This is nice. As someone who lives mostly inside Remote Desktop regardless of what actual physical machine I’m using, I’d be OK with getting one of these for work.

The price point feels a little high (especially since it appears to have no built-in biometrics or anything that really sets it apart from the slew of mini-PCs currently flooding the market), but I guess that for a first-party dual 4K thin terminal that’s… kind of OK?

Nope. I still own the original OP-1 and quite enjoy it, but this is quite a few Euro notches above the Field version and I think I’d rather build my music gadgets from here on out.

Still, it’s one heck of a fashion statement. Can’t wait to see it on Bad Gear.

I had a lot on my mind today (my recent change is taking a much bigger toll than anticipated), but this was, of course, inescapable, even for someone like me who abhors politics and never mentions it.

To my US readership: I didn’t get a vote. And I understand that the US is a deeply divided country, and that at least half of you actually thought using yours to bring this about was a good idea, somehow–in a way that I just can’t fathom.

The only thing I can say is that, from the outside, it was agony to witness his first presidency and how it impacted the world, and that it is fundamentally incomprehensible that you’ve allowed this to happen. Again.

I now fear the worst where it regards Ukraine, Taiwan, and the bubbling pot of madness that is North Korea, and see us all sliding towards a dystopian future where the US is no longer neither a beacon of democracy and freedom nor a reliable economic partner–and that will hurt everyone.

All the small town jobs, all the tech startups, all the farmers, all the people who just want to live their lives in peace, are now at the mercy of someone who has shown time and time again that he is not fit to lead a country, let alone the world, and who has in place a cadre of sycophants and enablers that actually have a plan to undermine the government apparatus from within.

And I am also very sad to read through the news and see that leaders in the technology industry are actually celebrating this.

But hey, stocks are up, right?

Too bad that will never help most of the people who voted for this.

I think this both vindicates my year-long interest in running LLMs on industrial “edge” hardware and signals that it’s time to step back and re-assess how to address that space.

3.2 TOPS isn’t exactly stellar performance when compared to what you can (nominally) get out of a RK35xx’s built-in NPU and way below the target for things like Copilot PCs, but the fact that we’re starting to get what is effectively commodity hardware at very low wattages changes the game a bit–AI is going to get cheaper and cheaper to deploy at the edge, and I don’t expect that trend to be limited to low-end hardware.

The stated compatibility with various small LLMs and the promise of future updates is commendable, but the real test (and hints at solution TCO) will be in short-term execution and software support, as always.

Well, this came completely out of left field.

As someone who relies on Pixelmator daily since they shipped 1.0, I am happy for them, but sincerely quite afraid Apple will botch this–their track record with acquisitions is dismal (just look at how they gimped Shortcuts even as they folded it into the OS, how Dark Sky essentially vanished, and what happened to the AI startups they acquired).

To be honest I would be surprised if it still exists a year from now, and even more if it keeps shipping new features.

What little I can use of Apple’s “Intelligence” in the EU right now (mostly on my Mac) is barely useful (especially when compared to the ones I built myself), but iA Writer has an interesting take on how to keep tabs on it (pun intended) and is going a little further.

I’ve always liked using it for my drafts (including this one), but I wasn’t really aware of some of its niceties since I don’t typically use LLMs for writing–word or sentence completion is just about where I draw the line.

But this does make me think about Apple Intelligence and how it’s being rolled out (and advertised): The promise of a “Friendly, Professional, or Concise” tone is nice, but if the AI can’t accurately capture your intent, you might end up with something that sounds good but means something entirely different, and I’m not looking forward to the notion of turning human communication into a sea of AI-generated fluff.

I get enough of that at work already.

I wasn’t terribly excited about Apple’s announcements yesterday, but the fact that the Magic Mouse’s charging port was only “fixed” by making it USB-C was definitely a low point until I read this, which I rate as either a perfect piece of satire or a self-infliced massacre on the one hill you wouldn’t want to die on defending Apple’s design choices.

I’m just not sure which yet.

Apple seems to think that forcing users to go wireless is a feature, not a bug (which is a bit rich, if you ask me), and I would have stuck to my old AA battery model if it wasn’t based on an old Bluetooth version that now throws up a warning on modern Macs. So I switched to a Logitech M720 and never looked back.

