Search results

All you really have to do is walk around on a nice day and you'll understand part of why. It's a beautiful area with moderate weather all year round. If it weren't for the pandemic, I'd love to visit. That's not even including the eclectic culture. The problem, of course, is that staying there...

The original exclusion was foolish on Apple's part, but as Hanlon's razor goes: never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Apple is addressing this; I don't think it was as much about creating a double standard as it was the company failing to consider the ways attackers could...

Really curious to see how the Indiana Jones game fares. Clearly it won't be an old-school adventure game, but it would be great to see an Uncharted-style game that... uses the character who inspired Uncharted. And why am I not surprised that the modern Wolfenstein studio is involved in a game...

Glad you like it! You're probably going to experience what many people do with hole-punch displays and notches. At first you notice it a lot, but eventually it fades into the background and you focus on using your phone.

In my experience, the notch fades away for the most part. You stop thinking about it and just use your apps. I also can't help but think that screens like these explain why Apple waited until 2017 to go with OLED. It's a big fan of color tuning, and it took a while before OLED was truly accurate.

If you want an illustration of how much the PC industry has changed, just look at this thread... folks are skeptical of that Intel engineer and defending Apple (within reason, of course). If Apple had tried this a few years ago, I suspect we'd have had people defending Intel to the hilt...

It'd be better to say that you shouldn't expect AMD (or any company, really) to bend over backwards for you. AMD certainly has gamers, and it cares about supporting the segment, but the execs aren't losing sleep because their PS5 production ramp made it harder for you to find a Ryzen 7 rig.

Just because PC sales are high doesn't mean PC gaming is dominant. Many, if not most, PCs aren't used for gaming. They're the $300 PC someone bought to check email, the $500 office PC, the $1,000 ultraportable. The average selling price of a PC in 2019 was $632, and it's unlikely to have gone up...

This is a friendly reminder that, while PC gamers often imagine themselves the center of the universe, it's console gaming that dominates in terms of sheer numbers. (I do hope AMD can take care of all sides well, but there's no doubt that it has to supply Microsoft and Sony first.)

I do miss the higher-end functionality, although my hunch is that Apple will add at least some of it back when it introduces higher-end ARM chips. Want upgradable RAM and 10Gbps Ethernet? Buy this higher-end Mac mini. A bit like the split between the current 21- and 27-inch iMacs, where you have...

Can't help but think the M1 Mac mini is the dark horse of the mix. It went from a niche computer for a handful of people to a pretty solid desktop if you aren't big on gaming and some pro apps. It's arguably better than many systems in the price class, both in speed (at least responsiveness) as...

That's so you can see your notifications without having to wait for the unlock or swipe the notification shade down.

I wish we had a best-of-all-worlds option, but I'm glad there are a range of options that in many cases will be just dandy for most scenarios. Mini LED seems like a great pick if you mostly watch in a brightly-lit environment or just don't want the slightest risk of burn-in. Also, in case...

How about the Apple News widget? Either that or Brief, which I hear is a good no-nonsense news app.

There are a number of problems with those claims. To start, you're confusing the FBI's demand to access phones themselves with iCloud access. Like it or not, there's not much Apple can do to prevent authorities from demanding access to iCloud accounts since there are logins and some unencrypted...

I'm not of the mind that virtually every smart device is spying on you, but we do tend to get complacent and forget that devices are sending back more data than is absolutely necessary. And so long as end-to-end encryption is still viable, countries can't really spy on some data no matter how...

Gonna echo T-Mobile. Not that there's never bloatware, but it doesn't have a reputation for saddling devices with lots of unwanted fluff. Keep in mind you could also use a service like Google Fi, which runs on T-Mobile's network and most definitely won't force you to take bloatware from a...

My concern is more that some people here are prone to hyperbole. For a start: the whole thread was started by the US suspecting that TCL might have backdoors, and the only evidence so far might just be a bad security vulnerability... but that has somehow morphed into "omg confirmed, TCL is...

Yeah, it's classic Apple (and this is from someone who's deeply invested in the Apple ecosystem). I can understand the desire to embrace wireless and even charging separately for a cable, but $35 is a bit much even if there are some reasons it's more than just a basic Lightning-to-3.5mm adapter...

That's probably a generic chassis. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a fine machine, but you're really buying that for the specs you get for the money, not the design.

