I think the retail market is maybe dead but datacenters are still a fairly large customer I’d think. HDDs really shine at scale where they can be fronted by flash and DRAM cache layers.
They are still cheaper than flash for cold data, but that’s not going to hold for long. Flash is so much denser the acquisition cost difference for a multi-petabyte store becomes small next to the datacenter space and power needed by HDDs. HDDs require research for increasing density while flash can rely on silicon manufacturing advances for that - not that it doesn’t require specific research, but being able to apply the IP across a vast space makes better economical sense.
I get this pain with Apple in a bunch of different areas. The things they do well, they do better than anyone, but part of the design language is to never admit defeat so very few of the interfaces will ever show you an error message of any kind. The silent failure modes everywhere gets really frustrating.
> The silent failure modes everywhere gets really frustrating.
I literally just experienced this with RCS failing to activate. No failure message, dug into logs, says userinteractionrequired. Front page of HN, nobody knows, apple corp response, 'thats interesting no you cant talk to engineering'.
Read the RCS spec definition document to fall asleep to after the board swap and the call saying they won't work on it since issue resolved, answers exactly what that meant, Apple never implemented handling for it, my followup post: https://wt.gd/working-rcs-messaging
Bingo. My wife’s phone failed to backup to iCloud. To be fair, there’s an error message. However, the list of what takes up space does not show what’s actually taking up space. Such as videos texted to or from you (can easily be multiple gigs as they add up over a year or two)
The list didn’t show the god damn GoPro app, which was taking up 20GB of space from downloaded videos. I guessed it was the problem because it showed up in the device storage list, but literally not reported when you look at the list of data to backup.
iMessage is another great example of a failure. I changed my iMessage email and didn’t receive messages in a family group chat until I noticed — I had to text the chat before stuff started coning through. Previously sent messages were never delivered. And they all have my phone number, which has been my primary iMessage for LITERALLY over a decade. iMessage’s identity system is seriously messed up on a fundamental level. (I’ve had numerous other issues with it, but I’ll digress.)
It’s messed up, but it can be fixed by turning off iMessage and MMS in settings.app and then turning it back on. It’s an old bug. Since it hasn’t been fixed, I’m guessing the solution introduces more problems than it a solves for whatever reason.
I don't even use Photos, except in extreme situation. It was such a major UX downgrade from iPhoto that I could never get it to work without lots of mystery meat guessing, and every interaction with it was so unpleasant because of that.
Knowing that a company had competent product designers that made a good product, but then shitcanned the working product for a bunch of amateur output from people that don't understand dry very basics of UI, from the one company that made good UI its primary feature for decades... well it just felt like full on betrayal. The same thing happened with absolutely shitty Apple Music, which I never, ever use, because it's so painful to remember what could have been with iTunes...
Just think that they marketed Photos as a worthwhile replacement for Aperture as well.
I remember advising many photographs friends on using Aperture for photo library management. Now I feel so bad for ever recommending that. I mean Lightroom now has a stupid subscription, but using Apple software was kind of the point: avoiding the risk of software becoming too expensive or bad because the hardware premium funds the development of good software.
Now you get to pay more for the hardware but you have to deal with shitty or expensive software as well. Makes no sense.
My biggest pet peeve with macOS Music is that you can't go back a track in the "infinite play" mode. Not only can you not go back to the previous track, but you can't even go back to the beginning of the song - the button is just greyed out. It's a purely arbitrary limitation because the same functionality works fine in iOS.
I don't know why it bugs me so much, but I'm at the point of moving my library into a self-hosted Navidrome instance so I can stop using Music.
Photos is horrific for this. No progress, no indicators. And what little status you get has no connection to reality.
Will it sync? When? Who knows? You’re on WiFi with a full battery and charging? So? Might be a minute, might be an hour. Oh, you restarted Photos? Who cares? Not Photos.
Agree that new Photos is abysmal compared to what it was before. And that's before the macOS only features that you don't know are macOS only features (like naming photos! Seriously!)
There's a lot of arcane lore about how to get it to sync. Closing all applications, restarting, then starting photos, then hiding the photos main window, then waiting, was how I got it to work last time. It worked twice, YMMV. If there's a cli alternative, please tell me.
