I love Apple’s “bento box” summaries, so here are the hardware (and software) presented a couple days ago (ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uarNiSl_uh4). The following sections have, of course, been reordered in terms of my own personal excitement level. AirPods Pro 2 as a hearing aid If this works as advertised, take my money! This is an older model at this point, but just take my money!! I am so excited by this new software feature that I snuck in a non-bento box image.

New M4 SoC 10-core CPU ({up to} 4 performance, 6 efficiency) 10-core GPU 16-core NPU (Ed: M4? M4?!?!) Performs as well as M2, using half the power. New iPad Pro 2 screen sizes (11-inch, 13-inch). “Ultra Retina XDR” displays. Thickness: 5.3 (and 5.1) mm. (Ed: How come the larger device is thinner?) Weight: .98 (and 1.28) lb. 2 colors (silver, space black). OLED tech for colour and luminance; 2 OLED panels, and so “Tandem OLED”.

Tim Cook’s tweet has made it pretty clear that there might be at least a new Apple Pencil announced in a couple hours: Pencil us in for May 7! ✏️ #AppleEvent Ref: https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/1782785458881302714 At home, we share a 2nd-generation 10.5-inch iPad Pro that I purchased as a refurbished unit in 2018; i.e., a 2017 iDevice that still works well to this day. It’s been awhile since 2018, preceding the time I started keeping a record of expenses; I believe it alone cost about 550 USD at the time, and so excellent, excellent value given its longevity.

A couple days ago, I saw an ad for Assassin’s Creed Mirage; e.g., This one’s been out in the wild more than 6 months now, but I’m glad that the iOS (and iPadOS) port will soon reach a far broader swarth of mobile-first (or mobile-only?) gamers. At launch, I really enjoyed navigating the streets of Baghdad and more on PS5; I’ll probably at least give it a quick spin come June.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I somehow managed to build a PC, followed by a minor refresh in 2021. Along the way, my GPU and motherboard died and had to be replaced at some point, hence the listing of 2 GPUs and motherboards below. Recently, I couldn’t turn it on anymore, and it wasn’t the power supply, so it might have been the motherboard again. I got fed up, sold most of my parts.

Xiaomi Miio is an integration for Home Assistant, an open-source home automation software. It is the link between Home Assistant itself, and your Xiaomi smart devices. Except I don’t want my network traffic routed to some server up in China or wherever when I’m at home, and the device itself is at home, as it makes for a meaningfully longer turnaround time, and is probably a privacy hole too. (The next step is cutting off “phone home” traffic from these devices, but story for another day.