As you might expect, fans of Android and/or Samsung gear are tripping over themselves extolling the virtues of the Galaxy S8 smartphones. They are supposed to be, in most every signifiant respect, far superior to what Apple is building now and far superior to the rumored iPhone 8.

So what’s so superior?

Well, its edge-to-edge AMOLED display is nothing especially new. Don’t forget the Galaxy S7 Edge as a notable example. So if Apple is going to go that route with an iPhone 8, it may not be original, but that’s not unusual. Apple usually adds such features only when they work properly, not because they sound good. So Apple often seems to be behind the curve.

Now obviously, the next iPhones are unannounced products. Apple may have given us a vague roadmap about future Macs, but no such statements are expected from the iPhone ahead of its release. While rumors, sourced from the supply chain, will coalesce about some of the features as we get closer to the launch date, Apple is still apt to surprise us.

The new Samsung smartphones are also be touted as offering superior biometrics, the result of having not just fingerprint sensors, but facial and iris recognition. True, such features are also rumored for the mythical iPhone 8, but Samsung is here and now, and just how well is it doing?

Well, if it’s a matter of having features first, Samsung has done that before, and I can count the ways. But if it’s a matter of getting them right, it’s not too promising.

So according to a column from Alexandra Burlacu, entitled “Samsung Was Aware Of Galaxy S8 Design Flaw But Rushed It To Market Anyway,” the biometric features are seriously flawed, but the title is actually about one of them.

Now this behavior sort of reminds me of the Galaxy Note 7, the one with the flawed batteries that overheated or burst into flame. It was discontinued when Samsung couldn’t get a handle on the cause of the problem. The reason Samsung allowed the flaws to get into production was because they didn’t have time to perfect them. Is that an acceptable excuse?

It doesn’t seem to ever occur to Samsung that it is better not to have a feature than to deliver one that doesn’t works as promised.

It starts with that fingerprint center, located at the rear of the unit. It’s there allegedly because, after deciding to remove a physical Home button, Samsung didn’t have the time to create a version that worked with its virtual counterpart. The result, according to the article, is that this choice leads “to an unnatural and uncomfortable grip.”

While Apple’s Touch ID isn’t 100% perfect, it works most of the time for most people, and is easy to use. You don’t have to make an awkward reach to touch the Home button. With the Galaxy S8, you may be forced to turn it around to find the precise position of the sensor, or just allow your fingers to reach for it clumsily, perhaps touching the camera lens by error and smudging it. In fact, Samsung is reportedly putting up a warning message advising you to clean the lens regularly.

You think?

The article’s title, however, is misleading, because it’s not just a single feature that’s flawed.

Take the iris scanner, an alternate method to unlock a Galaxy S8. But it doesn’t function in dark surroundings, or if you wear glasses. In other words, you have to remove your specs to use it. It brings to mind the classic image of the rapid removal of glasses when Clark Kent is about to change into his super-powered alter ego.

At least the iris scanner can work for those of you who can easily sidestep its flaws.

The other feature that isn’t so good is facial recognition . It has already been revealed that it can be defeated with a high quality photo. So might as well disable it.

Now the article by and large apologizes for Samsung’s unfortunate design choices. So we are told that “Samsung didn’t really have any choice but to compromise in this aspect and launch the smartphone as it is, as finding a more convenient location for the fingerprint scanner would’ve delayed the Galaxy S8 release even further.”

But what about the other biometric features?

In any case, the reader is asked to believe that it’s perfectly all right for Samsung to release a highly flawed flagship smartphone, with biometrics that are hard to use, or don’t work very well, because the company was in a rush to get the product out the door. Again, this is the same flawed logic that resulted in designing defective batteries for the Galaxy Note 7. As the Galaxy S8 nears release, you know that it’s most important security features are defective. But what about other important features that are being touted for this gadget? What other flaws does it have that we won’t know about until product reviewers have their say?

And maybe not even then if they emphasize the number of features rather than how well they work.

In the meantime, I hope that Samsung has fixed the problems with water-resistance that afflicted the Galaxy S7 Active. According to Consumer Reports, that handset failed a dunk test. So if you dunk your Galaxy S8, will it also fail because Samsung didn’t have time to fix the flaws?

I’m just asking.

Oh, and the S8’s Bixby digital assistant, developed by some of the same people who created Siri, will not be available when the product goes on sale. Or ever?

As you might expect, rumors have begun to appear about the forum or substance of the next Mac Pro and the mythical iMac professional version, or iMac Pro. Now contrary to what you might assume on the basis of the previous sentence, I’ll focus on the latter first.

There’s a personal reason why.

Back in the summer of 1998, I was one of what I presume to be a few thousand outsiders beta testing Apple software and hardware via its Customer Quality Feedback (CQF) program. I received very few of the latter, but one, a Power Mac, never actually saw the light of day. For whatever reason, the plug was pulled and Apple asked me to send it back for “recycling.”

