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The More-Responsive Edition Friday, February 21, 2025

Apple Reveals First Custom Modem Chip, Shifting Away From Qualcomm, by Stephen Nellis, Reuters

The C1 subsystem is the most complex technology Apple has ever built, with a baseband modem manufactured with advanced 4-nanometer chipmaking technology and a transceiver made with 7-nanometer technology, Johny Srouji, Apple's senior vice president of hardware technologies, said in an interview at one of Apple's silicon labs in Sunnyvale, California.

[...]

One of the ways Apple hopes the C1 will set its iPhones apart is by tightly integrating it with its processor chips.

For example, if an iPhone encounters congested data networks, the phone's processor can signal to the modem which traffic is the most time sensitive and put it ahead of other data transfers, making the phone feel more responsive to the user's needs, said Arun Mathias, vice president for wireless software at Apple.

Going Home

The iPhone Is Done With Home Buttons — Here’s Why I’ll Miss It, by Jay Peters, The Verge

Apple probably should have fully dropped the home button a long time ago. (The company has now mostly moved on from Lightning, too.) And even if I haven’t wanted to push a home button for a while, I’ll remember it fondly now that it’s gone.

An Ode To The Home Button, by Jake Peterson, Lifehacker

More simply, the Home button was a button, and buttons are great! Devices in general seem to be moving away from buttons in favor of touch or voice controls, and while those can certainly be effective, physical buttons are kind of the best. There's a satisfaction in clicking something and seeing an action as a result.

Stuff

Lost Bags Cost U.S. Airlines $150 Million—American Airlines Joins 18 Carriers Using Apple AirTags To Find Them Faster, by Gary Leff, View From The Wing

Apple said that more airlines would be coming online with this. American Airlines has just done so, but hasn’t yet announced it publicly.

Notes

Apple TV+ Announces Release Date For Murderbot, Its Next Big Sci-fi Show, by Ryan Christoffel, 9to5Mac

Murderbot is a new Apple TV+ sci-fi comedic thriller based on the hit book series The Murderbot Diaries. It stars Alexander Skarsgård.

Apple TV+ just announced that Murderbot’s 10-episode season will premiere on Friday, May 16.

Bottom of the Page

Yes, I can remember my first iPhone, the iPhone 3G, with its wonderful Home button that broke, and I had to press very very hard just to go home.

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I strongly recommend The Murderbot Diaries, a series of novels and short stories written by Martha Wells.

Unless you want to watch the television show before reading the books?

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Thanks for reading.