Tag: Apple

Seven Head-Scratching Features from WWDC 2022 – TidBITS

On By Paul HubbardIn Computer science, RandomLeave a comment

Customize Spatial Audio with TrueDepth Camera

This announcement came and went fairly quickly, but it had us scratching our heads immediately. The idea, it seems, is that spatial audio sounds more realistic if it can take into account aspects of the physicality of the listener that affect their perception of space. Apparently, this is a thing—called Head-Related Transfer Functions—and by capturing data using the iPhone’s TrueDepth camera, Apple could personalize the otherwise average HRTF that combines data from thousands of people.
— Read on tidbits.com/2022/06/13/seven-head-scratching-features-from-wwdc-2022/

I worked with HRTFs in grad school, trying to implement the filters in the wavelet domain (More here) so this is interesting to me. Looks like we’ll be able to use some combination of camera + lidar to capture the pinnae and derive personal HRTFs from that.

I cannot wait. Guess I’ll need to explore the spatial music and maybe movies now.

Damn it Apple

On By Paul HubbardIn recommendationsLeave a comment

Apple Music on iOS has turned into a ad-infested shitshow of dodgy UX patterns that verge on deceptive; where the big obvious click signs you up to become a positive number on some Apple ARPU dashboard.

This sucks. Quite a lot. You literally cannot be rid of this incessant upsell bullshit. Fucking Apple, I pay a premium to avoid this shit.

My current solution is OK but has limitations – the paid iOS app ‘Cesium’. Two bucks on the App Store. Reliable, no ads, none of the upsells and I’m a happy customer. It can’t download music, bummer, and I’ve not tried the playlist editing but overall at least it works and doesn’t try to scam me out of more money.

It’s 2018 and I still need fsck

On By Paul HubbardIn RandomLeave a comment

File this under “Really?”

That’s my wife’s laptop, spending an hour rebuilding the file system after it got corrupted. I had to know the command-v boot trick and video record it booting (!) to see the error fly by before it auto rebooted, then boot recovery, open a terminal and run fsck with a -r.

Ain’t no way a random user could manage it. Apple! Bash some bugs would ya?