Skip to main content

Apple Stuff in September 2019

So, Apple had an event yesterday. I watched some of it.

 Though I don't think they mentioned violating Chinese worker laws at this event.

 
Midnight Green? I dig it.                                                       Courtesy of Apple

Lower prices




The entry-level iPhone 11 starts at only 700$ instead of $750. Many of the older models have taken steep cuts as well - the iPhone 8 is now only 450$.

The Pro lines cost upward of 1k$ - and now they have 3 cameras, while the entry-level line has 2. Power to the portrait-takers.

Battery life has been improved by, in essence, making all of the components complement each other in how they operate. The glass (on the Pro models, at least) has also improved, so it can be less of a laughingstock when you drop it.

Is any of this enough compelling to get me to change from my LG Stylo line to an iPhone? Remember, I do have an iPhone I use for testing, and it's fine enough. I feel it's often too small for daily use.

Though the Pro does come in that snazzy looking Midnight Green.

Read more about it on the site.

iPad


Actually seems very cool for multitasking and moving mostly full-PC and laptop programs to work on a tablet space. Probably the item here I'm most likely to get...and I don't even like tablets.

Stuff on Streaming



Apple TV+ gave us a trailer for "See", which seems pretty interesting. What's more interesting is that most of the stuff regarding the actual content of AT+ wasn't talked about, but posted by Entertainment Weekly.

Pictured; Servant, or, the only AT+ show I am even remotely interested in.


There is no word on if there's a trial period, but if you buy a new i-Device, you get a year for free - though the service is only 4.99$ a month, cheaper than even Disney+ and much cheaper than Netflix. I am so enjoying seeing other services cut Netflix off at the knees regarding their pricing. They know they have far less (Well, Disney has a lot of revenue other places so they can take the hit), and price accordingly.

Touch-Screen Mashing With Apple Arcade


5$/month. They've got Frogger. Looks okay. Wonder how often they'll add new games to the service. You can also play it on AppleTV. Can you hook up a third-party controller to it?

Watch This


The Apple Watch also made an appearance. The screen is dimmed, there are some colors, tracks your monthly bleeding. Interestingly, it also warns you when you're in an area that's too loud. How? Via vibrations? I'm not familiar with the Watch at all, did it always have listening capabilities? That's very interesting.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Making KPI Dashboards with PowerBI

 While this is the free tier, I cannot share or collaborate with others, nor can I publish content to other people's workspaces, but they will not stop me from screenshooting and recording these self-taught adventures,so! I'm doing this because I idly searched "Mattel careers" and "Information Technology", and seeing a bulletpoint saying the following: Analytical and reporting skills such as creating dashboards and establishing KPIs such as experience with PowerBI, Cognos, Tableau, and Google Data Lake/AWS is preferred And thought "Well, I've used Tableau, and I've heard about PowerBI,  even if its in-demandness is questionable , so how similar is it? And can I write about it?"  First, PowerBI (PIB) does have a downloadable, local version, but apparently Windows-only. I could download the .exe but I couldn't run it / drag it to applications on my MacBook.  Not a problem, we'll use the online SaaS version, and a dataset found here, ...

Perplexity AI: The App, For The Everyday Person

   Perplexity AI, according to BuiltIn , is an AI-powered search engine - and it's now valued at 1 8$Billion dollars, with a B. I had it on my phone for research testing - something I do between contracts for money - and simply kept it all this time. With it making a resurgence, I can show you if it's viable for every day use cases.  I did not use it to generate "art" or writing.  Screen Reading and Photo Identification. I have used Perplexity to read Chinese characters on my screen, asking to point out the radicals, tone, and meaning of unfamiliar characters. There are minor differences between what Perplexity answers with and what Duolingo and DuChinese deal with, but I know enough Chinese* to figure out the difference - though a recent study calls the accuracy into question. For instance, below I've asked it what the radical is in  æ°´ (shui, water)      [alt: The character in your image is  æ°´ , which is the Chinese character for "wate...

A 2-week Trial of T-Mobile Home Internet

     The Xfinity app showed usage of the past 3 months: We used less than 40% each month, for about $80 USD a month.   No thanks! That cuts into the movie budget! Before we save some money (about $15/mo), let's test how T-Mobile Internet unlimited data works for 2 weeks.    There are 15 devices for this test; Smart TVs: 4 Laptops: 4 Printer: 1 Smart Home Speakers: 3 Game Consoles: 1 Phones: 1 (There are other phones in the home but they stick with data) Other: 1 Total : 15  I made tables for 3 entries a day across 3 days to test the Xfinity service we have. Here's one;   Xfinity is pretty speedy - Download times are between 227 - 236 Mbps, Latency between 24.5 - 25.5, Jitter between 5 - 6.68, and 0 packet loss.  Let's quickly define the terms in the table;    Date/Time - The date and time of the data gathered. Download (Mpbs) - How fast your network gets data. Upload (Mbps) - How fast your network uploads data. Latency ...