Cautious Apples & (Hyper)loopsđđ
đApple's cautious announcements last week put the competition into high gear and â°'the future of transportation' is getting nowhere fast
I wanna re-reiterate before I start sharing my thoughts on the latest Apple keynote last week with the fact that I am in no way an expert in microchip design and could not be further from it. Ok, letâs see whatâs whatâŚ
So what was announced? A new MacBook Air, a new, cheaper MacBook Pro and a new Mac mini, all powered by Appleâs first computer-focused, ARM-based chip, the M1.
What was promised? 18 hours of video playback on battery power for the Air and 20 hours for the Pro âyep, thatâs 6h more than on Intel-based Macsâ and Intel software working with the same or better performance on the M1 devices through Rosetta 2. Apple are so confident in these statements that they went as far as pulling Intel-powered Airs and some Pros out of their offer despite Macs in general recording record sales last quarter. Now thatâs a power moveâŚ
At this moment in time, we can only take Apple at their word that everything theyâve said in the presentation is in line with reality âthe things that are verifiable anywayâ and if thatâs so, this feels like a paradigm shift in the world of laptops and maybe even beyond considering the performance numbers touch on those seen in desktop computers.
Iâm, personally, most curious about the numbers regarding graphical performance, not because I deal in video games, but because every time you see the word âintegratedâ and âgraphicsâ in succession on the specs sheet the real-world performance ends up being mediocre at best. With the devices announced last week being at the lower end of the price range in the lineup, nobody expects stellar performance in the graphics department and by not allowing external GPUs Apple made it clear that you shouldnât expect anything stellar out of them. The two-year countdown clock for when all Macs will have Apple-designed chips has started last week and Iâd be surprised if this exact topic is not one of the main pillars to improve up until then.
What surely has the entire laptop-making competition sweating right now is the remark that this first laptop-focused chip built by Apple, is just a first step in a family of new chips they will be developing down the line. Considering that this level of performance is only achievable by controlling both the software and hardware stacks, another good question is, will Windows also start designing their own chips for their Surface line? No way of knowing, but if they were thinking about it before, now they have an extra reason to do so.
The highlight of the night amongst all those numbers and power multipliers showing how much better those Macs were? John Hodgman coming back as âPC guyâ. What a triumph!
Iâll address the Hyperloop news briefly, not because I think it worthy of electronic ink, but because I donât have anything for a second article this week, and if I have to suffer, you have to suffer as well, weâre in this together, readersâŚ
The theoretical part of Hyperloop technology is amazing. Close to supersonic speeds, terrestrial, comfortable, almost boutique-like travel experience over long distances, but when it hits real-world conditions the theory hits a lot of walls. The thickest of these walls right now are material science, human nature and financing.
The extreme conditions experience by Hyperloop vehicles, namely the high rate of speed and the degrees of vacuum needed to achieve it, might be achievable in theory and on a small scale, but a lot more difficult to execute when hundreds of meters turn into thousands of kilometers. Itâs not exactly sure that we can even build a vacuum tube this long with the materials we have currently and itâs clear that the airlock system in Hyperloop stations will need to abide by standards only seen in extreme conditions like deep-sea or space.
Said extreme conditions also mean that any unforeseen circumstances will need to be foreseen by engineers and accounted for in the design of the entire system. Earthquakes causing the smallest of misalignments, solar flares affecting the control electronics, vacuum tube pierce, derailing, the power going out with people stuck in a vacuum tube, you name it, it has to be accounted for.
On to the nature of the shaved chimp. A person driving into the vacuum tube, or, for that matter, an air-traveling vehicle, whether intentional or not would at least bring the entire system to a halt for a considerable amount of time before the system could be fixed and re-pressurized. While itâs true that trains also have the issue coming from malicious attacks along their tracks since theyâre also above-ground and unprotected, derailing a 2.5-tonne cart, for whatever reason, at 1200+ km/h will mean a lot more devastation for the surrounding area than weâve seen with trains before. Whatâs the problem of building them underground and safeguard against this? Read onâŚ
Finally, as world-famous economists, Wu-Tang, once said, cash rules everything around (me), and everything needs to be paid for by someone. We already have one important part of Hyperloop technology implemented in the real world: magnetic levitation. The reason why the longest high-speed maglev track in the world is just 30 km long is the upfront cost of it, at almost $40M per kilometer thatâs double the price of regular high-speed tracks. In the long run, maglev systems provide better maintenance costs along with improved reliability and almost zero noise pollution. Itâs worth mentioning that as the technology and its production processes are being developed, many expect maglev construction to come down in cost and be almost on par with high-speed rail, but this is a discussion for another time.
