You can always hold an accelerometer in your hand. If you did so now, assuming you're on Earth's surface, it'd register approximately 9.8m/s/s pointing in the upward direction.
You could also perform one of many historical experiments, such as dropping an object from an elevated height with careful timing, or rolling a round ball down a gently sloped track, and so on.
Or, just don’t play the game. I don’t mean to be flippant, but why waste time on software employing shoddy practices? Wordle and Apple’s mini crossword-minis are sufficiently stimulating and quick.
My tolerance for software like that is very limited. It’s almost an immediate long-press and uninstall.
Respectfully, if
I may offer constructive criticism, I’d hope this isn’t how you communicate to software developers, customers, prospects, or fellow entrepreneurs.
To be direct, this reads like a fluff comment written by AI with an emphasis on probability and metrics. P(that) || that.
I’ve written software used by a local real estate company to the Mars Perseverance rover. AI is a phenomenally useful tool. But be weary of preposterous claims.
There are many things wrong with this. I have an iPhone 17 Pro Max and use it to capture HEIF 48 and ProRAW images for Lightroom. There’s no doubt of the extraordinary capabilities of modern phone cameras. And there are camera applications that give you a sense of the sensor data captured, which only further illustrates the dazzling wizardly between sensor capture vs the image seen by laypeople.
That said, there is literally no comparison between the iPhone camera and the RAW photos captured on a modern full-frame mirrorless camera like my Nikon Z6III or Z9. I can’t mount a 180-600mm telephoto lens to an iPhone, or a 24-120mm, or use a teleconverter. Nor can I instantly swing an iPhone and capture a bird or aircraft flying by at high speed and instantly lock and track focus in 3D, capture 30 RAW images per second at 45MP (or 120 JPEGs per second), all while controlling aperture, shutter speed and ISO.
Physics is a thing. The large sensor size and lenses (that can make a Mac Studio seem cheap by comparison) serve a purpose. Try capturing even a remotely similar image on an iPhone in low light, and especially RAW, and you’ll be sitting there waiting seconds or more for a single image. Professional lenses can easily contain 25 individual lens elements that move in conjunction as groups for autofocus, zoom, motion stabilization, etc. They’re state-of-the-art modern marvels that make an iPhone’s subject detection pale by compare. Examples:
I can lock on immediately to a small bird’s eye 300 feet away with a square tracking the tiny eye precisely, and continue tracking. The same applies to pets, people, vehicles, and more with AI detection.
You can handhold a low-light shot at 1/15s to capture a waterfall with motion blur and continue shooting, with the camera optimizing the stabilization around the focus point—that’s the sensor and lens working in conjunction for real-time stabilization for standard shots, or “sports mode” for rapidly panning horizontally or vertically.
There’s a reason pro-grade cameras exist and people use them. See Simon D’entrement, Steve Perry, and many others on YouTube for examples.
For most people, it doesn’t matter. They can happily shoot still images and even amazingly high-quality video these days. But dismissing the differences is wildly misleading. These cameras require memory cards that cost half as much or more than the latest iPhone, and for good reason [1].
With everything, there are
trade offs. An iPhone fits in my pocket. A Nikon Z8 and 800mm lens and associated gear is a beast. Different tools, different job.
They’re known as DNs, or digital numbers. Thom Hogan’s eBooks do a phenomenal job of explaining the intricacies of camera sensors, their architecture, processing to JPEGs, and pretty much every aspect of capturing good photos.
The books, while geared toward Nikon cameras, are generally applicable. And packed with high-quality illustrations and an almost obsessive uber-nerd level of detail. He’s very much an engineer and photographer. When he says “complete guide”, he means it.
The section on image sensors, read-outs,
and ISO/dual gain/S&R, etc. is particularly interesting—-and should be baseline knowledge for anyone who’s seriously interested in photography.
To be clear, they default to JPEG for the image preview on the monitor (LCD screen). Whenever viewing an image on a professional camera, you’re always seeing the resulting JPEG image.
The underlying data is always captured as a RAW file, and only discarded if you’ve configured the camera to only store the JPEG image (discarding the original RAW file after processing).
I’ve submitted multiple bug reports over the years using the Feedback app. And, to my surprise, not only did I receive a detailed response within a month or so, the issues were resolved.
Arguably, the opposite is true. Ars Technica and others have written about this extensively [0].
Having summarized results appear immediately with links to the sources is preferable to opening multiple tabs and sifting through low-quality content and clickbait.
Many real-world problems aren't as simple as "type some keywords" and get relevant results. AI excels as a "rubber duck", i.e., a tool to explore possible solutions, troubleshoot issues, discover new approaches, etc.
Yes, LLMs are useful for junior developers. But for experienced developers, they're more valuable.
It's a tool, just like search engines.
Airplanes are also a tool. Would you limit your travel to destinations within walking distance? Or avoid checking the weather because forecasts use Bayesian probability (and some mix of machine learning)? Or avoid power tools because they deny the freedom of doing things the hard way?
One can imagine that when early humans began wearing clothing to keep warm, there were naysayers who preferred to stay cold.
The most creative people I know are using AI to further their creativity. Example: storytelling, world building, voice models, game development, artwork, assistants that mimic their personality, helping loved ones enjoy a better quality of life as they age, smart home automations to help their grandmother, text-to-speech for the visually impaired or those who have trouble reading, custom voice commands, and so on.
Should I tell my mom to turn off Siri and avoid highlighting text and tapping "Speak" because it uses AI under the hood? I think not.
They embrace it, just like creative people have always done.
