Apple Events - April 2021

iMac

Cool to see colorful Mac hardware again. It’s also interesting to see how close all their devices (iMac, MacBook, iPad) get over time. All the logic boards are starting to look the same these days.

The new keyboards with Touch ID surprised me because of the security implications. Although considering they’re doing even more authentication over Bluetooth stuff lately (with iOS 14.5 letting you unlock your iPhone with your watch when you have a mask on) this makes sense. It does seem like they suddenly have way more keyboard and mice SKUs to deal with now.

Also, when it comes to audio, I have definitely noticed a lot of attention on speakers/sound on Apple’s devices these days (based on my experience with AirPods, a 2020 MacBook Pro, and a HomePod mini) so I’m guessing they aren’t exaggerating very much about the sound improvements on these.

iPad Pro

M1 Chip

I figured there would be a lot of overlap between Apple’s usage of A series and M series chips. I can’t imagine they’ll still be manufacturing two different chips for very long. I was still surprised at first when they announced the M1 in the iPad, but it makes sense along with the other changes (Thunderbolt, new XDR display, etc).

New Display

It’s cool to finally see what all the mini-LED rumors were all about. Very impressive to see iPad displays with those kinds of specs.

Other iPad Stuff

There really isn’t much of a hardware difference between iPads Pro and the new iMacs now. Differences:

1. Software: iOS vs macOS.
2. Camera situation. I’m not sure if the new 1080p camera on iMacs is better than the new ultra wide camera on iPads Pro. Cool that they both got camera upgrades though. Also, Center Stage on iPad Pro actually looks pretty dope.
3. Cell connectivity. I still don’t think 5G was anywhere near ready to go, but it’s nice that it’s available on iPad Pro now.
4. AR. You either get amazing AR potential with iPad Pro, or none at all with iMac.

iPhone 12

There’s a new color. I like it.

It’s annoying that you don’t get interesting colors if you go with the “best” most expensive version of the phone though.

Apple TV

Processor

I’m skeptical about the high-framerate 4K HDR experience when everything we’re watching is compressed for streaming anyway.

I also don’t have much confidence in gaming on Apple devices. All the parts are there (very good processors, pretty good discovery/distribution with the App Store, compatibility with PS5/Xbox controllers), but they never seem to want to take it all the way. Btw, I actually laughed out loud when they talked about the power of the processor and how Apple TV is “console quality” and then immediately showed footage of whatever version of Devil May Cry looks like it was made on the PS2.

Anyway, for those reasons, I don’t really care about the processor upgrade.

Remote

This is the part everyone cared about right? Huge improvement. I’m actually really into the throwback “iPod click wheel”-like thing.

Other Apple TV Stuff

• I don’t care about Ted Lasso. I know it’s a good show, but I still don’t really care.
• The color balance adjustment thing is actually a really cool feature. I like it.

AirTags

Shrug. I don’t really lose stuff that often. I’m very curious about some of the things they did for privacy and safety (like stopping people from secretly tracking others) with these.

Also nice to see an actual use for the ultra wideband chips they’ve been putting in their devices lately.

Google has proposed a new way to enable/continue ad targeting now that third-party cookies are being phased out, called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC).

There have been a lot of articles written over the past few days about how nobody wants it and how shitty of an idea it is:

• WordPress Proposes Blocking Google’s FLoC
• DuckDuckGo Comes Forward With A Chrome Extension To Block FLoC, The Google Chrome Tracking Method
• Firefox, Edge, Safari, and other browsers won’t use Google’s new FLoC ad tech
• Browser makers, now including Mozilla’s Firefox, are already ditching Google’s proposed cookieless ad targeting method FLoC
• Google’s FLoC Is a Terrible Idea

From that last link from the EFF:

Users and advocates must reject FLoC and other misguided attempts to reinvent behavioral targeting. We implore Google to abandon FLoC and redirect its effort towards building a truly user-friendly Web.

I don’t know how that’s gonna happen when Google makes most of its money off this stuff. This kind of thing is fundamentally what Google has to be. They have no interest in a “truly user-friendly Web” if that means actually making ad tracking harder.

Anyway, a few of the articles I’ve been reading mention a HTTP header you can add to a web page to opt out of cohort calculation. As far as I can tell, websites without advertising¹ aren’t included in the experiment so I didn’t have to add it. But I did anyway. Mostly because it was just 1 line of code and a comment:

1// Disable FLoC
2w.Header().Set("Permissions-Policy", "interest-cohort=()")

But considering the reaction the proposal has gotten so far, I don’t really see this going anywhere (at least until they change the methods a little and rename/reword/rebrand it and try again).

Speaking of COVID and trying to get back to normal, I just read an article from Derek Thompson at The Atlantic, asking about the necessity of wearing masks outdoors:

The coronavirus is most transmissible in poorly ventilated indoor spaces, where the aerosolized virus can linger in the air before latching onto our nasal or bronchial cells. In outdoor areas, the viral spray is more likely to disperse. One systematic overview of COVID-19 case studies concluded that the risk of transmission was 19 times higher indoors than outside. That’s why wearing a mask is so important in, say, a CVS, but less crucial in, say, the park.

At the restaurant, however, I saw an inversion of this rule. Person after person who’d dutifully worn a mask on the uncrowded street took it off to sit still, in close proximity to friends, and frequently inside. I felt like I was watching people put on their seatbelts in parked cars, then unbuckle them just as they put the vehicle in drive.

I’m still gonna wear masks when I’m out of my apartment most of the time, even after being fully vaccinated, for a few reasons:

1. I feel better these days when I see someone wearing a mask, so I’ll wear one myself
2. In NYC, people like standing deep inside other people’s personal space, so masks make even more sense here
3. In the Winter, they helped with the cold; now in the Spring, they’re helping with pollen
4. Regardless of the situation, a mask just might help prevent another person from getting sick

That being said, yeah taking into account what we know about the virus, outdoor mask mandates aren’t very necessary. But it probably still helps the situation though.

I spent the past few weeks feeling annoyed that everyone I know here in the NY/NJ area (and a lot of people I know in CA) were able to get appointments for vaccine shots well before I did. In the meantime though, global COVID cases just hit weekly records…

Jinshan Hong at Bloomberg:

The worrisome trend, just days after the world surpassed 3 million deaths, comes as countries are rolling out vaccinations in an effort to get the virus under control. The data from Johns Hopkins University showing a 12% increase in infections from a week earlier casts doubt on the hope that the end of the pandemic is in sight.

The weekly increase surpassed the previous high set in mid-December. While infection rates have largely slowed in the U.S. and U.K., countries in the developing world – India and Brazil in particular – are shouldering surging caseloads.

I’m glad parts of the world are figuring out the vaccine situation and starting to get back to some kind of normal, but overall we are nowhere near done with this thing.

I just came across this very cool interactive map of languages spoken in New York City from the Endangered Language Alliance, with breakdowns by world regions, countries, language families, neighborhoods, etc.

From the project info:

With speakers of approximately 10 percent of the world’s 6000-7000 languages, the New York metropolitan area is the most linguistically diverse urban center in the world, probably in the history of the world.

This map is committed to representing in particular the smaller, minority, and Indigenous languages that are primarily oral and have neither public visibility nor official support.