have an iPhone11. My phone says it connects to 5G already, so I’m actually confused by this launch. Why would iOS tell me I’m connected to 5G? I’ll be honest that I’m unfamiliar with this space
Which is silly because even most 4G networks (LTE) don’t technically fall within the original standard of 4G. ITU actually lowered the standard of 4G to meet the limitations of LTE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_(telecommunication)).
I got stuck trying to explain (without being the annoying "well, actually" guy) why my SO's phone wasn't screwed up when switching from ATT to a different carrier.
Because on the old SIM it said 5G dammit! Now it only says 4G so how is that not slower??
Apple deserves to be shamed for this one, as they implemented a feature that essentially allows carriers to lie and display whatever network technology icon they want, instead of displaying the true status as reported by the network interface.
Source? It's the first time I hear that carriers are able to override the network technology/protocol logo. As far as I know the whole "carrier profile" thing (which is what allows carriers to do this, among other things like arbitrarily restrict tethering, etc) is Apple-specific.
No the same capacities exist,though perhaps not under the same name, on Android; my S10+ dutifully switched from reporting 4G LTE to 5Ge when AT&T decided on that lie.
Android manufacturers are even worse when it comes to this as they let carriers customize the firmware completely (which then interferes with updates) and should also be shamed. This doesn't however say that this is some kind of standard; it's just OS manufacturers being in bed with carriers and doing them favors.
It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation, isn’t it? By getting the chipsets out in the phone they’re at least solving the chicken part. Plus, iPhones are usually supported for a good 5 years, so this is a bit of future proofing for people who buy today.
I live in a midwest city with a population around 25,000. We won't see 5G for a long, long time. We need signal that goes farther, not faster. 4G is still being rolled out to more rural areas. 5G is a feature I'd rather not pay for.
There's a lot going on there like "5G service in city X!" where they really mean "we have an antenna mounted at the ballpark to cover a high density use case."
There's really 3 types of 5G: ultra-wideband, mid-band, and low-band. Ultra-wideband is the 5G you hear about most, with gigabit speeds but you have to be within direct line of sight to the cell site. There's also mid-band and low-band, which have similar ranges to LTE and can deliver a few hundred megabits instead of gigabits, and can handle problems like congestion better.
5G can potentially help with that when deployed on existing spectrum, because increased transmission rates reduces airtime utilization, and some cells adjust their range based on utilization. It might not help much, depending on current utilization and terrain and what not, but it'll probably help some, and I imagine carriers will do gradual deployments of that to lower density areas when there's enough handsets that support it and base station equipment is cost reduced enough. I don't think it's going to be fast, but I don't think it'll be on the long, long time scale.
Of course, 5G on the new high frequency spectrum is unlikely to be useful in low density areas, and is unlikely to be deployed. Also, I think AT&T has plans to declare their LTE coverage to be 5G :P
Are the speeds really that important or are they already good enough? Any time I try to do something substantial over cellular I wish for either better coverage or lower latencies (oh, the latencies... even with great signal strength)
It depends on whether the higher speeds let you use mobile in conditions where WiFi/broadband is flaky or unavailable. But, I agree in general that is a bigger problem in more rural areas and that's where mobile range is more important as well.
Mobile providers still upgraded their existing antennas. With my Note20 Ultra 5G on Sunrise, half of the time I am outdoors I get 5G (in Aargau) with speeds between 400mbps-600mbps.
Apple opened up HomePod to third party services this summer, through an official SDK. A lot of people are jumping to conclusions based on the lack of a screenshot.
Spotify has been pretty slow to pick up new features (iOS widgets, watchOS app, etc).
Their marketing works...Apple markets their fancy screens and people think they're better. But Samsung makes their screens and Samsung keeps the best screens for their own phones.
Prior to LG, Samsung was their only supplier of OLED screens. Even with LG onboard, LG is supplying only 20% for the upcoming iPhone 12. My point is, Apple always slaps a fancy marketing name to their screens (Retina...) but in reality the the quality is worse than Samsung phones. But Apple buyers ask if Samsung Phones have a Retina display...and when the answer is no, they feel they're getting an inferior phone.
There's a difference between 5G and Ultrawide 5G. Some carriers in the US, for example, just rebranded their 4G LTE networks as 5G because the top of their speed range is above the minimum required speed for actual 5G.
I laughed out loud at that. Explaining the deletion of the charger, which is effectively a price raise, through the environmental angle is genius-level marketing and margin improvement.
To be clear: I support the move and think Apple's environmental efforts are both sincere and meaningfully helpful. It's just the best, "aren't you happy we're raising prices!" I've ever seen :)
To be fair, the chargers are inferior compared to brands like Anker. GAN chargers are so much smaller. Apple took the easy way out instead of coming up with a decent charger.
One could argue that a company like Stripe's target demographic is _precisely_ the enterprise markets; yet, their product pages are slick af! Smooth scrolling, animations and all that jazz.
Because they're made up of folks who love JavaScript (and animations, of course)
Apple's marketing team is similar. They're probably a bunch of people who _love_ making videos; probably studied film or art or spent a ton of time on Final Cut Pro etc etc.
Could this be because Stripe has to sell, essentially, to developers, not executives, unlike most B2B products? Developers love slick product pages as much as the next guy, but none of that matters if sales are made over golf sessions with executives.
Although I personally feel it may just be innate appreciation or love of the craft. It's interesting to compare Stripe with other providers such as PayPal, AWS/Amazon, Square. AWS is (and has been) focussed on selling to developers, startups to massive companies. Yet, their product pages aren't as slick as Stripe's. They built out their product with the ethos from the Retail side -- frugality, ship fast & often etc. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Stripe has some serious frontend considerations too. I think their original value point was lowering friction in payment systems and reasonable rates. Stripe still does those things really really well, but so did Braintree (now part of PayPal).
Where Stripe absolutely nailed it is the infrastructure around it. Their SDK documentation and continous improvements still outpace Braintree.
For instance, Stripe has custom elements that you can use to interact seamlessly with their SDK, with little setup needed[0]
I could not find a similiar integration from Braintree.
