Disqus - Latest Comments for cjlacz

Re: The Best 4K Monitors

Charles — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 19:57:51 -0000

4k at 60hz on my Dell just fine. Do you have something against Dell? Sounds like a bit of troll.

Re: The Best Monitor Arms

Charles — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 01:34:46 -0000

I have the Ergotron LX Tall Pole with three monitor arms. You can buy additional arms separately. I have two 27" monitors and one 30" wide screen monitor attached to it. It's solid, and all the monitors move smoothly. I'm very pleased with it. I'm not sure the side by side is necessary or works any better, and this gives a little more flexibility if i want a monitors arranged vertically instead of horizontally, but the top of the pole can be visible above the bottom monitors if I have them set low. It doesn't bother me, but if you don't plan on using the pole height you might consider a different setup. Overall, they are excellent though and I'm definitely happy with them. I don't mind that I paid a bit more, as they are rock solid.

Re: The Best Noise-Cancelling Headphones

Charles — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 02:01:47 -0000

It sounds good in theory, but there is no good way to place these evenly on a charger. No charger is large enough to lay them on, and they need to be flat to charge well. Making a custom charger to hold them just to charge wirelessly is also a little silly.

Re: Concept: Apple Kitchen would be a natural extension of the company’s health initiatives

Charles — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 01:52:20 -0000

I don't know quite what to think. I cook a lot so this is appealing. I even pay for a couple recipe sites, but even with paying the number of ads is annoying. Merging it with sites to order ingredients would be great, but probably wouldn't happen quickly where I live, Japan.

I see some problems with it though. Cooking is very regional. Not just what people like to cook, but the ingredients, their availability and cost. Things like pans, oven sizes also tend to vary a lot, and specific types of cooking often use specialized equipment in certain countries. I think Apple would prefer a service that would be more universally available.

If they do create something like this, I'd love to see scaling for the recipes. Being single many are often too big and I'm eating the same thing for a week and using trial and error to scale it down. Cups vs grams. US in particular uses volume measurements for a lot of things where a lot of other countries use weight. Especially for baking. I've come around to the weight side and often search specifically for, or buy foreign editions of cookbooks that use weight vs volume for measurements where appropriate. I'd prefer that a cooking app allows someone to use either one.

It's just seems so country specific I really can't see Apple doing all the content themselves.

Re: AirPods Max Unboxing & Review: The pinnacle of preposterous pricing

Charles — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 00:50:44 -0000

Isn't picking one based on his needs exactly what he's doing? If I'm making an Apple pie I need apples not pears. Portability is of huge importance to him, so of course he'd pick the ones that's more portable. Just because the size is different doesn't make them incomparable.

Re: AirPods Max Unboxing & Review: The pinnacle of preposterous pricing

Charles — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 00:48:40 -0000

I really don't think they are unjustifiably overpriced. If you don't care about the features they offer over the headphones sure. But their ability to switch between apple devices, transparency mode, spatial audio are fantastic and I use all three a lot. They are made to a very high quality which I enjoy. Their sound is an improvement over most existing models in this range, although I'd prefer a bit more controlled bass on them. They are still setup a bit more for your standard consumer.

Re: AirPods Max Unboxing & Review: The pinnacle of preposterous pricing

Charles — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 00:46:12 -0000

Not really. Headphones don't age like cell phones. The noise reduction has most likely gotten better. Maybe the DSPs or whatever is in those headphones. There is plenty of old audio equipment out there that sounds as good or better than a lot of the new items. I just pulled out my 15 year Beyerdynamic 250s several days ago and they sound SOO good. Blow away anything I've owned since I bought these. They were purchased for deskwork though, and after I changed a job, then headphone ports were removed I stopped listening to them. God, I don't know why. Music sounds so good on these things. They don't even have any of the fancy electronics that are supposed to make these new headphones sound better.

Re: Accidentally Paying for Stadia – The TouchArcade Show #458

Charles — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 07:16:33 -0000

Ignoring for a moment if 30% is too much, what does Apple do?

They pay 1000s of developers to develop the APIs that are used to create iOS and iPad Apps. Also MacOS.
They develop and push out updates to their operating system yearly for free and the salaries, office space, tools for those employees do not come for free
They developer and distribute Xcode for free. Look how much some professional development tools cost.
They pay to develop their own language and optimize it for their platform.

By releasing their operating system for free, a majority of their users are on the most recent or very reason version making it easier for developers to support.

