The GP was talking about EarPods, not AirPods: EarPods - $29 AirPods - $179
They're confusingly, similarly-named, so the misunderstanding is not in the least bit surprising. I even swapped the names at one point as I was typing up this post.
Not so, for reasons that should be apparent once you take a look at the device's interior layout (see: Apple's HomePod page).
You'll notice that the sound is produced by a circular array of seven tweeters. Were the HomePod relying on the sound going directly from the tweeters to your ears, you're quite correct to suggest that (given the lack of spatial separation) it wouldn't be able to achieve a decent stereo effect. But the HomePod's sound isn't going directly to your ears. Rather, it's relying on the fact that the rear and side tweeters will have their sound reflected—and then coupling that with beam forming that's automatically recalculated whenever the accelerometer detects that the device has been moved—to produce a stereo effect.
The reviews I've seen so far seem to suggest that they've managed to achieve an outsized soundstage for such a small device, but I don't know what that really means in comparison to other devices, and I frankly don't see how it can hold a candle to a proper stereo setup. Even so, it does sound like it'd be pretty decent for people who want just one speaker.
As for the rest of the claims, which you call BS on, the original redditor didn't make the subjective claim (that the headline does) that the HomePod sounded better than the more expensive speaker. Rather, he claimed that it reproduced sound more accurately than the more expensive speaker, which is a claim that can be empirically tested and verified without subjectivity. Towards that end, he described his control setup, posted pictures of it, discussed how he accounted for confounding variables, and then provided graphs, numbers, and files with the raw data so that anyone interested in verifying or refuting his claims could be capable of doing so.
So, if you think his claims are BS, have at it. He's given you everything you need to disprove him. In the meantime, he's provided empirical evidence that the HomePod reproduced sound more accurately than a speaker that costs nearly 3x its price.
I can't speak towards all carriers, but we didn't have to pay AT&T anything to unlock my wife's phone. So far as I know, they all stopped charging a fee for unlocking phones a few years back, provided the device is paid off in full (if the customer financed the purchase through the carrier).
It will affect someone who goes on holiday and wants to use a local sim to avoid extortionate roaming charges
My wife and I had no trouble getting her AT&T phone unlocked so that we could use a local SIM while traveling abroad last year. The article itself indicates that Verizon isn't removing the ability to unlock phones, even ones that haven't been fully paid off. All they're doing is locking the phones by default, matching the practice used by the other three carriers.
I find myself in the odd position of defending a company I utterly loathe, but I honestly don't see the cause for concern here. Is their current practice more consumer-friendly? Without a doubt, yes. Is their new practice a problem, however? At least in my experience with other carriers who use that same practice, no, I don't think it is. I understand that unlocking phones used to be significantly more burdensome, but I haven't had any trouble with it in the last few years, so I don't understand the fever pitch in the summary and comments.
As much as I love vilifying the carriers, Verizon is not removing the ability to unlock phones, so most of what you've said is incorrect. In fact, the linked article specifically says:
Even after the change, Verizon will continue to unlock the phone regardless of whether it's paid off or not.
So what's actually going on?
In a nutshell, Verizon is simply matching what the other three US carriers already do. Currently, Verizon—unlike the rest of the carriers—sells phones unlocked by default. Going forward, they'll be stopping that practice and instead adopting the same practice of "locked by default, unlocked upon request" approach used by the other three carriers.
All of which is to say, this is a mountain being made of a molehill due to bad reporting and poor summarization. Importantly, this won't kill the secondary market like you're claiming, any more than the current practices of AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint have already "killed" the secondary markets (hint: they haven't; I've had no trouble getting phones unlocked before switching carriers or selling the handsets on the secondary market). Moreover, while I would love to see Verizon obliterated for its numerous offenses (e.g. ad identifiers and supercookies, suits against the FCC, giving us Pai, etc.), I have to give them credit where it's due for not attaching the requirement that the phone be paid off before it can be unlocked, which is something that all of the other carriers require.
It sounds like the mobile apps are more intended towards playback and I don't see any mention of remote control functionality, so I suspect the answer to the second question is "no". Though the first part sounds like it should work fine.
For remote control functionality, you're probably better off using Plex or something like it. Without needing to buy anything or sign up for a paid Plex Pass subscription, you should be able to use it to playback MKVs and cast them to a Chromecast (which they've supported since 2013). The mobile apps can also be used as remotes for playback, though I seem to recall that there may be a one-time fee around $5 to use some features in the mobile apps if you're not a Plex Pass subscriber.
