I decided in the end that it was so late that I would just stay up to watch the keynote, have a small nap then watch the ‘Platforms State of the Union’. If you’re wanting a live transcript then Arstechnica as always does a pretty good job (link) however what this blog post is all amount is more about collating some thoughts I had regarding the two presentations.

The start of the keynote presentation they announced a refresh of the MacBook Air, Mac Studio and Mac Pro. A new model of the MacBook Air was announced with a 15″ screen and an M2 SoC, the Studio was refreshed with the M2 series and the Mac Pro was also updated to the M2 series. The Mac Pro comes with 7 PCIe 4.0 slots however although it doesn’t support video cards as a means of display there isn’t anything mentioned about whether nVidia may provide user space drivers for their video card so then it is possible to offload CUDA workflow onto the video card while still utilising the built in video card for everything else. It’ll be interesting to see whether nVidia does that or whether it makes more sense that if you want that extra CUDA grunt that you push the work load into the cloud and let their hardware to the heavy lifting.

iOS 17 and iPad 17 were then announced – updates Phone, FaceTime, Airdrop and Messages being at the top of the list which focused on refinements such as a unique poster that appears when a given person rings up, improving search within messages, sharing location when in messages, being able to share contacts via Airdrop. From what it appears this year is about refinement rather than big whizbang features. When it comes to macOS once again the same situation as well, more refinement and improving what already exists rather than in the past where the marketing was all about the x number of new features being added.

I think the absence of new features probably has a lot to do with the big announcement of the Vision Pro running visionOS. Given that all the platforms share a common core I wouldn’t be surprised if there have been a lot of under the hood improvements particularly in the area of graphics performance to hit a graphics latency of no more than 12 milliseconds. I haven’t tried the developer beta of each of the operating systems but I’d hazard to guess that there will be a noticeable improvement in performance.

The announcement of the AR/VR headset was interesting but at the price it was announced I could imagine it being very much a niche product that may grow once a lower price non-Pro version of Vision is announced but even then I don’t see it being a big mainstream success like the iPhone or iPad. I could imagine it being used particularly in the professional field of being able to show off to a client something that is being worked on, being able to view it in the ‘real world’ then making real time updates rather than the length cycle of prototypes, tweaking then making a new prototype etc. Although US$3499 is a lot of money, if you’re a business and there is the ability to speed up the delivery of a product to the customer and giving the customer a better experience when the product is being developed then in the end it’ll pay for itself.

Regarding software updates and what is taking place – one resource I like to read through is the difference between Xcode 14.3 and Xcode 15.0 beta 1 in the documentation area (link) which outlines the API changes – additions, subtractions, modifications. One addition that stood out to me was the MediaExtension API that has been added to macOS 14 (This framework provides a means for developers to create format readers and video decoders for media that the system doesn’t natively support) which will hopefully mean that ffmpeg could get ported to the MediaExtension API which in turn will enable various bundled applications (Safari, QuickTime etc) to take advantage of the ability to playback formats not natively supported in the OS.

Another way to get an insight into the future direction of Apple, both hardware and software, is to check out the WWDC 2023 sessions (link). It comes as no big surprise that the visionOS and Vision Pro is at the centre but also many videos heavily pushing Swift and SwiftUI (the technology that unifies the development process for all the platforms) to heavily imply to developers that it is the technology of the future and that they need to get on the Swift train now in much the same way that XCode was pushed and pushed. Apple didn’t come out and say “move to XCode because in 2005 we’re moving to Intel” but instead Apple heavily push a particular technology for a reason, they may not give the answer but what is implied is that in the future that particular piece of technology or collection of technologies will form the basis of the products in the future.

Metal is getting pushed in a way I didn’t think it would – in the past there was lip service being made regarding gaming but it appears that this year they’re actualy taking it seriously with the introduction of the Game Porting Toolkit which includes support to bring DirectX games over to Metal 3, the Unity game engine is optimised for Metal 3, the addition of ray tracing etc. If you want to keep up to date with how users are finding the beta versions along with the new features then you can check out these sources (link) (link).

Regarding AI – the focus by Apple isn’t about tick boxes but rather making use of AI by integrating it into applications to improve the experience for the end users. This is the reason I was rather ‘meh’ about the whole AI launches by Microsoft and Google, it is one thing to put on a good dog and pony show for the passes but it is a different thing entirely to transform something from a cool public demonstration into something that is actually useful for the average end user.

I’m all excited about WWDC 2023 as the keynote draws closer – 5am on 6 June New Zealand time. I’ve decided to do the smart thing year and go to sleep at 8pm on Monday night so then I get up at 4:30am on Tuesday then watch it either on the big screen in the lounge room or on my laptop – depending on how I feel. Lots of rumours are whirring around particularly about the announcement of a new product category, hardware refresh, new operating system for the new product category. What I am hoping is that the announcements regarding their platforms is more a focus not on new features but rather focusing on improving on what they already have to make the platforms more reliable.

