I originally said I wouldn’t upgrade to iOS 15 but having seen that the custom domain support in iCloud so I thought that I might as well go for it. I upgraded my iPhone and Apple TV with both of them running buttery smooth so far for me, no bugs with third party applications. There was also the release of Safari 15 for macOS and although I’m not enamoured with the idea of the new design I’ve decided to stop whining and get aboard the ‘new tab’ bandwagon and I’m sure with some practice that I’ll eventually get there and it’ll become second nature.
Safari 15 itself is pretty good, no problems with YouTube playback – I’m unsure whether it was the disabling of DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) or the browse but everything appears to be working a lot smoother. It’ll be interesting to see whether we start using content blocking extensions start to make use of the Webextensions API content blocking. The content blocking also has had the cap increased from 50,000 to 300,000 (extension developers get around the limit but spawning a separate process for each filter category thus the limit is now over a million filters which will be more than enough).
At the moment I’m writing an article regarding the National Party and what I think they need to do so that they they can be a viable opposition party, I’ve also got another post on the back burner regarding the negative aspect of social networking (the concept of a social media platform and the business that runs behinds the scenes which applies an otherwise pretty toxic concept).
I downloaded a copy of Mimestream (link) to see how it performs when setup with my Google account. It have to admit, there have been some big improvements, in particular support for Google Contacts. i had a check of the Mimestream roadmap (link) and it appears that they’re considering support for not only Contact management (beyond the basic integration so far) but also support for Google Calendaring. I’ve put my 5 cents worth in and suggested they also provide support for the Google Keep API so then it can integrate with Google using the APIs provided by Google (link).
Long term I would love to see Mimestream fill that role similar to how Mail/Contacts/Calendar/Notes integrate with iCloud or how Microsoft Outlook app integrates in with Microsoft’s Outlook in the cloud. I believe that Mimestream has a good base to build on because they’ve decided to build it from the ground up using Swift because long term, in my no so humble opinion, Apple is going to eventually get Swift and Swift UI to a point of maturity that they’ll have an UI and language API that spans from workstations all the way down to watches which will eventually supersede AppKit/UI Kit in the long term with Catalyst (running iPadOS apps on macOS with minimal changes) is a stop gap measure in the mean time (in much the same way that with WinUI you can mix and match which makes migration a lot easier rather than telling programmers to throw it all out and start again).
One thing I have done recently was turning off DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) since it really was of no benefit to me other than having a cool break down in the form of nice graphics of what type of data I was transferring which came at the cost of latency, speed and I found at times it could be a big iffy (stalling) but that being said I still have my security set to its maximum setting. I’m looking forward to the next version of Unifi OS 1.11 which will include WPA3 support, improved firmware for the UDM’s wireless networking module etc. Although there are Wi-Fi 6 devices out there, I am waiting for the technology to mature and for the finalised specifications to make their way out to devices (most of the current ones are based on the draft standard which may cause problems as seen in the past with iterations). For me the interesting part will be the 6Ghz support that comes with Wi-Fi 6E in terms of potential bandwidth improvements (particularly important when one is on a gigabit fibre connection).
More leaks regarding the Pixel 6 are making their rounds with an indication that it won’t include the sort of X1 cores that are found in the Exynos 2100 and Qualcomm 888 – rumour has it that’ll include 2 x A78, 2 x A76, 4 x A55. For me, those would be good enough for the vast majority of people (aka normal people who don’t whip themselves into a frenzy over specifications) and I wouldn’t be surprised that by dropping the X1 cores it has enabled them to keep the price low – I wouldn’t be surprise if the Pixel 6 is only slightly higher than the Pixel 5 and the Pixel 6 Pro being slightly higher than that again. There is a good chance that we might see a sub $1000 phone which will mean it won’t be completing at the flag ship level but rather going for that premium mid range segment which is where all the excitement is at the moment then add to that the rumours of 5 years worth of updates, it sounds like I need to start cracking and saving up money to buy it – I’ll end up buying it through Amazon but I maybe lucky and find that Kogan offers it or even better if Google sells it directly into New Zealand like the did back in the days of the Nexus 6p.
