iPad

[beats me]

My smart keyboard has shipped.

It’s shipping from China. Don’t they know us Americans don’t like seeing that shit. Instead tracking should be stuck in PROCESSING for a couple days and then DEPARTING: Atlanta, GA or some shit, anywhere in the US will do.

But if it is coming from China I’m on the west coast of the US. So unless it’s being shipped via scuba diver it shouldn’t take the estimated 5 days to get here.

[beats me]

My new iPad arrived. Totally excited!!!



OK, now that, that is done with I wonder when Apple is going to announce the Apple Watch 2 and large iPad Pro 2. I think people are on to Apple and Apple is on to people. So Apple is going to keep their refresh date patterns on these unpredictable because a lot of people are holding out for the second gen (me included) and Apple wants to milk their existing inventory as long as possible. The Apple Watch is already over a year old. They just dropped the price $100 but absolutely nobody is thinking that means the second gen release is eminent.

Of course there is also the very real possibility that the existing hardware on those should be fine for a long time to come and Apple really doesn’t have anything (r)evolutionary planned for those. People will be pissed if it’s little more than a spec bump. We’re fine with that in computers at this point but still think portable devices need to at least be pitched as mind blowing innovation.

[mrdelurk]

Ordered up. I’m too poor to bookmark my midlife crisis with a sports car but not too poor to do it with a new iPad.

I just thought of the new blender-shaped Mac Pro in a pang of quarterlife rumination. Still unsure if it's an Apple Store in-joke or a real production unit I went to ebay to check if some are in fact selling. And they are, about 200 a month! It's an actual thing!

Will I buy one? If my memories of the past-OSX 10.4 clustermuck, where every decimal OSX upgrade caused half of the things to not work anymore (the world's costliest way to be a beta-tester for Windows) wouldn't still weigh heavily on my brain, I would. As things are, I'll need to get more forgetful, first.

Or maybe I could just buy an actual blender and stick an Apple logo decal on it. Most of my friends probably wouldn't notice it's not a computer, until they ask me for a cocktail. Or even better, maybe I could stick an Apple logo sticker on that bowling ball I have somewhere and say it's the upcoming Mac Pro XL.

[Tarekith]

The Apple Watch is already over a year old. They just dropped the price $100 but absolutely nobody is thinking that means the second gen release is eminent.

They can't update it too soon is my guess, it's still not widely accepted and the initial ones were stupid pricey. I'm guessing they will wait a bit until it's more popular and more people start getting that hype for the new feeling. I imagine some of the nicer watches might not resell well either, who cares if it's gold if it's slow as piss compared to what the next one will be.

Did you get the keyboard cover for the new iPad Pro too? I'm curious if it's much improvement over just using the ipad itself at that size.

[beats me]

I can’t remember the specifics but I remember Apple talking about more health tracking technology beyond just telling you your heart rate and to get off your ass every hour. I don’t want more than that now but probably will in the future and I don’t want to buy an Apple Watch and 3 months later they release a new one that will tell you when it’s safe to drive after you’ve been tilting them back with a cute animated buzzed level emoticon.

I did get the keyboard. It’s surprisingly plasticy looking for Apple and seems like it would be a good visual dust magnet. It’s good for typing anything of great length but mostly when at a desk or table. Not so much in a lounging position like in your lap or lying down. In those positions it’s just awkward. When you fold it back it sticks to both sides with magnets but sags in the middle where the crease is. I’m sure a back cover of any kind will make it so the magnets don’t stick. I’m getting more of a decal type back cover. I’ll let you know how that goes. A nice feature is it’s still connected when you fold it back but it knows to bring up the on screen keyboard when you have it in that position.

[beats me]

I think for only the second time ever I emailed Apple support.

To get all my music on my iPad I cable synced it to iTunes on my iMac because I don’t trust the cloud to get everything. Once synced I turned on cloud sync for going forward.

iTunes on my Mac says I have about 130GB of music. After syncing my iPad says there is only about 90GB of music on it. That’s not why I contacted support.

I have playlists on my iPad that are completely empty but oddly when I hit edit on the playlist all the songs appear to reorder of delete but when I hit done they disappear. That’s not why I contacted support.

I went into the iTunes app and went to Purchased and Not on this iPad. There’s (at least) 250 purchased tracks not on the iPad, many from the empty playlists. I hit the download all from the cloud icon and it appeared to be downloading them but they never actually download. That’s why I contacted support.