And yeah, it’s kind of funny to read John’s defense and realize he’s been using a Lenovo mouse all along.

The reviews for the 2024 iPad mini with A17 Pro are coming out, and Federico’s is, as usual, very positive and optimistic, but IMHO both him and Jason Snell stray a bit too far into the realm of fantasy and try to draw a dotted line to a future foldable iPhone, which I think is a bit of a stretch.

A foldable (any foldable) would not replace the iPad mini neither functionally neither price-wise (when it comes, it’s going to be the most expensive iPhone ever sold), and would be in stark contrast to Apple’s current approach at building the iPad mini out of binned parts–the current iPad mini is, as someone else put it (besides David Pierce, who also generally agrees with this sentiment), “a product that only a supply chain would love”, and very much a staple of the Tim Cook era.

And that is just not the Apple I grew up with.

I do agree with Federico that the iPad mini has always been my “third place” away from the phone and laptop–but for me, it’s actually the first thing I pick up every day and a device I always travel with instead of my iPad Pro, and as such I think this upgrade does it a major disservice by having a gimped, binned surplus CPU and lacking a few key Pro-like features (like Stage Manager on an external display).

I would even go so far as to claim that the iPad Pro (not the mini) is the true outlier in Apple’s product range–Apple has crippled iPads so much that having Pro features on the mini and using a laptop instead of the Pro actually makes much more sense–I could do without my Pro, but I can’t do without my mini, and that is exactly why this particular upgrade cycle sucks so much.

Dario Amodei’s essay is a fascinating dive into the potential upsides of powerful AI, but it feels a bit like a tech utopia wrapped in a cautionary tale. While he rightly emphasizes the need to address risks, the optimism about AI’s ability to solve complex global issues—like health and governance—might be a touch overzealous. Sure, AI could revolutionize biology and mental health, but let’s not forget the human element (or lack thereof) in these grand plans.

The idea that we could compress a century of progress into a mere decade is enticing, but it raises eyebrows. After all, history has shown us that technological advancements often come with their own set of challenges—think of the unintended consequences of social media. So, while the vision of a “compressed 21st century” is compelling, it’s essential to remain grounded in the reality that technology alone won’t save us; it’s how we choose to wield it that will truly matter.

And we just don’t have a good enough track record of that, honestly. Furthermore, LLMs still feel like a party trick gone viral–as token shuffling and prediction machinery, they lack true understanding, the ability to truly learn in real-time (associative memory, for starters), and, more importantly, any kind of agency. Which is why I am convinced that a second AI Winter is increasingly likely as we continue throwing money (and brute force compute) at these problems without understanding them.

I added the quotes because no matter how they sugarcoat the A17 Pro, it’s not the upgrade I wanted for my mini 5 in either CPU, display, camera or anything else short of the USB-C port and TouchID (yes, I prefer TouchID).

Given the PR-only prerelease and outrageously spaced out refreshes it’s obvious the mini isn’t a priority for Apple, so I have to figure out if I want to address the fact that the 256GB cellular model is closer to €1000 than I would like or wait another two years to upgrade.

Update: Also, there is no SIM slot–the cellular model is eSIM only. That’s a dealbreaker for me right now.

I’m definitely going to wait for the reviews on this one.

My initial thought when reading this was “this is just stupid”. Then I thought about the added complexity involved over just mirroring the display, and I thought it was probably a great idea UX-wise (on the lines of Continuity), but, in the end, I still think it’s a profoundly stupid implementation, for the following reasons:

1. Screen mirroring shouldn’t require creating local application stubs at all.
2. Even if it does for ease of use, there’s no reason to manage them like this. This is just lazy engineering, they should be in a database (where encrypting the contents and metadata with the user’s keychain would be entirely doable).
3. I shudder to think what will happen if this isn’t on-demand and if you try to sync hundreds of app stubs.

The amazing thing for me is that only last week I heard Nilay Patel say on the VergeCast that virtual nametags would be the killer app for smart glasses.

Well, two Harvard students took that notion and ran away with it, using Ray-Ban Meta glasses to dox people in real-time using AI and public databases. And, get this–most of the tech and databases already exist. They’re just paired with consumer gadgets that make them easier to abuse.

Even as an exercise in raising awareness, it’s plain that the horse is already out of the barn, so… Welcome to the panopticon, I guess?