Matisyahu's Blog

Another busy week has come and gone. Last night I got into the Apple TV series called ‘Severance’ – did a bit of a binge last night and watched the whole of the first season. It is one of those shows you really need to have your full attention when watching it because otherwise you’ll miss subtle clues that help you understand what happens in future episodes. I’m looking forward to season 2 to come out but the release date is unknown but on the good side, the end of April the final episodes for the final season for Ozark will be coming out soon along with new series in the pipe line. It is interesting that in the past I used to be really into movies but these days I would sooner binge watch some of the great original content being put out there by Apple, Amazon, Netflix etc.

I’ve been checking out the recent Safari Technology Preview over the last few months and it is great that so much progress has been made. Part of that also getting educated about the ARM ISA and other associated technologies that Apple implement in their own silicon such as the Neon ISA (link). Although there is a lot of focus on SVE2 being part of the ARMv9 ISA there is still a lot of exciting improvements in ARMv8.5-A (which is what Apple’s latest SoCs are based upon) that really open my eyes to seeing why Apple has embraced ARM.

I was thinking about video from a few days ago regarding the benchmarks which compared the Intel 12th generation to the available Apple Silicon. When the power consumption was pegged at 45 watts for both then the result was similar performance but that isn’t the interesting part since most people use their computer in such a way that bursts performance are needed rather than long sustained number crunching since most of the time the processor is either idle or at the lowest clocked speed. That is where the power savings really kick in because of Apple Silicon’s ability to scale down really low and maintain that for long periods of time with the power consumption measured in low single digit watts (and sometimes even lower). The part about benchmarks (not this specific one but others) is the tendency to ignore power consumption – end of the day it is pretty easy to keep throwing power at a problem because given enough cooling and power it is pretty easy to make the CPU perform better but at what cost? Apple’s focus is about performance per watt – if you remove the wattage cap, double the power consumption but the performance difference is only slightly better then I think most customers would sooner benefit from the more efficient yet slightly slower SoC if it means a whole day worth of productivity time.

I was watching a benchmark video last night which compared an Intel Core i7-12700H to an Apple M1 Pro:

I think what it goes to show is that for most people when it comes to performance the idea of putting a device under constant strain don’t really resemble how most people use their computer. Most people use their computer in such a way that they don’t stress their CPU and when they really do push the CPU to its max then it tends to be short periods of time – small bursts of processing required then the speed ramps back down to as low as it can or in the case of the new SoCs from Apple and Intel the load is moved over to the high efficiency cores until extra grunt is needed. Don’t get me wrong, I think that the Apple Silicon SoC is great but I think it is also important to understand your workflow before running off to buy something that is the fastest but will throttle during a long work load. One of the common pieces of advise is not to waste ones time getting an i9 in a laptop form because the amount of heat it produces means that you can’t run high work loads for extended periods of time because there is a thermal limit thus you’re better off just buying a laptop with an i7 instead.

The reason why I raise this issue is because of the amount of hype around the Apple Silicon SoC. The other point that I have to make is what Scott McNealy (former CEO of Sun Microsystems) said years ago – the world runs on GET – Good Enough Technology. Yes there have been more elegantly designed, theoretically superior, engineering marvels that have appeared but even with the promises the dominant processor today is still derived from the x86 in the form of the x86-64 even with it all is warts in much the same way that even with IBM’s own POWER processor the big Iron mainframes still depend on CISC based z/Architecture SoCs.

WWDC has finally been announced, the dates are 6 June to 10 June which will be great because I’ve got my holiday from 30 May to 15 June although I’m looking at doing some work around the house – cleaning up organising, getting the back and front tyre on my scooter sorted out since it appears that there is a puncher (at the moment I’m pumping it up each day since it s a slow leak). It’ll be interesting to see what Apple announces particularly in the area regarding Webkit given the gap between what is merged into the Safari Technology Preview vs Safari ‘mainstream release’ appears to be getting wider each day. Ideally what I’d like to see is Apple take a more aggressive approach to getting those improvements out there even if the release is on a 6 week cycle and the Webkit that Safari depends on is seperate so that after 6 weeks of end users using it, if the developers at Apple feel confident they can update the Webkit that comes bundled with macOS. What I am also hoping is that they embrace more of the open standards and royalty free codecs such as AV1 which Google has been pushing as the successor to the VP9 codec – at the moment VP9 is supported by Safari but AV1 isn’t.