FFS.

Even if songs aren’t physically on the iPad they should still appear as being able to stream or download, but they aren’t.

I’m thinking there might be some confusion between songs that were already on my iPad from my backup restore and then syncing it to my Mac. When I get home I’m going to delete the whole library on my iPad and then sync to my Mac again. Hopefully that will help. Until then

[beats me]

I see Apple makes a back iPad Pro cover that fits well with the Smart Keyboard. It’s $70. WTF, it’s literally just a piece of plastic.

[H20nly]

maybe I could just buy an actual blender and stick an Apple logo decal on it. Most of my friends probably wouldn't notice it's not a computer, until they ask me for a cocktail. Or even better, maybe I could stick an Apple logo sticker on that bowling ball I have somewhere and say it's the upcoming Mac Pro XL.

this


and...

They can't update it too soon is my guess, it's still not widely accepted and the initial ones were stupid.

fixed

[beats me]

I played with an Apple Watch for the first time at Target during an early AM shopping visit. Very few people in the store. It was kind of cool.

I like the way the Apple Store app on the iPhone has an actual size graphic with the 2 options so you can hold it on your risk and kind of eyeball it.

[beats me]

When I get home I’m going to delete the whole library on my iPad and then sync to my Mac again. Hopefully that will help.

This seems to have worked for the most part. I’m coming across some tracks that weren’t installed but I can do it manually and at least entire playlists aren’t empty. Oddly it also doubled all my playlists with a “1” added to the original playlist name but all the “1” playlists are empty. I deleted all those duplicate playlists.

Support responded to my problem 3 days later basically saying to chat with them online or call. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to go to a genius. I don’t need them discussing or judging my taste in music and they get overly excited when they find out you produce music. But it’s been a few years so maybe their attitude is now “Yeah, who doesn’t.” Maybe it depends on how many soccer moms and elderly they dealt with before my appointment.

[mrdelurk]

They can't update it too soon is my guess, it's still not widely accepted and the initial ones were stupid.

fixed

A totally cool and unstupid Apple thing would be an OS that runs on any bit-depth processors because at boot it determines what bit depth and GHz the processor, the peripherals, apps etc. run at, and just work based on that. So a 48-bit A/D could feed a 128-bit program that uses a 32-bit plugin under a 256-bit CPU. Learn the OS once, use it even 40 years later on 1 million times faster hardware, even if Apple changed the CPU manufacturer 4 times since. Now this would be truly elegant, on par with the Apple I used to know.

[H20nly]

They can't update it too soon is my guess, it's still not widely accepted and the initial ones were stupid.

fixed

A totally cool and unstupid Apple thing would be an OS that runs on any bit-depth processors because at boot it determines what bit depth and GHz the processor, the peripherals, apps etc. run at, and just work based on that. So a 48-bit A/D could feed a 128-bit program that uses a 32-bit plugin under a 256-bit CPU. Learn the OS once, use it even 40 years later on 1 million times faster hardware, even if Apple changed the CPU manufacturer 4 times since. Now this would be truly elegant, on par with the Apple I used to know.

cool idea but it undermines the very core of phase 3.

[beats me]

I set my mom up with the new Apple TV and quilting-centric youtube subscriptions she can now watch on the TV while she quilts.

Was going to add my parents to my Apple Music subscription but I see Apple still hasn’t untethered it from everybody also sharing purchased apps and content and more upsetting a single credit card for everybody on the plan. But I doubt Apple is ever going to change that because you know people are going to share it with people other than their family and that means Apple will only get 1.5 subscriptions revenue for 6 people. Also they killed the formerly free streaming Apple Radio stations if you aren’t an Apple Music subscriber.

At the very least they should untether it from other Apple ID activity and allow you to add individuals for $5 each. I think that is a reasonable compromise.

[mrdelurk]

cool idea but it undermines the very core of phase 3. (Profit)

I'd venture a guess that not having to relearn the OS would create super-high levels of user retention (=profit). Maybe it's just my anti-cynicism medication wearing off.

[H20nly]

cool idea but it undermines the very core of phase 3. (Profit)

I'd venture a guess that not having to relearn the OS would create super-high levels of user retention (=profit). Maybe it's just my anti-cynicism medication wearing off.

that's what keeps people confused and docile. we can't have a society of people that actually know what they're doing. it would be pure anarchy!