But offering their tools for free it opens to store to a lot of people who either wouldn't have had the means or interest to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for development tools like in the past. How many of those apps you use daily on your phone wouldn't have been developed if the cost of entry for the tools and entrance to the store was hundreds of dollars or more. This makes their ecosystem valuable and it's why Epic wants to be on the App Store and blackberry world.

I know their is their notification service they provide. Not sure what else, but there is more than just space for apps and credit payments.

---

Lets say Epic wins and now applications can use their own payment processors. What happens when an app that has a subscription stops working? How do you cancel your subscription? Apple can't do it, third party processor. A lot of apps only exist on your phone now, there isn't a web site to manage it. What if your phone dies a horrible death involving a lake and you get an android phone. How do you manage your payments on all these third party payment processors in your apps? How do you cancel?

I'm not here to argue that 30% is right amount, but I feel Apple provides a pile of stuff without extra charges that make their App Store appealing. Allows it to have apps we wouldn't see otherwise. Epic is claiming their entire Unreal engine will be decimated if they can't be on iOS, but at the same time they are claiming they shouldn't have to pay Apple anything. Clearly Apple's share of the market means a lot to Epic, doesn't that give it value?

----

As part of the legal documents that were released I believe it said that 12% of Fortnite's sales were through iOS. So if it was 5 billion, that's 600 million (12% of sales on iOS) and Apple taking 180 million of that.

Re: The Best USB-C MacBook and Laptop Chargers

Charles — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 12:11:33 -0000

I'll just say, I really like the Anker PowerPort Atom PD 2. It works fine for charging my MacBook Pro 13" when I'm in the cafe, but that second port really does come in useful. When I do use it, the notebook charges slowly, or runs even, but I'm still getting use out of it. The 30 watts on the other port is great for charging my 26000mAh battery (especially if I had to use it earlier because I didn't have a plug available) or my iPad. If I really need the notebook to have full power, I can just charge through the notebook ports. Sure, it could be a bit better, but for me the 60 watt total limit is probably a bit bigger issue than the fact it splits evenly. I like the fact it charges the other port pretty quickly too. If you only need the single port, the other options are probably small, lighter and cheaper.

Now I just need a good desktop charger. When will we get 3 USB-C ports at decent power?

Re: Olympus OM-D E-M1X Unveiled: A Micro Four Thirds Camera for Pro Sports Shooters

Charles — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 20:30:59 -0000

CDAF is really only an issue of sensor readout speeds and processing power. The machine learning driven AF probably would have an advantage as far as tracking in the long term. I don't know if Oly has matched Nikon's or Canon's high end AF in this camera, but I'd gamble in the long term it will be the winning solution.

Re: The Best True Wireless Headphones So Far

Charles — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 21:57:23 -0000

This seems to be a common complaint from people who haven't actually used them. I actually bought a second pair because I misplaced my first for a month and figured I'd finally lost them. Been loaning them out to friends to try, mostly those who had discounted them because of the wired Apple headphones. Everyone I've loaned them too has loved them, in particular a comment I've heard more than once is that you forget you are wearing them after a few minutes. Part of the reason is they just sit in your ear, rather than entering it.

I won't argue there are probably a few people where they just don't fit well, or fall out, but I have to think it's a small number. All the complainers I've seen have never used them for a few days.

Re: The Best Wireless Earbuds

Charles — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 21:48:54 -0000

My friend just got the Air Pods and love them, but he didn't buy them for a long time because he didn't like the normal apple headphones. I've heard it from other people too. The wired headphones look the same, but they don't seem to be a good guide as on if you'll like the airpods or not.

Re: Analyst: Apple Watch Series 3 could be a ‘game changer’ for Apple’s wearable

Charles — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 19:37:32 -0000

The series 3 with LTE is my first Apple Watch. In Japan with SoftBank adding LTE to my plan is only 350 yen a month. Battery power is about 2 days which impressed me.

Re: Opinion: Are subscription-based apps the future, or will they implode?

Charles — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 01:20:48 -0000

I guess I have quite a few subscriptions and I don't mind so much. I kind of like them, especially in the Apple store as I can just cancel them when I want, and resubscribe later. Some I only subscribe to for certain times of the year. Currently it looks like I have 11 subscriptions in iTunes. Navitime (best transit app for Japan), Wave information for surfing, Netflix, Yurekuru (earthquake info and alerts), Baseball at bat, Tabelog (restaurant search), Washington Post, Apple Music and MyfitnessPal plus another. Outside of that I know I have Adobe's Lightroom package. I guess I really don't mind it, even for apps that could work without a subscription. The developers needs to get paid.

