AI, Mobile, and Eveything Around the Cloud

 Source:   Appleinsider , Macworld . Do you compare yourself to others or just your previous self?  I'm not a fan of the former but I am fine with comparing myself harshly but fairly against myself a week ago, a month, ago, a year, ago, and even five years ago.  And sure, once in a while, I'll question what I am doing and how I am doing compared to others in similar positions.  I still favor self comparisons and evaluations. So, when Apple's latest M1 chip currently powering its lower end MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and 2021 iPad Pro was released late 2020, there were benchmarks after benchmarks that compared Intel-based MacBooks and Windows laptops against the M1 Macs.  And Apple was the clear winner in many if not most of the tests. However, time for those comparisons are over and we should be focusing on the next chip from Apple and how they match up to the M1.  It'll be faster, running cooler, and maybe even smaller but how will it compare to the M1?...

 As someone who can easily fall asleep, I do not have an understanding of people who have difficulty falling asleep are unable to get a good night’s sleep.  I was not always like this.  When I was young, falling asleep did not come easy for me.  Now that Apple Watch has had sleep tracking since WatchOS 7, it is perhaps one of the most undervalued features that I think most users ignore.  On weekends, I do like to nap and maybe it is a feature Apple should add in future OS upgrades. As I said above, sleeping comes easy for me.  I keep pretty much alert as anyone else during the day.  I prep for bed around 10 and hit the pillow by 11.  I set my watch to wake up around 6 AM but I tend to get up around 4:30.  It’s not a full 7-8 hours of sleep.  During COVID, I did not sleep longer because I do not save time commuting since my work is within a 10 minute walk. As you can see here, my sleep is quite consistent.  Oh yeah, the Apple Watch m...

A MacBook is be nice to have since it has a much longer battery life than anything that anyone can buy on the Apple side of the street including the iPhone Pro Max.  Still, lugging around a laptop is so 2010 and before that.  Now, there are tablets.  Okay, iPads, to be more specific, that can do the job of laptops and MacBooks and are better at specific tasks than regular computers.  And Apple suggests that users consider  During the last 14 months of lockdown due to Covid, I've relied on my 2016 MacBook for work I do for my regular job.  I have my trusty iPad mini around when I need to use it as another screen or a distraction while I am working.  I came back to the office about a month ago and for the first week, I was bring my MacBook to and back from work.  Starting with the second week, I've been leaving it at work.  Now that I have a regular schedule, I only do what's necessarily for my job and I don't want to take my work home if I don...

 I've been an Apple Watch user stating with the 2nd generation.  It is Apple's first mobile device that I did not jump on right away - I was an enthusiastic user of the original iPhone and iPad.  For some reason, it just was not for me.  And the second generation was not for me but I got it as a gift.  Before that, I was a Fitbit user if not a happy Fitbit user.  But I decided to give Apple Watch 3 a go and I'm now a believer.  It is largely due to the more mature apps, especially the fitness app and features.  It has been a while since Apple has made changes to the rings of goals and I'm hoping Apple will do that soon. I look at the Fitness app on the Watch every day that I have the watch on my wrist.  And probably a few dozen times a day to see where I am.  It's great.  I am comfortable setting my goals at 700 calories, 30 minutes of workout, and getting up 12 times a day.  It took a while for me to decide this is what works ...

 When we think of health these days, we have plenty of options and tools available to us to stay health, lose or maintain weight, or other health related goals we have.  In the Apple world, the most obvious one is the Apple Watch.  Before that, we have the iPhone with its ability to count steps and GPS to let us know how far we have walked, ran, or rode.  Today, with the different sizes of iPhones available to us, only the iPhone mini is the perfect choice for  There are plenty of apps with the sole goal of achieving better health.  How much water to consume, what to eat, and much more.  Some apps even duplicate what the Apple Watch does very well - measure your heart rate.  The iPhone 12 mini, the regular iPhone 12, and the two iPhone Pro models all do that very well because they can run all these same apps.   However, only the mini does all of these and is easier to carry around on the go.   This is obvious - the mini is smaller than a...

 At the latest Apple event on April 20th, this past Tuesday, I was looking forward to a new iPad mini but Apple totally went in another direction. I was expecting an iPad mini. Instead, Apple went for power and updated the iPad Pro with its most power chip, the M1 that currently powers the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.. Now, I fully expect Apple to upgrade the iPad mini later this year also with the M1 while it migrates everything else to the M2. However, I have picked up learning to code again and I am doing it part time on my MacBook and iPad mini 5. And I’m having a blast. Now, I’m not sure I’ll be upgrading later this year when Apple does release an M1 powered iPad mini.  Working on Python, I realized for my current level of the language and what I plan on doing with it, I can do what I need with just what’s available to iPad OS.  And at the same time, I discovered that I could do Swift exercises using the playground module on Apple’s Playgrounds app that Apple develop...

 Do you remember what the UMPC is?  It's the ultra-mobile PC from 2000s before the iPad was released by Apple.  The UMPC was a light weight PC that ran mostly Windows and had a battery life of 5 hours.  Real world use was obvious very disappointing as the class of PC did not live up to its aspirations.   When it was first introduced, along with a few upbeat commercials that claim we have finally be delivered to the mobile promise land, I was very skeptical.  I owned both Windows laptops and Powerbooks from Apple through college and I know what power and battery life was like in real life.  Luckily at the time, the time I needed to tax my computers was when I was playing games.  Excel work and plotting graphs were easy enough for the computers to handle with data from lab work.   When I did have to do photo editing, I did it on the Powerbook if I had to but I had access to the PowerMacs of the time in the late 90s. Through the 2000s, processin...