An AC responds to a series of facts backed up by citations by making a baseless claim based on no evidence while complaining that a product they don’t want isn’t something other than what it claims to be. They then have the gall to suggest the person they’re responding to is the zealot.
nobody in Detroit ever had the authority to dictate whether a private individual could rent out his home
Sure they did. They had that authority over their own homes, which they voluntarily ceded to the city whenever they gave it the ability to zone. Whether via its charter or subsequent legislation, that zoning authority would have come from the people themselves, and once you establish a city with the ability to zone, you necessarily also grant them the authority to restrict commercial activities in residential zones, which is exactly what they're doing here.
It's the same principle that allows HOAs and the like to establish deeds and covenants that restrict these sorts of practices. As a homeowner, you agree to abide by those deeds and covenants when you enter the neighborhood, thus ceding your authority in that area to the HOA. In my area, quite a few of the neighborhoods have restrictions on how many unrelated people are allowed to be under one roof, specifically to prevent the 70,000 college students we have in town from turning family-friendly neighborhoods into student housing.
I've never used Airbnb, but I'm a fan of the idea.
And I do think they innovated. When you get down to it, hotels are in the business of selling trust. The hotel chains are a known quantity. People recognize them and know what they're getting, which is why people up to this point have been staying at them instead of in random homes of strangers. Airbnb's innovation was in figuring out how to aggregate trust effectively, allowing them to become the middleman between a vast untapped supply of rooms and the huge number of people looking for something different/cheaper than what the hotels were offering.
Are they perfect? By no means. I don't like that my sleepy, family neighborhood near a major university becomes a crash pad for random sports fans on game weekends, and I'm not alone in that thinking. Even so, that's a problem that is best addressed through covenants and deed restrictions within the neighborhood, rather than legislation across a city or state. Let neighborhoods that care about that sort of thing sort it out amongst themselves.
It likely doesn't, given that a large part of the ROM code's job is to validate the integrity of iBoot (the part of iOS that leaked). Ars' writeup goes into a tiny bit more detail about what iBoot actually is, but the relevant bit for this conversation is that iBoot is the next step in the chain after ROM in the secure bootup procedure. Of course, being able to review iBoot's code can likely provide some insight into how the ROM's code is designed to function.
So, I'm looking at the product page for the Play:5 and I'm not seeing any information to support your claim that the Play:5 does beamforming. Now, I'm not an expert, but I don't find the lack of beamforming to be particularly surprising, simply given the design of the Play:5.
In a nutshell, speaker beamforming is (at least in this context) used to ensure that the sound from nearer speakers hits your ears at the same time as the sound from more distant speakers. The result is a tighter, better "sweet spot" for listening when you have speakers at different distances, but beamforming isn't necessary in the first place if the speakers are already the same distance from your ears to begin with.
...which is the case with the Play:5's relatively narrow, flat, unidirectional array of tweeters. So yeah, no need for beamforming.*
I'm guessing you thought the Play:5 supports beamforming because it has Trueplay? From what I can gather, Trueplay is simply their brand name for automatic EQing, which is a basic form of digital room correction that you'll find on many smart speakers (including the HomePod) and on any decent AVR (see: Audyssey MultEQ et al.).
More advanced forms of digital room correction (e.g. MultEQ) will do beamforming, but they require an ability to calculate the right delay for each speaker (i.e. they need to know how far each speaker is from the listener). AVRs like the one I own have the user go through a calibration process that involves placing a microphone at the desired listening location(s) while a sequence of sounds plays from each speaker.
Which brings us back to the HomePod and its use of a circular array for its tweeters and microphones, both of which do beamforming, according to Apple.
On the microphone side of things, Apple says it's using beamforming to hear voice commands better. The way that works involves adding a delay to any audio picked up by mics in the "front", then a lesser delay for mics on the "side", and then no delay for mics in the "back". Once the signals are combined any sound that originated on the "front" side (e.g. voices of users) will be amplified significantly, making it easier to hear. One of the reviews I read mentioned that it worked so well that the HomePod was able to pick up a whispered voice command while it was playing loud music (which is a feature I'd love, since I routinely have to shout my Echo Dot down after my wife leaves it playing loud music).
As for the speakers, because none of the tweeters face the same direction, the distances the sound from each tweeter will travel before it hits your ears is likely different. Assuming they can figure out the right delays, beamforming gives them a way to ensure you receive a consistent sound. But just how do they calculate those delays? My guess is that they measure (at each mic) the different times of arrival for the reflections of sounds generated by each tweeter. At that point, they'll know which side (if any) is the "front" and can then delay its audio by the right amount to give the audio from the back a chance to catch up, effectively ensuring that any user in the "front" will receive the sound from all of the HomePod's tweeters at the same time.
But, theoretically, they could actually be doing a lot more than just that.
