If they binge on solar, so much the better. It may not generate as much energy as other items per area of land covered, but upkeep on solar generation is very low, and the ecological impact is relatively minor compared to burning fossil fuels. Their use of the technology will get them to make it better, which benefits everyone.
I would be happy if they would return to their pre-Retina MBP engineering, allowing RAM to be upgraded, and a generic M.2 slot instead of Apple's locked down connector. A replaceable battery would be useful as well.
Same with their desktops. Having the ability to replace the HDD or SSD without having to deal with spudgers and hair dryers would be quite useful, especially in environments with a number of Macs.
1TB max internal storage is inexcusable for that machine. Yes, in theory, people are supposed to have FC HBAs and such, but the Mac Pro was designed to be a workstation, to handle high end tasks, so desktop RAID would be useful.
The current cylinder Mac Pro needs to be moved to a place as a midrange workstation, and the full tower brought back as the flagship Mac workhorse. I'd pay $4000 for a full tower with upgradable components. I'd pay $2000-$3000 for a non-upgradable canister Mac that has decent video (2016-era GPUs, not 2012/2013 era), a decent Xeon or i7, 32 GB of RAM, and at least one standard M.2 slot, preferably two, so I can have RAID 1.
I won't pay that much for 3+ year tech that cannot be upgraded in any meaningful manner.
You hit the nail on the head. "Good enough" has knocked Moore's Law off the rails. Since there isn't that much demand, other than adding cores for virtualization [1], it isn't surprising that Intel is backing off the gas pedal with CPU development.
There are other things as well to add to a CPU. Disk I/O hasn't kept up with capacity gains, and there is always working on better power management which is something I'm sure Intel's enterprise customers are heavily damanding for PR reasons.
[1]: The ideal would be faster cores, since Microsoft has hopped on the Oracle and Sybase bandwagon and started licensing by core, and not CPU socket, but more cores is better than nothing.
I know I am a late to this... but Windows Server 2012 and W2012R2 install Server Core by default. W2016 doesn't even give you the option for a GUI until you have the machine installed and are at a PowerShell prompt. Exchange has been using PowerShell for a lot of its configuration for almost a decade now.
Symantec Encryption Desktop is pretty close. You can hit a key, type your key's passphrase, have the mail decrypted in the window. Kpgp is similar on Linux, although you do have to cut and paste with it. I can't see how it can get easier than that.
If it does this, this is useful. I know with Exchange, I ended up setting up TLS connectors manually between sites that were in constant communication with each other. This way, anything going from foo.com to bar.com and back would be encrypted. Having this new standard will make life easier, because making connectors between sites would not be as important.
I just wish someone can address endpoint encryption. TLS has been constantly updated, while S/MIME and OpenPGP are pretty much untouched since their millennial introductions, and endpoint encryption is something that should be considered as a core security tool. Even having S/MIME sign all documents seems like something only I seem to do, but it has saved me in the past come audit time.
Sometimes having the books on Kindle (or in storage) is good. For example, when I was fixing a generator, and the starter decides to just stop working. Pull out smartphone, pull up manual, find a fuse that popped, replace it, good to go. I wouldn't be carrying a physical generator service manual everywhere I go, so being able to tap on a phone, find the part and pull it, was quite nice.
Regular books have their place as well. Best thing is to buy both.
Same thing happened to me. I have a Kindle Keyboard that sits plugged in, and apparently, it just autoupdated. No postcard for me.
What does this give over the existing protocols, other than using TLS? It looks like once the E-mail is received by the client side, it is stored decrypted, so it only solved a part of the problem.
What is so wrong with getting people to use a standard like S/MIME or OpenPGP, which truly secure messages, regardless if it is in-flight, sitting on a hard disk, or sitting on a spool file on a relay? The advantage of OpenPGP is that it functions independently of the messaging protocol, so security is assured, even if there is no other encryption in any part of the chain, other than the endpoints.
You would be surprised at how inexpensive 3G cards and antennas are. I wouldn't be surprised to find more devices just using that for a constant, unstoppable Internet connection if they can't find a link out.
Or, they can do what modern consoles do. No Internet connection, no worky. You agreed to this, and that all info the device finds, can be given or sold freely by the device maker, in the EULA, when you opened the box.
You can make IoT secure. Devices can be put on separate network segments that can't see each other, are firewalled, with an IDS/IPS in place to minimize damage if compromised. Logs can be exported one way via syslog to a secure server, which can be searched by Splunk or an elk stack machine. Warnings can be handled by an application running locally that can do email or SMS. Hub/spoke architectures can be used with low bandwidth devices using Bluetooth. Heck, most IoT devices could be hardwired. The deadbolt? Many, many buildings have used electric strikes and locks, and that technology is reliable enough for home use. Alarm systems are better hard wired anyway.
However, there is no money to be made by making IoT secure. As mentioned in other
I'm in the same boat. Due to numerous other Wi-Fi links around where I live, at best, I get reliable signal in one room, but that pretty much it. Because there are just so many devices yakking on Wi-Fi, even the 5Ghz band, where devices are supposedly to find the channel that is used the least, are saturated.
As for IoT devices, I do watch occasionally the Fiver channel on YT, which always has some new IoT item. Some are cool, others... why bother? If I were to spend the price premium for a "smart" fridge, I'd buy a refrigerator which runs on CNG or LP gas, as well as electric. Smart deadbolt? I'd like one that can tell me the status, and lock the deadbolt... but mechanically cannot unlock it from remote.
I've never understood why IoT devices don't move to a hub/spoke model. A hardened, central hub that does the Internet communicating, and the devices use Bluetooth and are paired with the hub (or hubs). This way, physical proximity is needed to the devices to had endpoints, and the hub can have IDS/IPS rules to handle compromised endpoint devices. This would go a long ways in solving the IoT security disaster.
I would say that HTC deserves props because they allow one to unlock the bootloader, and even though HTC may not do OS updates, there is always CM, which decently supports devices, and is kept up to date reasonably well. Add GApps and NovaLauncher, and the UI is decent.
I do agree that Nexus is top dog, but at least one can keep HTC devices current with a custom OS without much effort.
Similar with my MBP at home... it has a Thunderbolt to DVI adapter, Thunderbolt to GigE adapter, and the USB ports wind up going to decent powered hubs so I can plug in a keyboard, mouse, external HDD stuff, etc.
How hard would it be for Apple to redesign the MagSafe connector to handle DVI, USB-c, and FireWire? That way, all that is connected is one cord, no formal docking station needed.
Of course, there is the good ol' Dell docking station. Plop the laptop onto that... and it just works without issue. As an added bonus, I can slide a lever, add a Kensington lock, and both the docking station and the laptop are somewhat resistant to walking off. With my MBP, I'd have to have a metal shop fab me a cage for the device, since Apple in their infinite wisdom has decreed Macs immune to theft, so no Kensington lock slot is present on any of their offerings anymore.
Biology grows on you.
