In the previous post I was thinking about keeping my Mac mini booted to Windows 10 while waiting for El Capitan to be released. Well, that experiment lasted for two days. While Windows 10 was quick and snappy, something was bothering me and at least one thing was appearance and typography. I ran into font issues on some websites and maybe it's just me, but I simply prefer the aesthetics of Mac OS X to that of Windows. In addition, I have quite many OS X apps I've grown to depend on and wouldn't like to shell out money for Windows equivalents (if those exist) right now.
But the main topic I wanted to cover in this post is the forthcoming new Apple TV. A newly surfaced 9to5Mac rumor indicates that the device would cost $149 or $199. If those prices (for different storage options maybe?) are valid, then I guess the European equivalents will be around 199€ and 249€. Those would be quite expensive when a rather competent Nexus Player can be bought for just 99€. It would be relatively expensive even if there's a straight Dollar to Euro conversion (which there won't be with the current exchange rates), so the device itself will have to be rather amazing to justify the extra cost when considering that all my current needs are pretty well served with the Nexus Player as it handles YouTube, Plex, Netflix, and even AirPlay (with AirTight) just fine. I don't bother discussing the rumored $40 channel package subscription Apple's allegedly going to offer for the Apple TV as I don't think the service will be coming to Europe – let alone Finland – anytime soon, if ever.
sunnuntai 30. elokuuta 2015
tiistai 18. elokuuta 2015
Carrying just one phone, security, Windows 10, and stuff
Whoa, it's been quite a while since the last update and quite a lot has happened since that. My phone/watch dilemma has indeed been solved at least temporarily now as I've been carrying mostly my iPhone 6 around while the Nexus 5 has been relaying calls and text messages. However, at home I've used the Nexus 5 quite a lot as it has a remote app for the Nexus Player that's our current go-to media player with a native Plex and a working YouTube (unlike the Apple TV 2, which never got an update for the new YouTube API).
Even though I've used also Android devices while primarily using my iPhone, I had to give a serious thought to removing the Android devices from active use thanks to multiple security issues piling up around the Black Hat conference. However, now my Nexus 5 has received the initial Stagefright patch and was never vulnerable e.g. to Certifi-Gate (oh how I hate that name), so at least I'm good to go for a while even though the vulnerabilities made the platform's difficulties with updating devices rather evident. Let's just hope that the manufacturers keep their promises about starting to deliver more frequent security updates. In addition, Google could also step up its game. With a massive hole like Stagefright it was rather uncool of them to leave the 2012 Nexus 7 devices unpatched by referring to reaching their 3-year update limit. They could've ended the device's updates on a high note by supplying that all-important fix, but now they chose to stick to an arbitrary cut-off date instead. That cut-off date was also based on the original US release, so no one living in Europe, for example, got the updates even for that 3-year period. Now I'm also waiting for the next security update round for my Nexus 5 as the initial Stagefright patch turned out to be incomplete. With things like security updates I'm getting really fed up with the slow staggered rollout. At least with my iPhone I can get the update as soon as the server load allows it, and the delay is typically only a couple of hours at worst, unlike days or weeks with the Android update rollout schedule.
Windows 10 also came out recently. I had been using the preview versions on a couple of laptops (a Dell Latitude D620 and an ASUS T-100 hybrid) earlier on, but after the actual release I updated also the Boot Camp installation on my Mac mini as well as Windows 7 on the Dell Precision T1500 tower I bought from the office when old gear was sold to employees. Now all four machines are running Windows 10 and I quite like it. Yes, I'm aware of the privacy issues that have now surfaced, but most of them were there for 8.1 already and I disabled the options already back then. Who knows, I might actually try keeping my Mac mini booted mostly to Windows 10 while waiting for the El Capitan release of Mac OS X. That way I could really see if this could be a useful OS for me, especially when I'm quite impressed about how snappy things are on my hardware compared to Yosemite. We'll see if El Capitan improves on that front.
Even though I've used also Android devices while primarily using my iPhone, I had to give a serious thought to removing the Android devices from active use thanks to multiple security issues piling up around the Black Hat conference. However, now my Nexus 5 has received the initial Stagefright patch and was never vulnerable e.g. to Certifi-Gate (oh how I hate that name), so at least I'm good to go for a while even though the vulnerabilities made the platform's difficulties with updating devices rather evident. Let's just hope that the manufacturers keep their promises about starting to deliver more frequent security updates. In addition, Google could also step up its game. With a massive hole like Stagefright it was rather uncool of them to leave the 2012 Nexus 7 devices unpatched by referring to reaching their 3-year update limit. They could've ended the device's updates on a high note by supplying that all-important fix, but now they chose to stick to an arbitrary cut-off date instead. That cut-off date was also based on the original US release, so no one living in Europe, for example, got the updates even for that 3-year period. Now I'm also waiting for the next security update round for my Nexus 5 as the initial Stagefright patch turned out to be incomplete. With things like security updates I'm getting really fed up with the slow staggered rollout. At least with my iPhone I can get the update as soon as the server load allows it, and the delay is typically only a couple of hours at worst, unlike days or weeks with the Android update rollout schedule.
Windows 10 also came out recently. I had been using the preview versions on a couple of laptops (a Dell Latitude D620 and an ASUS T-100 hybrid) earlier on, but after the actual release I updated also the Boot Camp installation on my Mac mini as well as Windows 7 on the Dell Precision T1500 tower I bought from the office when old gear was sold to employees. Now all four machines are running Windows 10 and I quite like it. Yes, I'm aware of the privacy issues that have now surfaced, but most of them were there for 8.1 already and I disabled the options already back then. Who knows, I might actually try keeping my Mac mini booted mostly to Windows 10 while waiting for the El Capitan release of Mac OS X. That way I could really see if this could be a useful OS for me, especially when I'm quite impressed about how snappy things are on my hardware compared to Yosemite. We'll see if El Capitan improves on that front.
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