This week’s glorious news debris is all glommed together.
• From Tom’s Guide “iMac 2020 release date, redesign, price, specs and latest rumors.” What’s notable here? Look for the artist’s concept of the Apple patent filing. It’s awesome. There’s one for the iMac Pro that’s also nifty.
• What’s just as exciting is this leak reported at Laptop: “2020 MacBook Pro leak reveals powerful new specs.” Some lake effect data therein:
When vendors upgrade from 8th Gen to 10th Gen U-series chips, they have to decide between Ice Lake or Comet Lake processors.
Ice Lake processors offer a small CPU speed boost but a significant improvement to graphics thanks to the new Iris Plus integrated GPU. On the other hand, Comet Lake keeps the lowly UHD graphics but delivers huge computing performance gains over Ice Lake, especially the high-end, six-core Core i7 chip.
Which will it be? Or options for either one? Nah…
• Now that Apple has come to it senses on the MacBook Pro keyboard and the Touch Bar’s ESC key, what’s the biggest remaining user gripe? See: “It’s all about the ports: What Apple needs to change now that Jony Ive is gone.” David Gewirtz writes:
I reached out on Twitter and Facebook to ask, “Can you think of anything Apple can fix in its products now that Jony Ive is gone?”
Every answer was about ports. Users would be a lot happier if Apple stopped eliminating critically needed ports from its products.
Good stuff here.
• ViacomCBS, bathing in the success of Star Trek as its signature series and, perhaps, sensing weakness in the plans for NBCUniversal’s Peacock, is pouring on the coals. Gizmodo has a nice take: “ViacomCBS Will Turn CBS All Access Into the Foundation of Its New, Unholy Voltron of a Streaming Service.”
[7 Metrics of Success For a New TV Streaming Service]
More details are at the source: “CBS All Access, Comedy Central, Nick, Paramount to combine into one streaming service.”
As has been predicted, by me included, there will be a few (3 or 4) notable, big-time streaming TV services that thrive. And then there will those that fail. Or merge. Apple should be concerned about Disney+ and ViacomCBS in the long term. As NASA’s Gene Kranz once said, “Failure is not an option.”
• Here’s a nice tech analysis of external SSDs. “The best portable SSDs you can buy right now.” I own several of the SanDisk Extreme portable SSDs and one OWC Envoy Pro EX and can attest to their ease of use, durability and longevity.
• This is weird and interesting. From Tom’s Guide: “Crazy new iPhone design from Apple is ALL SCREEN with apps on front and back.” Would you go for this? It kinda puts me off.
• Finally,
“Ahem. Replicator: Tea, Earl Grey, decaff.”
Particle Debris is generally a mix of John Martellaro’s observations and opinions about a standout event or article(s) of the week followed by a discussion of articles that didn’t make the TMO headlines, the technical news debris. The column is published most every Friday except for holiday weeks.
My desk at home is about 30″ deep. The keyboard is right up to the front edge and the 27″ iMac screen is at the far edge so that I have maximum real estate between the screen and the keyboard to put stuff that I might need while working (or pretending to), such as papers, coffee, phone, etc.
When a designer throws off a design idea like the one shown with the keyboard attached to a 27″ screen, is the point of it all to impress us about how thoughtful, groundbreaking and innovative they are? Somebody tell them it’s not generating the effect they think it does.
The iMac concept looks more like something Samsung would bring out. If Apple does so, then something is definitely wrong in the state of Cupertino…
What about Macs with Intel Tiger Lake, which means Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 (USB 4)?
The one piece iMac on Tom’s Guide is just ridiculous. And I don’t mean that in a good way. The keyboard is too close to the screen. I mean for a 27” Model like a foot too close.
iPhone with apps on all sides? Naaa. So you cannot set it down without marring the screen(s)? Not well thought out here.
Apple, and all manufacturers play with a lot of ideas. Most get binned. Both of these will, in their present form, get binned.