A couple of tech news items
Oct. 31st, 2023 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneFirst up, Western Digital is splitting off its flash memory business.
In 2016, WD - traditionally a hard disk drive maker - purchased flash memory maker SanDisk. SD is known for making USB flash drives and compact flash cards for cameras, smart phones, and other devices. If you look back at 2016, the purchase makes sense: solid state drives were booming, and WD wanted to grow in that direction. But the pandemic utterly disrupted the hard drive and SSD industries and the flash memory side of the business has been suffering.
Now here's the interesting bit. An activist investor started pressuring WD to split off the business, and now they are! Their fortunes will rise and fall as they may, independent from one another. And, I guess, investors will be able to gobble up more stock from each of them?
https://www.reuters.com/technology/western-digital-separate-into-two-companies-2023-10-30/
Apple released their new CPU architecture, the M3 chip. And it has an interesting memory characteristic: it has 25% less memory bandwidth!
There's some curious things going on here, and it's a little too early to know exactly what's up. The chip was just announced yesterday, and the computers are not yet available though they can be ordered now. This is the third ARM M-series chip that Apple has developed in-house and they are screamers. I bought an M2 MacBook Pro earlier this year and am quite happy with it. This M3 chip? It's a bit puzzling. They are comparing the specs of the M3 against the M1, not the M2. And gee whiz, Batman, it's faster than the M1! The numbers would not be nearly as dramatic against the M2.
But the memory numbers are pretty firm: if you have processes that require LOTS of memory access, you may not get the performance out of an M3 system that you would out of an M2. The reason why this limit is in place is unclear, it may have to do with chip limitations or yield. Things will be revealed when actual units ship and are subjected to rigorous testing and labs outside of Apple's purview can get to the bottom of this strangeness.
It's going to be interesting to see what's going on here.
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/31/apple-m3-pro-less-memory-bandwidth/
I admit I'm an Apple fan - to a degree. They do a great job of integrating their products, and that is very useful to me. Their hardware is very high-end, but you do pay a direct price for that. They have excellent customer support. And you pay a price for that. And I'm willing to pay that, because I'm sick and tired of having to fix lousy products myself! I've been doing it for too long.
But I also don't like a direction that Apple has taken. They've bound themselves onto this treadmill that ALL of their iPhones have to be refreshed EVERY year. Which means a new iOS EVERY year. They introduce new iPads every year, though that's not a complete line refresh annually. And they introduce new laptops every year, but again, not a top-down refresh. And they do a new MacOS every year.
And in my ever so humble opinion, this is sometimes forcing them to release things before they're truly ready for prime time. The iPhone 15 released a few months ago? Has overheating problems. And if you use wireless induction charging in a BMW or maybe a Toyota, it can zap the NFC chip - Apple says a fix coming later this year. When they released iOS 11 a few years ago, they completely screwed over hearing aid users for pretty much the entire duration of that product release.
The problem is, a lot of the tech industry is ruled by people who live by the mantra 'Move fast and break things' and go back and maybe fix it in the next iteration. I hate seeing products released that haven't been properly tested and have major flaws, just to meet a marketing deadline! Marching to this constant beat of a one year release cycle to match hardware of ever-increasing complexity is a recipe for utter doom.
My iPhone, a 13 Mini, is two hardware generations from the current version. I bought a pair for my wife and I two years ago this coming Christmas. It's running iOS 17, the latest version. But I now believe that it is not truly iOS 17. You see, they time the new iOS release with the new iPhone release, and the new iPhone will ONLY run the latest iOS, can't run the previous generation. I have a feeling that iOS 17.0 is actually iOS 16.9. I think that they're continuing to build on the previous iOS, putting on new shinies and bells and whistles, plus the stuff needed to support the new hardware in the latest generation phone, and then changing the version number to the next increment. At some point they have to fork the operating system (make a copy so maintenance engineers can make patches (fixes) for problems in the aging code base) so that the engineers working on next year's phone can get the operating system working for the newer hardware, which is software-disabled for the old phones since that hardware doesn't exist on an iPhone 13 even though iOS 18 will need to run on it.
Software development for things like this mustreally suck be really challenging, and I am so glad that I was never involved in it! I wrote business systems for government agencies to support populations in need, and I'm proud of what I did because it helped people. This stuff? Far beyond my ability, that's for sure. Completely different type of programming.
In 2016, WD - traditionally a hard disk drive maker - purchased flash memory maker SanDisk. SD is known for making USB flash drives and compact flash cards for cameras, smart phones, and other devices. If you look back at 2016, the purchase makes sense: solid state drives were booming, and WD wanted to grow in that direction. But the pandemic utterly disrupted the hard drive and SSD industries and the flash memory side of the business has been suffering.
Now here's the interesting bit. An activist investor started pressuring WD to split off the business, and now they are! Their fortunes will rise and fall as they may, independent from one another. And, I guess, investors will be able to gobble up more stock from each of them?
https://www.reuters.com/technology/western-digital-separate-into-two-companies-2023-10-30/
Apple released their new CPU architecture, the M3 chip. And it has an interesting memory characteristic: it has 25% less memory bandwidth!