I found something really useful and it has saved me a tonne of time when moving passwords from Safari over to Chrome (link). The script works well however there are a few gotchas. The first being that it may fail a few times as you need to grant access to the script through the ‘System Preferences’ then once that done you’ll need to quickly enter your computer password so that the password can reach the passwords in Safari after that process is completed you’ll need to edit the csv file that the script creates such as replacing the file line with:
name,url,username,password
Then making sure that each of the url’s in the second ‘column’ are prefixed with the following:
https://
Then once you’ve done that you’ll then need to launch Chrome using the following command:
Because by default when you launch Chrome you can only export passwords but you need to enable the password import feature by launching Chrome from the terminal using the above command. Once imported everything synced into the cloud and voila I’m happy to frolic through the web and log into my favourite websites without having to do the awkward copy and paste from Safari to Chrome then hope that I’ve copied over all the login derails without mistakes.
Woke up this morning and had a quick read up on the Apple event that occurred – as expected there were incremental change with the big focus not necessarily on performance improvements when compared to the previous but rather pointing out that it is faster than the competition then quickly focusing on the battery life, new features etc. We’re pretty much getting to the point of diminishing returns where the additional performance is having less of an impact for the average user with the focus I see being in the future around battery life and what the device can do. Call me an old grouch but I refuse to see the phone as a replacement for a computer – it is a great device when you need to quickly get something done when you’re on the go (like back in the days of the PDA) but for serious work a computer is the best choice (tablets being good ‘computer replacements’ for people who want an appliance rather than a traditional computer with it all the power, flexibility but complexity that comes as part of the package).
I was having a brief look at the benchmarks for the Mac mini and I was shocked about the fact that my iMac (slightly under 4 year old) is being beaten. This has made me wonder whether, when I do upgrade my iMac and MacBook Pro, whether I should use go and get a Mac mini, Apple keyboard and mouse then buy a nice 4K 32inch monitor from Dell. The big factor for me going with the iMac over the Mac mini was because of the discrete graphics but if Apple is going to go with their own GPU for their Macs, from top to bottom, then I might as well look at look what alternatives to the iMac. Maybe the much rumoured maxed out Mac mini or even the Mac Pro mini, both rumours having been making the rounds for quite some time, would be an option. At this stage my only criteria is that it has to be ARMv9 compatible. As for what I’ll do with my old computers – I am tempted to donate them to mum or a family member unless I can get a decent deal which avoids me having go through he rigmarole of couriering my iMac – the iMac will either have to be a local sale or I’ll give it to my sister so they can use it.
I’m going to have a kebab tonight along with a mixed grill – salad, salad and more salad! I need to start eating my greens. It is interesting the number of new restaurants that are making an appearance on Delivery Easy but I wonder whether certain dishes won’t be available since they aren’t exactly the sort of dishes that keep well when it comes to a delivery service.
I’ve move back to Safari and I don’t know what Apple did but their latest update did something because now Safari is buttery smooth again. Although I threw a bit of a temper tantrum about the changes coming in Safari 15, it is highly likely that when I do eventually upgrade to macOS 12 (probably being released in around a months time or so) I’m sure I’ll be less pessimistic (the only exposure to Safari 15 has been through the Technology Preview releases from the Webkit project website). The Technology Preview builds are going to be buggy by their nature but the Safari 15 will be a lot more mature, less on the bleeding edge with the net result being probably a better overall experience.
It’ll be interesting to see what new features Apple will add to their SoC such as support for VP8, VP9 and AV1 which will hopefully mean a lot smoother experience when it come to video playback – I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually start finding that as time goes on that new features are either ARM only or if they are available on both Intel and ARM that the experience on ARM will be far superior to the Intel experience. It’ll also be interesting to see the work that Apple has done with LLVM (and all the associated projects) in terms of optimisations for their ARM based family of SoCs especially when one considers that eventually Apple will launch a range ARMv9 based SoCs which will include SVE2.
Had a shocker of a sleep on Sunday night meaning I only ended up getting around 5 hours of sleep but on the good side all I had to do was muddle through the day on Monday but then I fell a sleep at around 6pm when I woke up at around 11:30pm, went to the toilet then back to bed for another 10 hours sleep. After 15 hours of sleep I feel I’ve finally caught up on the lost sleep from Sunday night lol.
I work up this morning and Apple has released iOS 14.8 and macOS 11.6 – they were pretty big updates with macOS 11.6 being around 2.46GB which makes me wonder whether a few extra fixes were snuck into the update given Apple’s tendency to not always list all the changes that they’ve made but rather focusing on the most high profile changes they’ve made. I’ve updated my iMac, MacBook Pro and iPhone withe everything working perfectly fine and no adverse reaction from any of the third party applications i run such as Chrome.