There is a rumour about the Mac Pro being refresh however there is also rumours that the Mac Studio will be refreshed thus making it potentially the Mac Pro replacement. There was a patent application regarding having a two level memory model where you have an SoC with RAM on the packaging then having off SoC RAM that can be upgraded by the customer with the kernel I assume being smart enough to swap between the RAM on the SoC and the RAM that is user upgradeable so that the performance critical stuff is always in the fastest type of memory. It will be interesting to see whether it may even open the possibility for a nVidia video card to be added for CUDA hardware acceleration with support being provided through a user space driver rather than installing a kernel extension due to Apple phasing out kernel extension support.

Windows App SDK v1.4-experimental1 was released last week. Although I don’t use Windows I like to keep myself up to date on what is happening in the Windows world. It appears that the long term plan is gradually moving Windows components over to Windows App SDK which enables Microsoft to decouple the application API layer from the underlying operating system in much the same way that Google has decoupled the Android platform from the underlying kernel and user space which is allowing OEMs to stick with the same kernel and time tested drivers but upgrade what is sitting on top (Android platform). I could imagine some time in the future where there is a stable Windows base that that is super stable with the Windows App SDK on top being regularly upgraded along with the bundled applications in much the same way it occurs on Android through the Play Store.

It has been a busy week over at Google I/O with the big focus being on AI or more specifically pushing beyond the novelty factor of “suggest a cake recipe” in favour of focusing on where Google are going to use AI to have a material benefit to end users. Below is the video of the keynote:

One thing to keep in mind is the fact that Google have been using AI for many years before Chat GPT became the darling of the informational technology press. If you’d like the TL;DR version then it goes like this – Google is leveraging their own LLM in the form of PaLM 2 to improve existing functionality (grammar, spelling etc) as well as new functionality such as generating letters etc. I think the interesting part was how they’re able to scale down their LLM so that it is small enough to operate on a mobile phone which will enable more operations to be carried out on the phone. I could imagine future Pixel phones the focus will be around making use of future Google Tensor chips. I also wonder to what extent Google is offloading the work from their data centres to the clients device will reduce the load being put on their servers which will benefit their bottom line – a better user experience and saves a few dollars along the way is something I don’t see Google turning down.

The above video has more of a high level over view of Android (the individual session videos is the place where the subject matter is given a deeper level of explanation). We’ve reached the stage where the platform has matured just as in the case of iOS, the days of massive hyped up features that would grab end users attention is long gone and I for one am happy that the focus is around ‘fit and finish’ rather than features. I’ve had a look at the videos regarding the Android 14 beta that is available on the Nothing Phone 1 and so far it appears that the kernel remain the same (5.4.210) but I could imagine that when the Nothing Phone 2 is released towards the end of this year they’ll probably default to 5.15 or maybe 6.1.28 since both of those are the long term stable branch of the Linux kernel.

Will I upgrade to it? depends on what Google has done with the Pixel but based on Geekzone posts that I’ve been following it appears that Google is adding 5G support along with VoLTE so then at the very least if I can’t buy one in New Zealand then at the very least I’ll be able to buy one from Australia then get my brother to ship it to me or buy it from the United States then get YouShop to send it too me. I’m also looking at replacing the security camera around my place with ones from Google due the ability to attach them up to the power directly rather than recharging them which means for a few hours I don’t have any security cameras going. It’ll also be interesting to see where the next major update for Android TV will be made available for Chromecast with Google TV given that Google and other streaming services are pushing AV1 out due to it being royalty free.

Nothing has released Nothing OS 1.5.4 as an over the air (OTA) update – it’ll be gradually rolling out to customers but there is also the ability to download it directly and side load it (link). There have been some under the hood changes in the form of the kernel version has been bumped from 5.4.197 to 5.4.210 (dated 28 April 2023), Android security updated to 5 April 2023 from February 2023. Regarding the baseband version, I am unsure what the version was before the update but it was most likely updated due to notes about ‘Reduced standby power consumption by optimising 4G / 5G network switching function’ along with the usual optimisations that come with any sort of driver changes. Android 14 Beta 1 is rumoured to be released soon for a public beta but there has been no firm date set for it. On a side note it appears that the software engineers who worked on OnePlus are now working for Nothing where as before the work had been contracted out. It’ll be interesting to see whether there are changes in Android 14 or whether Nothing will keep the peered down minimalist design philosophy that attracted people such as myself to their Nothing Phone.

