Matisyahu's Blog

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick'"

recent posts

  • A spot of bad luck.

    Well, I came off my scooter yesterday due to a puncher in my back tyre so I’ve had to rest from work – I’ve been taking it easy but in moments where I’m feeling better I plugged up 4 punchers in my tyre. I think long term I’m going to have to replace the back tyre but at the moment it’ll get me through to the end of the week.

    Welp, got that all sorted out – I couldn’t order a Chromecast with Google TV via best buy however on a good side I realised it is available in Australia so I’ve ordered it so that it is delivered to my brother and then he’ll send it to New Zealand. I think going forward that once this whole COVID-19 is under control I’m going to turn October into the ‘upgrade my phone and gear while I head over to Australia for a holiday’ which will enable me to get Google gear without the stress of dealing with retailers in the US who apparently are keeping tabs of addresses of remailing services.

    On the Google front I’ve setup my Google Workspaces which will give me all the Workspaces applications plus 2TB of storage for NZ$18 per month and combine that with YouTube Premium which is NZ$15.99 the total cost is NZ$33.99 which isn’t too bad given that I’ll be backing up my whole music collection that I’ve backed from my CDs in FLAC files (currently sitting on an external SSD but it is always good practice to have an offsite backup) as well as making extensive use of YouTube Music since I’ll upload my whole FLAC collection to YouTube Music and let Google do all the encoding required so then I can access my music from all my devices – laptop, desktop or mobile phone. I’ve jut finished uploading the contents of my external drive which is around 160GB but given that it comes with 2TB it is pretty much unlimited.

    Once I’ve finished my YouTube Premium on my old account I’ll start up the subscription on my new account then upload all the FLAC files to YouTube Music so that they can be converted over. One of the cool things is that YouTube Music can be ‘installed’ as a PWA so it ends up acting like an application.

    Side note: It is interesting to see that Google is heading in the direction that I thought they would in terms of consolidating around key brands such as using the YouTube brand for bringing together music, movies, linear television and so on. Another side note: If you have a Workspace/GSuite account, you may find that you cannot access YouTube – you’ll need to wait 30 days and have spent at least US$30 in terms of paying your subscription – that can either be in the form of a deposit or just paying for a couple of months. I found it out the hard way in the past – pulling my hair out wondering why it wasn’t working. On a good side, my Pixel 4 XL won’t arrive until November, and my Chromecast with Google TV will probably arrive towards the end of October after it is received by my brother and his partner in Australia then mailed to New Zealand – from what I understand there is a bit of a backlog between in Australia and New Zealand so it might take longer than usual. Oh well, all looking good. When it arrives I’ll give both a review including lots of photos and stuff.

  • Google announcements.

    Around 6 days ago Google had an event entitled ‘Launch Night In’ where they launched the Pixel 5, Pixel 4a with 5G, Chromecast with Google TV plus a few other product refreshes (link). Most of what they were about to announce had been leaked out but it was interesting to see a confirmation but I was disappointed that there was no true flagship. Although they had only leaked news about the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a with 5G, I was expecting maybe a single high end model with a big screen (maybe even just on one colour to reduce inventory costs) but unfortunately I was disappointed. There was the mention of a Chromecast with Google TV (the rebranded Android TV) which has a fresh new interface and great hardware but unfortunately it isn’t available in New Zealand. One thing to keep in mind it has only has just been announced – I’m sure a retailer in New Zealand will distribute it just as they’ve distributed Google stuff in the past such as Kogan or one of the big box vendors (truth be known I prefer buying my stuff online and avoid the crowds – I was social distancing before it was cool).