Tomorrow is the big day for Apple as they’re hosting an announcement – questions are still circulating around whether this will be the announcement day for the next iPhone or whether they’ll maybe launch an Mac refresh then in a months time launching the iPhone refresh. As iPhone sales slow down the big question is how they’re going to create their services revenue particularly when you consider the recent changes regarding allow developers to collect payments through their own payment processing rather than being forced to use Apple’s own payment system along side allowing developers to link to their own website so the customer can add payment information.
Samsung has released One UI 4.0 beta to the public (link) and here is a video from Sam Mobile that covers the most visible changes that have taken place:
It’s good to see that Android 12 with One UI from Samsung is using the Linux kernel version 5.4.x with the changes being more about refining rather than anything radical but then again this is a very early beta so it could be possible that we may see either features being added or maybe seeing Android 12 with One UI being released before the end of this year and then in 2022 when Samsung releases the next Samsung S device we might see the the One UI 4.1 and possibly have One UI 4.1 also made available on the Samsung S21 series. The presenter in the video noted improved optimisation which does’t surprise me given that Samsung has moved from their custom architecture and instead using off the shelf ARM designs from ARM so I wouldn’t be surprised that as the code base matures that we’ll see improved performance. The biggest improvement to the Samsung S platform will be when the Exynos with AMD GPU is launched next year but even with the leaked information so far it appears that the gap has narrowed between Exynos and Qualcomm so I wouldn’t be surprised that we end up seeing Samsung launch Exynos SoC based phones where they used to ship Qualcomm.
Yesterday the government announced that level 2 outside of Auckland has been extended to 21 September so that’ll mean working from home for another week which I’m happy about – not having to spend money getting to and from work is nice but I wish it were a more permanent option or at least be able to work from home for Wednesday, Thursday and Sun with Friday and Saturday at work in the office (I don’t start until 11:30am those days). With all that being said, the big focus by me is to get rid of the interest free payments for my phone from Spark and focus on saving up for either the Pixel 6 Pro or next year the Samsung S22 Ultra (assuming it adopts the S22 branding). For me, I’m in no rush although I’m quickly realising that I’m more dependent on the Google ecosystem particularly as Safari doesn’t seem to be up to the task as Apple appears to be focusing on everything but getting the core (Webkit) sorted out by addressing the many developer complaints (I’ve linked to a blogpost addressing the many complaints).
New Zealand’s vaccination rate is sitting at 69% for at least one dose and 35% (slightly over half) have have had their second dose (with extra supplies obtained from Spain and Denmark). It appears that the government will be going with Novavax for the booster shot (link). It’ll be interesting to see when the government will start the booster shot deployment or whether the government is keeping their options open as generation 2 COVID vaccines are getting close to regulatory approval. Hopefully once we get everyone vaccinated it’ll be a matter of a COVID vaccine become like getting an MMR vaccine then followed up each year with a booster shot.
Oh, upon reflection, I think the headache I’ve had today was the result of keeping away from sugar and processed foods (prepared meals from the frozen section) – I’m sure after a week of withdrawal symptoms that my body will get used to the ‘new normal’. Tonight I was lazy and ordered a meal from Bowel which had a grilled chicken breast with lots of vegetables etc. which is a lot healthier than what I would have normally have. For me it isn’t about being a ‘health nut’ but more about making those incremental changes that’ll stick for life. I have a tendency of wanting to do a whole lot of changes all at once and within a matter of weeks it becomes all too much (overwhelming) that I end up slipping back into old habits – let’s hope that taking it slower will make the transition seemless and a permanent change. I guess when I was younger I could get away with treating my body like a garbage can – consumption with very little reflection of how it’ll impact my long term heath but now that I’ve hit 40 I think I need to start taking what and how I eat a little bit more seriously.
Well, it has been confirmed, Apple is having an event announcement on 14 September – could it be like last year where the September event launches a set of products then a month later (October) they launch the next iPhone then a month after (November) that there is a Mac refresh with the much rumoured M1X. It’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out. Btw, no, I’m not going to say “this year has hit peak iPhone” because every time some commentator says that it ends up being completely and utterly wrong.