Compartively, I find their informational SDK page a bit more polished than Braintree, respectively, though I realize some of this is personal style and taste, Stripe has clear pathways for me to find the information I want right on the side bar and referenced throughout the landing page for the client SDK[1] where as Braintree[2] is more narrowly focused, which with payments, may mean I miss a better set of features I should be aware of.
Reducing frictions and painpoints is what they won with, in the end. It was easy to setup and maintain. How many 3rd party services have both of those things that handle something as complex as payments? I can't even get AWS integrations with their own SDKs working together without some effort
That's a tired and specious argument that might have held water if Apple were only successful for a year or two. There are a myriad of devices from competitors who also had large marketing budgets but eventually disappeared into the night.
But it's essentially been 13 years (if you only start counting from the introduction of the iPhone). Great engineering/product deserves a big marketing budget. They go hand in hand.
With my browser (chrome) it was H.264. Still, I'd take 6 Mbps H.264 over 1.5 Mbps H.265 any day. I'm sure the apple stream was VBR as well - I tried to pick a representative/average segment to do the quick calcs on.
Maybe I'm being too negative but other parts of the production are throwing me off. The white balance is so cold and the profile photo style vignetting and background blur is so overbearing.
Its a great keynote but I would have preferred more subtlety in the production toys.
I was wondering how they'd done the house with open sides. Looked really realistic but even apple don't have enough money to burn on stripping the side wall of a house off for a 10 minute segment... or do they?
They built it, it's really not that difficult. The sky, view through window and trees around it look like they were added after. The top floor may have been a seperate piece perhaps.
It looks impressive, but why does everybody talk in that weird way;"Wow. What an exciting day." It feels so weird and artificial. It actually makes them sound less enthusiastic and genuine to me.
They also present a lot of features (especially photos), but without comparison I am left wondering, how much better is the new stuff. And why should I buy it...
Sounds great with that new glass too; I wondered if they would show how much better it is -- Maybe do something funny, risky, and slightly stupid like the Cybertruck incident. Nope: Just 4x better than before -- Whatever those 4x means. Get some hammers out -- Do something...
The A14 is also faster than before. No real-life demo comparison. Wouldn't it have been easy to compare the games on the GPUs (stuttering frame rate on one side)? Just something. If you can't show us why it is better, it is not good enough.
Oh, and why no actual live demos with the phone instead of just 100 great photos and videos of the phone and by the phone?
The old keynotes had a slide with the comparison of the mini, normal, pro models and the end. Those actually served as an informative summary at the end. Instead Tim Cook just told us what we had seen, and that "it was the day everybody had waited for", and then I am left struggling to remember why the pro is more expensive and how much more it was...
They may be the best at this, and it does feel (overly) polished, but I feel the old much simpler Jobs keynotes were far ahead in enthusiasm and far more entertaining. Sorry.
I believe you can generally just capture a scene with a lot of dynamic range (say a person standing in front of a flat wall with the light falloff ranging from dark to overexposed) and then zoom in on a frame and you'll see more or less banding because of the tough decisions the capture device has to make on what data to throw away/reduce and what to keep
> why does everybody talk in that weird way;"Wow. What an exciting day." It feels so weird and artificial
This gets me every time. It's so artificial that I'm pulling my hair. I honestly don't know, why everyone is always so so "excited". Every time I hear someone say "this is exciting", I think BS. We had a colleague and his go-to phrase was "This is super exciting". "SUPER EXCITING!"
Where do you live?
Because I'm from Europe and I used to work for a US company but in a European office and it was kind of a running joke among us that the people from the HQ would always call everything "amazing" and have these all-hands meetings that felt like rallies to us.
I think this fits the cliché that we have about Americans, although I'm sure it's not like that everywhere.
I'm from Czech, but live in Silicon Valley. For last 10 years I have been really struggling with this. Every time someone calls something "amazing", I automatically ask them politely to tell me what they really think. Oh boy, I heard some harsh feedback after the first "it's amazing".
Thanks for the link. Pretty much sums up my experience. And I can say it isn't so much about Easter European... it is more like American vs the Rest of the World.
Oh man, as a Yank who has worked at startups, I feel like that’s just the sales people we have sadly perfected. “Let’s all cheer instead of whistling past the graveyard.” FWIW, devs here struggle with it too.
I kinda don't think Tim was in the theatre. It's much more likely he's match moved and laid over pre-recorded renders. they're not the first tech group I've seen go to full pre-recorded footage like this, it takes _all_ the risk out of a failed demo.
They supposedly use Keynote, but I think with these presentations it's more likely custom motion graphics in After Effects or possibly Final Cut Pro if Apple is imposing in-house software.
Apple have an in house team that specialize in just these kind of keynote slides. I imagine it's worked up mostly in keynote, maybe with a bit of extra software like After Effects on the side.
They employ an outside company to do the bigger CG graphics, promo introductions and renders of the devices
Take a look at any of the "new" releases of Macbooks over the past couple of years, and all the problems that people have with them. From butterfly keyboards, to having to charge through right side to avoid CPU slow down, to all the problems with software in Catalina especially how it breaks features on older Macbooks, e.t.c
IMO anyone who actually gives about tech should have stopped buying Macbooks since they started soldering SSDs into the board.
It makes a lot of technical sense to solder SSDs to the board given the insane speed of modern SSDs. Solder joints are much better than a connector for a high bandwidth link. Even tiny parasitic capacitances become a major headache.
Are they accomplishing anything that couldn't and isn't already done well be an NVMe M.2 connector? All that comes to my mind is a miniscule space savings.
I suspect they are getting better speed and power consumption, and deeper integration with T2 (which functions as the controller chip). Apple is generally ahead of the curve when it comes to SSD performance in laptops, so it's unlikely that a generic SSD connector would function as well.
That's probably a good idea. I do expect the battery gains as well as speeds be massive though. I suspect at least 50% longer lasting battery, and less burning of my laps
Is this the first iPhone launch without Phil Schiller (in a while)? Looks like individual experts have taken over each segment of iPhone (from Phil Schiller). Still I miss him!