Back to using Safari 15.4 because a new version of AdGuard Safari Extension has been launched, version 1.11.3, which has improved the ad block experience immensely when one considers the changes that were made with Safari recently such as the increase to the number of rules up to 150,000 not to mention all the improvements that have been made for manifest v3 support over the various technology previews. With AdGuard each category of rules is its own separate extension which means each category has up to 150,000 rule each which enables a lot more rules to be made available and hopefully will result in a more secure experience (the big feature I like is the security rules which block websites that try to mine bitcoin). So far things are going well, it’ll be interesting to see what appears in WWDC in June given all the work going on so far around Webkit particularly in the area of implementing the browser agnostic Webextensions API which will allow developers to target the API and as a result target multiple browsers.

I updated Unifi’s built in controller software to 7.0.25 however there appears to be a UnifiOS update in the works for the UDM as well as firmware update for the Unifi AP AC HD.

Got work tomorrow – looking forward to the weekend (Monday and Tuesday).

Chrome 100 was released today – many bug fixes and security fixes so best to get updated to the latest version as soon as possible. So far on my MacBook Pro it has been going well – no strange memory leaks, the uBlock Origin extension is running well, no website compatibility issues etc. so I’m fairly happy so far.

Rumour has it that WWDC 2022 will either come in the first or second week of June but I guess we’ll need to see when it will be. For me the big focus is what will happen with macOS, specifically, getting those improvements that appear in Safari Technology Preview to be migrated to Safari ‘mainstream edition’ that comes with macOS. For most people (including myself) the web browser has become the most important piece of software on their computer, it is the first thing one opens after lifting the lid, it is the run time engine that is delivering what Java promised to deliver but never did with reasonable performance and/or responsiveness – write once, run everywhere. Safari has been lagging behind in terms of embracing standards or have broken implementations which has resulted in some web developers getting rather frustrated as they balance up targeting Chrome/Edge and Firefox but finding Safari a rather painful experience.

Work was good today, working on standardising the standard operating procedures – something I’ve put forward is having a place where we put clean boundaries as to the scope of technical support that we provide out customers. The reason why I say that is because at some point you have to draw a line in the sand between what we can provide assistance with vs. something that they’ll need to speak to a technician about. For example, if you’re a bank and provide internet banking then there is a fine line between resetting a password, teaching someone how to use the service etc vs. having to step the customer through the process of upgrading their browser or updating their operating system so that their software is compatible with your service. There has to be a line in the sand or otherwise your help desk moves from providing support to customers on how to use your product into a general purpose help desk where people get their technical issues solved which are well outside the scope of what you’re employed by the business to do.

Sigh, I really need to get my act together because almost every week I’ve said to myself, “this week will be the day I take my laptop in to get the keyboard replaced” but each week the weekend goes so fast and then I find I’m back in the office working again. At this rate it’ll be next year before I eventually get there…well ok, maybe not that far away but I really do need to get my act together.

I was so optimistic about Safari 15.4 until things started to break – I went to YouTube, searched for a video and found that none of the thumbnails were loading. I have the Adguard extension installed however I have YouTube on my ‘Trusted Websites’ so it shouldn’t have interfered with the loading of the website but I decided to uninstall it anyway. After uninstall Adguard I thought I would take it safe by also clearing all cookies and cache to ensure that I start with a clean slate. Went to YouTube, logged in and then tried to search – same thing happened again. I have also found that it keeps falling back to low quality playback even though I’ve got plenty of bandwidth (gigabit connection) and the issue doesn’t occur with Chrome. What that tells me is that the issue isn’t related to the operating system itself but instead something in Safari itself which is causing the problem.

There has been a lot happening in the world of Windows 11 (link). There is a lot of changes that are occurring ‘above the hood’ with the ‘under the hood’ pretty much at a state that the heavy lifting changes were more or less complete by the time Windows 11 was released. That probably explains why Windows 10 was such a rollercoaster in terms of reliability when compared to Windows 11 where all the changes so far has been about keeping the same ‘backend code’ but replacing the ‘classic’ UI frameworks with a single unified one, WinUI, which now forms the foundation of Windows going forward – after years of stopping and starting with various ideas it appears that MIcrosoft, with the leadership they have in place, know where they want to get to and how they’re going to get there. I think the big lesson that has been learned is not to re-invent the wheel, take what you already have and build upon it because otherwise you’ll find yourself in a world of hurt and many unhappy end users unhappy that you’ve re-written an app from the ground up but is missing features that the old version had.