So if maglev technology alone doesnât make financial sense as it is, how can maglev+on pylons/underground+inside a vacuum tube+insane maintenance costs over time due to complexity make more sense? Iâm afraid it doesnât. Worse even, unless youâre running it on free energy âthus breaking at least some laws of physicsâ the vacuum tube completely eliminates the lower long-term costs of operating an existing maglev system. Contrary to popular belief, solar panels still have design, manufacturing, transport, operation, and maintenance costs associated with them and so do energy storage systems.
Tests like Virginâs version last week, where the pod reaches speeds around 170km/h on a track thatâs 500 meters long challenge zero of these aspects, nobody is challenging the fact that you could build something like that. The issues come in when scaling the system to become thousands of kilometers long and borderline supersonic. At this pace, the Hyperloop might be just another technology that will be âjust around the cornerâ forever and ever and ever and ever.
After Fortnite, Roblox joined the phenomenon that is concerts inside video games with a show from Lil Nas X, a show so successful that they decided to add three more over the following days. Itâs increasingly starting to become obvious that this quarantine thing will accelerate the move towards the inevitable metaverse, solving one of the biggest problems that all novel concepts encounter at launch: low adoption rate due to social normsđśđŽ
Speaking of Fortnite, Epic Games was asking players whether they would be up for paying a subscription between $14 and $19 in return for the perks offered currently in the Battle Pass plus a time-limited outfit pack and some hard currency. While this is not the first survey of its kind, this time around, the sentiment in the community appears to be overwhelmingly positive, a sign that times are a-changing in this kind of video game productđ¸đ¸
Early sales for the Xbox Series X/S look very good, outselling every previous generation in terms of units over the first 24h. I doubt weâll ever see a split between the sales of the two models since the cheaper âSâ is obviously leading, but itâs good to know that interest in hardware consoles still exists for this generationđŽđŽ
TakeTwoâs acquisition of Codemasters last week was both unexpected but also a logical move for the owners of Rockstar and 2K Games. While itâs true that the acquired company developed a lot of game genres over the years, in the past decade their focus was definitely on one kind of vehicle-based game or another. Combine that with the fact that racing games are absent from T2âs offering at the moment and with the genreâs recent rise in popularity due to quarantine conditions and this makes a lot of financial sense. The under-one-billion sum looks low to me when I think of the âCodemastersâ name alone and the pedigree of the companyđď¸đď¸
The Oculus Quest 2 has gotten a new software version, increasing the maximum refresh rate of the screen to 90Hz andâŚa fitness tracking function. The first has been requested by developers and consumers alike for some time now, the latter, not so much. Truth be told thereâs no way of both launching a fitness tracking feature without actually telling people you launched it, so putting some good in with the bad is as good as it gets. But boy does Oculus track a lot of things these daysâŚđđď¸đ
It was fun while it lasted for those who used it, but photos will not be free to store on Googleâs âPhotosâ service starting June 2021. With the information generated by us going up exponentially every year, this measure has been a long time coming, it was at Alphabetâs latitude for how long they wanted to subsidize this part of the business in order to gain market share. Good news: you can print photos again đđ¨ď¸
While the contribution of the car cannot be understated, that of the road infrastructure is a lot harder to achieve, traveling almost 500km in two hours remains impossible in most European countries regardless of the name of the badge đŁď¸đ§
Politics aside, photographing from more than a kilometer away takes serious hardware
BMW already have some electric two-wheel products on sale but this new one also looks good
After seeing this video I was beginning to wonder if the Spot platform will ever give birth to a software ecosystem, an APP for construction, one for farming, another for policing etc.
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