I used Spacemacs for years and recommend it to others. It was fantastic in the early days, but the stability seems to have diminished. I encountered more bugs over time that I'd have to troubleshoot and fix myself.
I switched to Doom Emacs a couple of years ago. It's well-maintained with regular updates, fantastic language support, and lightning fast. The CLI tooling is also nice (i.e., you can run 'doom upgrade' to update everything, or 'doom doctor' if you encounter an issue).
It's the closest equivalent to VS Code in terms of working out of the box. Not to mention the advantages of Emacs with Vim keybindings. There is a learning curve, but the GitHub documentation is excellent.
Adding support for Ruby on Rails development, for example, is as simple as uncommenting '(ruby +rails +lsp)' line in the '~/.config/init.el' file, and then running 'doom sync'. There's a long list of supported languages and tooling [0].
Musk was heavily involved in the engineering efforts at SpaceX. NASA struggled to keep up with his continual and extremely detailed stream of questions regarding engineering choices, with an obsessive and relentless focus on blueprints.
The list of engineering achievements and innovations (often unorthodox) is too long to list in a comment, but I highly recommend the book The Space Barons by Christian Davenport [0]. It's a fantastic read.
I agree. I've used FSD v13 on a Model Y with hardware version 4 for a couple of months now. Checking my mileage, that's over 2,000 miles, most of which was with FSD enabled (road trips on interstates, backroads, two-lane country roads without lane markings, interstates, highways, etc.). It's been absolutely fantastic.
Even my parents and sister use FSD v13 regularly now in their Teslas.
It's come a long way from the early days when I first started testing it.
It makes me wonder how many people are using Autopilot (included as standard) instead of FSD on a newer Tesla with the new AI hardware?
It's pretty wild to be able to start from park. Tap a button, and go.
Just the other day, it managed merging onto the interstate and then immediately changing 7 lanes to the left to merge onto the next interstate exit heading north. It performed flawlessly.
Apple has a pretty good trade-in program. If you have an Apple card, it's even better (e.g. the trade-in value is deducted immediately, zero interest, etc.).
Could you get more money by selling it? Sure. But it's hard to be the convenience. They ship you a box. You seal up the old device and drop it off at UPS.
I also build my desktop computers with a mix of Windows and Linux. But those are upgraded over the years, not regularly.
You'll be glad you did. I loved my 2015 MBP. I even drove 3 hours to the nearest Best Buy to snag one. That display was glorious. A fantastic machine. I eventually gave it to my sister, who continued using it until a few years ago. The battery was gone, but it still worked great.
When you upgrade, prepare to be astonished.
The performance improvement is difficult to convey. It's akin to traveling by horse and buggy. And then hopping into a modern jetliner, flying first class.
It's not just speed. Display quality, build quality, sound quality, keyboard quality, trackpad, ports, etc., have all improved considerably.
YouTube shows a small red "HDR" label on the video settings icon for actual HDR content. For this label to appear, the display must support HDR. With your M3 Pro, the HDR label should appear in Chrome and Safari.
You can also right-click on the video to enable "Stats for nerds" for more details. Next to color, look for "smpte2084 (PQ) / bt2020". That's usually the highest-quality HDR video [2,3].
You can ignore claims such as "Dolby Vision/Audio". YouTube doesn't support those formats, even if the source material used it. When searching for videos, apply the HDR filter afterward to avoid videos falsely described as "HDR".
Keep in mind that macOS uses a different approach when rendering HDR content. Any UI elements outside the HDR content window will be slightly dimmed, while the HDR region will use the full dynamic range.
I consider Vivid [4] an essential app for MacBook Pro XDR displays.
Once installed, you can keep pressing the "increase brightness" key to go beyond the default SDR range, effectively doubling the brightness of your display without sacrificing color accuracy. It's especially useful outdoors, even indoors, depending on the lighting conditions. And fantastic for demoing content to colleagues or in public settings (like conference booths).
I realize this isn't your particular use case. But with newer iPhones, you can use USB-C directly for audio. I've been using the Audio Technica ATH-M50xSTS for a while now. The audio quality is exceptional. For Slack/Team/Zoom calls, the sidetone feature plays your voice back inside the headphones, with the level being adjustable via a small toggle switch on the left side. That makes all the difference, similar to transparency/adaptive modes on the AirPod Pro 2s (or older cellphones and landlines).
I use a small Anker USB-A to USB-C adapter [1]. They're rock solid.
As great as the AirPod Pro 2s are, a wired connection is superior in terms of reliability and latency. Although greatly improved over the years, I still have occasional issues connecting or switching between devices.
Out of curiosity, what's the advantage of a jailbroken iPhone nowadays? I'd typically unlock Android phones in the past, but I don't see a need on iOS today.
Interestingly, the last time I used Android, I had to sideload Adguard (an adblocker). On the App Store, it's just another app alongside competing adblockers. No such apps existed in the Play Store to provide system-level blocking, proxying, etc. Yes, browser extensions can be used, but that doesn't cover Google's incessant quest to bypass adblockers (looking at you Google News).
I'm part of a local physics meetup where AI is often a topic of conversation. One member is a well-regarded high school physics teacher (his students end up at MIT, Georgia Tech, etc., and some go on to get physics PhDs).
He shared that some teachers now require AI/LLMs for homework assignments, such as writing essays. The actual assignment is to critique the output of the LLM.
As a millennial, even our middle school classes taught information literacy in various forms in the "computer lab". And that was the nascent days of the web.
AI is a tool, not unlike a calculator or Wikipedia. They were both controversial and even forbidden at times. Students adapted. So did education.