For instance, something that should be possible but that I haven't seen them mention is that they can use the different times of arrival from sounds in the room to infer the point of origin of those sound within the space (i.e. akin to passive sonar). Their hardware seems to have the capacity to do so, and if they were to do so it would allow them to infer a user's location within the room. With that information, they could fine tune the speaker beamforming to create a "sweet spot" that followed the user around the room, ensuring that the "front" of the HomePod that has
Well, on the good side, it sounds like reducing latency has been a major focus for Airplay 2, which is due out for the HomePod via software update in a few months, so it may become more viable. Even so, I not convinced there’s a huge market for that sort of thing. Seems to me they could simply enable Bluetooth support using the existing hardware the HomePod has to eliminate the market for a device like that, given that you could then use one of the existing analog to Bluetooth adapters that exist.
Airfoil and Airfoil Satellite are in the vein of what you’re looking for, so far as software goes. There’s also AirParrot that can act as a sender. You might be able to use Airfoil Satellite with an old iPod Touch receiving audio through the 3.5mm headphone/mic jack, which then transmits it back to Airfoil on a PC/Mac, which then transmits it via AirPlay to the HomePods, but I have no idea if that’d actually work and it sounds like way too brittle of a workflow.
Besides which, why introduce latency concerns, especially if you’re watching movies or talking about hooking up consoles? It’s one thing for music, where latency isn’t a problem, but it’s something else when you now have lips out of sync with the words being spoken or audio cues that don’t correspond to the inputs you’re providing or the action on the screen.
In a quick price check on Amazon, it looks like iPhone 6 battery replacements run about $20 on average, rather than the $9 for the S5's battery. Regardless of why that's happening, it suggests that users are paying about $10 for the replacement service (as well as for the guarantee that the battery is from a trustworthy source), rather than $20, which changes the math quite a bit. At that point, you're starting to talk about the sorts of margins that are perfectly normal across a variety of industries.
I agree that Apple regularly has obscene margins on many of their products (e.g. memory and storage pricing), but I don't find this one to be particularly egregious, nor even "huge".
Exactly. This, from the sounds of things, is no different than when any other open source group has reverse engineered a proprietary document format or proprietary protocol and released their own tools and services that operate on or over it. Provided they haven’t copied Blizzard’s code—which it sounds like they haven’t—and provided they haven’t copied Blizzard’s art or music assets—which I suspect they didn’t have a need to, given that the client app that Blizzard itself provided is the part that holds those—I don’t see how this can be a valid copyright claim on Blizzard’s part.
I’m actually sympathetic to Blizzard, but it sounds like they don’t have a leg to stand on, other than taking advantage of the fact that with a large service, there will be a handful of coincidences that are going enough for an initial DMCA takedown notice, even though they won’t hold up under appeal.
Considering you can just tap the “Deny” button at any “The Mobile Driver’s License app would like to use your location” prompt that might appear, I don’t see why it’s that hard to believe. After all, they’d just be another app, with no more access to your location than any other. I have no problem with this notion, provided they don’t mandate through law that location data be enabled for their app with no opt-out or ability to use a physical license instead.
For any site where I don’t care about having my own login, BugMeNot is the easier way to log in. For any site where I want my own login, it’s worth doing the one-time registration and then putting it into my password manager.
Nor do I. After all, what incentive does a leader in a particular category have for giving up their competitive advantage? To my eyes, this push for a standard is an attempt to stem the tide among the crowd that's interested in these sorts of things (among which I am not a member).
Apple currently provides the best stylus in the consumer tablet space, hands down. The Apple Pencil uses a proprietary Bluetooth chip that pushes its wireless latency to a far lower point than anything else on the market, and it only works with the iPad Pro, which has a 120 Hz refresh rate. Between the low latency and fast refresh, it seem as if you're simply writing on a physical pad of paper. Even as a person who has no interest in styluses, it was shocking how much of a difference those factors made over Wacoms and other products I've tried over the years.
A quick anecdote: my non-techie wife dabbles in watercoloring and sketching, and after a brief stop by the Apple Store a few months back, she went from being completely ambivalent about the Pencil to being blown away by it. When I told her that it only worked on the newest iPad Pro, she immediately changed her plans for her next tablet. She had been planning to pick up an iPad mini once her current mini got too long in the tooth, but now she plans to get a Pro. I've heard similar anecdotes from a handful of other friends who dabble in art, several of whom have dropped their use of dedicated devices like Wacoms that ostensibly do the same things, simply because the Pencil was so much better than whatever they already had.
