Month: September 2015

Introducing ExFAT, my first ever podcast

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Subscribe to ExFAT in iTunes

Subscribe to ExFAT manually via RSS

I have been preparing for this over the last decade. It might sound exaggerating, but it is really not a simple task to find someone who is willing to throw in money, and to spend his or her free time, to record something as trivial as a podcast.

Which is why I am truly glad that Daniel, one of my techie friends, is totally on board. After at least 10 people who promised me that they are interested and then disappear even before we recorded a single episode, it is telling that Daniel has already recorded more than 3 sessions with me, with each one spanning 2 hours or more, excluding the preparations.

It might be insignificant, there might be no listeners, we will almost definitely lose a lot of money doing this – but I am totally glad that I have done it, and will continue doing it for the foreseeable future.

Why a podcast?

Podcasts are my main source of audio entertainment on the go (other than music of course), and listening to them week in week out have just made my desire to produce a podcast myself stronger and stronger as the years go by. Besides, for a very short while some years back, I was invited to be part of another local tech podcast, one that I did not really enjoy due to the over-produced format of the show.

ExFAT is why I really want to do – just talking crap into a microphone without any kind of preparations whatsoever.

Why ExFAT?

There has been a trend in recent years for tech podcasts to have one-word names, and ExFAT has to be a name that techies have heard before – ExFAT is both Windows and Mac (even though it is a Microsoft file system, but that is exFAT, not ExFAT), and we are not only Apple – but usually Apple.

Both Daniel and myself are people well-versed in both the Windows, Apple, and Android worlds, and while we personally love Apple more than anything else (for good reason), we will like to talk about non-Apple stuff as well, be it Android phones or Windows updates, or even random stuff such as politics in Singapore.

How often?

The intro states that we will be producing once a month, but most likely it will be quite infrequent, with more shows when I have more free time, and lesser shows when I am busy with work. Daniel is still a student, so I believe we will not have shows when he is having his exams too.

Lastly

When you subscribe, there will be three episodes in the feed, with one “Special” episode, one “Prelude” episode, and our episode 1 which we are releasing today.

Please do not listen to the special and prelude episodes. The prelude episode was recorded after our first failed recording, and it was so bad that the only reason why it is in the feed is to create the iTunes feed in the first place. And the special episode is one where we talked out of our arses about the GE which I hope no one listens to in case we get sued. So just please listen to episode 1 – Where is my Pink iPhone 6s?

You can subscribe to ExFAT in iTunes or manually in podcatchers using the RSS and iTunes links below, or you can just search for ExFAT in the most popular podcatchers such as Overcast and Pocket Casts and it will be there already.

Thanks all. Please do give feedback here or in the various episode posts in MacRyu.com.

Subscribe to ExFAT in iTunes

Subscribe to ExFAT manually via RSS

MacRyu.com is Content Blocker Friendly!

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Web ads have never made me a single cent, and I doubt they ever will. And I don’t care.

MacRyu.com has always been made to look and work the exact way I want it to be, and I will never litter it with fugly banner ads.

Please feel free to run your content blockers, Peace, Crystal, Purity, all of them.

Or even better, just read via RSS.

The silly people making a big big fuss recently don’t get it – we never read their stuff with ads on in the first place thanks to RSS.

And I can’t help but think Marco Arment is making a big mistake taking Peace off the App Store.

In fact, if anything, high profile Marco just further increased the demand/appetite for ad blockers by iOS users fearing Crystal or Purity doing another “Marco”.

Registration of Interest for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus for all telcos

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If you have missed Apple’s preorders for the new iPhones last Saturday, or if you buy your annual iPhones from the local telcos like most of us, here are the various links for registering your interest to purchase this year’s iPhones.

Singtel

Starhub – Preorder closes 16th Sep, 12pm.

M1 – Registration now closed.

Unlike previous years, it seems like this year, at least for Starhub and M1, the telcos will be doing a staggered registration process where groups of customers will be invited to pre-purchase the iPhone online at differing time and dates, probably to prevent the annual server-crashing preorder load.

*fake* iPhone 6s resolution to be 2K, iPhone 6s Plus to be 2208×1242

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Proven fake

So a Chinese source claims the iPhone 6s will now sport an increased resolution of 2000×1125 while the iPhone 6s Plus will now sport a increased resolution of 2208×1242.

While Cult of Mac might be sceptical, the listed resolutions are highly possible.

When the iPhone 6 Plus was first announced, it was the first iOS device to use Retina 3X elements, meaning, in actual fact, the iPhone 6 Plus hardware is effectively outputting a effective resolution of 2208×1242, and then applies a software scaler to downscale the resolution to 1920×1080, effectively both lowering actual resolution while letting the performance of the iPhone 6 Plus take a hit.

Theories such as the need to save battery life with higher resolution screens being more power hungry were put up as reasons for the downscaled resolution of the iPhone 6 Plus.

What if, the reason for the downscaled resolution is simply that Apple could not get enough low-energy high resolution screens for the kind of scale the iPhones require during the last generation? If so, it makes perfect sense to remove the downscaling this time round now that they have secured enough low-energy (probably IGZO) high resolution screens for the next generation of iPhones.

Thus, the native 2208×1242 resolution for the iPhone 6s Plus.

For the iPhone 6s, it is simply a matter of changing the Retina 2X elements used in the iPhone 6 to using the Retina 3X elements this time round, making both iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus use Retina 3X elements.

This also effectively increased the ppi of the iPhone 6s to 488ppi, which is higher than the iPhone 6s Plus’ 460ppi if the 2208×1242 resolution is real.

Seriously speaking, high-end Android phones long have such high density screens, and it makes zero sense for Apple to stay away from them especially if the battery life will no longer take a hit from using these screens.

I for one will like a 488ppi iPhone 6s in Rose Gold.