First things first: I am not an audiophile.

Most of my life, I have been listening to music out of the earbuds that came with Apple products, out of Beats earbuds/headphones and AirPods Pros, or out of Bluetooth speakers. Why should you listen to me? Well, I’m just like you in that I like the way certain things sound just because I like them, not because they’re objectively better. Anyways, let’s see what I think about the AirPods Max and why.

 

Price

At $550 USD, these are on the expensive end of your average consumer’s audio listening devices. While there are many other headphones that are significantly more expensive, there are also big-name headphones that have been recognized and applauded for packing a punch at a reasonable cost. The two headphones that come to mind are the Bose 700s and the Sony WH-1000XM4s.

 

Design

Personally, I think these are gorgeous. The colorful finishes are subtle, yet bold and they will definitely turn heads. The Smart Case that comes with each pair has a strange, purse-like look, but I’m sure third-parties will take advantage and create more attractive cases.

Aside from aesthetics, the mesh-like material on the headband is meant to distribute the weight of these relatively heavy headphones comfortably onto heads while providing breathability. The magnetic ear-cups that cost $69 a pair (yes, really) have memory foam pads, and are meant to provide comfort for long listening sessions.

 

Sound

Although I will not receive my Space Gray AirPods Max until between February 15th and March 1st, I am excited to see what they sound like. With Spacial Audio and sound settings like Transparency Mode and Active Noise Cancelling, these provide an immersive listening experience.

I hope these have a similar sound to the HomePod: clear, tight bass and crisp and balanced mids and highs. Individuals that have reviewed the AirPods Max so far have described their sound to be impressive, rivaling high-end open back headphones which provide wide sound stages.

 

Strategy

With this product, Apple’s strategy remains unclear to me. These headphones are at a price that falls between the headphones the average consumer would purchase and higher-end headphones that you may see in a recording studio.

 

I am looking forward to seeing reviews in the coming days. If you are looking to pick up a pair of AirPods Max, be sure to order them now as delivery dates are slipping into March 2021.

 

November. Every tech enthusiast’s favorite time of the year is November. This year alone, there have been some especially exciting tech releases. Just to name a few:

• Apple iPhone 12 Mini
• Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max
• Apple HomePod Mini
• Apple MacBook Air (with Apple Silicon)
• Apple MacBook Pro 13″ (with Apple Silicon)
• Apple Mac Mini (with Apple Silicon)
• Microsoft Xbox Series X | S
• Sony Playstation 5

Today, we’re going to be exploring just how powerful the new gaming consoles are.

 

Measuring Computer Power

Devices that make computations are typically measured by how many computations that can complete in a second. A FLOP is a measure of how many floating point operations a computer can complete in a second and a floating point operation is a simple arithmetic operation (+, – , *, /). A teraflop (TFLOP) is a FLOP measured times 1 trillion.

If you see a number followed by “TFLOP” it can be thought of as “trillion operations per second”.

For reference:

an iPhone X is capable of 2 TFLOPs.

 

Gaming Console Performance

The Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 output 12 and 10.28 TFLOPs respectively. Compared to the iPhone X, this is a massive increase in computing power. These consoles are both capable of updating a display with 8.3 million pixels up to 120 times per second!

 

What this Means

I understand that this was a little technical, but I want you to try to understand just how much power these systems have. Let’s talk about what this means for the future.

As time goes on, we expect technologies to improve at a steady rate so we can take advantage of the fastest, strongest machines. Although these are gaming consoles, a lot of these engineering feats will be implemented into cell phones and computers, improving everyone’s experiences.

Although the numbers I just presented you with have nothing to do with network speeds, we will quickly see network speeds increase, as to not act as a bottleneck for computers.

Because there has been a rapid transition to a now standardized online workflow, this means we will have more network reliability which will not only allow us to download large files at blistering speeds, but will decrease disconnections which may interfere with important online activities.

Advancements in this technology will quickly transfer over to real-world applications and it is becoming increasingly possible that the time between an online request being made and an operation being completed will be significantly shorter, if not instant.

It is a very exciting time for everyone who has access to technology.

 

 

 

As time goes on, businesses value data more and more. Data is a term that is thrown around often when generally talking about numbers, but what really is data and why is is so important?

 

What is Data?