I don't doubt that art professionals have access to better tools, or else tools that address needs the Pencil doesn't address, but at least in the consumer tablet space the Pencil is far and away the best thing available. If someone is interested in an inferior stylus, dumb styluses already work just fine. If someone wants a wireless, pressure-sensitive stylus, why would Apple support a device that is almost certainly worse than what they already have, particularly when what they already have is so compelling to the people interested in it that it's driving sales of more expensive iPads, despite the added cost of the Pro and the obscene $100 price of the Pencil.
I'm an Apple fan (though I like to think I'm not a fanboy), and I'm okay with this investigation. While the facts about what happened aren't in dispute, the decisions that led to those actions are in dispute, and depending on what they end up being, they might point towards misdeeds on Apple's part. For instance, while I doubt the government will find any indication of it, if Apple was slowing already-purchased phones down for the purpose of driving people to purchase new phones, there'd be some serious problems for them, given that they would have effectively been engaging in a bait-and-switch.
I expect that the government will subpoena the relevant e-mails, investigate whether that was the intent, and then will almost certainly come to the conclusion that there's no evidence of Apple engaging in any wrongdoing. At the same time, I expect that the investigation will be dragged through the news cycles every few months whenever a politician or competitor who's opposed to Apple in some way needs a quick way to make Apple look like the bad guy.
I can't speak towards this rule in particular (since I tend to think that it exceeds their authority, regardless of their protestations to the contrary), but when it comes to the FCC issuing rules in general, the law that gives them the authority to do so is the FCC's charter, which was enacted via a law passed by Congress. Most of these sorts of agencies, organizations, and commissions that live in the executive branch are created by acts of Congress that delegate a particular aspect of Congress' authority to those groups.
Would the FCC order itself suffice for you? Directly from the same order that repealed Title II classification for ISPs, the FCC itself said (emphasis mine):
We therefore preempt any state or local measures that would effectively impose rules or requirements that we have repealed or decided to refrain from imposing in this order or that would impose more stringent requirements for any aspect of broadband service that we address in this order.
It was fairly trivial to find, given that they put it in the section entitled "Preemption of Inconsistent State and Local Regulations", with that particular quote coming from page 110, paragraph 191. A few paragraphs later they provide an argument for their legal authority to preempt the states, but that authority will doubtless be challenged in court whenever the FCC sues California or vice versa, given that the California bill flies directly in the face of that preemption. The Montana and New York approaches use a backdoor approach to dealing with the issue that doesn't directly defy the FCC's order, so it's entirely possible that they may be allowed to remain in place even if the California bill gets tossed out. Of course, being that they're based on executive orders, the very next governor of those states could easily repeal the order.
Anyway, going back to (what I assume was) your earlier question:
Wasn't the point of striking NN to cede power that the FCC really doesn't have and allow states to figure out what's best for themselves? Or does that not fit the anti-Trump narrative?
No, not only was it not the point, it was explicitly not the point, and as such it fits just fine with the anti-Trump narrative surrounding net neutrality.
Things like public awareness notices can be sent over SMS and the phone's built-in logic can decide if the user wants to get those in the middle of the night.
Agreed, or at the very least they can be managed through more granular controls at the OS level. I may not mind receiving Amber alerts on my own terms, but as it is now iOS only allows for an all-or-nothing with Amber alerts: either you get woken with a blaring alarm or you get nothing at all. This seems like an obvious area for improvement, but I suspect there are regulations impeding their ability to deal with such a well-known pain point.
Within about a week of Amber alerts being added as a feature, I had multiple rude awakenings in the middle of the night for missing children in Houston (1.5 hours away by car) and San Antonio (3 hours). Given that Dallas is a comparable distance to San Antonio from where I live, I wouldn't be surprised if I would have eventually received alerts for them as well, meaning I'd have been receiving alerts for 3 of the top 10 largest cities in the nation, almost none of which would likely be applicable to where I live.
Thankfully, iOS breaks the Amber alerts out separately from weather alerts, which is the only reason I still receive weather alerts, and the weather alerts where I live have actually been used wisely by whoever is making the calls. We've only been seeing them for major events in our immediate vicinity, such as for flash flood and tornado warnings within a few miles. And a tornado approaching my home is definitely something I want to be woken for, so I've been glad that I've been able to keep the weather alerts active.
The US already has the largest rail network in the world, the vast, vast majority of which is being used for freight. While there’s surely room for more growth, it’s aleady being utilized quite effectively as it is for the sorts of things that make sense to put on rail.
Even so, rail can only get your package between hubs, so you still have a need for point-to-point deliveries once you move things from one hub to another. That’s where courier drones can eliminate the most jobs/save the most costs, hence why that’s where businesses are the most interested in using them.
Slashdot Mirror
The GP was talking about EarPods, not AirPods:
EarPods - $29
AirPods - $179
They're confusingly, similarly-named, so the misunderstanding is not in the least bit surprising. I even swapped the names at one point as I was typing up this post.