Intercom is not a solution. Our house growing up had an intercom in every room. We used it for all of 2 days before we figured out that simply calling someone loudly was simpler.
Apple is great at providing solutions to problems that they tell you that you have.
Not to mention that other device like Alexa already have this.
How can you complain at Apple for making up problems and at the same time criticise Apple for not having a thing everyone else has? If Amazon had it first, Apple didn't make it up. If not having it impresses you then it shouldn't be a point that Alexa had it first, that would be bad. If having what Alexa has impresses you, then Apple should be adding it, and adding it is not bad. You can't have both.
> Not to mention that other device like Alexa already have this.
Then don't mention it. What on earth do Android or Lisp or Linux users think will happen when they say "X had it first"? The only sane conclusion is that X is not the reason people avoided Android/Lisp/Linux. That was already clear because people were not tempted over by the presense of X. So if the only point is show gloat or be dismissive and/or scornful, who would want to move to a system which has the same feature but has a public facing community that's more about gloating and scoffing than being welcoming or helping?
Tinfoil hats, cancer treatment, self driving cars or perhaps platoons for highways, smart homes that are easily hacked, wireless low powered implants that cause benign tumors that sue a tech company into bankrupty, but the shell company opens another 5g implant company.
They’ll likely have to change that if for no other reason than someone will use their plan to run some servers using many TB/mo of data or something crazy. Like how MS needed to cap “unlimited” OneDrive because a few people were storing 100TB of system images.
5G is for the cell carriers not the customers. Towers can simultaneously transmit to a certain number of clients at a time, so if you can get latency down and bandwidth up, you can service effectively more clients in the same period of time. With that said clients benefit too since they can shut down their power-sucking radios sooner. Think of it like turbo boost for CPUs: it's all about racing to get the link to sleep.
Has the network ever been a problem or bottleneck for the deployment of IoT, or is it just yet another bullshit buzzword pushed by the telecoms industry, similar to remote surgery/telemedicine? Most current IoT is using 2G cellular modems and seems to be fine with it given that the majority of devices don't need high bandwidth and the carriers themselves are not rationing the amount of SIMs that can be active, suggesting that there's plenty of capacity left too.
It's not about network speed, it's about the power requirements, range and iSIM.
With LTE-M (not sure if it's considered 5G, but it's a new LTE standard being rolled out at the same time anyway) or NB-IoT you can have devices using way less power to stay connected to the internet, and the range can be very impressive too. Of course, the bandwidth is also very low. But that's OK for things like tracking devices (they're making reindeer trackers in Finland) and basic smart watches.
With eSIM or iSIM you can also make the device smaller
> is using 2G cellular modems
I think carriers really want to discontinue 2G eventually. It's really inefficient. They've already dropped support for 3G around here.
I'm guessing it's also way more power hungry than LTE-M/NB-IoT
I’m a layman on this topic but watching the Apple video it sounded like 5G has higher power requirements than LTE. He even explained how it switches between them to conserve battery. LTE when you don’t need speed and 5G when you do.
Do not be confused. These technologies are very different to the 5G technology (called “New Radio”) the new iPhone and 5G phones in general are using. They are designed around using as little energy as possible and maintaining connectivity in very difficult conditions to the expense of speed and latency.
The reason IoT hasn’t completely taken off yet is simply because it’s still developing as an industry. There are lots of open questions about maintenance and architecture and how cloud IoT services should work. As it becomes more commodified it will become widespread.
[edit - noticed sibling post... “smart toasters” etc total BS nonsense, but IoT for business will be transformative]
Both LTE-M and NB-IoT are considered technologies of the 5G family. Technically they are way simpler versions of LTE, but they can coexist with "normal" 4G and 5G. A 4G / 5G base station can allocate part of its radio resources to these mobile technologies. In the future, with slicing this allocation can even be dynamic.
Most of the times, when people discuss how 5G will serve "massive machine type communications" they refer to LTE-M / NB-IoT.
There was a lot of talk about how the number of sensors on autonomous vehicles meant many gigabytes of data per minute would be produced and transmitted by 5G back to servers to help train the systems. I'm not sure if I actually believe that, but that's certainly what people were claiming.
The claims are even more dumb, that it enables automimous cars by connecting them - would you let a car drive you around if it required a mobile connection to work properly? Nope. Note that Elon Musk / Tesla nor any other self driving car uses anything of the sort. It all needs to be running on the car. And they're managing to do self driving already without any 5G. For uploads you can just wait til the car is home and use the wifi, or slowly (though not that slowly really) upload with 4G.
I think this is a futurist persons painting a sexy picture. In reality, it would be cool if - as we slowly approached a self driving world- the vehicles could relay real time road conditions to the cloud. This of course would enable the vehicle to be aware of upcoming road conditions. It’s not so much that the internet connection is doing the driving but it could aid it. Something simple like potholes. They show up after a rain and get fixed a few weeks later (if you’re lucky). If the car knew there was a pothole ahead and knew to drift to the left portion of the lane to avoid it that would be nice. The vehicle wouldn’t have to do real time jerky swerve reaction because it knew it was coming. Maybe next month a vehicle notices the pothole is gone, the cloud forgets about it. Something like this is the practical use of IoT on the roads.
Certainly not this one simple example in a single device (vehicle). I don’t know where our 3/4 G limits are but I think if you multiply the data transmission by many millions of devices and many millions of reasons to communicate, it’s possible it would put a strain on our present network capacity.
5G in the case of self driving cars is meant to have an auxiliary role. For example, it may warn surrounding cars for pot holes or even notify instantly of a sudden breaking.
The theory here is nice, but who here on HN does actually get good unthrottled speeds on 4G now? Will carriers just magically stop throttling 5G after they sell it?
A few days ago I downloaded a 4.8GB MacOS update over a 4G connection. That took 25 minutes, which is an average of 3.2 MB/s. My provider claims 30 Mbit/s, so that is pretty reasonable.
That's great and all, but that would leave me with 0.2 GB of data for the rest of the month (Germany). Great now I just have to disable downloading of pictures and videos in Whatsapp.
