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Showing posts from 2020

The Best Value Tablet: iPad Air 4th Generation Review (2020)

  “What’s a computer?” I’m a nerd. I collect and restore old iBooks and MacBooks for fun. I built a PC (who hasn’t in 2020?). I own a lot of computers. But there is no computer I love nearly as much as the iPad. And I have had a lot of iPads. I waited in line for the first iPad in 2010, thinking it would be an ideal MacBook replacement, and it fell noticeably short. Beyond not having a physical keyboard accessory that was easy to transport, the original iPad simply lacked the available software and processing power of the Mac and was ultimately not sufficient at the time as a full-on ‘computer.’ I didn’t give up. Becoming particularly enamored with the idea of turning an iPad into a laptop replacement, I tried again, souping up an iPad Mini 1 st generation with a keyboard case (a ClamCase—remember those?!). Again, the iPad was not enough. I tried again, this time with the iPad 5 th generation. I loved this iPad. I managed to get most of my work done during a summer internship wit

Wait For Apple Silicon—it’s worth it.

It’s time for another transition. For Apple, this is the fourth major transition in its product history, beginning with the shift from Motorola’s 68000 chipset to IBM PowerPC processors in the 90s, to the major overhaul of Mac OS X from legacy Mac OS 9, and most recently with transition from PowerPC to Intel. This isn’t Apple’s first rodeo, albeit it could get messy, especially for consumers who likely aren’t familiar with the differences between Intel, AMD, and ARM processors (although the RISC instruction set is only a small piece of the Apple SoC story). While there has been much chatter from the pundits exclaiming the glory of the Apple SoC, the rest of the world remains unfamiliar with how important this transition is not only for Apple, but for the entire industry.  It is my feeling that the benefits of using Apple’s integrated System on a Chip (SoC) far outweigh translation limitations when porting over apps from Intel, and it feels like Apple really softened the blow with mac

2016 or 2020? The Losing Strategy of Centrism

It feels like it’s 2016 all over again for the Democrats. Fighting through an overcrowded field of initially over 20 candidates, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden have emerged as the frontrunners for presidential nominee in the Democratic Party. Both candidates are wildly different from each other on nearly every issue from healthcare, to student debt, climate change, and everything in-between. Biden represents a resurgent albeit uninspiring consensus of a panicked  Democratic Establishment (comprised of the DNC and its wealthy donors, not African American voters as a confused Biden recently suggested) that has made this same bet on centrists before with Walter Mondale, Al Gore, John Kerry, and most recently, Hillary Clinton—and each time we lost big to Republicans. Conversely, Sanders represents a party running to the left, fed up with the imbalance of wealth and power in the American political system, Bernie embodies a progressive vision for an America that works for everyone, n