Makes very little sense to me. As much as I want a Xserve, I don't see how Apple has a competitive advantage for the target market.
Nvidia already or will definitely make a product that will compete with Apple, as they are moving towards full integration. They also owns the networking, GPU, CPU, and other parts as well. Apple's only advantage is M8 potentially being slightly faster and macOS. Neither is a moat for the intended market.
Had a lot of the content in this article came out 4 years ago I would have agreed. At least we finally don't have a fake Image Coding Comparisons [1] that tries to undermine JXL.
Ignoring AOM and AV1, I was the first few on HN apart from its author supporting JXL from the start, I would argue the biggest case against JPEG XL is JPEG li.
Jpegli offer enough quality improvement and advantage without introducing an entirely new codec. And all of a sudden the bar for next image codec now needs to be even higher.
I had Safari build me an extension that lets me press control+space on any page to bring up a spotlight-type search box and to search in Kagi.
It did it, it works… but it’s beyond stupid that this still isn’t just a setting to add a custom query string, even if they bury it in the advanced settings.
I wish they would improve the extension support in Safari. I'm on Safari full time but I always dread the moment I have to install an extension. If the extension even exists (Firefox / Chrome is easy, so developers always do that and they don't have to pay Apple a fee) download some app, then click some button to open Safari settings, then enable the extension there, then give it permissions in the Safari menu bar. Horrible UX.
That gives you the extension, but the workflow within macOS for users is still very user hostile. Problem with extensions might be that the training data isn't that great as there's not that many open source Safari extensions.
I use 1Password, RSS Button (To highlight if the page has a feed, so I can subscribe with my own Miniflux instance), 1Blocker (Ad blocking), Tampermonkey for loading userscripts on some websites, Readdeck extension to easily send something to my "read later" pile. It's not a lot of them, but every time I want to test a new one I dread it.
Browsers on iOS may be using the same rendering engine under the hood but they make different decisions for UI or how certain features work. They can be useful if you don’t like the decisions Apple made with Safari.
An example of a decision Safari made that I don’t like: if you open too many tabs you reach a limit, but it doesn’t tell you that and just silently overwrites other tabs you have open.
I use Safari, but whenever I go on a pilgrimage to try a different browser, I also get it on my phone so I can access tabs and bookmarks whenever I am.
Safai 27, which is often the only thing I look forward to when new macOS comes out. But Golden Gate feels something similar to old Mac. may be the icon redesign. But for now it doesn't feel any faster than macOS26 on my M5 MBA.
Basically they are bringing back the old Apple Store design.
Ever since Steve Jobs passed away and Tim Cook let others continue to make Apple Store into something different. First a high street electronics store then a fashion showroom and then a "social community" space. It wasn't until Deirdre O'Brien took charge before she start to walk back a lot of changes.
It needs to work backwards, much like Video Codec and ask what do the stakeholders really want or need?
We are closing in to rolling out the last / final phase of 5G. And yet none of the Massive MIMO on FDD is happening. We are still stuck on 32T32R, hardly that impressive considering we have that in LTE already. Not to mention the insane complexity increase from 4G to 5G. And judging from the previews of 6G that seems to be event worst.
If you ask an average user, they will tell you they don't feel much different between 4G and 5G. Yes there are capacity increase and other things. But at this stage I don't think the benefits outweigh the cost of switching. That is both from MNOs and End user perspective.
I've seen an interesting corollary: 4G on an airplane at the gate is much faster than the 5G microcells inside the terminal.
If I'm downloading podcasts for a flight, I do it on WiFi beforehand or on 4G on the plane. 5G in the terminal is really useful at getting you some service, but it's slow.
Probably a side effect of not enough backhaul speed.
That is a very effective use case, but until we live in hive cities, stadium-level device densities are an edge case. Developing a new generation to service the 0.01% of time phones spend inside stadiums seems inefficient.
They struggle a bit on Oxford Street which as stadium like densities much of the time. I changed networks to O2 as Three became pretty much unusable in that area. Three sell a lot of unlimited data packages which their hardware seems inadequate to serve.