It will become cheap enough (both hardware and subscription wise) that companies can include them in basically everything. That way you can't prevent your TV from uploading data to the mothership by not connecting it to wifi.
I am hoping that SOME TV manufacturer SOMEWHERE follows Apple's lead and markets a privacy-conscious TV as a feature. I have never bought a smart TV (I last bought a plasma 12 years ago), so I have managed to somehow skip the whole smartTV thing. And I'd like to continue avoiding it.
we've got one and have never used it for anything other than plugging in the laptop via hdmi. it just happened to be a decent deal and nice picture - the "smart" aspect was completely ignored.
I have a feeling that the concept of TV will be phased out.
There will be iPhone, iPad, iOS-based computer, iDesk, iWall, and finally, an iHouse.
You wake up to a big ceiling made out of ceramic-enhanced scratch-resistent glass screen, which artificially has emulated sunrise, so your experience of waking up is natural and absolutely amazing. Siri greets you, plays you a song, and while you brush your teeth, calmly tells you about your day, which is of course planned by an intelligent algorithm powered by the latest A42 neural chip.
Bacon is crispy, and eggs are tender. What a breakfast prepared by iChef! Not to mention the special sauce that is part of your weekly gourmet discovery program. Just savory.
The wall is playing you your morning news.
"What day is it today?" asked Siri, cheerfully. "It's Apple Event's day!"
Phew, for a second there, you thought Siri has asked you a real question. Turns out it's just rhetoric.
The new A43 chip is going to blow A42 out of the water. The trade-in program is amazing.
You look around the house, and the iWall looked bleak. The screen contrast-ratio on iChef is lacking. Your iToothbrush doesn't have a speaker as booming as the one in the advertisement.
"Hey, Siri. I'd like pre-order the new iHouse package!"
"Of course. Do you want to enroll in the trade-in program to exchange your current iHouse with a discount."
"Yes, please."
"Done."
A month later, the trade-in team has taken away the iHouse, yet the new iHouse isn't there. There has been a delay; the iHouse was supposed to be transported by the Pixel automatic railway, but Google just cut the project last week, so everything is stuck in warehouse for now.
"Damn it!"
You cursed, reflected, and walked into a Samsung shop.
GoogleMind notices your entry to the Samsung shop and expands the pervasive storage field, incrementally improving its probability of extracting money from you in future. "AndroidHouse had toothbrush features years ago, moron" says the shop assistant in lieu of a greeting. Looking around hoping to see some example appliances and integrations you are puzzled that most of the store is given over to themes. In the distance two people are cheering because the washing machine has dark mode. Presumably the lights in their house don't work.
A customer wearing a V for Vendetta mask locks eyes with you, they start to say something about a YouTube video they're following to upload a custom firmware to their cooker which lets the gas burners override the legal safety limits and double as a room warmer, but at the mention of YouTube a solid sheet slams down from the roof in between you blocking the conversation. "Get the best YouTube experience" it ... instructs? Demands? The place where it should take a response from you is missing. You turn away.
The shop assistant invites you over to the VR counter where you can tour the AndroidHouses on offer, several tens of thousands of makes and models all alike, and hands you a pair of carefully cleaned and sanitized VR goggles, which you put on. "Please select all images of brutal murder scenes or books on leopards" the familiar captcha test prompts. You go through the motions, accepting that it's perfectly reasonable that you might be a spam customer. Nobody has been able to speak to a human about the captcha contents for at least a decade now.
The VR goggles go blank, then show you a scene from a Virtual Reality headset of the 1980s. "I thought Android VR was quite good?" you mutter. "Mandatory Samsung overlay" says the assistant, "runs all the same apps". Data gathered by the headset arrives at the nearest orbiting FaceBook point of presence, sneaking past the privacy filters. Which privacy legislation applies to the satellites is still being fought. You tour some houses, you watch some ads. It's terrible that Apple doesn't let you block ads properly. You watch some more ads. Disgusting Apple blocking third-party plugins. You ask if AndroidHouse allows third-party plugins, but it doesn't.
Leaving the shop, undecided, you glance in the door of the GNU/OpenLibreHouse Organization. "Our houses would have electricity now if it wasn't for Microsoft!" you overhear. A large and intimidating man walks up to you and grabs your arm. "If you want to see your daughter again, come with me and move into your new OracleHouse". He moves and you go with him like his grip was iron. It might well be. Your wallet is missing. He nods at a crowd of people standing nearby and your heart sinks. Consultants. "We can have your toothbrush setup within six months - a Gartner leading average time" one of them says. You never asked for this.
I don't think I've commented here for years, but had to dig out the login credentials for this one.
I recently spent 20 minutes looking at TVs on Amazon because the NBA finals were happening and I figured it might make sense to finally get a TV. Every damn TV I saw either had Alexa built right the eff in or it was Alexa-or-some-such enabled.
It's frustrating. I'd like to have a "smart" TV because having Youtube, Hulu, Netflix or Spotify on it is fairly useful, but the divide between smart and dumb TVs is now too large, with nothing sensible in the middle.
I'd definitely pay extra for a privacy-oriented TV, but I fear that a handful of privacy nerds willing to pay 20% or even 50% premium is not enough to offset the economies of scale and make this a reasonable proposition for any PM at any existing TV manufacturer to bring up.
Every single smart TV I have owned was complete and utter garbage and I am a tech person who carefully reviews what they buy.
I went with a Sony for the display tech but dear God is AndroidTV hot garbage. Interfaces, UX, everything terrible. Worst of all are the $20 main processors used in these things. They feel as if they're run on a 2007 BlackBerry.
The lackluster solution is to get a TV box (AppleTV, Xiami stuff...idk) but why is that even necessary.
Buy a computer screen + the $100 AppleTV module. At least Apple is privacy-serious, and you get Netflix-Hulu-Youtube. It doesn’t give you a classic tuner though.
I hope that would happen but nothing on the technology roadmap suggest that is possible. Even if 5G patents were free, i.e you paid Zero for all Wireless patents cost, Antenna, RF Front End and 5G Modem is expensive.