Not so, for reasons that should be apparent once you take a look at the device's interior layout (see: Apple's HomePod page).
You'll notice that the sound is produced by a circular array of seven tweeters. Were the HomePod relying on the sound going directly from the tweeters to your ears, you're quite correct to suggest that (given the lack of spatial separation) it wouldn't be able to achieve a decent stereo effect. But the HomePod's sound isn't going directly to your ears. Rather, it's relying on the fact that the rear and side tweeters will have their sound reflected—and then coupling that with beam forming that's automatically recalculated whenever the accelerometer detects that the device has been moved—to produce a stereo effect.
The reviews I've seen so far seem to suggest that they've managed to achieve an outsized soundstage for such a small device, but I don't know what that really means in comparison to other devices, and I frankly don't see how it can hold a candle to a proper stereo setup. Even so, it does sound like it'd be pretty decent for people who want just one speaker.
As for the rest of the claims, which you call BS on, the original redditor didn't make the subjective claim (that the headline does) that the HomePod sounded better than the more expensive speaker. Rather, he claimed that it reproduced sound more accurately than the more expensive speaker, which is a claim that can be empirically tested and verified without subjectivity. Towards that end, he described his control setup, posted pictures of it, discussed how he accounted for confounding variables, and then provided graphs, numbers, and files with the raw data so that anyone interested in verifying or refuting his claims could be capable of doing so.
So, if you think his claims are BS, have at it. He's given you everything you need to disprove him. In the meantime, he's provided empirical evidence that the HomePod reproduced sound more accurately than a speaker that costs nearly 3x its price.
I can't speak towards all carriers, but we didn't have to pay AT&T anything to unlock my wife's phone. So far as I know, they all stopped charging a fee for unlocking phones a few years back, provided the device is paid off in full (if the customer financed the purchase through the carrier).
It will affect someone who goes on holiday and wants to use a local sim to avoid extortionate roaming charges
My wife and I had no trouble getting her AT&T phone unlocked so that we could use a local SIM while traveling abroad last year. The article itself indicates that Verizon isn't removing the ability to unlock phones, even ones that haven't been fully paid off. All they're doing is locking the phones by default, matching the practice used by the other three carriers.
I find myself in the odd position of defending a company I utterly loathe, but I honestly don't see the cause for concern here. Is their current practice more consumer-friendly? Without a doubt, yes. Is their new practice a problem, however? At least in my experience with other carriers who use that same practice, no, I don't think it is. I understand that unlocking phones used to be significantly more burdensome, but I haven't had any trouble with it in the last few years, so I don't understand the fever pitch in the summary and comments.
As much as I love vilifying the carriers, Verizon is not removing the ability to unlock phones, so most of what you've said is incorrect. In fact, the linked article specifically says:
Even after the change, Verizon will continue to unlock the phone regardless of whether it's paid off or not.
So what's actually going on?
In a nutshell, Verizon is simply matching what the other three US carriers already do. Currently, Verizon—unlike the rest of the carriers—sells phones unlocked by default. Going forward, they'll be stopping that practice and instead adopting the same practice of "locked by default, unlocked upon request" approach used by the other three carriers.
All of which is to say, this is a mountain being made of a molehill due to bad reporting and poor summarization. Importantly, this won't kill the secondary market like you're claiming, any more than the current practices of AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint have already "killed" the secondary markets (hint: they haven't; I've had no trouble getting phones unlocked before switching carriers or selling the handsets on the secondary market). Moreover, while I would love to see Verizon obliterated for its numerous offenses (e.g. ad identifiers and supercookies, suits against the FCC, giving us Pai, etc.), I have to give them credit where it's due for not attaching the requirement that the phone be paid off before it can be unlocked, which is something that all of the other carriers require.
It sounds like the mobile apps are more intended towards playback and I don't see any mention of remote control functionality, so I suspect the answer to the second question is "no". Though the first part sounds like it should work fine.
For remote control functionality, you're probably better off using Plex or something like it. Without needing to buy anything or sign up for a paid Plex Pass subscription, you should be able to use it to playback MKVs and cast them to a Chromecast (which they've supported since 2013). The mobile apps can also be used as remotes for playback, though I seem to recall that there may be a one-time fee around $5 to use some features in the mobile apps if you're not a Plex Pass subscriber.
An AC responds to a series of facts backed up by citations by making a baseless claim based on no evidence while complaining that a product they don’t want isn’t something other than what it claims to be. They then have the gall to suggest the person they’re responding to is the zealot.
