MyAppleMenu

The Spending-Big Edition Monday, July 3, 2017

Why I'm Not Buying The Most Powerful MacBook Pro Anymore, by Antonio Villas, Business Insider

By spending big in the past to extend the life of my old MacBook Pro, I've essentially locked myself in to its old technology until I upgrade. Since it still does everything I need it to do so well, it's tough to justify buying a new laptop.

Still, I'm weighing whether to buy a new model in order to gain the benefits of a beautiful screen, the updated USB standard, the lighter weight, slimmer design, extended battery life, and bigger trackpad.

iPad As My Main Computer, by Cam Pedersen

I’ve been wanting to use an iPad as my main computer for a few years but it’s never been quite right. When the new 10.5” iPad Pro was announced at the last WWDC, I decided to pull the trigger and see if I could make it work. I figured if I needed to burn an SD card, I could find someone with a laptop and ask for their help. It turned out I didn’t need to do anything the iPad couldn’t handle.

Understanding The Real Innovation Behind The iPhone, by Kalle Lyytinen, Scientific American

The prospect of making a fully functional hand-held computer changed how users and manufacturers alike thought about mobile phones. For Apple and every other phone company, software became much more important than hardware. What apps a phone could run, and how quickly, mattered much more than whether it had a slightly better camera or could hold a few more photos; whether it flipped open, slid open or was a bar-style; or whether it had a large keyboard or a small one. The iPhone’s keyboard was on-screen and software-generated, making a function that had required dedicated hardware into one running on generic hardware and dedicated software.

At the time of the iPhone launch, Nokia offered about 200 different phone styles to meet all the different needs of its hundreds of millions of customers. There was just one iPhone model at the start, and in the ensuing decade there have been only 14 major styles – though today they come in different colors, not just white and black as the original did. This is the power of software functionality and related simplicity.

Stuff

Review: Apple’s 21.5-inch, 3.4GHz ‘Kaby Lake’ 2017 iMac, by Jonny Evans, Computerworld

The display is quite lovely while processor and graphics performance improvements and speedier storage means this model provides a compelling combination of the things you need. Just max out the RAM when you make the purchase as Apple insists on making post-purchase memory upgrades unreasonably hard to do, given these are desktop machines.

'Brain Training' App Found To Improve Memory In People With Mild Cognitive Impairment, by Eureka Alert

A 'brain training' game developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge could help improve the memory of patients in the very earliest stages of dementia, suggests a study published today in The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.

[...]

Cognitive training has shown some benefits, such as speed of attentional processing, for patients with aMCI, but training packages are typically repetitive and boring, affecting patients' motivation. To overcome this problem, researchers from the Departments of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences and the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cambridge developed 'Game Show', a memory game app, in collaboration with patients with aMCI, and tested its effects on cognition and motivation.

Develop

Five Reasons Why You Should Hire An Old Programmer, by Josh Marinacci

You should hire an old programmer. It’s true! Sure.. older programmers are not going to work as many hours as someone fresh out of college. They have kids and spouses and mortgages and softball games to attend. They won't hang out at the office playing Xbox and ping-pong all night. They will not work 80 hour weeks and they will actually use their vacation time. And of course they cost more than young programmers. Despite all of those reasons not to hire an older programmer, you still should. For one simple reason: they are worth it. I know this, because I am one.

Notes

ACCC Chief To Question Apple On Westpac Chat App Payments Ban, by Paul Smith, AFR

Technology giant Apple's controversial decision to order Westpac Banking Corporation to disable a mobile banking feature that let customers make payments in chat apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger has caught the attention of Australia's competition watchdog, amid concerns it could be attempting to remove rivals to its own upcoming service.

Bottom of the Page

Is it just Monday Blues, or is it a Mid-Life Crisis? I may never know for sure.

~

Thanks for reading.