Even if you somehow Apply Moore's Law, it will take at least 3 Gen reduction in cost. ( That is 6 years ).
The original iPhone was 2.5G and could load webpages just fine. But when a modern iPhone only has a 2.5G connection, it’s useless. All we need to make 5G critical is for webpages to start being 500+ MB for basic text plus all the associated ads, trackers, and other important features.
The demo stated that iOS will only use LTE by default and only kick in to using 5G when it needs it. It will be interesting to see how it makes that decision.
You're off by an order of magnitude, because it's a max speed of 4Gbps. Not 4GB/sec. Bits and not bytes.
Your overall point is still valid, though. Most users will get essentially zero benefit from this and data caps or throttling will kick in hilariously quickly.
> what technology advancements will there be in the next 10-20 years that actually make 5G technology useful?
Real-time 3D/VR video streams. I think this will start happening immediately after release since the Pro models have LiDAR. Expect weird, interesting things to happen in games and streaming.
It's pretty dumb to call it magsafe. With a laptop it really did keep your laptop safe from getting pulled off a desk when you got up to get a coffee and walked through the cord like an idiot.
What exactly is 'safe' about this? It's just... mag.
It’s called marketing and brand recognition. Most people won’t care it’s not a literal description of how it works, but they will have heard of MagSafe before and get the general idea.
In my experience MagSafe never did that, so it’s likely to be the same on the iPhone as on the Macbooks. Most times when I tripped over the cable, it pulled the cable in a straight line. Unfortunately I can lift my Macbook with the MagSafe cable by pulling in a straight line, so it never actually broke apart the way it was intended. Also unfortunately, it breaks apart very easily if you push up or down, which happens frequently when the laptop is sitting on my lap.
So it would unplug itself constantly in normal use, but still pull the Macbook off the table when I tripped on the cable. It’s still better than nothing, but in my experience MagSafe never worked the way it was advertised. Especially as the Macbooks got lighter.
Why do people want magsafe back? The new USB-C cord pulls out of the wall if you trip over it ... and the little slot doesn’t get filled with metalic dust any more.
Watched for a little bit, gave up. I used to find them very interesting back in the Jobs era, but now they're pretty boring. I think partly it's just because the tech is maturing so there's less exciting stuff to show, but it's also definitely down to a much less crisp presentation style.
I have zero interest in Apple, never owned one since the very first iPod mini, but I still find their marketing department to be fantastic. These virtual keynotes also have amazing production quality.
I do agree the talking parts could be maybe 50% shorter though.
I started watching the keynotes with 2 tech friends when I was like 16 years old and as we grew older (am 27 now) they are the only events across the year where we sit down, talk a bit about tech and make fun of all the stupid bullshit in the keynote.
The League of Legends x Apple announcement is bigger than people might think. I 100 % believe that this is the start of a massive shift from pc/console to mobile which we have seen before in China. In fact, it is clear from this announcement that iPhone IS considered a console now for Riot. Huge stuff.
It's not the start of a massive shift. You'd be surprised what the gaming spending per platform breakdown looks like - phones are a MASSIVE chunk, and growing by far the fastest.
I don't have the numbers on me to back this up but maybe someone else can fetch them.
The rule of thumb when it comes to sizing gaming audiences is:
- Mobile: Billions
- Console: 100s of millions
- PC: 10s of millions
In other words, a decent mobile game (not Fortnite or LoL, but something like Among Us) can get 100s of millions of users, a good console game can sells 10s of millions of copies and a PC game can sell millions of copies.
10's of millions of PC gamers? I think you're off by a huge margin. I believe DFC reported that there's over a billion PC gamers in the world in 2020. It's a billion dollar market in itself.
According to one source[1], steam alone has 95 million monthly active users. Not every pc gamer has steam running, so actual PC gamers are definitely in excess of 100 million. By comparison, ps plus and xbox live have 103 and 90 million monthly active users respectively. I'd say that PC and console gaming are within the same order of magnitude.
I think you might have it reversed. I think the LoL announcement is mostly catering to the LoL playerbase (which is mostly located in China) rather than a great ploy to steal PC gaming share.
Separately from that, its pretty interesting how obviously faked the "playing" of LoL in the video was, in an presentation that is otherwise so focused on attention to detail.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this is partly why Epic made such a big move trying to put an Epic store on IOS (to the point of sueing Apple).
They managed to get Fortnite to run at 120FPS on Ipad Pro just this March and probably realized that high performance gaming on IOS is here and will only get better as CPU\GPUs improve on mobile, and sued Apple by August.
What better way to monetize your immersive, high performance, addictive game when it's in everyone's pocket all the time ie no need to sit at your console or PC.
Even though "Android had it X years ago" is mostly a meme by now, I can't resist: The Nexus 5 had magnets that automatically aligned it on a Qi charging dock 7 years ago.
I was sure that the Nexus 5 was probably not the first one, and someone was going to come along to provider older examples :P
I was surprised that the iPhone didn't already have it in the last generation, given that accurate alignment is a well known problem with wireless charging and magnets are a well known solution. Maybe they kept it back on purpose just to have a new feature for this release and/or sell another round of charging accessories.
Here's an even easier one, Apple had them as early as 2006! But then pulled them, even though everyone loved them... and now are reintroducing it as new
eSIM gives way more control to the carriers which is not a good thing. I can take out a physical SIM, move it to a different phone, bring it abroad, lend it to someone, etc and the carrier has no say in that.
With an eSIM, once it's provisioned onto a phone it can't be "extracted" and getting a new one involves the carrier, which can say no or make the process difficult/annoying, even if unintentionally.
Does the Chinese dual-sim iPhone have any restrictions or downsides compared to a US or EU model? I might consider it as my next step if I can let go of the iPhone 8 and its fingerprint sensor.
Which region are you in and which region is your system set to? I always thought things like this were determined by which region you select when you set up the phone (or something similar like detected via GPS/network instead of being bound to the hardware itself).
You’ll never get Apple fans to understand that. They will happily toss a $1000 Apple’s way yearly for a new unrepairable device to be created with rare earth metals in China, shipped across the ocean on a freighter and then turn around and tell you that paying more for a charging cable is helping save the environment. Diehards do not care about the cost, they are already paying.