Have you tried looking in a mirror recently?
nobody in Detroit ever had the authority to dictate whether a private individual could rent out his home
Sure they did. They had that authority over their own homes, which they voluntarily ceded to the city whenever they gave it the ability to zone. Whether via its charter or subsequent legislation, that zoning authority would have come from the people themselves, and once you establish a city with the ability to zone, you necessarily also grant them the authority to restrict commercial activities in residential zones, which is exactly what they're doing here.
It's the same principle that allows HOAs and the like to establish deeds and covenants that restrict these sorts of practices. As a homeowner, you agree to abide by those deeds and covenants when you enter the neighborhood, thus ceding your authority in that area to the HOA. In my area, quite a few of the neighborhoods have restrictions on how many unrelated people are allowed to be under one roof, specifically to prevent the 70,000 college students we have in town from turning family-friendly neighborhoods into student housing.
I've never used Airbnb, but I'm a fan of the idea.
And I do think they innovated. When you get down to it, hotels are in the business of selling trust. The hotel chains are a known quantity. People recognize them and know what they're getting, which is why people up to this point have been staying at them instead of in random homes of strangers. Airbnb's innovation was in figuring out how to aggregate trust effectively, allowing them to become the middleman between a vast untapped supply of rooms and the huge number of people looking for something different/cheaper than what the hotels were offering.
Are they perfect? By no means. I don't like that my sleepy, family neighborhood near a major university becomes a crash pad for random sports fans on game weekends, and I'm not alone in that thinking. Even so, that's a problem that is best addressed through covenants and deed restrictions within the neighborhood, rather than legislation across a city or state. Let neighborhoods that care about that sort of thing sort it out amongst themselves.
That code may contain ROM source code
It likely doesn't, given that a large part of the ROM code's job is to validate the integrity of iBoot (the part of iOS that leaked). Ars' writeup goes into a tiny bit more detail about what iBoot actually is, but the relevant bit for this conversation is that iBoot is the next step in the chain after ROM in the secure bootup procedure. Of course, being able to review iBoot's code can likely provide some insight into how the ROM's code is designed to function.
So, I'm looking at the product page for the Play:5 and I'm not seeing any information to support your claim that the Play:5 does beamforming. Now, I'm not an expert, but I don't find the lack of beamforming to be particularly surprising, simply given the design of the Play:5.
In a nutshell, speaker beamforming is (at least in this context) used to ensure that the sound from nearer speakers hits your ears at the same time as the sound from more distant speakers. The result is a tighter, better "sweet spot" for listening when you have speakers at different distances, but beamforming isn't necessary in the first place if the speakers are already the same distance from your ears to begin with.
...which is the case with the Play:5's relatively narrow, flat, unidirectional array of tweeters. So yeah, no need for beamforming.*
I'm guessing you thought the Play:5 supports beamforming because it has Trueplay? From what I can gather, Trueplay is simply their brand name for automatic EQing, which is a basic form of digital room correction that you'll find on many smart speakers (including the HomePod) and on any decent AVR (see: Audyssey MultEQ et al.).
More advanced forms of digital room correction (e.g. MultEQ) will do beamforming, but they require an ability to calculate the right delay for each speaker (i.e. they need to know how far each speaker is from the listener). AVRs like the one I own have the user go through a calibration process that involves placing a microphone at the desired listening location(s) while a sequence of sounds plays from each speaker.
Which brings us back to the HomePod and its use of a circular array for its tweeters and microphones, both of which do beamforming, according to Apple.
On the microphone side of things, Apple says it's using beamforming to hear voice commands better. The way that works involves adding a delay to any audio picked up by mics in the "front", then a lesser delay for mics on the "side", and then no delay for mics in the "back". Once the signals are combined any sound that originated on the "front" side (e.g. voices of users) will be amplified significantly, making it easier to hear. One of the reviews I read mentioned that it worked so well that the HomePod was able to pick up a whispered voice command while it was playing loud music (which is a feature I'd love, since I routinely have to shout my Echo Dot down after my wife leaves it playing loud music).
As for the speakers, because none of the tweeters face the same direction, the distances the sound from each tweeter will travel before it hits your ears is likely different. Assuming they can figure out the right delays, beamforming gives them a way to ensure you receive a consistent sound. But just how do they calculate those delays? My guess is that they measure (at each mic) the different times of arrival for the reflections of sounds generated by each tweeter. At that point, they'll know which side (if any) is the "front" and can then delay its audio by the right amount to give the audio from the back a chance to catch up, effectively ensuring that any user in the "front" will receive the sound from all of the HomePod's tweeters at the same time.
But, theoretically, they could actually be doing a lot more than just that.