Data is discrete and objective numbers, symbols, text, facts, or observations which are unorganized and unprocessed. Data technically conveys no meaning until it has context and by definition, data with context is called information. Relationships between data sets are what give them value.

In order to understand data, I want to introduce you to the DIKW Hierarchy. Put simply, the DIKW Hierarchy is the map that shows us how we have to interpret data. As I explained earlier

Data is essentially observations with no meaning.

Information is data with context which answers questions like who, what, where, or when.

Knowledge is information with meaning and answers why.

Wisdom is knowledge with insight which provides understanding of a specific goal.

 

Where does Data Come From?

Now that you have an idea of what data is and how we can eventually gain wisdom from it, we have to find some data! Luckily, it is very easy to find… so easy that you are looking at text on a screen which is, at its core, data! In the last two years alone, 90% of the world’s data has been created. This is really had to comprehend, but checking this might help.

2.5 quintillion bytes of data are produced by humans every day. This is equal to about 2 billion, five-hundred million gigabytes. For reference – as of right now, the most storage you can buy an iPhone 12 Pro with is 512 gigabytes.

This means we collectively generate enough data to fill up 4,882,812.5 iPhones every single day.

This massive amount of data comes from a number of sources, but two stand out in particular: Google searches and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Google processes over 40,000 searches every second – about 3.5 billion searches a day, about 525,000,000 of which have never been searched ever before. Every single day. As for the Internet of Things devices, which are better known as “smart” devices, Security Today estimates that by the end of 2020 there will be 31 billion active IoT devices that range from refrigerators to cars. These devices have sensors which collect data from the external world and quantify it in order to perform particular actions.

 

Where the Value in Data Comes From

Businesses also collect their own data on their users and based on the data collected, they are able to create user profiles. In these user profiles, businesses use past data to guess future behavior. They have an idea of who you know and what your connection is to them, the things you like and the things you don’t like, and they may even know what you want to do before you know you want to do it.

This ability to predict future behavior incentivizes businesses to help influence your decisions and sell your data whether you realize it or not.

In order to get an idea of a user profile you may be building of yourself, take a look at your phone. Look at some of the apps you have downloaded, the pictures you have taken and where you’ve taken them, your recent searches, and your health activity.

This virtual profile you have spent years unknowingly building is called the quantified self and is the premise that you can boil your entire life down into visualizable numbers.

 

 

Apple and Google are two of the most powerful tech giants in the world. While both companies offer high-quality hardware, it is safe to say that software is their bread and butter. Although Apple offers their own suit of default applications, there is one base they don’t have covered.

Search.

Google this, Google that. The word Google has become an official verb which, according to Merriam-Webster, means to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the World Wide Web.

Google is such a dominant leader in terms of search that Apple relies on them to be the default search engine on all Apple devices. While there are other companies that focus on search capabilities, Google collects that most data and writes the strongest algorithms.

In for Google to keep their place as the default search engine on Apple devices, Google reportedly pays Apple between $8 and $12 billion a year.

Yep. Billion. A year. This accounts for approximately 20% of Apple’s worldwide net income.

 

What’s the Issue?

The problem here is that Google is such a powerful entity with so much wealth, that it is essentially impossible for any other search engine to have an opportunity like this.

The actions of Google have resulted in the media likening them to that of a monopoly. According to Oxford Languages, a monopoly is the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service and in this case, the service in question is the search engine.

Because of this, the Department of Justice has filed an Antitrust Lawsuit.

 

The Search for a Solution

Although Apple and Google both benefit from the current deal they have, it will soon come to an end. There are multiple ways Apple can continue once their deal with Google subsides but there is one thing that option that would work best.

If Google is no longer the default search engine, who would take over as being default? iPhone users have the option to change their default search engine, but it is rarely done. In order to fairly determine the search engine the users want to use, Apple could create their own engine which would become the default search engine.

This would take a lot of resources, but in the long run, Apple would benefit as they’ll be collecting so much data that their user profiles will become more and more refined over time.

Apple will have to make a decision carefully because in an article Business Insider by Kate Duffy, she says:

“The lawsuit cited a Google document that called the Apple search deal a “significant revenue channel,” and that said losing the deal would be “Code Red” scenario.”

I made a video on this topic. Check it out below.