I switched from android whatsapp to ios years ago and still have all the messages. I don’t recall how I did it, but it is definitely possible unless whatsapp locked things down.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 488 ms ] threadSimilarly, iPhones are all set to 9:41 in marketing materials because that's the approximate time Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone back in 2007.
In general, Apple's presenter's watches (and demo devices) show the local time for live events, and they tried to do that here but obviously didn't do a very good job.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NygtPyTIkto
[Edit: found this benchmark from a month ago: https://www.tomsguide.com/features/5g-vs-4g] basically looks like Verizon delivers on the promised speeds, but it still isn't clear to me what the spatial distribution of the higher speeds looks like.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/atts-...
Because on the old SIM it said 5G dammit! Now it only says 4G so how is that not slower??
Verizon just announced they are expanding today their 5g in three US cities... yet in reality there isn't much 5G now in those cities they mentioned.
Pointless marketing by all!
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/10/13/210785...
> Verizon 5G Nationwide service is available today to more than 200 million people in 1,800 cities around the US.
I'm sure there's some trickery going on here, though?
5G can potentially help with that when deployed on existing spectrum, because increased transmission rates reduces airtime utilization, and some cells adjust their range based on utilization. It might not help much, depending on current utilization and terrain and what not, but it'll probably help some, and I imagine carriers will do gradual deployments of that to lower density areas when there's enough handsets that support it and base station equipment is cost reduced enough. I don't think it's going to be fast, but I don't think it'll be on the long, long time scale.
Of course, 5G on the new high frequency spectrum is unlikely to be useful in low density areas, and is unlikely to be deployed. Also, I think AT&T has plans to declare their LTE coverage to be 5G :P
Spotify has been pretty slow to pick up new features (iOS widgets, watchOS app, etc).
1. Demand some integration point on appleOS to be opened up
2. Drag their feet on using it once Apple makes it available
3. Roll said integration out almost silently when they finally implement it
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/05/26/samsung-iphone-12-displ...
To be clear: I support the move and think Apple's environmental efforts are both sincere and meaningfully helpful. It's just the best, "aren't you happy we're raising prices!" I've ever seen :)
5 star marketing
Can you name even one country where it is not?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
You can tell Apple's target demographic isn't enterprise markets at every turn.
Apple's marketing team is similar. They're probably a bunch of people who _love_ making videos; probably studied film or art or spent a ton of time on Final Cut Pro etc etc.
Although I personally feel it may just be innate appreciation or love of the craft. It's interesting to compare Stripe with other providers such as PayPal, AWS/Amazon, Square. AWS is (and has been) focussed on selling to developers, startups to massive companies. Yet, their product pages aren't as slick as Stripe's. They built out their product with the ethos from the Retail side -- frugality, ship fast & often etc. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Stripe got my business years ago because of the API (compared to the CyberSource merchant API at the time) and the competitive rates.
The pretty UI on their site had precisely zero bearing on the decision.
But I feel there's something to be said or appreciated about building or striving to build something beautiful despite that.
Where Stripe absolutely nailed it is the infrastructure around it. Their SDK documentation and continous improvements still outpace Braintree.
For instance, Stripe has custom elements that you can use to interact seamlessly with their SDK, with little setup needed[0]
I could not find a similiar integration from Braintree.
Compartively, I find their informational SDK page a bit more polished than Braintree, respectively, though I realize some of this is personal style and taste, Stripe has clear pathways for me to find the information I want right on the side bar and referenced throughout the landing page for the client SDK[1] where as Braintree[2] is more narrowly focused, which with payments, may mean I miss a better set of features I should be aware of.
Reducing frictions and painpoints is what they won with, in the end. It was easy to setup and maintain. How many 3rd party services have both of those things that handle something as complex as payments? I can't even get AWS integrations with their own SDKs working together without some effort
[0] https://stripe.com/payments/elements
[1] https://stripe.com/docs/stripe-js
[2] https://developers.braintreepayments.com/start/hello-client/...
But it's essentially been 13 years (if you only start counting from the introduction of the iPhone). Great engineering/product deserves a big marketing budget. They go hand in hand.
As a comparison I'm typically getting like 1500 kbps from Netflix on a 1 gigabit per second connection on their "HD" plan.
Its a great keynote but I would have preferred more subtlety in the production toys.
They also present a lot of features (especially photos), but without comparison I am left wondering, how much better is the new stuff. And why should I buy it...
Sounds great with that new glass too; I wondered if they would show how much better it is -- Maybe do something funny, risky, and slightly stupid like the Cybertruck incident. Nope: Just 4x better than before -- Whatever those 4x means. Get some hammers out -- Do something...
The A14 is also faster than before. No real-life demo comparison. Wouldn't it have been easy to compare the games on the GPUs (stuttering frame rate on one side)? Just something. If you can't show us why it is better, it is not good enough.
Oh, and why no actual live demos with the phone instead of just 100 great photos and videos of the phone and by the phone?
The old keynotes had a slide with the comparison of the mini, normal, pro models and the end. Those actually served as an informative summary at the end. Instead Tim Cook just told us what we had seen, and that "it was the day everybody had waited for", and then I am left struggling to remember why the pro is more expensive and how much more it was...
They may be the best at this, and it does feel (overly) polished, but I feel the old much simpler Jobs keynotes were far ahead in enthusiasm and far more entertaining. Sorry.
Watching them attempt to display emotions is hilarious.
When the comparison is 8 vs 10 bit HDR while 99.5+% are watching a crappy SDR youtube feed on SDR panels comparisons literally can't be real.
This gets me every time. It's so artificial that I'm pulling my hair. I honestly don't know, why everyone is always so so "excited". Every time I hear someone say "this is exciting", I think BS. We had a colleague and his go-to phrase was "This is super exciting". "SUPER EXCITING!"
I think this fits the cliché that we have about Americans, although I'm sure it's not like that everywhere.
https://blog.ipspace.net/2019/11/why-are-you-always-so-negat...