You're not saying it, but ugh, yeah, anything along those lines of magic incantations and this is all the very antithesis of what Apple claims to embody.
The budget offering is a used MacBook from the massive aftermarket stock, but I take your point - it doesn't scale and some people are averse to buying used goods.
Having just switched up to the M4 air you're not wrong. Unless you have the 8GB version and it's causing you memory pressure (which it may not be), or you really need that extra display output (I did), it's a wonder machine still 5 years later.
Also, that wedge design might be peak laptop. It's just soooo nice when lifting off a surface. I know that sounds ridiculous but the attention to detail that went into that design is next level.
Even though I'm not in the market, part of me really hopes the MacBook SE (or whatever they call it) uses the wedge design to clear chassis parts like they did with the SE iphones (although I doubt it).
Fairly confident the CPU has never been the reason you can't install whatever you want on an iOS/iPadOS device. Also not the reason you can't install macOS on it either.
If you want macOS, you buy a Mac. You want iPadOS, you buy an iPad. And if you want an iPad Pro that can double up as a Mac in a pinch, you feel awkward while Tim Cook death stares at you until you empty your pockets.
In all seriousness though, I have an iPad Pro and a MacBook (as a lot of people here do I'm sure) and it would make a poor laptop. And how do you switch between macOS and iPadOS? I don't see a way to have that not be clunky because of all the different metaphors. I'd rather just have both (actually I'd rather just have the MacBook as the iPad sits largely idle, as I'm also sure a lot of people's do).
They can absolutely make the iPad Pro run macOS just fine and figure out the software solution quite easily.
They just need to make it run macOS by default but with an UI layer that could transform it in an iOS like UI in a pinch (while shutting down most of the daemons and stuff iPad OS doesn't use currently). You can already run iPad apps on Apple Silicon macs just fine.
It's purely and simply a commercial decision, to force people to buy multiple devices. If the iPad could run as a Mac they would lose a large amount of MacBook Air and low-end MacBook Pros, this is a simple as that.
It’s clearly for commercial reasons. It still doesn’t change the fact that it would be clunky, like Windows and Android tablets are today. The surface is a poor tablet and Android is a poor desktop OS. The metaphors are oil and water.
Sure, they could adapt macOS and iPadOS enough to make it sort of workable, but I tend to agree with them that it would ultimately be a master-of-none device.
Clearly the reason they don’t want to do it is that it’ll cannibalise other sales. If macOS were written from scratch today it wouldn’t allow apps outside of the App Store or even multiple users. They’re Apple.
Isn't the whole "raison d'être" of Apple to be able to do stuff that other computer company completely fail ?
The surface make a poor tablet but that's mostly because the hardware isn't suitable for it anyway (because they lack the potential Apple Silicon has). It would be quite pointless for Microsoft to focus on tablet style software when the hardware wouldn't be able to make advantage of it and anyway, the touch layer they have on top is largely sufficient for most task you would want to do in tablet mode (especially since it is sold with a stylus and focus on that interaction method).
Android would make a poor desktop OS as is, but Google is merging ChromeOS with it and there is Samsung Dex that is quite competent already. With the increased competitiveness of Qualcomm chips I think they'll attain a quite decent middle ground at some point.
You say it would be a master of none device but isn't it what the iPad Pro already is ? Quite overkill for a content consumption tablet and too limited to be a full laptop replacement. This is particularly true for the 13 inch model, most use the 11 inch, which is kinda pointless for the price. Better to buy a cheaper iPad Air and a good enough laptop for the price asked.
But really the hardware isn't the problem, it's all about the software that Apple willingly gimp, they could very well make a dual mode device with legacy support for "classic" Mac Apps and a way to suspend to swap when you go into full tablet mode. Most of the app in the ecosystem already use the same underlying data and files format, it's all about differentiated UIs in the end. There is no real problem problem, only lack of will, because of greed as you mention.
Apple spent billions on an overpriced VR device, for which they will never be really competitive because one of its primary use case (gaming), largely require open development model that they will never allow because of their greed.
If Apple would figure out the software solution there would be no reason to buy both a Mac and an iPad for most common use case, and that's really the only reason for their lack of interest.
I think that's good because if the competition manage to figure out the hardware, they'll give them a run for their money.
>Fairly confident the CPU has never been the reason you can't install whatever you want on an iOS/iPadOS device. Also not the reason you can't install macOS on it either.