Some people seem to avoid it just on principle. I just look at the monthly cost vs the value I get out of the subscription. I certainly have tried many others that didn't make the cut and have been cancelled. At least subscriptions through iTunes makes that easy.

Re: Would you rather Apple delay the iPhone 8 or launch it with select features disabled at first? [Poll]

Charles — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 21:32:14 -0000

So we have a phone that we aren't even sure it called the iPhone 8, which has no release date, so we have no idea if it's 'delayed' or not. How can it be with no release date set? Anything related to issues with the software is still speculation. It will be out when it's ready.

Re: From Medium Format Digital to Micro 4/3 (by Vytas Narusevicius)

Charles — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 02:13:05 -0000

You might be surprised. Having done some digital printing on a similar Epson printer you realize that the color range supported by printers is small. Much less then you can see on a screen which is why you have to soft proof. I'd spend time editing my photos only to have many shades of red/purple/green not be able to be printed at all. Maybe you are talking about it in some other aspect. I don't feel that capturing more colors would really help my color printing at all, at least on these types of printers.

Re: It’s official: I’m a 1Password user

Charles — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 13:39:18 -0000

1password can't create those passwords? The options are right there on the main screen that generates the password. Special characters, length, all there. You don't even have to switch to another tab or bring up options. There is no way you've been using it for years.

Re: Google Maps for iOS updated w/ more detailed location descriptions, iOS 10 support, more

Charles — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 23:55:41 -0000

it's looking better and better. There are still a lot of places missing in Apple maps and location information is still incorrect for a lot of them. Missing business hours, incorrect categories. I've been updating the places I go to. It will be usable, but it's definitely not up there with google yet. Google maps does have links to tabelog more often now, but doesn't directory show information inside the app.

Re: Top Ten Fasting Myths Debunked

Charles — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 02:41:07 -0000

In general, green teas should be brewed at 160-170F, not boiling water, or close. I made this mistake for years and they always turned out bitter, not what I was used to getting at a nice cafe in Tokyo. Try it and you may be very surprised. Steeping teas for only a minute or two is all you need.

Re: E-M5II review by Digitalrev.

Charles — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 00:25:26 -0000

I've stopped watching his reviews. They used to be a bit humorous and negative, but still informative. It's like he's gotten bored and just runs on autopilot now. Too many facts are wrong without out really talking about the actually useful improvements.

I do get a bit sick hearing complaints about the menu. Yes, it's not the most intuitive thing, but once you get the camera setup you don't have to dig into it much.

Re: UPDATED: This is how much smaller the Olympus 300mm lens is compared to the Canon/Nikon version.

Charles — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 03:03:39 -0000

The better way to put this is that the Olympus 300mm on an Olympus body has the same angle of view as a 600mm lens on a full frame camera. The depth of field is the same as a 300mm lens on a full frame camera. (angle of view is related to the size of the image capture size) Both lenses are F4 (for exposure).

Re: Gerry Conway: The ComiXology Outrage

Charles — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 22:00:19 -0000

You are so right about the impulse buys. I originally downloaded comixology because of something I heard on a podcast. I didn't even know they had a site until I had a couple hundred comics and wanted to read them on the iPhone. Now I have a few thousand comics all purchased on the iPhone. In the new app I can't even see what's on sale or the new releases for the week and I haven't been on the site to check if a new spider-man was released or not. I got into and read comics because of the ease of purchasing. If I liked that issue all I had to do was press buy and get the next volume. I'm not happy about the change, but not boycotting Amazon either. I'll check back in a couple months (if I remember), but based on my experience so far I expect I won't have bought anything.

On a side note, I live in Japan, so even if I bought it off the web site I get to deal with extra charges for exchange rates etc. Nor do I want to put my credit card info on another site.

Re: Olympus OM-D E-M10 Digital Camera Review

Charles — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 06:26:47 -0000

Olympus has said a few times that they have chosen to work on still image quality over video. The lack of features in video is by a choice. Recently they did state they plan to work on improving video in the near future, but I imagine it will take some time to actually make it into a product.

Re: Man Fed Up with Girlfriend’s Shopping Spree Jumps to His Death

Charles — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 08:45:51 -0000

He should of just stuck her with the bill. If the poster above is right and she spent 100,000 RMB or $16,500 US, I have have to say I understand a little bit.

Re: Smokehouse

Charles — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 09:12:23 -0000

There are worse places than Whitesmoke even in the BBQ land of US. I'm sure Shibuya can manage it. I'll have to give this place a try, but honestly I'm getting pretty satisfied with my home smoked ribs.