If you have a season ticket to a Premier League team you're going to be in that density once a week or once a fortnight. Whatever the percentage of time that might be, that seems frequent enough to not be an edge case.
5G outperforms wifi in crowded situations. With wifi you get increasing collisions and backoff intervals until everything stalls; with 5G you just get less bandwidth (time sliced) but no collisions, and its frequency spectrum is free of interference.
How would it have helped? Net neutrality doesn’t mean you can’t sell your customers different bandwidth guarantees.
Net neutrality is only about the connections between a provider and external networks, not about how a company handles bandwidth contention amongst its customers.
Net neutrality would fix a problem like “only Facebook is accessible inside crowded stadiums” not “AT&T customers who pay more get better connections in crowded stadiums”
Net neutrality as generally understood says nothing about being able to pay more for a higher service tier from your ISP.
It's entirely on the publisher side: net neutrality was an attempt to avoid ISPs getting paid extra---costs that would be passed onto you---in exchange for making your experience on site A be better than your experience with site B (or service, vs site).
Think: "Oh, yeah, Netflix 4k works great on your new Comcast plan! But if you want Hulu 4k, you're gonna need to pay us more, because Netflix pays us to make their shit work better than Hulu's if you don't!"
Net neutrality means that providers don't discriminate based on the kind of traffic, that you get internet access, not just access to particular services.
They can absolutely meter and limit your connection as long as one byte is one byte, no matter its origin. They can also discriminate based on the technology they provide (4G, 5G, fiber...). Net neutrality is not about preventing "pay to win", obviously, you can get a better connection if you pay more. It is about fair competition between online services.
People still believe this? Google pays their ISP. I pay my ISP. Google does not pay my ISP. Why is my ISP's response to the amount of traffic I use demanding to bill someone other than me?
To be clear, Google was doing this out of self-interest. Paying user ISPs for access to those users is not a cost they want to pay. But it's the same as any other protection racket. A local shopkeeper has personal reasons to not want to pay off the mob, but that doesn't mean their position is wrong.
ISP's spent $$$$$ against net-neutrality cause they wanted to get paid twice (Google already was paying for their side of the bandwidth as the source).
When you add the second line---pretending that that nobody funding all the anti-net-neutrality let-big-ISPs-do-what-they-want stories that pro-legacy-company Republicans ate up---it makes me think this is some astroturfing, since it goes from "maybe this person fell for the ISP claims" to straight-up dishonest intentionally-misleading-fallacy.
Google was obviously on the side of "don't get charged twice" but ultimately net-neutrality was a tech enthusiast consumer position that came out of a desire to avoid getting charged more on the basis of what sites you did or didn't want to watch, and ISP's trying to influence where you visited by cutting deals to get paid to prioritize A vs B.
(Hell, ISPs were already getting paid "twice" for the bandwidth in some ways, e.g. when your "100Mb" plan only works at that speeds if your neighbors aren't using it much. That's a different sort of incomplete-advertising trickery that helped create the whole "too many people using Youtube are saturating the network!" "problem" in the first place.)
(And high-bandwidth publishers already were making private peering/colo-of-servers deals with ISPs and CDNs that I don't believe would've been prohibited by net neutrality, so the 'protection racket' aspect of the ISP's game was maybe more arguably wanting to be paid thrice? Or wanting to be paid without providing that colo service?)
4G used clever ideas to get much better practical spectrum efficiency than people thought was possible... At the cost of very expensive infrastructure. The biggest selling point to carriers was standalone 5G networks that were cheaper to build but paradoxically carriers are prone to frame 5G as a feature customers pay more for.
The area where wireless networks fall short is coverage. Obviously many homes and businesses are difficult to cover with wireless technology. Also many "IoT" and public service situations need wide coverage, and a network that works in 92% of places is "close but not cigar." There are few obvious answers rather than "lots of fiber and very cheap small cells" and "satellite technology" but it's what it takes to address wireless use cases that currently aren't addressed.
e.g. Notably several major carriers in India skipped 3G entirely and went to 4G directly because it was cheaper per subscriber. Which implies less expensive equipment per unit performance?