Are you lost? Did you reply to the wrong comment? My comment says nothing about CPU or anything about hardware, at all.
The thread above my comment is talking about a "MacPad" which means running MacOS on Apple tablets and phones.
Of course Apple prevents this even though it's entirely possible to do it, because Apple is going to do Apple things.
>In all seriousness though, I have an iPad Pro and a MacBook (as a lot of people here do I'm sure)
Reality distortion field in effect?
> and it would make a poor laptop.
Uh... all you would need to do is add a keyboard and mouse and it's a laptop, and all of that is already possible to do and has been possible for a very long time.
>(actually I'd rather just have the MacBook as the iPad sits largely idle, as I'm also sure a lot of people's do).
If you have a look around on the interwebs there are longstanding criticisms of how overpowered the iPad is relative to what you're actually empowered to do with it, and by extension the question of who is it supposed to be for. Like you said, Apple doing Apple.
I'm sure a lot of them sit idle because a constant complaint people have (again all over the interwebs) with them is that they aren't good at much besides media consumption, and are rarely people's first choice for that due to convenience.
Whatever though? It hardly matters. Enjoy your iPad I guess(?)
It’s not that the UK government believes censoring porn is a vote winner so much as they really want to use “think of the kids” as a cudgel to widespread surveillance.
In other countries (not least the US) there’s an expectation of privacy which doesn’t really exist in the UK. It’s not seen as a right by any major party or particularly valued by the public at large (“nothing to hide nothing to fear” etc). The government still really wants E2E encryption banned here (as nonsensical as that is).
They don’t see any of this as a vote loser, as none of the alternative parties see it any differently.
Personally I’m kind of happy about this gating even if I disagree on principle, but they’ve already indicated that they have no line. They’ve been very open about seeing everything you say and do.
Despite all this talk about privacy, US would appear to be leading the free world in surveillance and illiberalism right now. It is very reminiscent to me of the radical free speech of Twitter and Republicans, which in practice means censorship.
I'm not saying UK is great, but surely ahead of what the US is doing by a wide margin.
If you look at the UK through the MAGA lens you see that there’s a grain of truth in some of the comments about free speech.
Likewise terminology in the US is sometimes a little turned on its head - in the US “liberalism” means something completely different from actual liberalism (which would be closer to libertarianism).
Also “woke” has been used for so many things that its meaning has been warped from “don’t trust the system” to whatever the right dislikes on a given day, even though they’re ostensibly all about smaller government that stays out of your business.
Politics has always been very subversive but it’s more entangled than ever now.
In a scenario where you have a powerful enough quantum computer and are able to break the encryption you can access any wallet (I.e. the system would be done, and the value would be zero).
It's a dumb analysis of the situation that ignores what would actually happen:
A new wallet cert would be created that uses more bits. Enough that a brute force even with a quantum CPU would take too long. Then you transfer the funds to the new wallet. Abandoned wallets might be claimed during this transition but overall the deflationary trend of btc won't really be effected long term.
I think having Trump whisper in your ear before the next Truth Social post is the least effort way to win at Crypto. Inventing a viable quantum computer seems like way too much effort for the bros.
I'm surprised this isn't a bigger concern given that:
For over a year now we've been at the point whereby a video of anyone saying or doing anything can be generated by anyone and put on the Internet, and it's only becoming more convincing (and rapidly)
We've been living in a post-truth world for almost ten years, so it's now become normalized
Almost half of the population has been conditioned to believe anything that supports their political alignment
People will actually believe incredibly far-fetched things, and when the original video has been debunked, will still hold the belief because by that point the Internet has filled up with more garbage to support something they really want to believe
Absolutely! And don’t kid yourself into thinking you are immune from this either. You can find support of basically anything you want to believe. And your friendly LLM will be more than happy to confirm it too!
Honestly it goes right back to philosophy and what truth even means. Is there even such a thing?
People forget that critical thinking means thinking critically about everything, even things you already think are true because they fit into your worldview.
> Honestly it goes right back to philosophy and what truth even means. Is there even such a thing?
Truth absolutely is a thing. But sometimes, it's nuanced, and people don't like nuance. They want something they can say in a 280-character tweet that they can use to "destroy" someone online.