    I then did some comparisons with the Pixel 4 XL and interesting enough it still holds up strong against the 765G SoC and although Google talk about not launching a high end flagship this year as being a deliberate choice I have a sneaking suspicion it had to do more with wanting to push out a 5G phone and deciding to go with the 765G SoC to offset the extra power consumption and cost that the 5G modem uses (not to mention pressure by carriers who are hyping up their 5G network (don’t get me started on mmwave and how it is pretty much snake oil at this point). I have a inkling that next year we’ll see the return of a ‘traditional’ flag ship as the cost of 5G technology drops in cost so that it is integrated into the SoC like the modem was with the 855 series or maybe Google drops support for mmwave altogether after Verizon finally comes to its senses and realises that a technology that cannot penetrate a raindrop probably isn’t all that good even if the hypebeasts at network equipment manufacturers promise multi gigabit speeds.

  • Kitchen renovations.

    Another weekend has arrived and I’m looking for some relaxation at home. So far the new kitchen is looking good although I have to get the floor covering installed but that being said I’m in no great hurry since there is plastering and panting yet to be done. With all that being said the kitchen does look a lot bigger now that the shelves on the wall are removed along with the divider which made the kitchen feel boxed in.

    Rumours are still making the rounds that Apple will still have an iPhone presentation on 14 October (13 October US time) along with maybe announcing the release date of macOS 11.0 ‘Big Sur’ along side the release of the first ‘Apple Silicon’ based Mac (rumoured to be the MacBook ultrabook which would enable Apple to show off it’s architectural chops on the form of great battery life in a thin and light form factor).

    The weather is improving and with that I think I’m going to get back on track. I’ve been pretty lazy over Autumn and Winter so this Spring and Summer I’m going to start going for a small walk each night – some fresh air along with getting the body moving. Tomorrow will be a start of a fresh new day – lets see how it all turns out.

  • ASUS Zenfone is looking good.

    Well, I’ve ordered a nice wallet case for a ASUS Zenfone 7 Pro from Aliexpress so it’ll be interesting to when that’ll arrive and how well it’ll look with the Zenfone 7 Pro I’ll be buying off a parallel importer (which also deals with the whole ‘paying GST as it goes through customs) which will be a nice step up from the iPhone I have. I’ve been giving Apple a second, third, forth (you get the point) chance to finally get Safari HTML5 technologies sorted out and yet Safari on iOS 14.0 is still only scoring 494 points on HTML5 test when compared to Chrome which achieves 525 points.

    At this stage I really have to ask whether Apple’s failure to implement the numerous APIs that make up the HTML5 standard a situation of Apple wanting to maintain Webkit’s super efficient reputation by ensuring that what is implemented doesn’t result in regressions or whether it is a situation trying to fend off progressive web apps for as long as possible by not implementing key technologies that developers require. Unfortunately in the case of iOS, although you can install other browsers the reality is that they’re merely a front end over the same Webkit rendering engine that Safari uses which includes all the limitations as well.

  • More rumours of the next Samsung Galaxy.

    I have to admit, I am kind of old school in how I use my computer in much the same way that many people by default search for an app on their smartphone even though the website is perfectly fine or in many cases exactly the same as the app itself (where I work the app and the website look exactly the same when accessed from a smartphone). In the case of me I tend to use the blogging app but the problem is that there are features not available on the app which is available on the website. A good example of that would be the auto-arranging of photos – on the app you try to move it around into some order whereas on the website all you have to do is select the photos and WordPress will offer you layout options where you select the one you want and it takes care of all the details itself.

    There are more rumours making the rounds regarding the performance of the next Samsung Galaxy smartphone given what has been leaked so far (link). It appears that there is still going to be a gap between Qualcomm 875 and the new SoC appearing in the next version of Samsung’s flagship smartphone but on the upside the battery life is a whole lot better. There is also a rumour that Samsung will be standardising on their own CPU design globally which given the costly nature of Qualcomm’s up and coming 5G modem/SoC combo – as seen by the rumoured release of the Pixel 5 skipping the 865 in favour of the 765G which has a better battery life (at the expense of performance – but most users wouldn’t notice) which will offset the hungrier 5G modem.

