davidmalcolm

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davidmalcolm
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  • Trump says Tim Cook complained to him about the EU

    davidmalcolmdavidmalcolm
    My expectation would be that this isn’t true. Cook does t seem to love dealing with Trump. He may go to places like Davos which I don’t like. But Trump would be much more exhausting to talk to. Someone like Trump doesn’t shut up. I could see him accepting the call, but Cook is much more private than Trump. He’s not one to complain to someone with as loose of lips as Trump. 
    9secondkox2baconstangwatto_cobra

  • Apple A16 chip is now being produced in the USA

    davidmalcolmdavidmalcolm
    For people saying, “oh these chips are made in the US then shipped somewhere else” you don’t seem to get it. Right now Apple is so incredibly dependent on operations in China. If war broke out between the US and China. (Realistically right now a China would be much smarter to look north and absorb large chunks of Russia. Winning a land war with Russia would seem to be much easier than picking a fight with its many heavily populated south Asian countries. Though China clearly would like to reabsorb Taiwan.)

    Right now if America went to war with China or Taiwan that would mean no access to the best fabs in the world (also the fabs would be destroyed and the kinda behind them lost.)

    by ensuring Apple and other companies can build advanced chips off the Island it gives China less leverage and motivation. One of the benefits for taking Taiwan would be disrupting the west. Because without Taiwan we as a society would be falling back on much older less efficient fabs in the US and Europe they can’t make power efficient chips that are perfect for mobile devices.

    also Apple has manufacturing operations in China, India and Brazil. I suspect those plants in Brazil are in part there because Apple is hedging their bets not just because the labour is cheap. 

    It’s also pretty obvious that as soon as it’s practical Apple will move device assembly to robots. Even if it costs more they’ll have at least some products being made in part by robots so that as climate change destabilizes the warmer/poorer parts of the world, they’re still able to pump out devices. (Also let’s be honest, COVID  put a huge wrench into things. So the sooner they can move to a system where they don’t have to rely on large groups of humans breathing the same air, the sooner they will.)
    ronnwatto_cobra

  • iOS 18 Freeform app getting giant navigation & object positioning upgrades

    davidmalcolmdavidmalcolm
    Apple really needs to implement double tap to undo, at least as an option that can be turned on. It’s so intuitive and it not being there makes Freeform useless on iPad for anyone who is familiar with Procreate or Affinity or anything else. 
    williamlondonwatto_cobra

  • Hands on with the new Sonos Ace headphones

    davidmalcolmdavidmalcolm
    jamnap said:
    Have been waiting forever for these headphones, but after the recent Sonos App update bricked my 12-speaker Sonos home setup I have lost confidence in Sonos.  Will be selling off my system (lots of $$$ spent) and moving on.  Any suggestions on a replacement?  Maybe Bose or Apple (wish Apple would purchase Sonos because as good as the big HomePod is, it needs soundbars and bass modules).
    I’ve got two HomePods as a Stereo pair which I find provide great sound. And when friends come over and watch movies I’ve had a few ask where my sub is and when they find out it’s all in the HomePods themselves they’re always floored. 

    I have noticed for some people though they associate good sound with rattling bass. The HomePods have up firing woofers which means they’re intentionally not rattling your home (which apartment dwelling neighbours will appreciate.) I’m regularly shocked that none of my neighbours complain about how loud I play my music but between the concrete walls in my building and the fact that the bass isn’t being directed into the floor etc nobody complains. 

    For headphones it’s funny, I have a set of AirPods 3 I really like (I don’t like in ear tips) but I almost never wear them since getting my Dyson Zones, I get sick when exposed to perfume (which is in almost everything people clean themselves and other things with which makes leaving my home a mine field.) The Dysons sound quite good but I’m sure I’d appreciate a set of AirPods Max if I could save my wear them out. 

    I find that Sonos has a great reputation for their hardware, but the company seems to be failing to appreciate good design with their software. I had to help someone with the Sonos app for Mac a few months ago and I remember thinking, “this is the software that one of the top audio brands give their customers? This makes Android’s UI look like a high quality product!”

    I just don’t understand why some companies spend so much on hardware engineering and then trip on the finish line with bad software for the user. I’ve recently gotten into using Dyson stuff more and their app isn’t perfect, but it’s clear they approached it and accomplished what they were trying to do. (I wouldn’t do it all that way, but I can’t say that it isn’t well thought out and there isn’t attention to detail.) 
    jahblade

  • If China invades Taiwan, TSMC can wreck Apple's chip production line remotely

    davidmalcolmdavidmalcolm
    People who point out that all of Apple’s chips are in one basket fail to realize that China is also Apple’s second biggest market. 

    If China did seize control of Taiwan Apple probably has enough connections to be able to secure that they’d still at the very least v be able to sell the best chips they have in China unless the machines are destroyed.

    for the rest of the world they’d probably switch over to having Intel or another fab work on whatever their current designs are. Apple probably has assurances that they can take a lot of TSMC’s IP to another fab in this kind of incident. Plus I suspect that if China was going to invade they’d be pulling out a lot of top talent before the fighting began or soon after. 

    Don’t get me wrong, it would probably be very bad for absolutely everyone, but Apple would land on their feet faster than most. They already have a fair bit of manufacturing happening out of China. 

    I suspect we would see a really rough year where consumer spending on technology would plummet as prices of goods would sky rocket. You might even see the resurgence of the dumb phone as a lot of companies just try to piece together anything they can ship. 

    You’d also see a lot of problems in general with inventory that is made in China as I suspect the west would go pretty hard with cutting off China economically. They’d probably be allowed to keep dealing with Russia, India, the Middle East, Africa and South America, but the EU and North America would be pissed and would use it as an excuse to push for more local manufacturing. (Heck so many things could be automated in terms of manufacturing and a lot of the reasons companies don’t use machines is because Chinese peasant hands are cheaper and rich people like having slaves.)

    Honestly, I think the most dangerous thing to think of happening when China invaded is the fact that we know they were working on Covid as a bio weapon, and I doubt they learned their lesson so I’d expect to see China invade and that we’d also start seeing some new plague released in a few major western cities as China announces that they’re closing their borders. 
    williamlondonwatto_cobra