Work has been chaotic all this week with people having to stay at home due to being immunocompromised along with those who have COVID but are well enough to work from home. It’ll be interesting to see what the upcoming opening of the border will result in considerable increase in infections or whether it stays on the same course. It’ll also be interesting to see whether the government will go for a 4th booster shot although strange enough they’ve got 10.72 million units of Novavax on order (link) – are they going to shift over to Novavax with a booster shot being the start of a Novavax regiment? I guess time will tell but I’m hopeful that the work being done to bring about the second generation vaccines (link) will result in decreased transmission and higher numbers of antibodies resulting in a longer period of protection. If in the long term we can get to the point that COVID vaccination becomes a once a year or once every two years regiment then that’ll go a long way to getting things back to normal – we’ll still need to be smart about protecting ourselves and others but it should result in a flattening of the curve.

When it comes to Manifest V3 the discussion regarding the WebRequest API (link) so it’ll be interesting to see whether eventually see the major parties realise the foolishness of ramming something through that will detrimentally impact millions of end users. Hopefully they can get this all sorted out by January 2023 (the date when Manifest V2 stop being distributed by the Google extensions store).

Well, after planning to drop off my laptop I tested positive for COVID so I ended up having to isolate myself for a week – it wasn’t too bad given that I’ve experienced a whole lot worse in my life. I’m hoping that I’ll eventually have the time to head into Wellington to get the keyboard repaired – the spacebar is already rather iffy along with many other parts of the keyboard. If I get another 2-3 years out of this then I’ll be a happy lad.

Apple released macOS 12.3, iOS 15.4 and tvOS 15.4 (along with others), the system firmware remained the same but the loader version has been updated from 540.80.2~11 to 540.100.7~14. In terms of Safari it has been bumped up from Version 15.3 (17612.4.9.1.8) to Version 15.4 (17613.1.17.1.6) which includes 70 new enhancements (link) not to mention various updates to drivers such as the AMD driver being updated to fix up a security issue along with many others security fixes being shipped (link). There were all plenty of fixes for iOS and tvOS (link).

Over all, after updating all my devices, I’ve found that they’re working slightly faster, Safari had it’s fair share of fixes which has resulted in it being a lot more snappy particularly when it comes to websites that that have a reasonable level of complexity. Hopefully the improvements coming through is beginning of a much required improvement in translating the improvements appearing in the Technology Preview and for those improvements to make a timely appearance in the mainstream build of Safari.

Well, I’ve enjoyed my second day off from work – just chilling out at home. Last week I was going to head into Wellington to get my keyboard repaired but due to all the craziness along with police advising not to come into the CBD due to the protest. This week I’m going to head in on Wednesday – might go for a bit of a trip around the Hutt Valley before going into Wellington. I can get the keyboard fixed up for free because it falls under the free repair – basically I want to keep using it for as long as I can before I need to replace it. The big focus for me is the M seies of Apple Silicion is the arrival of an ARMv9 version arriving and then I’ll upgrade.

Today I’ve been chilling out upgrading software on my computers, making sure I’m running the latest version of Chrome while also catching up with the latest news about Apple working together with other vendors to improve interoperability as to avoid developers having to create exceptions for different browsers because of implementation quirks (link). The big problem I’ve had with Webkit/Safari isn’t the time it takes to implement features but how long it takes for those features to migrate from the Safari Technology Previw to the mainstream release of Safari on macOS.

Well, I was going to head into Wellington today (Wednesday) to get the keyboard on my MacBook Pro replaced (as part of the whole programme Apple has running) but given the craziness I saw online in Wellington I decided to wait it out until things get back to normal – a person riding in on a scooter is an easy target for the crazies out the front of parliament.

On a good side, Ubiquiti have pushed out an update for my UniFi AP AC HD which updates it to 6.0.14 which also includes new wifi driver, new wifi firmware etc. so it’ll be interesting to see how things perform. There is also another UDM update in the works at the moment which is sitting at 1.11.4 but that could keep gong up version numbers as they develop it – maybe in the future they’ll eventually merge UnifiOS so there is a single OS that covers their UDM range of products.

With the conflict currently going on in Ukraine I’m going to refrain from putting my 5 cents worth in regarding it however I do think it is worth while for people to have a brush up on their history – further back than Putin or the Soviet past – way back to Peter the Great. Long story short, how we got here involves many twists and turns.

One of my work colleagues had a close contact so she headed off home to get tested with the rest of us at the office keeping in an eye on whether we’re experiencing any symptoms. I’ve been triple vaxxed along with all my work mates so we’re ok but we’ll need to play it safe and hopefully we’ll get through this wave with the least number of deaths possible.

I thought I could have avoided it however the keyboard on my MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017) is starting to show the tell tale signs it needs replacing. Thank goodness though my device is still covered by the replacement programme that Apple has running but I’ll need to duck into Wellington to get it sorted out – hopefully I’ll be able to avoid the protestors who have been causing over two weeks of disruption to normal Wellington life.