There's some curious things going on here, and it's a little too early to know exactly what's up. The chip was just announced yesterday, and the computers are not yet available though they can be ordered now. This is the third ARM M-series chip that Apple has developed in-house and they are screamers. I bought an M2 MacBook Pro earlier this year and am quite happy with it. This M3 chip? It's a bit puzzling. They are comparing the specs of the M3 against the M1, not the M2. And gee whiz, Batman, it's faster than the M1! The numbers would not be nearly as dramatic against the M2.
But the memory numbers are pretty firm: if you have processes that require LOTS of memory access, you may not get the performance out of an M3 system that you would out of an M2. The reason why this limit is in place is unclear, it may have to do with chip limitations or yield. Things will be revealed when actual units ship and are subjected to rigorous testing and labs outside of Apple's purview can get to the bottom of this strangeness.
It's going to be interesting to see what's going on here.
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/31/apple-m3-pro-less-memory-bandwidth/
I admit I'm an Apple fan - to a degree. They do a great job of integrating their products, and that is very useful to me. Their hardware is very high-end, but you do pay a direct price for that. They have excellent customer support. And you pay a price for that. And I'm willing to pay that, because I'm sick and tired of having to fix lousy products myself! I've been doing it for too long.
But I also don't like a direction that Apple has taken. They've bound themselves onto this treadmill that ALL of their iPhones have to be refreshed EVERY year. Which means a new iOS EVERY year. They introduce new iPads every year, though that's not a complete line refresh annually. And they introduce new laptops every year, but again, not a top-down refresh. And they do a new MacOS every year.
And in my ever so humble opinion, this is sometimes forcing them to release things before they're truly ready for prime time. The iPhone 15 released a few months ago? Has overheating problems. And if you use wireless induction charging in a BMW or maybe a Toyota, it can zap the NFC chip - Apple says a fix coming later this year. When they released iOS 11 a few years ago, they completely screwed over hearing aid users for pretty much the entire duration of that product release.
The problem is, a lot of the tech industry is ruled by people who live by the mantra 'Move fast and break things' and go back and maybe fix it in the next iteration. I hate seeing products released that haven't been properly tested and have major flaws, just to meet a marketing deadline! Marching to this constant beat of a one year release cycle to match hardware of ever-increasing complexity is a recipe for utter doom.
My iPhone, a 13 Mini, is two hardware generations from the current version. I bought a pair for my wife and I two years ago this coming Christmas. It's running iOS 17, the latest version. But I now believe that it is not truly iOS 17. You see, they time the new iOS release with the new iPhone release, and the new iPhone will ONLY run the latest iOS, can't run the previous generation. I have a feeling that iOS 17.0 is actually iOS 16.9. I think that they're continuing to build on the previous iOS, putting on new shinies and bells and whistles, plus the stuff needed to support the new hardware in the latest generation phone, and then changing the version number to the next increment. At some point they have to fork the operating system (make a copy so maintenance engineers can make patches (fixes) for problems in the aging code base) so that the engineers working on next year's phone can get the operating system working for the newer hardware, which is software-disabled for the old phones since that hardware doesn't exist on an iPhone 13 even though iOS 18 will need to run on it.
Software development for things like this must
no subject
Date: 2023-11-01 01:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-01 03:56 pm (UTC)I have a feeling WD probably gave themselves sweetheart deals on patent licensing before they started the spinoff.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-01 11:36 am (UTC)"You see, they time the new iOS release with the new iPhone release, and the new iPhone will ONLY run the latest iOS, can't run the previous generation"
Ahhh classic Apple and their ways to make people PAY.
This M3 chip puzzles me as well because, why?
On a positive note - I admit that once they introduced the Intel chip (which is no more), I have had less and less problems with the computers on a whole. Before the intel chip, it was a nightmare, having to try and troubleshoot every...damn...thing yourself because customer service was a joke.
Speaking of, really - you think Apple's tech support is good? After asking you if you turned off your computer and turned it back on before anything else? I prefer finding a certified Mac geek over the idiot "geniuses" that are trained only on the latest models by robots disguised as humans in Cupertino any day. :D
no subject
Date: 2023-11-01 04:04 pm (UTC)I've only had one poor experience with Apple Support. I called them a month or so ago, saying that I suspected the data modem in my phone had an intermittent fault. The tech said something like 'I'm looking at the report you called in on 'Day X, and the tech didn't find any problem.' IT WAS DAY X, THEY HAD JUST CREATED THE REPORT! It stunned me for a minute and I had to figure out what they were talking about. I hadn't talked to anyone, it was the current call! Other than that one call, every time I've worked with Apple Support it's been good. But I don't have to call them very often and didn't own a pre-Intel Mac.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-01 11:20 pm (UTC)Hugs, Jon
no subject
Date: 2023-11-01 11:48 pm (UTC)It's not going to significantly affect the price of camera memory cards.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-02 12:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-07 05:44 am (UTC)Apple continues to court and chase people who want to always have the latest thing, the shiniest thing, and they don't care nearly as much about how it functions because they're going to get the new Malibu Stacy doll when it comes out. And for those who aren't chasing the treadmill, they eventually lock people out of being able to keep their computers updated. So, yes, there are prices to pay for the good things, and for the not good things about them.