That is a very cool project and makes perfect sense.
Also I've just realized I am still using my Kindle 3 (the one with keyboard) to read books and it would feel strange to repurpose it to just display screenshots.
Anyhow, I wonder what problem does this actually solve. Almost all the money I spend is spent cash-less. Does this somehow allow to bypass Visa/Mastercard and thus be cheaper for merchant? What is the difference between digital euro and "paper cash"/normal euro in my account, being spent via card payments or wire transfers?
So we'll see at least 1-2 years of Apple Silicon being at least one node ahead of competition. I am curious for how long will be Apple able to pull this lead off, and what the perf/watt will look like when (if?) AMD has node parity with Apple in the near future. Or when perhaps Intel uses TSMC as well, and the same process node.
The problem is scale and availability of materials to make batteries.
Right now almost all the batteries are produced for and used in electric cars, however electric cars only make around 10% of all the cars consumed.
Now you wanna store enough solar-generated electricity for when the sun doesn't shine, worldwide? My napkin math says that either the price per kWh will go up, or that some poor country with enough lithium will be "politically destabilized" soon.
Gave me smile because I have a little anecdote that happened recently.
My friend showed up for a B-day party, and after some time invited me and few other friends to have a look at his new car. I was thinking he must have gotten a raise at work, because the car was brand new Volvo V40, which is above average expensive in my country and also our income bracket.
Then it turned out he bought a new collar for his dog, and that the producer of the collar organized a prize lottery, where you could win a really nice backpack, and a car. And that my friend won the main prize, which was the brand new Volvo.
Now I know someone who won something really valuable, and also that these prize lotteries can sometime work.
I've used Windows almost exclusively until the end of 2021, when I replaced it with Macbook Air with M1 processor, so I am very aware of Windows vs. MacOS situation. To be honest, I like windows management on Windows better than MacOS, I also like much better compatibility with e.g. legacy printers on Windows 10. Also updates are faster and with much less problems on Windows (I'd never thoght I'd write that).
The above being said, I bought the Mac it exclusively because of hardware. I am aware that you can build much better desktop PC for the money, but I need laptop for my use cases, I don't own any desktop computer and don't plan to.
Going deeper, I only paid around 960 USD for 16/512 configuration (in Europe), and for that kind of money I got great performance, great battery life, very good screen, excellent trackpad and usable keyboard. It's very thin, runs very cool and for the first time I can use laptop more like phone/tablet - only charging it when the battery gets low. Oh, and I have ZERO problems with battery drain during sleep, which on Windows is currently broken (connected standby).
What I also got is mediocre selection of ports and I am not sure how durable the machine is compared to Thinkpad, so I kinda baby it all the time.
YMMV, I personally don't care who uses what but since you asked, above are my points.
Speaking about M1 laptop here, yes, the port selection is poor, however the laptop is so good that I will choose it any moment over my Lenovo with many ports. YMMV I guess.
Something that has been bugging me for some time (genuine question, please forgive me lack of geopolitics/economy understanding) is this:
Supposing we want to hurt Russian economy - how are we hurting it by stopping selling them licenses/branding/machines to make and sell burgers and fries? Are we not ripping them off money if we sell to them? As in: we gain, they lose?
I understand we don't want to sell advanced technology, or weapons. And we also want to stop buying oil/gas or other goods produced in Russia. But burgers?
If you understand what's going on, please share it :-)
Yeah, well when they removed the headphone jack on iPhone 7, which has the same shape and dimensions as iPhone 6, it turned out they just put some piece of plastic in the place where previously the jack was. Youtube channel Strange Parts managed to implement working headphone jack on iphone7:
So I call BS on space constrains, I call BS on waterproofing (waterproofed phones with 3.5mm jack exist). Conveniently, when Apple released iPhone 7, they also released 1st gen AirPods :-)
> Upgrading the OS to a major version without worrying if I'll be able to boot next time.
Yeah, well my friend's Intel Mac mini got bricked when he updated from Big Sur to Monterey in the first week after release. Needed to send it to Apple service. IMO Mac updates are almost as broken nowadays as Linux updates were 7+ years ago when I daily driven it.
I also upgraded my Thinkpad X220 from Windows 7 to Windows 10 when the update showed in my system, and everything worked without any reinstall since then.
Since I don't have (nor plan to have) Magic mouse, that's kinda expensive solution :)
I use this instead: https://github.com/pilotmoon/Scroll-Reverser and it works well. Generally my preferred settings is like this: natural scrolling (ie. the mac default) for trackpad, but inversed (ie. linux/windows default) scrolling for mouse.
Thanks for the tip. While the plugin from Google never failed for me during file transfer, it's incredibly limited! I was very surprised that that is absolutely NO macOS-Android compatibility out-of-the-box when I got a Mac recently.
- cannot invert scrolling just for mouse (I use normal mouse with wheel, not apple mouse) -> I have an app for that
- cannot connect Mac to a low dpi screen (like 1080p) without macOS looking like crap
On the other hand, macOS can run MS Office, or professional video and photo editing apps, which Linux cannot do. Alternatives exist, but are IMO worse.
My opinion: M1 gives you (speaking about laptops here): thin and light, very powerful device that runs very cool, a combo that you don't get anywhere else for less money. Frankly it's hard to get close for ANY money. You also get great screen, trackpad, speakers. HW is the reason to get Mac nowadays IMO.
I hate using messenger but some people I communicate with still prefer it. If this is rolled out, they will surely move to other platforms.