For instance, something that should be possible but that I haven't seen them mention is that they can use the different times of arrival from sounds in the room to infer the point of origin of those sound within the space (i.e. akin to passive sonar). Their hardware seems to have the capacity to do so, and if they were to do so it would allow them to infer a user's location within the room. With that information, they could fine tune the speaker beamforming to create a "sweet spot" that followed the user around the room, ensuring that the "front" of the HomePod that has
Well, on the good side, it sounds like reducing latency has been a major focus for Airplay 2, which is due out for the HomePod via software update in a few months, so it may become more viable. Even so, I not convinced there’s a huge market for that sort of thing. Seems to me they could simply enable Bluetooth support using the existing hardware the HomePod has to eliminate the market for a device like that, given that you could then use one of the existing analog to Bluetooth adapters that exist.
Airfoil and Airfoil Satellite are in the vein of what you’re looking for, so far as software goes. There’s also AirParrot that can act as a sender. You might be able to use Airfoil Satellite with an old iPod Touch receiving audio through the 3.5mm headphone/mic jack, which then transmits it back to Airfoil on a PC/Mac, which then transmits it via AirPlay to the HomePods, but I have no idea if that’d actually work and it sounds like way too brittle of a workflow.
Besides which, why introduce latency concerns, especially if you’re watching movies or talking about hooking up consoles? It’s one thing for music, where latency isn’t a problem, but it’s something else when you now have lips out of sync with the words being spoken or audio cues that don’t correspond to the inputs you’re providing or the action on the screen.
In a quick price check on Amazon, it looks like iPhone 6 battery replacements run about $20 on average, rather than the $9 for the S5's battery. Regardless of why that's happening, it suggests that users are paying about $10 for the replacement service (as well as for the guarantee that the battery is from a trustworthy source), rather than $20, which changes the math quite a bit. At that point, you're starting to talk about the sorts of margins that are perfectly normal across a variety of industries.
I agree that Apple regularly has obscene margins on many of their products (e.g. memory and storage pricing), but I don't find this one to be particularly egregious, nor even "huge".
Exactly. This, from the sounds of things, is no different than when any other open source group has reverse engineered a proprietary document format or proprietary protocol and released their own tools and services that operate on or over it. Provided they haven’t copied Blizzard’s code—which it sounds like they haven’t—and provided they haven’t copied Blizzard’s art or music assets—which I suspect they didn’t have a need to, given that the client app that Blizzard itself provided is the part that holds those—I don’t see how this can be a valid copyright claim on Blizzard’s part.
I’m actually sympathetic to Blizzard, but it sounds like they don’t have a leg to stand on, other than taking advantage of the fact that with a large service, there will be a handful of coincidences that are going enough for an initial DMCA takedown notice, even though they won’t hold up under appeal.
Go on...tell me another one.
That's funny right there.
Considering you can just tap the “Deny” button at any “The Mobile Driver’s License app would like to use your location” prompt that might appear, I don’t see why it’s that hard to believe. After all, they’d just be another app, with no more access to your location than any other. I have no problem with this notion, provided they don’t mandate through law that location data be enabled for their app with no opt-out or ability to use a physical license instead.
For any site where I don’t care about having my own login, BugMeNot is the easier way to log in. For any site where I want my own login, it’s worth doing the one-time registration and then putting it into my password manager.
Nor do I. After all, what incentive does a leader in a particular category have for giving up their competitive advantage? To my eyes, this push for a standard is an attempt to stem the tide among the crowd that's interested in these sorts of things (among which I am not a member).
Apple currently provides the best stylus in the consumer tablet space, hands down. The Apple Pencil uses a proprietary Bluetooth chip that pushes its wireless latency to a far lower point than anything else on the market, and it only works with the iPad Pro, which has a 120 Hz refresh rate. Between the low latency and fast refresh, it seem as if you're simply writing on a physical pad of paper. Even as a person who has no interest in styluses, it was shocking how much of a difference those factors made over Wacoms and other products I've tried over the years.
A quick anecdote: my non-techie wife dabbles in watercoloring and sketching, and after a brief stop by the Apple Store a few months back, she went from being completely ambivalent about the Pencil to being blown away by it. When I told her that it only worked on the newest iPad Pro, she immediately changed her plans for her next tablet. She had been planning to pick up an iPad mini once her current mini got too long in the tooth, but now she plans to get a Pro. I've heard similar anecdotes from a handful of other friends who dabble in art, several of whom have dropped their use of dedicated devices like Wacoms that ostensibly do the same things, simply because the Pencil was so much better than whatever they already had.
I don't doubt that art professionals have access to better tools, or else tools that address needs the Pencil doesn't address, but at least in the consumer tablet space the Pencil is far and away the best thing available. If someone is interested in an inferior stylus, dumb styluses already work just fine. If someone wants a wireless, pressure-sensitive stylus, why would Apple support a device that is almost certainly worse than what they already have, particularly when what they already have is so compelling to the people interested in it that it's driving sales of more expensive iPads, despite the added cost of the Pro and the obscene $100 price of the Pencil.