The way I remember it in the US was in the 3G age you had good cell service in cities like Rochester, NY which have moderate populations and gentle hills but it was spotty in dense cities with crazy geography and/or urban canyons. [1] Like I used to stay at a motel two blocks from Hollywood and Vine and my phone barely worked. Once 4G was rolled out, coverage got good in Nielsen "A" markets.
[1] ... and there was that summer my son and I tried to visit as many state parks in upstate NY as we could and I had phones on both the AT&T and Verizon networks that had terrible coverage away from certain big roads.
Most of what passes for 5G in the US is the same old but full duplex with wider channels.
Calling that 5G obscures the fact that millimeter wave 5G standalone is a totally different beast, and a huge network engineering challenge.
It may seem bureaucratic to regulate what people can call 5G, but US consumers get ripped off thinking they're on an advanced network when in fact you could call it the long-term evolution (see what I did there?) of the existing network.
is anyone deploying mmwave outside of maybe sports stadiums?
I have it in my home, but I live in the center of a major city. It just speedtested at 476.64 Mbps down, though I think I've seen 650+ in the past, but I might be mis-remembering that.
However, I only get 5G mmwave (indicated as "5GuW" on the phone) on my work phone.
The carrier I use for my personal phone charges an extra $20/month for 5G, and I don't care that much, so I leave it at 4G LTE.
5GUW on Verizon isn't necessarily mm wave. Originally, it meant mm wave, but that hasn't been the case since 2022. Now it means the 3-5GHz C-Band spectrum or the 20-50GHz mm wave. If you're seeing 5GUW on your phone, it's going to be C-Band a lot more than mm wave.
C-Band spectrum also makes sense given a speed test of 400-800Mbps. That's fast, but not hugely faster than what you should expect with really good coverage today. T-Mobile experiences speeds above 560Mbps 25% of the time. Verizon's 5GUW (which is mostly C-Band) experiences speeds above 620Mbps 25% of the time. You ran two speed tests and got 477Mbps and 767Mbps. One of those is pretty average for C-Band and one of those is quite good for C-Band (25% faster than the 75th percentile), but nothing too out of the ordinary.
Those are speeds that are relatively common when carriers have around 150MHz of 2.5-5GHz spectrum deployed in your area and you have good signal and not too much congestion.
mm wave does exist, but the coverage is often a block or two with indoor coverage being really spotty. C-band coverage will be measured in square miles. C-Band won't have the coverage that lower frequencies have, but it's a lot more practical to deploy than mm wave. mm wave shines when you have a small, high-value area where you want to deploy 1,000MHz+ of capacity. Carriers might have 50MHz of capacity around 800MHz, 90MHz of capacity around 1.9GHz, 150MHz of capacity around 4GHz, and 1,000MHz of capacity around 30GHz. That really high frequency mm wave won't cover a large area, but there's a lot of it. If you're looking to cover a sports stadium, it makes sense. If you're looking to cover people's homes (even in major cities), C-Band is going to get you really good speeds with coverage that will be a lot more usable.
It's possible that you're getting mm wave, but those speeds are pretty normal for good C-Band coverage. The first test is pretty average and the second test is quite good, but nothing extraordinary.
Everyone uses the example of stadiums, but the occupancy rate of stadiums makes the economics of the network and backhaul iffy. I would guess only the biggest NFL stadiums get it as a showcase. Maybe parts of Manhattan, too.
Chinese cities, especially at train stations and the surrounding area get really impressive flows of people every day. But even in China I would expect that while they might have a lot more 5G SA when in the US, that the radios are actually mid band and not millimeter wave for most coverage. You still get higher capacity and low latency, but most people probably don't notice the low latency, except maybe Chinese autonomous taxis faking it till they make it.
