* Posts by anonymous boring coward

3229 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jan 2015

Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's like 16GB in a PC

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: They’re exceptional

"and to my surprise the basic 8GB model pretty much always flew along"

It's really, really fast at swapping to SSD. Unfortunately this will take its toll on the SSD eventually. Hence pay the $200 for 16GB. It pays back in the long run, not to mention second hand value.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Insult to injury

Your local importer bought stolen stuff?

Or did I misinterpret that?

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Insult to injury

I'll inform my son that when he is downloading a 120GB game from Steam it is actually a really small thing, thanks to X86 compact instructions...

(Point being that there's tremendous amounts of stuff, even in RAM, that has little to do with instruction sets.)

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Nah

"Apple can't be arsed with the cost and effort of modifying their designs "

They just moved from Intel to M1, M2 and so on. With massive effort put into Rosetta 2.

Your description of laziness sounds a lot more like MS and Intel.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Pointless penny-pinching

Yes, but can you blame them? Most average users are fine with the entry level products, and why destroy the upper end where you can make a bit more margin?

Just cough up the $200 and be done with it. It's expensive anyway, why cheap out on crippling the Mac?

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

16GB iPad? That would be the flash memory then. Nothing to do with RAM.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Insult to injury

I think Mac introduced it in 2013. No surprise MS did so a few year later.

But yes, some Apple managerial types probably aren't up to speed on much.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Symbian all over again

Agree with most of it, but Apple isn't peddling 2GB and 4Gb models. The entry level is 8GB. So pretty standard for decent laptops.

The M* line will get more RAM soon, for sure. It's just a bit more complicated than the separate RAM approach.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: 8GB? No thanks!

I suggest you check just what the heck your apps are up to...

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Twice as good

Hang on now.. This discussion is getting out of hand.

Many (most?) PC laptops come with 8GB as default too. And it's poverty spec on those too. But it works if you are an average user. Just like the Macbooks.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

The "Pro" moniker is indeed a marketing strategy as well.

The Pro macbooks use active cooling (fan) so can theoretically run faster at high loads. My Air M1 is fast enough for me. I just wish it was 16GB, but on the second hand market the premium isn't just $200 -it's more like $400 because buyers were stupidly stingy when speccing their macbooks (so there are few 16GB models around, and even more so for the Air models).

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Just one more thing..

Applications are very much to blame. Single web pages using 500MB+ for example.

My current instance of Excel with 3 tiny spreadsheets open, using 2GB of RAM! Never, ever releasing anything until you kill it dead.

Throwing more RAM at that sort of thing just makes developers even more lazy.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: I was gonna say...

So, get the 16GB version then...

What's the problem?

Pro users need to get the correct tool.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: I was gonna say...

I find that most pro mac users know all about needing RAM and buy accordingly.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Insult to injury

It's probably the RAM compression they are thinking of. Well, that would be the explanation, anyway.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Insult to injury

Mostly stolen ones.

I've bought many macbooks and ipads on auction, and never had an issue.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Insult to injury

Second hand value is very good, as long as the machine doesn't die. I only buy second hand. An M1 Air is my newest machine.

Microsoft: Iran's cybercrews got stuck into Israel days after Hamas attacked – not in tandem

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

"Iran's role in the Israel-Hamas war has been largely "reactive and opportunistic," says Microsoft,"

You may want to correct this nonsense...

Perhaps you meant "cyber war"?

YouTube cares less for your privacy than its revenues

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

"YouTube cares less for your privacy than its revenues"

Shocking revelation?

UK throws millions at scheme to heat homes with waste energy from datacenters

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Well, it's a problem if you think it's ok to leave things on because they will heat up the house anyway. A monetary problem.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: are they heating the homes...

But his is on the motorway. Is yours?

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Assumptions

"If it was viable, there would be profit in it and the free market would have done it already."

Not quite true. The awful "socialist" Scandinavia has many publicly funded or backed things, and benefit from things like good public transport, and good housing.

UK has things like slum landlords. Very free market.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Assumptions

If you have the water based distribution in place, you can always heat the water using any number of current technologies, including fire.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

I don't remember the details, but getting from warm to boiling hot is not an easy process. -it will cost energy. Thermodynamics.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

I didn't say any of that "aggressive" stuff, did I?