There are continued rumours about Chromecast with Google TV but given the big improvements in Android TV 14 in terms of memory efficiency I wouldn’t be surprised if Google ends up skipping Android TV 13 in favour of Android TV 14. I think the big challenge is the fact that neither Chromecast with Google support hardware accelerated playback of AV1 (not to mention that AV2 is in early development at this stage). Given how woefully powered the current SoC being used in the current Chromecast with Google dongle I couldn’t imagine seeing it smoothly decoding AV1 where as an Apple TV (the current generation) has more than enough headroom to adequately decode AV1 playback without too many problems. As a side note to this, I always find it funny how businesses will automatically assume that poor sales are automatically due to the price when in the case of the Chromecast with Google came to New Zealand 18 months after it had been originally launched. If you’re not selling enough then maybe it has more to do with the fact that you’re selling it in a limited number of markets and failed to build relationships with internet service provides and retail outlets rather than it being the byproduct of “it’s too expensive”.

Great news, Ubiquiti has released Unifi OS 3.0.20 (link) which will hopefully mean that the early access 3.1.x builds won’t be too far away thus bringing the UDM and UDM Pro inline with the rest of their product range. The built in ad blocking (as mentioned on a previous blog post) is pretty rudimentary in that it does it at the DNS level rather than intercepting as the page is downloaded. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next few releases the focus is on dealing with bugs then once stable hopefully they’ll make it more feature rich. In terms of its relaibility and performance after the update – everything is smooth sailing but keep in mind that I have a pretty simple setup consisting of an UDM, AP AC HD with the devices connected include: Mac Studio, MacBook Air, Apple TV and Nothing Phone.

Apple has pushed out a ‘Rapid Security Response’ update (link) however there haven’t been any notes regarding what was actually updates but I’d hazard to guess that a lack of details combined with Apple’s use of their ‘Rapid Security Response’ indicates that must have been critical and the lack of details points to Apple wanting to get every user updated before giving out details. It’ll be interesting to know what the details are – I’ve checked a few key macOS components to see whether they’ve been changed (wifi firmware, frameworks such as Webkit) but nothing jumps out at me but they must have been serious enough that they couldn’t wait until the next round of updates (iOS 16.5, macOS 13.4 etc).

Chrome 113 has been released for the desktop (link) which is available for immediate update but Android will be rolled out in stages so it may not come to your Android device straight away (it is available in iOS). If you’re a developer there are plenty of changes (link) along with harmonisation of implementation standards (link). One thing to realise that when it comes to browsers, Google see Chrome like a runtime framework in much the same way one could view Android, Flutter etc. with websites becoming more feature rich – almost like a native application that eventually native applications will become less and less common. When it comes to seemingly native applications aren’t so native after all, OpenMTP for example is an Electron based application even though it makes use of low level libraries and hardware access to access an Android device via MTP.

When it comes to Microsoft, it is interesting how they’re gradually killing off native applications – very soon I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up Skype being replaced with Teams. Although they have said that they won’t do that, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a long term goal of doing just that as it would greatly simplify maintenance. I also wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up seeing the online version of Office 365 replacing the native version particularly for businesses that are either new or investing into moving away from bespoke custom line of business apps in favour of using an SDK provided by Microsoft or use another website either by Microsoft or by a third party that can integrate into Office 365.

Side note: There was a report that Google was working on getting Chrome working on iOS so then they’re ready to ship once the European Union forces Apple to open it’s platform for alternative web engines rather than forcing vendors to use the one Apple provides with iOS.I wonder whether the improvements that have come through for macOS in regards to memory, performance and battery life it is the result of inefficiencies being picked up as they develop Chrome for iOS. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the case given that when the law changes that Google will want their browser ready to go right of the gate. It’ll be interesting to see just how much transaction it will gain when it is an option given how strong the preinstalled option is for most people – “meh, it’s good enough and I’m not motivated to change it” which is part of the reason why Internet Explorer hung around for so long. With all that being said, it is interesting how there is suddenly a sense of urgency within Apple about getting Safari up to scratch – it lacks the sort of feature rich extensions framework that enable me to use the extensions I like but I guess for for most people it’s a bit of a non-issue.

As side note to my side note: I’m going to start deleting some only posts I made. I like purging the old content as keep moving forward. I’m tempted to clear out everything before 2023 so I start with a new fresh start. I’ll make the decision over the next few days. With that being said, I’ll hopefully be providing better coverage to WWDC this year – what I might end up doing is going to bed early rather than waiting up until 5am so that by the time it comes on I’m an absolute zombie. I tried covering it the first time by staying up but by the time I got around to writing my blog I needed to watch it again. Hopefully with a good night sleep I can put it on my big screen, crack out a soft drink and some nibbles and get to watch the experience – I may even do a live commentary via Mastodon for not just the keynote but also for WWDC Platforms State of the Union if I have time.