I've gotten mmWave on Verizon in certain spots in Midtown Manhattan. But it doesn't really give me a lot of practical benefits over non-mmWave 5G.
In general, putting aside the bandwidth/crowding concerns (which are real, of course), I don't find 5G that much of a step above LTE - it's nothing compared to the jump from 3G to LTE. LTE changed how I used my phone in a big way (e.g., I could now watch video or download something on my phone practically). LTE got pretty fast over time anyway.
I get 5G mmWave in my home and around my neighborhood in Seattle. In fact sometimes at home I’ll turn off WiFi on my phone just because I’m sitting in a WiFi dead zone but the mmWave still works great.
This is on Mint Mobile, a budget MVNO now owned by T-Mobile. I pay $20/month for 15GB data.
You're probably not getting mm wave with Mint. T-Mobile hasn't deployed mm wave much. They have deployed a lot of 2.5GHz spectrum which will be very fast (faster than most people's home internet connections). If you're seeing 5GUC, that's probably not mm wave.
I think a lot of people are attributing speeds of 200-700Mbps to mm wave when it's actually pretty ordinary speeds for 2.5-5GHz coverage today now that carriers have decent capacity there. If you're getting below 144Mbps, you're in the bottom 25% of T-Mobile's network experience. Over the past 6 years, speeds have gotten a ton faster, mostly from 2.5-5GHz spectrum. Verizon is the only carrier that put much effort into mm wave and it still covers basically nothing.
Ignoring latency, you're likely to get speeds similar to wifi from today's mobile networks without mm wave - unless you have a really great home internet connection and a good wifi setup. I have a MacBook Pro, but it only has wifi 6 and I can get 700-800Mbps out of my wifi, but I'm not getting 2Gbps from it.
I'm paying $15/mo. To pay $50/mo for in the end the same thing (I'm going to use the same amount of data regardless) just means I'm spending $420 a year more for the same outcome.
How is it a better deal to spend more money for essentially the same thing?
Imagine you're buying food that will go bad tomorrow. You can't keep it. You can't share it. You can buy enough food to fill you up today for $5, or enough food to fill you up 50x for $20. You will still eat that one unit of food, the other 49 units will just go to waste. Which do you buy?
For all the time I've had Mint, I've saved nearly $3,000 compared to your $50/mo plan. I've never felt the urge to really need more data personally, and it's worked well for me on my international travels around North America. If the outcome was the same, wouldn't you rather keep $3k in your pocket?
Did you have a bad day outside of the internet today? These three thread posts come off as you being a bit of an asshole for no reason. Why wouldnt the guy put financial context on your claim he should go for a three times more expensive sub?
In Germany I notice a massive difference in 4G and 5G. If I see 4G on my phone and know I can put it away again if it's not some kind of an emergency because it's basically unusable. I am not sure what is going on here, probably the telcos that are limiting the bandwidth.
There’s always a gradual refarming of the spectrum into the next G. Usually the most penetrating frequencies (ie lowest) are kept on the lower G to maximize legacy support.
For a while I had my phone stick to 3G, which doesn’t support emergency alerts, because my jurisdiction kept sending them out for joint custody disputes at 3AM 1000km away. It was fine But the 3G became unbearable and they tightened up the alert criteria.
> There’s always a gradual refarming of the spectrum into the next G.
Not necessarily for 4G to 5G. 5G can run a 4G compatible control channel and timeslices can be 4G or 5G.
> Usually the most penetrating frequencies (ie lowest) are kept on the lower G to maximize legacy support.
Maybe, but at least in the US, 4G wad deployable on new lower frequency spectrum that had previously been used for TV. LTE 71, 600 Mhz is lower frequency but wouldn't have been usable for 3G because legacy phones didn't use those frequencies.
> Not necessarily for 4G to 5G. 5G can run a 4G compatible control channel and timeslices can be 4G or 5G.
And for those playing at home, WiFi 7 devices aren't held back by coexisting with WiFi 6 devices, for the same reason (the use of OFDMA), at least on the 6 GHz band. Legacy clients of course muddy the waters on the other bands when they're in use.