They employ an outside company to do the bigger CG graphics, promo introductions and renders of the devices
I personally think this is simply too much.
IMO anyone who actually gives about tech should have stopped buying Macbooks since they started soldering SSDs into the board.
Instead of just buying the same model and swapping in the drive.
Minor MacBook update possible in Nov or Dec.
Intercom is not a solution. Our house growing up had an intercom in every room. We used it for all of 2 days before we figured out that simply calling someone loudly was simpler.
Apple is great at providing solutions to problems that they tell you that you have.
Not to mention that other device like Alexa already have this.
> Not to mention that other device like Alexa already have this.
Then don't mention it. What on earth do Android or Lisp or Linux users think will happen when they say "X had it first"? The only sane conclusion is that X is not the reason people avoided Android/Lisp/Linux. That was already clear because people were not tempted over by the presense of X. So if the only point is show gloat or be dismissive and/or scornful, who would want to move to a system which has the same feature but has a public facing community that's more about gloating and scoffing than being welcoming or helping?
On a more serious note: what technology advancements will there be in the next 10-20 years that actually make 5G technology useful?
We all know that the manufacturer will stop updating the firmware after a few months, leaving botnets to pick them up.
With LTE-M (not sure if it's considered 5G, but it's a new LTE standard being rolled out at the same time anyway) or NB-IoT you can have devices using way less power to stay connected to the internet, and the range can be very impressive too. Of course, the bandwidth is also very low. But that's OK for things like tracking devices (they're making reindeer trackers in Finland) and basic smart watches.
With eSIM or iSIM you can also make the device smaller
> is using 2G cellular modems
I think carriers really want to discontinue 2G eventually. It's really inefficient. They've already dropped support for 3G around here.
I'm guessing it's also way more power hungry than LTE-M/NB-IoT
Can you make something like this with 2G? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/airbolt/the-airbolt-gps
I don't think so...
[edit - noticed sibling post... “smart toasters” etc total BS nonsense, but IoT for business will be transformative]
Most of the times, when people discuss how 5G will serve "massive machine type communications" they refer to LTE-M / NB-IoT.
In Denmark, I get unlimited data for 18 euros/month. I don't have a wired connection; I just use my phone as a hotspot.
(Both were really 1TB/month before throttling and not truly unlimited.)
Which kinda tells how 5G is also a marketing gimmick - it's theory of 2Gbps will be hugely different from actual reality you'll get when using it.
Edit: In the US.
It's not a consumer technology.
There will be iPhone, iPad, iOS-based computer, iDesk, iWall, and finally, an iHouse.
You wake up to a big ceiling made out of ceramic-enhanced scratch-resistent glass screen, which artificially has emulated sunrise, so your experience of waking up is natural and absolutely amazing. Siri greets you, plays you a song, and while you brush your teeth, calmly tells you about your day, which is of course planned by an intelligent algorithm powered by the latest A42 neural chip.
Bacon is crispy, and eggs are tender. What a breakfast prepared by iChef! Not to mention the special sauce that is part of your weekly gourmet discovery program. Just savory.
The wall is playing you your morning news.
"What day is it today?" asked Siri, cheerfully. "It's Apple Event's day!"
Phew, for a second there, you thought Siri has asked you a real question. Turns out it's just rhetoric.
The new A43 chip is going to blow A42 out of the water. The trade-in program is amazing.
You look around the house, and the iWall looked bleak. The screen contrast-ratio on iChef is lacking. Your iToothbrush doesn't have a speaker as booming as the one in the advertisement.
"Hey, Siri. I'd like pre-order the new iHouse package!"
"Of course. Do you want to enroll in the trade-in program to exchange your current iHouse with a discount."
"Yes, please."
"Done."
A month later, the trade-in team has taken away the iHouse, yet the new iHouse isn't there. There has been a delay; the iHouse was supposed to be transported by the Pixel automatic railway, but Google just cut the project last week, so everything is stuck in warehouse for now.
"Damn it!"
You cursed, reflected, and walked into a Samsung shop.
A customer wearing a V for Vendetta mask locks eyes with you, they start to say something about a YouTube video they're following to upload a custom firmware to their cooker which lets the gas burners override the legal safety limits and double as a room warmer, but at the mention of YouTube a solid sheet slams down from the roof in between you blocking the conversation. "Get the best YouTube experience" it ... instructs? Demands? The place where it should take a response from you is missing. You turn away.
The shop assistant invites you over to the VR counter where you can tour the AndroidHouses on offer, several tens of thousands of makes and models all alike, and hands you a pair of carefully cleaned and sanitized VR goggles, which you put on. "Please select all images of brutal murder scenes or books on leopards" the familiar captcha test prompts. You go through the motions, accepting that it's perfectly reasonable that you might be a spam customer. Nobody has been able to speak to a human about the captcha contents for at least a decade now.
The VR goggles go blank, then show you a scene from a Virtual Reality headset of the 1980s. "I thought Android VR was quite good?" you mutter. "Mandatory Samsung overlay" says the assistant, "runs all the same apps". Data gathered by the headset arrives at the nearest orbiting FaceBook point of presence, sneaking past the privacy filters. Which privacy legislation applies to the satellites is still being fought. You tour some houses, you watch some ads. It's terrible that Apple doesn't let you block ads properly. You watch some more ads. Disgusting Apple blocking third-party plugins. You ask if AndroidHouse allows third-party plugins, but it doesn't.
Leaving the shop, undecided, you glance in the door of the GNU/OpenLibreHouse Organization. "Our houses would have electricity now if it wasn't for Microsoft!" you overhear. A large and intimidating man walks up to you and grabs your arm. "If you want to see your daughter again, come with me and move into your new OracleHouse". He moves and you go with him like his grip was iron. It might well be. Your wallet is missing. He nods at a crowd of people standing nearby and your heart sinks. Consultants. "We can have your toothbrush setup within six months - a Gartner leading average time" one of them says. You never asked for this.
I don't think I've commented here for years, but had to dig out the login credentials for this one.