Before you accuse me of breaking Apple’s NDA, just note that it happened 19 years ago, and I actually didn’t give you much in the way of specifics. I really didn’t see anything about the design that seemed distinctively different compared to existing gear. So it probably made sense not to move it into production, although there could have been a long-range plan that, obviously, Apple wouldn’t tell us about.

There was another computer in my home office, one with an egg-shaped plastic case in a peculiar variant of a color known as Bondi blue. The iMac I had been testing was missing the optical drive’s faceplate, but was otherwise fully functional. My Apple contact said I would be able to keep it if it survived a final firmware update, but there was a cautionary note in what he said. If the update failed, the computer would be bricked, so I’d have to send it back.

I am not about to say that it was all by design, but the computer didn’t survive the flash process, so I returned it. But as things go, it wasn’t so great a loss. I had a maxed out Power Macintosh G3 as my primary work computer, and a recent PowerBook for remote work. When it was not on the road, Grayson used the PowerBook, until he got his very own iMac a year or two later when I cashed in a book royalty check.

Having been there at the start, I always felt close to the iMac; it had a personal connection even if it didn’t quite meet my needs. But Apple gradually moved it upmarket.

So the Late 2009 27-inch iMac was a magnificent piece of work, with a great standard definition display, and internal workings that were powerful enough to meet the needs of at least some of the people who might have otherwise sprung for a Mac Pro.

I wasn’t doing 3D special effects or math, so I was tempted. When someone offered me a decent figure for my Mac Pro and its 30-inch Dell display, I made my decision. I optioned an iMac with a quad-core Intel i7 processor, a better GPU and extra memory. MacMall offered a slight discount, and I ended up ordering the iMac with a backup drive. I had a few hundred dollars left to pay bills, and I bought a computer that is still compatible with the latest version of macOS. Outfitting it with a 1TB SSD a couple of years back really made a sharp performance boost, and the only downside was the lack of a Retina display.

In its roundtable with a handful of tech journalists last week, Apple executives promised an iMac refresh with pro features. Perhaps it’ll come this fall, which would be two years after the last upgrade was released. Maybe it’ll arrive earlier, perhaps to be demonstrated at the next WWDC. Regardless, it’s easy to predict simple enhancements, such as twin SSDs, more powerful graphics managing a pair of external 5K displays, and a CPU with more cores. One published report suggested a low-end Intel Xeon, but I wonder if the price increase would be worth the slight performance gain, not to mention the need for costly ECC RAM. Add that to the requisite USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports, and the needs of an additional segment of Mac Pro users would be met.

As for the rest, predictions for the next Mac Pro are vague. One report suggested what seems like a modest refresh, offering support for a powerful single GPU card. It would still provide a single CPU slot, since Intel is adding more and more cores to its Xeon lineup. The need for a second CPU is thus lessened. But if it’s going to be modular, easy to upgrade, it should support industry-standard internal connections for graphic cards and SSDs. Customers should be able to buy any compatible component and just plug it in. Obviously graphic cards would require macOS drivers, but AMD and NVIDIA have done that before. In that way, the Mac Pro would be a throwback to the previous model.

A recent suggestion that Apple will use custom connections for internal parts doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Apple would still have plenty of opportunity to create a workstation that’s relatively compact and light weight, with the thermal capacity to handle the most powerful parts available. As to what’s anticipated for the future, Apple certainly has access to Intel’s (and AMD’s) processor roadmaps, plus the GPUs in development, so it shouldn’t be difficult to engineer something that will really survive for the next 10 years.

Since Apple isn’t promising delivery of the new Mac Pro this year, it’s assumed it’ll arrive in 2018, but some suggest it may not arrive until 2019. But that doesn’t make sense. Even if they only started the development process a few weeks ago, I fail to see why it would take more than a year to get the work done. Just taking the cheese grater Mac Pro, getting rid of excess space, and making it attractive and light, should be second nature to Apple by now.

So don’t be surprised to see a work-in-progress demo at June’s WWDC, with the promise that the 2018 Mac Pro will ship early next year.

That leaves the Mac mini. Will it grow larger to accommodate more powerful parts, a la the HP Z2 Mini, or retain its existing form factor? Regardless of its shape,  the Mac mini could morph into a headless iMac. That means essentially the same componentry, with perhaps some lesser parts for the $499 entry-level model.

Of course, none of this is true. It’s just idle speculation. I don’t have any “informed sources” or “little birds” to show me the way.

Ahead of that sudden, unexpected, call to Apple headquarters this past week, in which several tech reporters engaged in chitchat about the future of the Mac, there was speculation as to what they might be up to. Certainly it seemed as if, by inattention alone, Apple had decided to allow the Mac Pro to just disappear. It would be on the price lists until it wasn’t.

