Category: Hardware

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Apple Hardware Iconfactory Indie iOS Stream

My Apple Products

Ribbit Like many in the Apple geek world I listen to a few Apple podcasts. I love ‘em. I get to hear about their latest Apple purchases, mostly about the new phones they purchase every year, but occasionally we get to hear about something different. Recently it’s been M1 Mac purchases. I admit I’m green with envy. I have FOMO like a MOFO.

But these are the hyper fans. It’s why they write and talk about Apple products. They’re deeply invested in the Apple ecosystem. They’ve managed to turn their love of a company into a business. It doesn’t get much better than that.

I became a fan of Apple when Windows 3.0 released. I’m weird that way. It wasn’t until 2006 that I was able to switch to a Mac at work. That led to purchasing a Mac for our oldest daughter and my wife. I wrote my first couple iOS Apps on her white MacBook because I didn’t have one. Now we’re very much an Apple Family.

Back to my FOMO. If I had the means to purchase the new thing every year, I would. No doubt. But do I really need to buy the new thing every year? No.

Over the course of the iPhones existence I’ve had four.
• iPhone 4
• iPhone 5c
• iPhone 7
• iPhone 11

I upgraded to an iPhone 11 after the announcement of the iPhone 12. It’s purple and I love it. I’m typing this post on it right now (using Tot from The Iconfactory.)

As a developer of iOS Apps you’d think “I bet he has a really nice setup.” I do, but probably not what you’d expect. I’ve had two personal MacBook Pros.
• MacBook Pro – 2011 15in
• MacBook Pro – 2015 15in

I remember purchasing that 2011. It was my Christmas present that year. I did a bunch of consulting work on that machine and it’s still in operation to this day. My wife uses it on occasion. I replaced the batter a couple years back. It’s still a great computer. One with a spinning hard drive I might add.

The 2015 MacBook Pro was a complete surprise. It too was a Christmas present but I had no clue I was getting it. It’s a great little device. It sits on a stand right next to my 24in Dell display. I really love the setup. It’s more than enough screen real estate for me. Plenty of space for Xcode, a few shells, and BBEdit. I use the laptop display for the browser and other non-development apps. It’s the setup I used to write Stream.

Here’s the thing about Apple hardware. It’s really good! I don’t need to replace it very often because Apple has been great about supporting old hardware.

Some folks may ask “How can you deal with such a slow machine?” Maybe because it’s what I know? I use a 2019(?) MacBook Pro at work and I don’t notice a speed difference between it and my 2015. I don’t base this on any speed tests or measure performance in any way. It’s just by feel. That feel is how quickly Xcode builds stuff. I don’t use anything else in my day to day work that needs more horsepower than that. The only thing I do notice is how much my fingers don’t like the 2019’s keyboard when I use it on occasion. Oh, I’ve also been running Big Sur on it and it’s absolutely fine performance wise.

Here’s another reason why it’s fine for me. I work on iOS Apps. They’re small. It’s not like I’m building Photoshop or Xcode itself. Just little iOS Apps.

When the time comes for a new computer I may go with an Intel MacBook Pro with the crummy keyboard because the pricing may make it affordable enough for my tastes.

I also have a Series One Apple Watch. I wear it everyday and have since I got it. The OS is no longer updating, but this watch doesn’t have the ability to use new features and it’s perfect for my needs. My use? Text, Slack, and phone notifications. I also have a couple weather app complications; the built in Weather and Dark Sky (which will go away at some point.) Again, when the time comes for a new watch I will probably get a Series Three or Four because the price will be much better.

On the iPad front I still have a Gen One iPad Mini. It’s amazing it still holds a charge for a really long time and it’s small and light. The perfect reading device. The display is non Retina but it works. I hardly ever use it. I’m not much of a book reader. Shameful, I know.

Let’s wrap this up. Here’s my everyday list of personal Apple devices I use.
• Apple Watch – Series One
• iPhone 11
• MacBook Pro – 2015 15in

The Watch and MacBook Pro speak to Apple’s focus on high quality design.

They just keep working.