I recently spent 20 minutes looking at TVs on Amazon because the NBA finals were happening and I figured it might make sense to finally get a TV. Every damn TV I saw either had Alexa built right the eff in or it was Alexa-or-some-such enabled.
It's frustrating. I'd like to have a "smart" TV because having Youtube, Hulu, Netflix or Spotify on it is fairly useful, but the divide between smart and dumb TVs is now too large, with nothing sensible in the middle.
I'd definitely pay extra for a privacy-oriented TV, but I fear that a handful of privacy nerds willing to pay 20% or even 50% premium is not enough to offset the economies of scale and make this a reasonable proposition for any PM at any existing TV manufacturer to bring up.
I went with a Sony for the display tech but dear God is AndroidTV hot garbage. Interfaces, UX, everything terrible. Worst of all are the $20 main processors used in these things. They feel as if they're run on a 2007 BlackBerry.
The lackluster solution is to get a TV box (AppleTV, Xiami stuff...idk) but why is that even necessary.
I hope that would happen but nothing on the technology roadmap suggest that is possible. Even if 5G patents were free, i.e you paid Zero for all Wireless patents cost, Antenna, RF Front End and 5G Modem is expensive.
Even if you somehow Apply Moore's Law, it will take at least 3 Gen reduction in cost. ( That is 6 years ).
That is why everyone continues to improve WiFi.
The original iPhone was 2.5G and could load webpages just fine. But when a modern iPhone only has a 2.5G connection, it’s useless. All we need to make 5G critical is for webpages to start being 500+ MB for basic text plus all the associated ads, trackers, and other important features.
I see you've never used GitHub before.
I'm using Safari 14.0. Do you have any measurements (maybe on another browser) that show GitHub serving particularly large pages?
E.g. Apple are rumoured to be working on their own AR glasses for release within the next couple of years.
Your overall point is still valid, though. Most users will get essentially zero benefit from this and data caps or throttling will kick in hilariously quickly.
Real-time 3D/VR video streams. I think this will start happening immediately after release since the Pro models have LiDAR. Expect weird, interesting things to happen in games and streaming.
They have been using their own CDN for quite some time.
What exactly is 'safe' about this? It's just... mag.
I thing the “safe” monicker is still warranted.
It’s called marketing and brand recognition. Most people won’t care it’s not a literal description of how it works, but they will have heard of MagSafe before and get the general idea.
In my experience MagSafe never did that, so it’s likely to be the same on the iPhone as on the Macbooks. Most times when I tripped over the cable, it pulled the cable in a straight line. Unfortunately I can lift my Macbook with the MagSafe cable by pulling in a straight line, so it never actually broke apart the way it was intended. Also unfortunately, it breaks apart very easily if you push up or down, which happens frequently when the laptop is sitting on my lap.
So it would unplug itself constantly in normal use, but still pull the Macbook off the table when I tripped on the cable. It’s still better than nothing, but in my experience MagSafe never worked the way it was advertised. Especially as the Macbooks got lighter.
I find them really hard to watch. It's about 95% fluff and bullshit and 5% about the technology. I usually just read the bullet summary afterwards.
I do agree the talking parts could be maybe 50% shorter though.
I don't have the numbers on me to back this up but maybe someone else can fetch them.
- Mobile: Billions
- Console: 100s of millions
- PC: 10s of millions
In other words, a decent mobile game (not Fortnite or LoL, but something like Among Us) can get 100s of millions of users, a good console game can sells 10s of millions of copies and a PC game can sell millions of copies.
Most people are too young or too old. Most live in low-income. Most don’t have the time or interest to game.
Even between my friends & family, I’d say less than 10% is a PC gamer. And I’m a 30 something male in a high income country.
Afaik the vast majority of chinese/south korean/SEA LoL/Fortnite players play from a netcafe
According to one source[1], steam alone has 95 million monthly active users. Not every pc gamer has steam running, so actual PC gamers are definitely in excess of 100 million. By comparison, ps plus and xbox live have 103 and 90 million monthly active users respectively. I'd say that PC and console gaming are within the same order of magnitude.
[1] https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/357726/Steam_brought_in_...
[2] https://www.playstation.com/en-us/corporate/press-releases/2...
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/531063/xbox-live-mau-num...
1. PC gaming is more diverse than console gaming and that the top games represent a much smaller portion of the overall market.
2. As the poster below said, there are a large number of net cafe gamers in Asian markets that are also PC gamers.
Separately from that, its pretty interesting how obviously faked the "playing" of LoL in the video was, in an presentation that is otherwise so focused on attention to detail.
They managed to get Fortnite to run at 120FPS on Ipad Pro just this March and probably realized that high performance gaming on IOS is here and will only get better as CPU\GPUs improve on mobile, and sued Apple by August.
What better way to monetize your immersive, high performance, addictive game when it's in everyone's pocket all the time ie no need to sit at your console or PC.
IMO the only thing clear is that Apple wanted to promote LOL because of all what's going on with Epic.
I was surprised that the iPhone didn't already have it in the last generation, given that accurate alignment is a well known problem with wireless charging and magnets are a well known solution. Maybe they kept it back on purpose just to have a new feature for this release and/or sell another round of charging accessories.
https://battlepenguin.com/tech/every-cellphone-i-have-ever-o...
* The lack of a way to move Whatsapp messages between platforms. (They'd just need to allow Whatsapp to use Google Drive for backup on iOS)
* The lack of (physical) dual-SIM.
With an eSIM, once it's provisioned onto a phone it can't be "extracted" and getting a new one involves the carrier, which can say no or make the process difficult/annoying, even if unintentionally.
I specifically searched for and bought the physical dual SIM version of the iPhone 11 Pro, because most of the MVNOs here still don't support eSIM.
If I used it with any regularity, I could probably work around it with a keyboard shortcut.
I have nothing that links to Hong Kong or China, so it's probably implemented by identifying the different phone model number of the dual SIM iPhone.
* all phones go obsolete in about 2 years and there is no reason paying $1000 for one when I can buy one 80% as good for half the price.
I don't understand why WhatsApp won't let their iOS version access a chat backup from Google Drive.