Since I haven't logged in here for a while, I figured it's time to launch a new thread on a classic topic.

Google just pre-announced the Pixel 6. The top-line news is that it's going to be a "premium" phone with a high refresh rate, as well as three cameras on the backside (very wide, normal wide, and "4x telephoto"), plus a new in-house CPU that has some sort of AI/ML acceleration hardware and extra security goodness. I kinda only care about the improved camera, and a good telephoto (presumably with AI cleverness to deal with camera shake) would be a welcome feature.

Meanwhile, my kid who has been mostly kinda okay-ish with Pixel phones (I'm currently using a Pixel 3a XL, and she's got a Pixel 3a), was grumbling about SMS, and ultimately it came out that she's feeling the pain from "all her friends" having iOS devices; her inability to do iMessage is a serious problem. The available workarounds tend to involve things like keeping a Mac running to proxy messages to your phone. I'm probably going to have to give in and get her some flavor of iPhone. Currently waiting for whatever Apple's going to announce soon.

Also meanwhile, I hand-me-downed my 2018 MacBook Pro to my kid, for her from-home Internet school experience during COVID, and then I needed something new for myself, so I got one of the new M1 MacBook Air laptops. This thing is amazing. I threw a bunch of benchmarks at it, scalar or parallel, and it consistently runs twice as fast as my older MacPro 6-core desktop (3.5GHz Xeon). And it does it on a 30W power supply, with no internal fan.

The only downside is that various dev tools don't quite work right. Like, in my case, I couldn't get some Python code using numpy to run, because numpy has a bunch of native C code that comes along with it to make it go fast. (Yes, I know there are workarounds available, but it's not a pressing issue for me. Yet.)

What *has* worked great is Java. You just download an OpenJDK that's compiled native for the M1, from Azul, and everything else just works.

My plan, then, is once there's an M1-variant with at least 32GB of RAM, I'll retire my circa-2013 MacPro desktop and move along with the new M1 Mac universe.

P.S. During the COVID lockdown, my LaCie 5-big JBOD cage decided to die. Turned out that the JBOD cage was fine, but the power supply died. To my astonishment, Amazon sells a no-name replacement power supply that worked perfectly. Deciding not to push my luck, I decided it was time to update to newer disks and ultimately went with the OWC Thunderbay 4 Mini, which I loaded with 2x 4TB SSDs (for my bulk storage) and 2x 4TB spinning disks (lower cost, for backups). Smaller, quieter, and requiring me to buy a Thunderbolt 2 -> 3 adapter to talk to my MacPro. Eventually, it will just be Thunderbolt 3 straight through to the replacement M1 Mac to come.