    That being said, given that Samsung makes their own modems they might just not even bother with mmwave support given that globally all the focus by carriers has been in the sub-6 GHz zone – T-Mobile deploying 5G on the 600 Mhz spectrum they recently acquired which will given them coast to coast coverage (not to mention the refarming out of spectrum it acquired via the acquisition of Sprint). In the case of New Zealand there is 5G being deployed on 3.5 GHz by all of the three major carriers although things will start to get interesting as lower spectrum is refarmed out or made available in future auctions such as 600 MHz or possibly lower (Scandinavia there is investigation by a few carriers about the possibility of deploying 5G on 450 MHz).

  • Updates to various platform beta builds.

    Apple has pushed out Beta 8 of macOS ‘Big Sur’ recently (link) – I still very much have the release date being at the same time as iOS/iPadOS/etc 14.2 being released along with Xcode 12.2 since that version of Xcode will include an updated SDK which supports all those platforms. There hasn’t been any word on next press conference but I’d probably say that it’ll be on 14 October given that 30 September is already the launch day for Google’s own products.

    I’m looking forward to seeing the first crop of Apple Silicon based Macs – for me I’m not going to upgrade at least for another 2 years at the very least. The reason for that is firstly finances and secondly I tend to avoid buying 1.0 of any sort of product, I’d sooner let the early adopters deal with the first crop of products and then come in to purchase the next version which has improved baed on the feedback received from consumers in the real world. When I do upgrade I’ll make it an ‘all in one’ affair – iMac, MacBook Pro, iPhone and Apple TV plus maybe a newer television – all in a single transaction.

    Things are slowly getting back to normal – Auckland is moving to Level 2 and the rest of New Zealand has moved to Level 1 but it will be interesting to see whether the wearing masks will become mainstream in much the same way that wearing a mask when one is sick is the normal thing to do in many Asian countries. Reading through the Wellington subreddit it was interesting people noting how many were wearing masks on public transport.

  • macOS 11 development continues on.

    Apple released another beta build of macOS 11 ‘Big Sur’ (link) – it will be interesting to see whether beta 7 marks the move to the final stretch or whether Apple will keep pushing out updates to address the last few ‘known issues’. There Is a rumour going around that there will be another event held at the end of September regarding the iPhone 12 and the launch of the first Apple Silicon based Mac so it is plausible that they’re wanting to stabilise macOS as much as possible so that the first round of Apple Silicon based Mac’s give customers the best possible experience out of the gate (although like the Intel Mac’s I’m sure there will be a flurry of updates pushed out to fix up bugs developers find, to improve Rosetta optimisation etc). I have a strong feeling (completing guessing) that macOS 11.0 will be released when Xcode 12.2 and the x.2 series of iOS, iPadOS etc. will be released around the same time.

    There was a podcast I was listening to a few days ago that claims Apple were looking at moving to their own ARM based designs for Mac as far back as the 2015 based on Intel falling behind the roadmap that Intel promised Apple but I personally disagree with that assessment. I disagree with with the assessment because of Apple’s historical tendency towards wanting to bring as much as possible ‘in house’ which enables them to control the complete process and for the components to suit their needs rather than a third party developing something aimed for a larger market and it kinda meets the needs of Apple. When Apple started to move to their own CPU design (vs. using a reference design) that long term Apple was going to move the Mac platform to their own CPU design – the situation wasn’t if but rather when. I would say that where the decision in 2015 kicks in is the decision to bring forward the time line – that it was always going to go ahead but sometime in the future but given what has taken place with Intel unable to meet it’s roadmap it brings forward the time line of transitioning over to its own CPU.

  • Release date has been announced.

    On Tuesday (NZ Time) Apple announced that iOS, tvOS, watchOS and iPadOS would be released on Wednesday (NZ Time) so when I woke up this morning I was ready to install it. On my iPhone it was a pretty hefty download of around 2.3GB but I was also surprised that Safari 14 was made available to macOS Catalina (I was expecting the rumoured ‘Supplemental Update’ that was talked about on 9 to 5 Mac (link)). With that I did a clearing out my macOS installation (falling down into single user mode and deleting the contents of ~/Library along with Caches etc).