Categories
Apple Development Hardware iOS

iPod Touch

Why doesn’t Apple improve on the iPod Touch every couple years? Why not take older chip sets — maybe a model from last years iPhone — and leave the form factor alone? Just keep stuffing updated tech into the existing design.

There are folks that can’t afford to buy their kids an iPhone but the iPod Touch may fit nicely into their budget.

Yep, it's a rooster.As a developer this is also a nice machine for testing. The only issue I see is it hasn’t been revved in a long time. It’s still using an A8 processor but it is still slightly ahead of the iPhone 5s which uses an A7. that’s important because the iPhone 5s is the lowest end iPhone that supports iOS 12. That means we could get another couple years use out of the current generation iPod Touch.

The iPod Touch with 128GB of storage sells for $299US.

Fingers crossed Apple updates it soon.

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Apple Development Hardware Mac

MacBook Monster

I listen to a podcast called Accidental Tech Podcast. If you’re a Mac or iOS Developer you’ve probably heard of it or you’ve heard of one or more of its hosts. One of their ongoing topics of conversation is Apple’s apparent lack of focus on the Pro market. It’s true Apple has become very focused on more consumer oriented products, like the iPhone. I mean, who wouldn’t? When you look at the numbers it makes total sense.

When Apple announces results sites like Six Colors do a great job breaking down all the numbers and, in Six Colors case, they make really awesome charts! Just look at this one from January of 2015.

Awesome Six Colors Revenue Chart
Awesome Six Colors Revenue Chart

Who can blame Apple for spending most of their time on the iPhone? Look at those numbers. They’re stunning. It’s not to say the Mac or iPad are losers, they’re not. Most companies would give anything to have one product doing so well, Apple has at least four; iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Watch. Most likely someone will write in to let me know I’ve missed one, or I’m wrong about something, but you get the point. Apple is killing it, on multiple fronts.

What about Pros?

Much of the consternation from the ATP guys revolves around the Mac Pro. Who can blame them? Apple hasn’t shipped a new model since 2013. The hardware is now embarrassingly outdated and is due for a much needed refresh.

As a developer I can understand their need for Phenominal Cosmic Power! But they’re stuck with an Ity Bity Living Space. Not fun.

I’d love to see Apple pull together a great new piece of hardware that includes all the latest, greatest, internals and really appease the Professional Apple Workstation crowd. This would include filmmakers, photographers, designers of all kinds, the CAD folks, and, of course, Software Engineers of all kinds. On my list of nice to haves would be a box large enough to hold multiple multiple core processors (say 256 cores, why not? Windows can do it), tons of RAM, and a killer external bus system to allow folks to chain together external GPU’s. That would be a really great computer, don’t you think? Maybe the base configuration is the most popular, but it sure would be nice to be able to take a Mac and macOS to an extreme level.

Having said all of that, as a Professional Developer I’d prefer a really great Portable Workstation.  What is that? Well, it’s a desktop replacement in a laptop form. Apple is obsessed with making everything thinner and lighter. I do appreciate that, I really do. My first MacBook Pro was a lovely 17-inch beauty, but it was big. Not only heavy, but it was long enough that it was difficult to find a decent backpack to carry it in. Let’s just look at the weight alone, it was 6.6 pounds.

I remember carrying that thing around my first WWDC in 2011. Early morning to late afternoon. Yes, I got tired of carrying it, but it wasn’t a hardship. I would happily trade a bit of weight for a super powerful MacBook Pro.

I read an article recently on the new Dell Precision 5520 on Windows Central. This thing is a beast.

“Besides the big Core processors, all of which are the last generation “Skylake” variants, there is the big kahuna with the Xeon E3-1505M v6. Introduced this year, this Intel Xeon is a quad-core processor with support for ECC memory, 8MB of cache (up from the usual 6MB in a consumer Core i7), and a slightly higher base clock rate of 3.00 GHz with Turbo up to 4.00 GHz. These specs make it one of the fastest mobile processors around, besting the Core i7-7700HQ found in the XPS 15 (9560) by 200MHz.”

