Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
Monday, February 12, 2018
iPhone battery replacement.
I'm blown away by what happened today.
I have been trying to make my 64GB iPhone 6+ that I purchased 40 months ago last as long as possible. I'm past the point where I would buy a new phone every two years, especially since modern phones are good enough that the changes from one year to the next are not as revolutionary as they used to be.
Apple received some bad press when it was revealed that they were slowing down older iPhones with worn out batteries to help preserve the battery life. Because of the bad press, Apple put their $79 battery replacement service on sale for $29. I had an appointment to get the battery replaced a month ago, but when I showed up for my appointment they didn't have any batteries available. So I waited a month to be notified that the battery had arrived and I went in today to have the service done.
I dropped off the phone at the Apple store and they told me that the repair would take an hour. So I got some lunch at the mall and wandered around to pass the time.
At this point a thought creeped into my mind, where I wondered what would happen if the repair didn't work? After all, my phone is 40 months old, so maybe something would go wrong and the phone would not work with the new battery? This might seem like an unnecessary worry, except this is actually what happened. They informed me that my iPhone did not power on with the new battery installed.
They immediately informed me that they were giving me a new 64GB iPhone 6+, and still only charging my $29. I was shocked by this, and asked if the phone was refurbished, but they told me, no, it was a new phone. So I walked into an Apple store with $29 and a 40 month old phone, and walked out with a brand new phone of the same type.
I'm impressed.
Monday, February 5, 2018
Friday, January 26, 2018
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
Axom-m-phone with two screens
https://www.cnet.com/news/axon-m-phone-opens-into-tablet-hands-on/
I predict that this could become the future of phones.
I predict that this could become the future of phones.
Saturday, November 4, 2017
How Bill Gate Made Microsoft
Not sure if you would like this or not. The documentary is about 18 years old. So it is a little out of date. Much of the information is available in other places. Nevertheless, I found it pretty interesting, but these kinds of things always interest me.
Friday, November 3, 2017
Yavin 4
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: utahtrout <utahtrout
Maybe what we thought was a sentry in star wars on Yavin 4 was just a cell tower repairman...
Globally, no country has yet to hit the important milestone of 50Mbps average speeds. Analysts have been predicting that a country (South Korea or Singapore) would hit the magic number this year, but both are still stuck at about 45Mbps.
Mind you, that number doesn't look so bad when you scroll all the way down to the United States, languishing at 14Mbps. The list of nations with faster mobile internet includes powerhouses like Lebanon (23Mbps), Romania (25Mbps) and Serbia (33Mbps).
There is one tiny beacon of hope: the US is doing well in terms of 4G availability, measured as the "proportion of time users have access to a particular network." The US is fifth of all countries, which is a huge achievement considering how widely spread parts of the US's population is.
http://bgr.com/2017/11/01/
Friday, October 20, 2017
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Apple Special Event. September 12, 2017.
A couple of days ago, Apple introduced their products at the brand new Steve Jobs theater, at their new Apple Park campus. I thought that the first ten minutes of the video were pretty interesting, including at 4:24 a quote from Steve Jobs I hadn't heard before.
re: Big announcements from our September event.
iPhone 8 can be preordered in 2 days. iPhone X can be preordered on October 27th.
Since my iPhone 6+ works just fine and I am happy with it, I can't really justify spending hundreds of dollars on a new phone. I could be happy with either the iPhone 8 or the iPhone 10, but I would rather wait until something major goes wrong with my phone before I spend the big bucks.
When I was working, I used to get a new phone with a new contract every 2 years. The upfront cost was relatively low, usually either $200 or $300, because the carrier would subsidize the cost of the phone. Many carriers won't do this anymore,but some companies like Sprint might. But right now I am saving $30 per month on Total Wireless, so I would have to pay an extra $720 over two years to get a subsidized phone.
One reason I bought a new phone every two years is that there would be some major changes every two years. However, now the phones have gotten so good that the changes are more incremental. The new phones always have a faster processor and a better camera, but this is hardly a reason to abandon your old phone.
Apple's 6 core processor is kind of exciting. Two high power cores with 4 low power cores, and unlike the previous phone, it can use all the cores at the same time. This rivals some desktop computers in terms of power. (Some competing brands of phones will allow you to hook up a monitor, keyboard and mouse and use it like an internet based computer. Microsoft Windows Phone does this, and I think so does the Google phone.)
Since my iPhone 6+ works just fine and I am happy with it, I can't really justify spending hundreds of dollars on a new phone. I could be happy with either the iPhone 8 or the iPhone 10, but I would rather wait until something major goes wrong with my phone before I spend the big bucks.
When I was working, I used to get a new phone with a new contract every 2 years. The upfront cost was relatively low, usually either $200 or $300, because the carrier would subsidize the cost of the phone. Many carriers won't do this anymore,but some companies like Sprint might. But right now I am saving $30 per month on Total Wireless, so I would have to pay an extra $720 over two years to get a subsidized phone.
One reason I bought a new phone every two years is that there would be some major changes every two years. However, now the phones have gotten so good that the changes are more incremental. The new phones always have a faster processor and a better camera, but this is hardly a reason to abandon your old phone.
Apple's 6 core processor is kind of exciting. Two high power cores with 4 low power cores, and unlike the previous phone, it can use all the cores at the same time. This rivals some desktop computers in terms of power. (Some competing brands of phones will allow you to hook up a monitor, keyboard and mouse and use it like an internet based computer. Microsoft Windows Phone does this, and I think so does the Google phone.)