Obviously, that expectation has changed, perhaps unexpectedly, with the promise that a new modular Mac Pro was under development, one that would allow for easy updates. But it won’t arrive this year. One published reported suggested it may not even arrive by 2018, but I would think Apple is quite capable of developing a full-blown desktop workstation in less than two years. One question is how long ago this project began, and that answer is lost in the haze of unfounded rumors. Did it really not get started until after Apple received sharp criticism due to its design choices for the MacBook Pro?

So I will, for the time being, assume the Mac Pro will restore some or all of the expandability of the previous model. Indeed, a souped up cheese grater Mac Pro could have been released long ago, so obviously a lot more is involved. I expect to see something far more compact, but as easy to upgrade. Or maybe easier. The people who designed a trash can Mac Pro can certainly find a middle ground between that and a traditional tower workstation.

Continue Reading…

In recent months, I’ve suggested that Apple ought to consider a professional version of the iMac, a model offering higher-end parts to better satisfy the needs of Mac creatives. At first, there wasn’t much response, until Apple called several journalists to their Cupertino, CA campus for a roundtable. During that session, they promised that an iMac with professional options would become available some time this year.

Based on previous iMac timetables, that would likely mean October.

Now there’s a published report, in Pike’s Universum, which lists the possible configurations for this souped up iMac. Now before I continue, it’s fascinating to realize that the original iMac from 1998 was a consumer computer sporting a CRT with other parts largely borrowed from PowerBooks. Over the years the iMac became a more powerful entrant in the Mac lineup, and, in 2009, it became a viable alternative to the Mac Pro.

Today’s 27-inch iMac features a 5K Retina display, something that’s a rare commodity, at a price that’s not any different from the previous models without the high-resolution monitor. In benchmarks, the top-of-the-line iMac configurations can best a Mac Pro until more than four cores are needed by an app.

Now I suppose one could design this iMac Pro without the help of a “little bird,” which is who that blog identifies as its source. But it’s mentioning an option with a quad-core Intel E3-1285 v6 processor, something that has yet to ship, support for 64GB ECC memory, speedier SSDs, AMD graphics capable of supporting VR, and the expected USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports. A “brand new keyboard” is mentioned, which is in line with my previous discussions of a potential Magic Keyboard 2 with Touch Bar. Whether the keyboard could exist as a standalone product or require support from a specific Mac isn’t known.

It’s not as if the beefed up hardware could necessarily be swapped into the existing design. It might make additional demands to the iMac’s thermal system, requiring some reworking and enhancements to its cooling capability.

Now if this comes to pass, a fully configured iMac might cost upwards of $5,000. The other question is whether  6-core, 8-core or even 12-core Xeons will be supported. Aside from the obvious lack of internal expandability, other than RAM, we’re talking about the potential for an all-in-one variant of the Mac Pro. It wouldn’t eliminate the need for the latter, which may bring back support for adding extra stuff inside, such as drives and expansion cards, but it would take the iMac up a couple of notches in terms of raw power.

There are a few more things in that article, one of which is not inconsistent with my suggestions about the next Mac mini. In yesterday’s column, I cited the HP Z2 Mini as a competitor that can be customized to serve as a compact CAD workstation. Apple made a point of saying that the Mac mini has some pro users, so I’m not surprised at the suggestion in that blog that there might be a version that’s physically larger than the current model? A Mac Pro mini?

The forthcoming display may also support 8K, which would make it suitable for high-end movie editing. Yes, 8K. The forthcoming comic book film, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” was reportedly shot with the RED WEAPON 8K digital camera. In case you’re aching for one, they start at $49,500. This would also mean that the Mac Pro would be equipped with graphic cards that can handle several 8K displays. Stands to reason.

It’s possible 8K support is what would separate an iMac, even with professional parts, from the Mac Pro. But what about an 8K iMac? Maybe next year.

The big question is when the new version of Apple’s pro workstation will arrive. When Apple executives said it wouldn’t be this year, the assumption was that it would arrive some time in 2018.

But there’s also a published report that the green light for the new Mac Pro was only given recently, and it may not arrive until 2019, though that might be a little much for Mac power users. Obviously, it’s too early to know, but I suspect Apple would want to have one to demonstrate at the 2018 WWDC, for release that fall, or maybe even right away.

Is it true that it took more than three years for Apple to realize that the trash can Mac Pro took the product in the wrong direction? That published report claims that the negative reaction, particularly by Mac pros, to the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, and the faulty launch of the LG UltraFine 5K display, served as the final wakeup call for Apple. On the other hand, the new Mac notebook is supposed to be a big success, helping to drive Mac sales to a slight increase in the December quarter.

Right now, however, it’s all about unconfirmed rumors. The actual specs for the new gear won’t be known until they’re much closer to the actual release dates. However, I find it fascinating to see how closely some of my speculation, made without the use of any outside sources, may end up to be very much in the ball park.