Yes, you read that right. This laptop can be configured with a Xeon processor, not to mention 32GB of RAM. That is professional sized horsepower in a small package. This is what I’d like to see from Apple. A true high-end Portable Workstation. Oh, and do you remember the weight of that old 17-inch MacBook Pro I mentioned above? Yes, 6.6 pounds. This Dell weighs 4.56 pounds. Compare that to the new 15-inch MacBook Pro which weighs 4.02 pounds. It’s not that big a difference.

I’d love to have this kind of power wrapped in Apple’s design ascetic. Oh, it should only come in one color. Black.

Categories
Hardware Microsoft

Hello, Surface Studio

Hot buttered popcorn and a movie, ahhh!Not to be outdone by Apple, Microsoft announced Surface Studio a few days back. It looks like a winner.

Ars Technica: “And as is Microsoft’s habit, there’s human interaction novelty, too, with the Surface Dial. This is a Bluetooth spinner and clicker with haptic feedback. Spinning the wheel can invoke either system functionality (such as changing the volume) or application features (such as the amount of red, green, or blue used by the current paintbrush in a painting app); there’s an API to allow third-party software to provide Dial-specific capabilities. Its unusual feature is that it can be used off the screen, or, when in studio mode, on the screen. When used on the screen, the Surface Studio knows exactly where the dial is and can draw radial menus or other controls around the device.”

JavaScript Scene: “That’s a huge amount of gorgeous screen real-estate for only $2,999. And it’s a touch screen. And it has an amazing interactive dial that you can place directly on the screen. You can draw on it with pens.”

CNet: “Really, though, this is all about the Surface Dial, a wild new idea that instantly excited people from its on-stage demos. The metal dial can be an on-screen tool as much as a desktop one, and looks like the other-hand tool designed to work alongside the Pen in everyday Surface creative use.”

I want one. It makes we want to create desktop software for Windows again.

It looks like Microsoft has hit one out of the park.

Designer Neven Mrgan took a trip to his local Microsoft Store to check one out. He seems impressed.

Can you imagine using Photoshop with the Surface Dial? Yeah, it could be awesome for designers.

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Hardware

Buying a PC Laptop?

I’m a Mac

I’ve been a Mac for a few years now. When I was working at Pelco a few years back I had a 17″ MacBook Pro and I loved it. We bought our daughters Macs when they graduated from high school and I bought my lovely wife a Mac. We have more than a few iPod’s laying around the house and four iPhones between us. We’re definitely an Apple loving family.

Three years ago, with the help of my brother, we released our first iOS application, RxCalc. It’s been all Apple, all the time since then. I finally got my first Mac for Christmas, December 2011. Up to that point I developed iOS software on my wife’s Mac.

I was finally able to venture out on my own in May, 2012. My primary goal was to find enough freelance work to allow me to work on my own software from time to time. I’d love to ship some iOS and Mac software this year, or early next year. So far things have been great. I’m just rolling off a great project and trying to wrap up another, both iOS. But, being a freelancer is difficult. Work is work, right?

To Windows, or not to Windows?

Most of my 20 plus hears has been spent writing software for Windows, so it’s something I know, and I’m comfortable writing software on that platform. I’ve been in discussions with a company to work on some Windows based software, so I may need a PC once again.

I have a decent MacBook Pro so I wonder if VMWare would do the trick, but the software I’d be working on requires hardware accelerated graphics. Have the VM folks solved that problem? Will Direct3D work? I don’t know the answer to that. These are questions I need to solve so I can decide if spending the cash, and carrying around two laptops, is worth it.

PC Laptops

On Saturday I walked into our local Best Buy to see if I could find a decent 15″ laptop for under $1000. All the laptops were under $1000! That was a big surprise. The thing I quickly discovered is I don’t pay attention to hardware any longer. Since I became a Mac user our choices are limited to a few very high end pieces of hardware, so all you have to decide is how much RAM you’d like and how big the hard drive should be. In the PC laptop world is wild and varied. The one thing I did notice is every laptop I looked at had about 4GB of RAM. That would need to be bumped right away to 8GB and I figure I’d need at least a 500GB drive, but what processor should I get? It’s not like I’m going to use this laptop for anything but coding on Windows.

So, the big question. What sub $1000 laptop is decent enough to install Windows 7/8 and run Visual Studio? It doesn’t have to be the best ever, just good enough.

Comments welcome.