Tag: MacBook

Apple’s Color Wheelies

Color me a gadget utilitarian

I’ve never been one to be that obsessed with the color of tech gadgets or any of the other tools I use. Sure, colors attract, and I’m all in for more color rather than less in many things, but I’ve never been one who has made a gadget purchase based on color.

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In fact, I usually shy away from bolder color choices. I’ve typically chosen whatever version Apple is marketing as black when it comes to iPhones and whatever case I bury them in. I do the same for laptops, not straying too far from silver or occasionally the variant of Space Black that seems to change more frequently than I imagine happens in the dark depths of space. I do own a Blue iMac 24, but the last time I really saw the “blue” on the rear of the enclosure was when I set up the device.

I feel the much the same when it comes to other non-computing tools. Walking through a hardware store I always view the bright green, bright orange, red, aqua, and other multi-color designs of drills, other hand held tools, lawn care equipment, etc… as somehow cheaper than those with a more muted approach. They look more utilitarian, and frankly, suggest longer lifespans. As my grandkids age and I shop for their gifts, the more brightly colored tools look like toys to me.

I know I’m probably the oddball when it comes to color coveting. There certainly seems to be a lot of excitement about Apple presumably releasing new products with a slew of new color options soon. But I think of my computing devices the same way I do other tools. I acquire and use them to complete a task. Many others see them as personal statements and that’s cool. More power to those who need that or appreciate that sort of whimsy.

Another way I think of this is that if a tool maker needs to market new colors to keep customers excited about their products, it means the product has probably reached maturity enough to more than prove its value. But that doesn’t always keep the marketers employed.

(Images from 9to5Mac and MacRumors)

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

 

Am I Blue?

Blue is in the eye of the beholder. Or maybe in the lens of the camera.

I took a trip to the Apple Store today to pick up a new iPad for my mother-in-law. Her older iPad 8 had run out of storage space and would no longer update. Picked it up. Set it up. No hassle. She’s off and running. 

While there I thought I’d take a look at the new M4 MacBook Air and other new hardware that might be on display. In looking at the MacBook Air I thought for sure I was looking at the silver colored version for a while. (Pictured below next to the Starlight version.)

When a rep popped by I asked him if they had any of the SkyBlue models on display, he said the one I was looking at was the Sky Blue version. 

Surprised, I asked if he had a silver version on display and he pointed me to the other end of the table. Walking back and forth, my eyes could not distinguish any real difference between the two colors. But as the photos below show, the camera picked up the slight difference better than my naked eyes could. (Sky Blue is on the right.)

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I asked the rep if other folks who may have better eyesight than I were equally confused  and his reply was, “Apple doesn’t know what blue is, so why should we expect customers to figure it out.” I asked him further why they were positioned so far apart on the table and he said they were given specific orders to put as much distance between the Sky Blue and Silver variants as possible. 

Well, ok then. 

By the way, my mother-in-law’s iPad is closer to what I’d call Sky Blue, and yet the cameras tend to make it appear less saturated than it is in person.

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Colors can be weird.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. 

Apple Taking Heat for 8GB Base Configs on New M3 Hardware

If you have to a discussion about whether 8GB of memory is enough in Apple’s latest M3 Mac hardware, then 8GB is not enough. And there’s a discussion going on. Apple’s latest Mac hardware comes with 8GB of memory in the starting configurations of the various machines. Quite a few folks think that’s not enough. Especially at the price Apple charges for larger memory capacities. And also in regards to our seemingly unstoppable AI future. I’m in that camp.

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Apple is touting its new GPU Dynamic Caching on the M3 machines as industry leading and why 8GB is enough. But as Jacob Roach says nobody knows exactly how it works. He’s got a pretty plausible theory that’s worth a read.

Jason Cross takes Apple to task in this MacWorld article in a piece that focuses on the marketing and the pricing and less on the tech.

But Apple is defending its choices with an interesting statement sure to keep the discussion fires burning. MacRumors quotes a recent interview with Chinese ML enginner and content creator Lin YilYi in which Apple’s VP of worldwide product marketing Bob Borchers says this:

Comparing our memory to other system’s memory actually isn’t equivalent, because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory, and we use memory compression, and we have a unified memory architecture.

Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems. We just happen to be able to use it much more efficiently. And so what I would say is I would have people come in and try what they want to do on their systems, and they will I think see incredible performance. If you look at the raw data and capabilities of these systems, it really is phenomenal. And this is the place where I think people need to see beyond the specs, and actually go and look beyond the capabilities, and listen to trusted people like you who have actually used the systems.

People need to look beyond the specifications and actually go and understand how that technology is being used. That’s the true test.

That may well be true on some levels and for some users. I’m not buying it big picture though. We can talk about smaller memory allocations clogging up with browser tabs and heavy duty, poorly coded applications all we want today. That’s still real. Tomorrow’s memory migraines are all about AI as its going to be the culprit gobbling up GPU cycles going forward.

From a PR perspective it’s a dropped ball by Apple. It’s like that old saying in politics, if you’re defending you’re not winning.