On the topic of Android vs. iPhone sales figures, there was in IDC report that came out Apple outpacing Android in terms of 5G phones (link). One thing to keep in mind is that there are many phones still being sold that are solely 4G because the first generation of SoCs had the 5G modem as an external chip which raised costs for handset vendors not to mention the fact that they consumed more power (new technology tends not to be as optimised in terms of battery life when compared to the previous generation which had years of refinement in terms of hardware, firmware and driver maturity). As a result of that many held off from deploying 5G with the only ones being shipped being flag ship models but even then much of the 5G has been just that – hype.
What will happen in the next year? Well, the original Qualcomm 865 SoC was dependent on an external 5G modem where as the Qualcomm 888 which started to shipped in phones this year was the first that included the X50 integrated modem not to mention the extra complexity of 5G mmWave antennas. Then add to that when it comes to raw units shipped Android dominates the low to mid range so I wouldn’t be surprised that Android will dominate the market once 5G scales down to the low to mid level phones.
The interesting rumour has it that Google is pushing to use their custom SoC into more devices with a Chromebook being scheduled for a release in 2023 based on an article (link). That along with the work being done around Wear OS and other join ventures will hopefully put to rest the never ending rumours that the relationship between Google and Samsung is ‘rocky’. No matter how much Google tries they’ll never have the distribution reach that Samsung has and as much as Samsung would love to have their own platform the reality is that developing and maintaining ones own platform is expensive with very limited benefits beyond “hey, we have our own platform! yay for us!”.
Samsung has its own SoC with an AMD GPU with rumours that we’re going to also see a Exynos laptop running Windows 11 in the near future. It is interesting how for years 1-2 players can dominate a market then in a short period of time that dominance is gradually undermined. Reminds me of how Internet Explorer absolutely dominated the market then it was undermined by Firefox because it stripped off all the bloat from Mozilla so it was purely a web browser then that was slowly usurped by Google embracing Webkit then later forking it (Blink) for their own browser where Chrome these days is almost like a run time engine that much of the internet relies on these days (it appears that Chrome has delivered on what Java was meant to do and that is to ‘write once, run everywhere’).
Tonight had had some burritos from a local store but tomorrow I might just have an easy meal of some ramen noodles with semi-soft boiled eggs. Oh and on a side note I started taking flax seed oil again an I feel so much better even after a long day at work. I don’t know what I stopped but I think I need to make it a more regular thing – the benefits of Omega 3 along with the iron tablet will set me up for a winner of a day.
The government has announced that from 23:59 on Tuesday that the rest of New Zealand will move to level 2 and Auckland will remain at level 4 (link). There have been some changes with level 2 so there was a meeting by management at work and they decided that we’re continuing to work from home until the end of the week. There has been changes to the level 2 protocols regarding spacing and limits which is why internally we’re referring to it as level 2.5. I think we’re probably going to stay at level 2 until Auckland comes down but then again it is all speculation on my part.
I’ve been looking through the iCloud+ regarding the details of custom domain hosting and I’ve realised that although it sounded great at the time the problem is that there is a limit of three email addresses per person per domain which means it is very much limited to 3 email per user per domain. That may sound a lot but in my case I like to more than three email addresses – I tend to have different email addresses for different purposes so that I can keep track of which websites use which email address so then I know when a website has been compromised or starts emailing be spam so then I can quickly dispose of that email and create a new one to replace it.
Google Workspace is open option although Office 365 is also a viable option but I always like to keep my options open especially when one considers that in the net couple of months that not only the iPhone 13 and Pixel 6 will be launched, there is also a Microsoft Surface event scheduled where the much rumoured Surface Duo 2 will be announced. I really do hope that they’ve learned from their mistake such as not having NFC in the first generation device given how ubiquitous NFC technology is these days.
Came back to work on Friday after enjoying an extra couple of days off only to be reminded of the constant barrage of calls because of the lock down – people forgetting their password, being taught how to add their debit or credit card to the website etc. hopefully things will start to calm down when Auckland moves from level 4 to level 3 but that won’t be for another 2 weeks. On 6 September the government will assess whether the rest of New Zealand will stay at level 3 or move down to level 2 – part of me wishes to stay at level 3 because I prefer working from home than having to get up early to go to work each day.