    I’m enjoying Safari 14, it loads websites faster – not only making the initial connection but also downloading and rendering the page as well. It doesn’t include 4K Youtube support in the form of VP9 support being added so that’ll have to wait until Big Sur is released but that being said – so far everything is working well. What I am hoping for is that gradually they’ll expand WebExtensions API so that it has the depth and breadth of support that Firefox has. Although Ad Guard does a pretty good job I do wish for uBlock Origin to make its way to Safari.

    I’ll be writing up a longer review once Big Sur is released – I’m hoping that’ll be released while I’m on my holiday – I’ll do a clean install on all my devices so I start with a clean slate which will give a fair assessment of how Big Sur performs.

  • The future of Apple and Apple Silicon.

    As we draw closer to the release of Apple’s first ARM based Macs it is interesting to watch various people speculate about the future – I generally avoid the clickbait in favour of Snazzy Labs, Rene Richie which have a more measured tone in terms of forecasting where they think Apple will go.

    Although there is a lot of speculation about the performance of the SoC, the question is whether we’re going to see software vendors make use of the various parts of the SoC (Neural Engine processor, CPU and GPU) through frameworks provided (Metal, Metal Performance Shaders etc) or whether they use the CPU as a dumping ground resulting in customers getting a subpar experience (see Adobe drag their feet every step of the way when it comes to adopting new technology). There is a certain amount that Apple can do in terms of ensuring that various parts of the operating system’s frameworks are tapping into the underlying hardware but there is a limit particularly if software vendors are writing multiplatform software and need to utilise multi-platform frameworks such as Qt.

    What has also happened recently was the announcement by nVidia to buy ARM from SoftBank (link). It’ll be interesting to see how it all turns out but given that it would provide nVidia with a CPU of their own, it will provide them with the opportunity to make use of ARM based SoCs for cloud servers and maybe even open up the possibility of ARM based laptops, desktops, workstations in the mainstream. Regarding how this impacts Apple – it doesn’t as Apple has a licence which gives them access to the ARM ISA but the design of the SoC itself is up to Apple to build from the ground up (vs. licencing a design from ARM as with the case of Samsung’s upcoming Exynos which will revert to standard CPU designs straight from ARM).

    It will be interesting to see whether long term we might even see console vendors like Microsoft and Sony look into using ARM based nVidia SoC’s with nVidia GPU particularly if it means they can get improved performance but at a lower cost per unit which can either be passed on as savings to customers the ability to develop consoles beyond consoles – imagine a XBox running a stripped down modernised version of Windows where you boot up and choose between ‘gaming mode’ and ‘desktop mode’ – where a student could purchase an XBox, hook up a screen, mouse and keyboard, and have a games machine and computer that they can use for study all in one.

  • Mac and ARM based SoC.

    Something that I realised when thinking about the fact that the move to ARM based Mac’s will enable the running of native iOS/iPadOS applications on macOS about what it might mean for Google applications that run on iOS/iPadOS. For example, for years people on various Apple forums have complained about the subpar integration between macOS and Google services but with the movement to ARM based Mac’s might open up the opportunity for the native Gmail application appearing on MacOS along side a native YouTube Music app, Google Maps etc. Keeping in mind that for these applications to make their way onto macOS it is something that Google would have to opt in on – it’ll be interesting to see whether they go, “meh, might as well, it’s no skin off our nose” or whether they rigidly stick to their current position of “small screen’s get the apps, everyone else uses a web browser to access our services”.

    Rumour has it that there is an ARM iMac being released next year – 24 inch but in the same case as a 21.5 inch by stretching the screen to the edge (27 inch being upgraded to a 32 inch by stretching the screen to the edge) but as noted in the past – I always let the early adopters take the 1.0 version and I’ll be waiting for the the next revision where hopefully most of the bugs will be found and corrected.