Friday, November 20, 2020

M1 MacBook Air is Faster Than You Think! (Real Tests) - Krazy Ken's Tech Misadventures

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVtQfsXLnSA

Apple has performed a minor miracle with its new M1 chip.  It has 8 CPU cores, 8 graphics cores, and RAM all on one chip.  It has a 5-nanometer process, which is better than the current Intel and AMD processors.  It might not be possible to make smaller circuits without developing new materials.  So far, there isn't much progress in this area.

What is surprising is that this same chip can run on the Macbook Air, which has no active cooling.  This is essentially a mobile processor.

You can buy high-end desktop processors that are more powerful, but this System On a Chip is at least 22% faster than my 2017 (14 nanometer Intel quad-core I-5) iMac desktop according to a benchmark that I saw.  That is not a reason for me to replace my desktop, but compared to their previous mobile processors, this thing is pretty impressive.

Reportedly Apple is going to come out with something better for their desktop computers.  It would make sense that a desktop processor would be more powerful.

The only downside is that they can't run Intel-based programs natively, but have a software solution for running those programs.  I'm not sure about Windows compatibility, but I heard something about being able to run some Windows programs through emulation.  


Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Dear Linus...You're Wrong About the Apple M1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUkDku_Qt5c

At 3:50 they have a benchmark for the new Apple M1 chip in the Macbook Air, and it is about 22% faster than my iMac desktop computer.  That is with no active cooling.  Apple is making mobile processors and getting desktop performance out of them.


There is a rumor that there will be an M2 chip for the future desktop iMac computers.  Maybe eventually.  The M1 was supposed to target mobile devices.

Saturday, October 24, 2020

A14 Bionic

The new Apple A14 bionic processor in their new iPhone and iPad Air, with its 5-nanometer circuits, benchmarks its processor power between my old iMac and my new iMac, and this is without any active cooling. This is desktop processing power on a phone. Apple is planning to use similar chips in its upcoming laptops because they are abandoning Intel processors on at least their portable devices.  

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Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Thursday, October 15, 2020

6G - Explained!

I think that 5G is not very practical yet, given that the high frequencies are easily blocked. However, this video is already talking about 6G, to come in 10 to 15 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvcAovqG5Kk

Monday, October 5, 2020

Wi-fi problems with new AT&T Internet

I have resolved my Wi-Fi speed problems as best I can. It turns out the latest Broadcom drivers for Windows 10 are not good, at least not for high speed. Initially, I was getting only 30 Mbps. I did much research on the Internet, and I saw a few different websites and videos recommending switching to older drivers, a couple of which I had to download and install. I have switched between 4 versions of the drivers, and the oldest one seems to work the best. My speed tops out at about 200 Mbps, although reality might be a little less. I did a large download to test the speed and I calculated about 120 Mbps, which is at least double the speed of my old internet.

However, the same computer running Mac OS gets up to 660 Mbps with my new AT&T internet. My iPhone gets about 400 Mbps. One option for me is to run an ethernet cable to the router, which would work, although in my current setup that would not be convenient.

It was slightly helpful to turn off power saving features on the ethernet and wifi cards by selecting "maximum performance" instead.

The AT&T technical support couldn't do much other than test that the internet is working. They recommended that I do a Windows Update, which took an extraordinarily long time and didn't help. It was also recommended that I reinstall the Bootcamp software, but for some reason, the install crashes and does not finish. I tried manually copying the driver from the Bootcamp software, which helped, but I got better results by downloading and installing an older driver.

It seems odd to me that the Microsoft Windows Update installs the latest Broadcom driver that is apparently defective. This could happen with my next Windows Update and I'll have to fix this again.

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Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Is the Smartphone Market Ready for This?

Apple has the only 5 nanometer processor available to the public so far.  It is no wonder that Apple is dumping Intel and going with their own chips on future computers. 

Best wishes,

John Coffey

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Coffey 
Date: October 3, 2020 at 11:29:30 PM EDT
To: Albert Nelms 
Subject: Re: Is the Smartphone Market Ready for This?

This performance is comparable to my old Core-i7 iMac computer.  On an iPad Air. 

What is astounding is how many nodes per second Stockfish gets on my five year old iPhone 6s+.  Around 2 million.  On my 2017 iMac I see 3 to 5 million. 

Best wishes,

John Coffey

On Oct 3, 2020, at 6:00 AM, Albert Nelms wrote:

iPhone 12 p, A14 chip performance review.

https://apple.news/A8OQyAXzSRdCQe4SKq2Lquw

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Apple details A14 chipset ahead of iPhone 12 lineup announcement - GSMArena.com news

Right now, the only 5-nanometer computer processor in the world is on an Apple iPad Air.  However, AMD is not far off.  Intel, however, has been struggling to keep up.  They only recently introduced 10-nanometer chips.

https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_details_a14_chipset_ahead_of_iphone_12_lineup_announcement-news-45297.php

Sunday, August 16, 2020

How Nebraska elites screw farmers & get away with it.

https://youtu.be/r2AqVfIrjZ0

In theory, if I don't like Apple's repair policies then I don't have to buy Apple products. 

However, I feel like Apple has engaged in some monopolistic practices that are pretty questionable, like using the law to throw someone in jail for charging a nominal fee for burning an install disk on software that Apple gives away for free, and using the customs agency to confiscate refurbished Apple parts as "counterfeit", even though the Apple parts were sold as refurbished.

Apple should not try to monopolize repair manuals and repair parts in such a way that only Apple can do the repairs.  Most of the time Apple will tell a customer that it is way too expensive to make the repair and that the customer needs to buy a new item.  One extreme example of this was when Louis Rossmann was able to repair a loose connection in a couple of minutes that an Apple repair person said would cost $1,000 to fix.

When I buy a product, especially an expensive product, there is an implied contract or at least assumption that if I need it repaired then I can get it repaired and at a reasonable cost.  If a company deliberately makes this difficult or monopolizes the repair service, then I feel that I am being denied reasonable choices that I should be allowed to make.

This issue is by no means limited to Apple.  This is spreading to other products as they get more high tech.

Government interference in the marketplace often causes more problems than it solves, so I don't necessarily have a good solution.

Thursday, August 13, 2020

Google's Friendliest Smartphone - Pixel 4a

Maybe because of competition, we are entering an era of cheaper mid-range phones that have some really good specs.  The new iPhone SE has top-notch internals and camera with a 4.7" screen.   However, I prefer my 5.5" screen on my iPhone 6s+.

This low-cost Google phone has a 5.8" screen.

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Get Free Coffee at Panera Bread

I've been getting free coffee for about 3 weeks.  I need to cancel the coffee subscription by the end of September in order not to be charged.