UK has plenty of old things, heaven knows. You prefer global warming and paying through your nose to doing something, even if the UPVC "sash window" is now a 3-glass look-alike?

Or would you prefer freezing?

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Sure. but money needs to go into implementing it. Not just architects faffing around. That would delight the Tories, however.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

"This weeks magic bullet to fix everything."

True that. UK's politicians are notoriously sh*t at maths. They can only do simple addition, and only if it's money coming their way.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Another hare-brained idea

"Another hare-brained idea"

It's hare brained only because UK can't implement shit.

Scandinavians have this in many places.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: At the speed of government

"Now, 189 years later, the government finally take notice."

Correction: pretend to take notice.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Heat from electricity is about 5 times the price of heat from gas, so that's a problem.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Communal central heating is a common thing in Scandinavia.

But, of course, Scandinavians do actual planning, and proper engineering. Thinking ahead, and that kind of thing.

So nothing like UK.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

The same money spent on subsidising new front doors, replacing useless windows, etc, would probably save much, much more energy.

And especially "listed" stuff like sash windows need to go. Can't keep looking backwards.

Millions of smart meters will brick it when 2G and 3G turns off

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: 2G is perfect for this

"The data rate of a channel depends on the bandwidth and the signal/noise ratio"

With no noise the data rate can be infinite. Of course, there's no such thing as "no noise".

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: cost savings to households from knowing the amount of energy they are consuming

I’m not a poor beggar, but I certainly check my IHD, sometimes in horror as it indicates £10+ for a single day.

It’s good to know what’s going on.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Turn off reliable old systems that are still in use?

Makes so much sense.

Microsoft scratches Surface device policy – some get extensions of up to 6 years

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

"Just weeks later, Microsoft announced it was extending its spare parts program for Surface devices by providing replacement components via repairs site iFixit. "

iFixit had an April Fools article about Apple doing this, a couple of years ago.

Now, how "affordable" will those parts be? And why should iFixit have some kind of exclusive rights? (If that's indeed the case.)

Can open source be saved from the EU's Cyber Resilience Act?

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: GB left the EU

"Sharply downhill" may be overstating it a bit?

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: GB left the EU

If only the caring and amazing GB could have had any way to influence things, rather than just being a rule taker...

CIA exposed to potential intelligence interception due to X's URL bug

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Truncate URLs?

Why? What good is a truncated one?

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Ridiculous!

And make him do stuff for you.

Raspberry Pi 5: Hot takes and cooler mistakes

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

I was going to explain that a cooler would actually increase the total heat output of the RPi, but others have already done that.

Gulf states and 'The Stans' could become new tech hotspot – analyst

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Is that before or after they have eradicated Israel, the current hotspot for tech?

Russia to ban all VPNs – again – says senator

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: A matter of opinion

Well, that certainly justifies Putin murdering people in Ukraine. You certainly have me convinced now.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Everyone's at it..

"And yet over half of Americans once voted for him to be President.."

Not quite. But the number of insane in USA is insane. for sure.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: A matter of opinion

More bollocks from you. Russia has no right to exist. It squandered it just now.

Divide and hand out. Moskva can be a one city nation.

Amazon had secret algorithm to hike prices, claims FTC

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: I don't understand what the problem is?

Do you think all Amazon sellers are computer wizards?

Even if they were, why would you think it would be economically justifiable to spend money on this for small companies?

You do understand that many sellers consist of just one or a couple of people?

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: I don't understand what the problem is?

The problem is that Amazon has all the data for all it's sellers at its fingertips, and massive data crunching power as well.

Bit of a power imbalance there.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Find it on Amazon for a price check

I've returned several things that weren't what I searched for, but were presented as if they were, so accidentally purchased.

Really annoying the way things are pushed regardless of what you search for.

Lorenz ransomware crew bungles blackmail blueprint by leaking two years of contacts

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

"According to htmalgae, Lorenz closed access to its online contact form, preventing contact attempts using it, but the root issue "has not been addressed.""

Don't friggin tell them!

Red Planet roommates have been stuck on 'Mars' together for 100 days

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

I hope they are all attractive, to each other. What else would one do in a situation like that?

I predict a lot of action on Mars.