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
We are entering a new era where a phone can be a real computer.
We are entering a new era where a phone can be a real computer.
I think that this was inevitable.
In this department, Apple has refused to merge their mobile and desktop operating systems, which Microsoft has done and Google has started to do. Apple would prefer that you spend big bucks to buy separate overpriced devices, but with newer phones becoming as powerful as some laptops, if not more powerful, why bother?
Best wishes,
John Coffey
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
Fwd: Unlock iPhone
'Tim Cook Opposes Court Order That Apple Must Help FBI Unlock iPhone'
https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/
Sunday, December 27, 2015
The late Steve Jobs introduces the first iPhone in 2007
I love watching this video.
This video serves as good instruction on how to use the iPhone.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Fwd: low power
'By using absorption and reflection to indicate data states, NASA reckons it's created a Wi-Fi device for the wearable market that uses just 0.1 per cent of the power of ordinary transceivers.
Working with Frank Chang at Caltech UCLA, the JPL boffin Adrian Tang is keen on ways to let devices with relatively low communications needs do without recharging.
As NASA explains here, their idea is to let a chip either reflect a signal back to a base station or access point (representing a binary 1), or absorb it (representing a binary 0). That way, the Wi-Fi device (be it a smart-watch or a a bio-sensor, for example), only needs enough energy for its own operations, instead of having to carry power for a full transceiver.
Not only that, but the device is fast. The NASA release says that at a short 2.5 metre distance, it can communicate at up to 330 Mbps, "using about a thousand times less power than a regular Wi-Fi link".'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/28/back_at_you_wifi_reflector_cuts_power_demands_for_wearables/
Fwd: Google translate
'Google Translate's real-time translation tool, first introduced in January, instantly transcribes a sign from a foreign language to your own when you point your phone camera at it—and now, the feature has expanded to cover 27 languages. Through the standalone Translate app, users can translate signs in tongues ranging from Catalan and Indonesian, to Slovak and Ukrainian.
The service previously offered translations between English and French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. The app works both ways: Non-English speakers can also translate English signs into their native languages. For Hindi and Thai translations, however, Google Translate can only convert English to the two languages—not the other way around—due to the complexity of their characters.
The app also works in the absence of a data connection for a phone, which makes it optimal for travelers.
The instant translation feature is largely derived from the Word Lens app, which Google acquired last year when it purchased the company behind it, Quest Visual.'
http://www.fastcompany.com/3049192/fast-feed/google-translate-can-now-decipher-signs-in-27-languages
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Fwd: android graphics api
'Mobile app developers looking for more direct graphics control will have it: Google on Monday announced Android support for Vulkan, a direct rendering 3D graphics API.
Vulkan actually comes by way of the Khronos Group, a non-profit consortium of companies creating open standard APIs for computer graphics rendering such as OpenGL and WebGL. Once Google integrates the new Vulkan APIs, developers can choose to use them or stick with the tried and true OpenGL ES.'
http://www.zdnet.com/article/android-to-get-a-graphics-boost-with-vulkan-a-low-overhead-rending-api/
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Fwd: Xpoint
'Much of that possibility hinges on the actual performance of 3D XPoint. Intel and Micron didn't get into specifics beyond the "1,000X" faster switching speed, but they did say 3D XPoint would offer "10X" the performance of an NVMe PCIe device. You don't have to look far to find that NVMe PCIe device either: The only one I know of today is Intel's excellent 750 series SSD, which hits in excess of 2.5GB of read speed on some loads. If that is the drive both companies are using as a reference, it's pretty easy to see that they expect 3D XPoint drives/devices to reach beyond 20GBps of read and write speed.
For reference, a typical PC with a Haswell or Broadwell CPU and dual-channel DDR3 offers around 17GB+ of memory bandwidth, while lower-end machines survive on 9GBps or less. Higher-end systems reach into the 55GBps range, while graphics card memory far outstrips those.'
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2953816/storage/what-3d-xpoint-says-about-the-pc-of-the-future.html
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Fwd: USB-C
'It's only taken thirty years, but we'll soon have one plug that, on paper, does it all: power, video and all kinds of peripherals. Cue headlines about "one cable to rule them all". And it's reversible!
However, "soon" isn't "now". It's going to be a confusing and expensive journey before the promises are fulfilled.
The last piece in the jigsaw fell into place yesterday at Computex, and cemented the USB-C socket as the winner. Intel announced that the third generation of Thunderbolt will support USB-C plugs.
So only one kind of plug is needed to support power, video and audio, and high-throughput data peripherals such as disk drives.
But that doesn't mean one cable will support everything: there will be several different kinds of USB-C supporting different capabilities, ensuring confusion continues for some time to come.
The reason is obvious to the tech-savvy, but less so for the typical user who has wandered into PC World on a Saturday morning. The plugs may be the same, but the capabilities are defined by the gadgets at each end of it.
Since the expense is defined by the capabilities of the host controller, it all depends on how much the market-conscious manufacturer wanted to spend.
Most people who'll see a USB-C socket won't be getting Thunderbolt 3 performance, as the Thunderbolt hardware is a luxury-priced item that will continue to be in high-performance hardware, rather than the value mass-market.
So the industry is moving to "one plug", but retains lots of different standards. At least in the bad old days, you knew you couldn't plug your projector monitor into the modem port and expect it to work. It wouldn't fit.'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/03/one_usb_plug_to_rule_them_all_no_wait/
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