Like I said, politics as usual.
I'm an Apple fan (though I like to think I'm not a fanboy), and I'm okay with this investigation. While the facts about what happened aren't in dispute, the decisions that led to those actions are in dispute, and depending on what they end up being, they might point towards misdeeds on Apple's part. For instance, while I doubt the government will find any indication of it, if Apple was slowing already-purchased phones down for the purpose of driving people to purchase new phones, there'd be some serious problems for them, given that they would have effectively been engaging in a bait-and-switch.
I expect that the government will subpoena the relevant e-mails, investigate whether that was the intent, and then will almost certainly come to the conclusion that there's no evidence of Apple engaging in any wrongdoing. At the same time, I expect that the investigation will be dragged through the news cycles every few months whenever a politician or competitor who's opposed to Apple in some way needs a quick way to make Apple look like the bad guy.
I.e. Politics as usual.
Only problem is the FCC can't preempt state laws without a title II classification.
I quite agree, despite their protestations to the contrary that they can enforce deregulation as a form of regulation.
I can't speak towards this rule in particular (since I tend to think that it exceeds their authority, regardless of their protestations to the contrary), but when it comes to the FCC issuing rules in general, the law that gives them the authority to do so is the FCC's charter, which was enacted via a law passed by Congress. Most of these sorts of agencies, organizations, and commissions that live in the executive branch are created by acts of Congress that delegate a particular aspect of Congress' authority to those groups.
Got an authorative source for this?
Would the FCC order itself suffice for you? Directly from the same order that repealed Title II classification for ISPs, the FCC itself said (emphasis mine):
We therefore preempt any state or local measures that would effectively impose rules or requirements that we have repealed or decided to refrain from imposing in this order or that would impose more stringent requirements for any aspect of broadband service that we address in this order.
It was fairly trivial to find, given that they put it in the section entitled "Preemption of Inconsistent State and Local Regulations", with that particular quote coming from page 110, paragraph 191. A few paragraphs later they provide an argument for their legal authority to preempt the states, but that authority will doubtless be challenged in court whenever the FCC sues California or vice versa, given that the California bill flies directly in the face of that preemption. The Montana and New York approaches use a backdoor approach to dealing with the issue that doesn't directly defy the FCC's order, so it's entirely possible that they may be allowed to remain in place even if the California bill gets tossed out. Of course, being that they're based on executive orders, the very next governor of those states could easily repeal the order.
Anyway, going back to (what I assume was) your earlier question:
Wasn't the point of striking NN to cede power that the FCC really doesn't have and allow states to figure out what's best for themselves? Or does that not fit the anti-Trump narrative?
No, not only was it not the point, it was explicitly not the point, and as such it fits just fine with the anti-Trump narrative surrounding net neutrality.
Things like public awareness notices can be sent over SMS and the phone's built-in logic can decide if the user wants to get those in the middle of the night.
Agreed, or at the very least they can be managed through more granular controls at the OS level. I may not mind receiving Amber alerts on my own terms, but as it is now iOS only allows for an all-or-nothing with Amber alerts: either you get woken with a blaring alarm or you get nothing at all. This seems like an obvious area for improvement, but I suspect there are regulations impeding their ability to deal with such a well-known pain point.
Within about a week of Amber alerts being added as a feature, I had multiple rude awakenings in the middle of the night for missing children in Houston (1.5 hours away by car) and San Antonio (3 hours). Given that Dallas is a comparable distance to San Antonio from where I live, I wouldn't be surprised if I would have eventually received alerts for them as well, meaning I'd have been receiving alerts for 3 of the top 10 largest cities in the nation, almost none of which would likely be applicable to where I live.
Thankfully, iOS breaks the Amber alerts out separately from weather alerts, which is the only reason I still receive weather alerts, and the weather alerts where I live have actually been used wisely by whoever is making the calls. We've only been seeing them for major events in our immediate vicinity, such as for flash flood and tornado warnings within a few miles. And a tornado approaching my home is definitely something I want to be woken for, so I've been glad that I've been able to keep the weather alerts active.
The US already has the largest rail network in the world, the vast, vast majority of which is being used for freight. While there’s surely room for more growth, it’s aleady being utilized quite effectively as it is for the sorts of things that make sense to put on rail.
Even so, rail can only get your package between hubs, so you still have a need for point-to-point deliveries once you move things from one hub to another. That’s where courier drones can eliminate the most jobs/save the most costs, hence why that’s where businesses are the most interested in using them.