That's why I'd rather get a Quest 2 even if I had a high-end Windows PC. Not having to fire up a computer or stay tethered with a long cable (wireless VR on PCs is still limited) would be immensely appealing.

Despite all the dystopian talk, AI really needs this. Robots struggle in part because they don't know how to cope with concepts and tasks they haven't been taught to perform. If a robot can understand not just the basics of a task but the systems that undergird that task, they won't need...

My game of the year: Spider-Man: Miles Morales. It's short, but it has an engaging story, endearing characters, and that modern Spider-Man gameplay that's oh so fun. The PS5 version (which I played) also makes a case for the new console with seamless loading and those pretty ray-traced...

He still didn't confirm anything. It's odd — you know Trump is a chronic liar, especially when Russia is involved (see: bounties on US soldiers), yet you explicitly trust him here. I won't delve further into who's been tougher on Russia (hint: you're not accurate), but I'd much rather trust...

He "confirmed" nothing, and in fact suggested China might be responsible despite zero evidence. You do know his modus operandi is to shift blame away from Russia no matter how responsible that country might be, right? And that his own Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, said Russia was "pretty...

Interesting! I'm sure your employer is in a better position for this than others (not every company can justify Macs due to price or software), but this is how Apple makes its inroads. Companies that can justify Macs ask why they should buy Windows PCs that are slower or more troublesome, and...

Frankly, Microsoft doesn't have much choice here. Windows on ARM has struggled in no small part because Microsoft is chained to Qualcomm, and Qualcomm's PC-oriented chips are... underpowered, to put it mildly. There are other reasons, of course, but Microsoft was never going to get PC users to...

As it stands, I suspect Apple gets what makes buyers tick more than Sony, Bose or other rivals. While a handful of enthusiasts grouse about the price tag, the case and the Lightning port, many would be buyers are simply thinking: "they sound great, look cool and work like AirPods... sold." It's...

Here's hoping there are better third-party cases available. Once it's safe to travel again, I suspect we'll need more than a half-protective pouch.

So they're basically Philips AirPods (complete with the pause-on-bud-removal trick). Not a bad thing, but Apple won't lose any sleep!

Yes, but discovering these routes could be very important for future missions. It's nice to get a probe out to the far reaches of the Solar System a few years earlier.

Not necessarily. The tricky bit is avoiding the train smash that was Andromeda. It's a game universe full of potential, it's just a question of making good use of that potential.

That's because smartphones represent a much larger market than PCs, not because there's a thriving games market on those devices. Gaming isn't the center of the universe; most tech products don't live or die based on how well they cater to gamers, and that includes computers. Gaming PCs do help...

Oh, that was like watching a slow-motion car crash. Mac sales surged during the Vista era in part for stunts like this — it was the textbook example of Microsoft and Windows OEMs prioritizing sales over users, the "race to the bottom" leading to a horrible experience. The baseline for...

Reports have Apple developing up to 32-core GPUs for MacBook Pros and iMacs, and up to 128-core GPUs for high-end desktops (Mac Pro and maybe iMac Pro). Don't know how well Apple's tech scales, but given that even an eight-core GPU in a MacBook Air is better than Intel's integrated Xe, that...

Branding is part of it, but Apple also has a knack for design that many companies don't. Look at the AirPods Max, for example. Whatever you think of the design, it stands out compared to the generic '90s electronics aesthetic that often passes for style in headphones. More like what you see with...

That's been my thinking. If you're highly dependent on recovering data from the actual drive... you don't really understand the importance of backups. Anyone who truly can't afford to lose data should at least have an external backup drive, and preferably a cloud backup as well (so you're not...

I wouldn't count on it happening at all. The transition to majority apps on the store is a big "if" — unless Apple makes it extremely unpalatable to publish anywhere else, very quickly, I can't see developers flocking toward the App Store en masse. And there's already a security system in place...

My concern isn't so much the price by itself as whether or not they're worth that price. Yeah, it'll be great if they sound better than your Bose or Sony headphones, but will they sound $200 better? That could be tough. Apple has a knack for really high-quality audio as of late (the HomePod line...

Like I said, speculation isn't evidence. Really, strongly believing something (as you do) doesn't make it any more likely to happen. In fact, you undermined your own argument by pointing out Microsoft's follies. Apple saw how a locked-down computer experience flopped with Windows on ARM and...