Excursions

It’s time for Apple product launches. And so is the time for all the talks of -gates and sheeples and reality distortion. There’s so much noise this time with iPhone XR screens. Typical comments from most folks.

• “..just 326 ppl in 2018? WTF?”
• “..not even 1080p screen? How will it play 1080p videos?”

I get it, both are facts. iPhone XR is not a full-HD screen and has a pixel density way lower than it’s better sibling XS. But does it deserve all the brickbats? Am not sure about that. This is the screen configurations of all the lowest configuration iPhones over the year (since Retina displays were introduced).

I hope one can get the trend with this. Since the time retina screens were launched, pixel density of lowest configuration iPhone has always been 326ppi. And iPhone XR is that device this year. So it gets that screen. Sure, Apple always has a Plus size device with a better resolution screens. That need is addressed by XS this year.

So am not sure why there is such a huge pushback on XR devices. If reviews are anything to go by, these screens are just as good as Apple’s LCD screens have ever been. Are there cheaper Android devices that have screens with better resolutions? Of course. There will always exists cheaper devices with better configuration on paper than iPhone. But I think one thing tech nerds should have learnt by now, Apple never plays the configuration game.

I don’t get the enmity for Bluetooth headphones. For normal usage, these are very convinient. Are they without any issues? Of course, not. But they never evolved because there wasn’t any demand. And hence no incentive. Now there is, and am already seeing these become common.

There was a time when I used to visit the Wikipedia main page as a routine, every morning. It’s one trove of fascinating information. As I grew, not sure why I decided to be less smarter and abandoned this routine. That page is still brilliant.

There are new calls for retraction of Bloomberg’s compromised spy chip story — a story that apparently a lot of background research from renowned publications too failed to corroborate. And now people with skills are getting critical of the presented claims. Not looking good.

Time for another break. Time for another chai! ☕️

Learnt that “olden” is an accepted English word. It is so obvious, but I never thought it to be a “real” word. I always believed it to be just a poetic substitute for “old”. So never used in prose. I guess I was wrong.

Micro.Threads Update: Added an option to fetch more posts in the Thread Discovery section. I’ve played with this option on my local - though not wholly solved yet, it has reduced the missing out on posts issue for me.

YouTube’s recommendation engine is one of the worst out there. It fails to understand long running interests and prefers decisions based on the immediate watch history. Makes me completely wary of clicking on a video that I do not want Google to learn from lest it gets polluted.

So OnePlus preferred to postpone their event by a day to “maximize the amount of people we could reach with our message”. Reason? Well, Apple decided to select the same date as theirs. And they will even cover any costs people’ll incur to change the plans. Apple is .. splashy.

Magic happens when you let the colours play their natural game!