On Monday 30 August I received my second Pfizer covid shot thus making my fully vaccinated – no, I’m not going to stop wearing masks because it is still possible to get sick but taking the vaccinate greatly improves your chances of not dying if you contract it. Remember, keep safe out there by socially distancing, wear a mask, practice good hygiene and only go out because you need to purchase something (and do all your errands in one go) rather than just dawdling around the store. For me, I’m purchasing my groceries online which funny enough I’m being a lot more mindful about what I actually need rather than turning up at the store after work and hungry for dinner only to buy a whole heap of stuff I don’t really need. I also bought some razor blades for my ‘old school’ safety razor – for NZ$22.99 I can get 100 blades which is so much cheaper than if I had the modern disposable razors whose blades can be $25 or more for a 5 pack of razors not to mention the fact that the old school razors don’t get clogged up with whiskers. The only way I could go cheaper is if I learned how to use a cut throat razor but I don’t feel confident enough to make that leap – given how error prone I am I would end up like Norman Gunston (link).
macOS 12 beta 6 has been released but there are still things that need to be fixed with iOS 15 beta 7 but all signs indicate that Apple has frozen the addition of any new features and disabling those features that aren’t stable stable enough to go into the golden master. As noted earlier, what it indicates to me is that macOS will get released later (like last year) which will probably be in line with iOS 15.1 and the launch of secure relay and custom domain hosting. As noted before, I’m playing it by ear – keeping in mind that I’m not particularly wedded to iCloud but I much prefer using macOS than using Windows so my other big focus is waiting for an ARMv9 based MacBook Pro and iMac to ship.
I think holding off from upgrading is a good decision on my part having read through the Chromium change log where the various backends aren’t optimised for Metal so they fall back to the older backend technology. The net result is that although Chrome is compiling for macOS the big focus by Google will be to optimise and restore the Metal backend optimisation for Skia and ANGLE (along with other Chrome components).
That being said, there is also another piece of software that I love keeping track of which is Mimestream (link). Mimestream is a mail application designed from the ground up for Gmail so rather than implementing IMAP with all the extensions Google has done to the standard it uses the Google Mail API instead. The net result of using the API? it is a lot more reliable, pushed based receiving of emails, labels work properly not to mention all the fun ways in which Mimestream integrates in with the Google ecosystem (yes, it also works with Google Workspace). Currently it is still in development (currently 0.27 is the latest version) however it is being developed quickly and it is written from the ground up using Swift so it gains all the performance benefits of using a modern highly optimised language.
As for my person life, I am enjoying four days off from work (2 day weekend (Monday, Tuesday) followed by 2 days off (Wednesday, Thursday)) but on a good side I have been getting much better organised, eating regular meals that are home cooked. Oh, and speaking of food, they’ve finally bought back Tatua sour cream to the supermarket. Honestly, it is the only sour cream, along side the Lewis Road sour cream, that is worth buying because it has a proper sour cream taste. Next week there are a few things I want to buy but I think I’m going to make it a more regular thing to get my groceries delivered since I take a bus to and from work there is a limit in what I can purchase but if I can order a whole heap of stuff then it’ll mean I can go straight home each night rather than piecemeal shopping which can be problematic since other things get bought that I really don’t need.
Apple has made available via their iCloud beta website the custom domain hosting – I tried it out and it was fairly painless though adding the CNAME record was a bit of a pain in the backside because it wasn’t just a simply copy and past. That being said, all these services are available if you pay for extra storage space (I’m on 200GB at the moment but I’m looking at upgrading it to 2TB in the near future). Beta 7 of iOS 15 has been released so if I had to guess I would say that the announcement of the next iPhone will be mid October with the release of iOS 15 being a week after then when the iPhone 13 starts arriving there will probably a minor update (something like an iOS 15.0.1). When it comes to macOS I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up seeing macOS 12 being released mid to end of November with iOS 15.1 being made available which will include iCloud Private Relay (it was disabled in iOS 15 Beta 7 which is an indication that they’re wanting to stabilise it read to ship the ‘golden master’ to the factory for the new phones).
Getting the Delta stran under control appears to be working – the growth of community transmission is slowling which indicates a flatting of the curve (assuming there isn’t a cluster suddenly found. With all that being said, they are doing sewage testing as well which will help detect if there is any COVID within the community – at the moment the tests in Christchurch has detected trace amounts but (link). It’s speculation on my part but I have a feeling that there will be an extension probably until the end of next week with a move to level 3 the week after next week but then again anything could happen – NSW thought that they had it under control then it all went sideways because they half-assed the lock down resulting it never being properly controlled.
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