Ubiquiti has released Unifi OS 3.0.19 to the early release channel – it has been a long uphill slog from the 1.x series to the 2.4.x series to now the 2.5.x series then eventually when Unifi OS 3.0.19 it should mean that Unifi OS harmonisation across all the various network devices should mean feature parity.
I am looking forward to the ad blocking feature baked into the router itself – it’ll be interesting to see how it performs when compared to using uBlock origin particularly regarding how many ads it allows through versus website compatibility and whether there are issues when navigating websites with ads that use ad detection to block users from accessing their website. Hopefully the gap between Unifi OS 3.0.19 and Unifi OS 3.1.x series shrinks – the UDM was probably one of my better purchases when it comes to networking equipment vs the years of purchasing consumer grade routers only to find that they’re buggy, unreliable etc.
When it comes to Pixel devices with the latest QPR3 Android 13 beta it appears that not only is VoLTE and VoWIFI is working but also 5G is working as well in New Zealand. As I’ve said in the past, I’m all all good with Google choosing to sell Pixels online only in New Zealand (and shipping them out of an Australian warehouse) due to the small market or even not selling at all in New Zealand but what frustrated me was the lack of support for mobile phone carrier settings in New Zealand. From my point of view it will open up more Android options than the current situation of Samsung, Samsung and Samsung – variety is always good which is one of the reasons why I’m stoked that have my Nothing Phone which has ‘renewed my faith’ in Android.
For me, when it comes to computers I am all the way with Macs but when it comes to phones, I am pretty agostic along with set top boxes, networking equipment etc. For me, I see the Pixel as the ‘iPhone of the Android world’ but given that at the moment the lack of fully support for New Zealand carriers I went with the Nothing Phone. It’ll be interesting to see when the Nothing Phone 2 is released given that the SoC being used will be the Qualcomm Series 8+ Gen 1 – although it would not be the bleeding edge, I think for the vast majority of people it is good enough particularly for those who are drawn to the aesthetics of the Nothing Phone.
How are things in the world of Chrome? I keep giving Safari a try to see whether the issues I experience have been addressed but so far what I see are Safari playing catch up at least as so far as addressing bugs that break compatibility with other browser implementations of standards but looking at the Webextensions API it appears that there is a lot of uphill work yet to be done. A good example of that would be the recent discussion on the Webextensions API meeting minutes regarding user scripts, adding more functionality to the Declarative Net Request to fill in the gaps that many of the third party developers have raised etc. Part of me hopes that Google just get rid of the whole notion of MV3 and instead just focus on evolving rather than making an announcement then suddenly realising after making the announcement that there is a tonne of functionality missing that many extension developers actually need to make their extensions work.
Apple has released the release candidate builds for the soon to be released updates for the various platforms such as macOS, iOS, tvOS, watchOS, homeOS etc which will probably result in them being either released on Tuesday or Wednesday (NZ Time) next week. When they are released I’ll probably do an upgrade but on 7 April (NZ Time) I’ll do a clean install since I have a lot of stuff built up when trying different software – I like to experiment with different web browsers for example as to educate myself with what is out there so then I am knowledgeable enough to provide technical support to customers who ring up. It’ll be interesting to see what security bugs are fixed and what features from the Technical Preview have made their way into Safari. There was chatter about AV1 support in an older technical preview but I hazard to guess that it’ll probably be something that will appear in the next version of Safari being announced at WWDC because I’m sure there is plenty of optimisation that need to take place – the SoCs that Apple are plenty powerful enough to decode but it is more an issue of making sure it is done in the most optimised way possible to preserve battery life as much as possible.
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