MBW 763: Is the Purple Faster?

Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…

What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!

Now I want to see Leo “smoking a spleef” on the next episode lol :joy:

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I think Apple won’t eliminate the ability to advertise entirely, but I think they will narrow the path of data collection to just a couple of paths that don’t allow anyone to bypass the rules put in place. Companies like Facebook and Google are facing their judges (the public) criticism and will have to find a new way of doing business or not doing business with the platform at all. Also Apple creates a nice soft fuzzy platform of trust and protection for their users and creating options for new users who are sensitive about their privacy.

Been trying to get my wife to replace her old-ish iPhone XS Max but she just said no! She saw the purple iPhone 12, it will be here Friday!!:joy::joy::joy:

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Similar reaction from my wife too :laughing:

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It’s probably similar in execution, I imagine. These are technical based corrections to the signal sent to the display to get it closer to a reference. (The Huey Pro was for Pantone references, I believe.) There is no way for software to make the same level of adjustments to the hardware that actually adjusting the hardware will achieve. (Unless you had a display that was talking to the computer about adjustments, no doubt such intelligent systems exist, at great expense.)

The optimal way to set up a display is to calibrate its physical adjustments (frequently manual button presses and knobs) while displaying a known pattern or set of patterns (colour bars even.) Professional calibrationists (which charge for the service) will do this for you. You can achieve some of the results by using a Spears & Muncil type DVD/Bluray or even the Dolby tool included on some movie disks.

After getting the physical adjustments as close to a reference as possible, the final tweaks can now be applied by the software process, aided by a colorimeter of some sort, such as the Spyder, the Huey Pro or in the case of Apple, your iPhone’s camera.

I do wonder about the changes in hardware as it ages, but more importantly the change in human eyes as we age. Do you remember the “what colour is the dress” meme? It shows that different eyes see things differently. That begs the question if there really is an ideal adjustment for any display that perfect for all viewers.

Someone said on the show about the auto calibration ‘of course the Apple TV can’t adjust brightness’ but games consoles do - you get that screen where you adjust the brightness down until you just see the logo/whatever. Or is that different?

That’s a version of what the Apple TV is doing, only automated. The net result is a change to the display data sent to the TV, but it would be better if you adjusted the TV manually. If you think about it, this is basically a mathematical transform… like a stretch or compress of the data. You are forcing your visuals into a smaller display spectrum, which means it will be losing some dynamic range as a result. A software adjustment may well be better than no adjustment, but a proper hardware adjustment would be wiser, and then the software adjustment would have less effect (and thus be less needed.)

Leo was referring to “The Matrix” in this episode. @Leo, do you know about The Wolfram Physics Project? Stephen Wolfram (and many others) are seeking a model for the universe using Wolfram Mathematica. I don’t understand the project nearly well enough to comment intelligently on it; perhaps you do. There was recently an online session describing the first year of the project:

…and a post to his blog about the anniversary. The video is probably the best resource about the project. I recommend it to fans of The Matrix – or enthusiasts of such ideas.

On a personal note, I’m saddened that Stephen Wolfram and his company have drifted away from Apple since Steve Jobs passed. SJ arranged for his Next machine to include Mathematica with every computer, and Jobs even suggested the name “Mathematica” for the project. I love this tool, its ability to create great visualizations, and the fact that Wolfram Research freely distributes Mathematica for the Raspberry Pi. That’s an extraordinary gift. We should have a freakin’ visualization revolution – but nobody seems to have gotten the memo.

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Woah. My story made macbreak weekly. This is almost as exciting and as complicated as hackneyed as that time I got the closing line changed from “another macbreak is broke” to “break time is over”.

That internet eating beaver? Was in my home town. Took out the internet. Took out cell service. And took out options tv for the five or six people who had signed up for it.

Here’s the original running narrative, if anyone cares other than me…

I wasn’t in town and was noticing The town’s Facebook groups were very silent. Finally heard from someone who said all the services save for landlines were out. So I contacted telus support to find out what was happening, and because I kept asking, the media person found our it was a beaver.

I wrote the first story, but of course, it was picked up by progressively bigger papers. But I still lay claim to the original story.

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You own MacBreak Weekly! Thanks for the laugh!

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