I’d you have a 5G phone and plan but see 4G, that usually means you are at the very edge of coverage. Thats not the experience 4G was or still is if you are in a well covered area (which would have 5G available as well)
The difference between 4G and (non-SA) 5G is fairly small compared to earlier generations. They use the same core network, and it’s actually quite possible to be connected to 4G and still see the 5G logo.
These tricks are less common in Germany though, as far as I’ve seen, so seeing 5G can serve as a weak proxy for “the carrier has at least touched this base station in the last few years”, which increases the chance they’ve upgraded its spectrum or backhaul a little bit.
Really depends on the concrete situation, though. Having a small 4G cell with 20 MHz of spectrum to yourself beats an overloaded large 5 MHz rural 5G site any day.
> If I see anyG on my phone anywhere that isn't a city in Germany and know I can put it away again if it's not some kind of an emergency because it's basically unusable
My pessimistic take is it’s being optimized for the “numbers” users benchmark with. The 5G repeater towers that display on your phone as full-bars but the tower itself is constrained, to juicing the speedtests. Apple even changed how the RSSI translates to the bars. There are engineers doing great work, and the marketing teams muddle the waters (like ATT’s “5Ge”).
I guess there aren't enough network engineers or RF experts here to have a real conversation about it though. All the comments are just anecdotal discussions of phone bars and reception.
3G has been shut down in several countries to free up frequencies. 2G was also shut down in several countries, it seems to be still up in most european countries with shut downs being scheduled in the next few years up to 2030.
At least in NZ around when they closed 2G the govt created a group of some kind which went around and put up a bunch of 4G towers in more remote areas, the key thing was the towers went owned on xyz company, so everyone who visits the area regardless of the telco they use get the same great signal.
*having said that, it's still sad 2G was closed, it had truly impressive coverage, with few cell towered required.
Is how it should be country wide in my opinion. Way too many towers up everywhere just so xyz company can get coverage there. Leaving no 1 company to have the "best" coverage.
2G also needs a tiny amount of spectrum in contrast to the newer standards, as it was designed almost exclusively for voice calls, where a few Kbps is sufficient for good quality speech. (And 64kbps, which is only 8KB/s, is considered "toll quality".)
'best' is relative here; lower bands travel further, which is great for maximizing coverage footprint, but not great for high-density. Each node can only handle so much traffic, and you can pack them in more densely with short-range spectrum. mmWave really is the best frequency for very high density, high capacity networks, but the bottleneck is you have to deploy all the extra nodes to get the coverage.
I’m not in the industry, so I can’t speak intelligently on this, but as a user, literally the only change I’ve actually noticed in my day-to-day is that when they removed 3G, I lost a shitload of connectivity. I live probably half a mile from the capital building in a greater metro region of over a million people and I still get shit connection at home on TMo. Maybe physics is the problem, but why waste time making things insanely fast in a lab setting? Work on making it fucking usable in the real world, like in a neighborhood with trees.
I do not give a shit if I can download at 500mbps while resting my phone on a wireless router. I need to be able to USE it.
More likely, data usage has increased greatly in your area since 3G was still available and your carriers spectrum or backhaul hasn’t caught up. 4G/5G make things more efficient but ultimately can’t fight physics.
Ive never heard a single person say they don't see a difference between 4G and 5G, atleast in the USA.
Ive switched my entire home internet setup to 5G and haven't had an outtage in two years. Whereas it was once a week with fiber. I also can fallback with duel sims.
5G has legitimately changed my quality of (digital) life.
That’s most likely because of the massive amounts of midband spectrum that became available for 5G use in the US and less so due to any inherent advantage of 5G.
Nvidia already or will definitely make a product that will compete with Apple, as they are moving towards full integration. They also owns the networking, GPU, CPU, and other parts as well. Apple's only advantage is M8 potentially being slightly faster and macOS. Neither is a moat for the intended market.
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