Headworx

The super accelerating world of technology today means some high end upgrades are available to everyone.  Take HiFi music before CDs - the super expensive Dolby tape decks. Now way exceeded by the cheapest MP3 players. One such upgrade for me were the original Bose noise canceling headphones. Wearing them in an airplane was more than being upgraded from economy to business or first. Flying in silent environment and being able to listen to high fidelity music was the unforgettable experience back in 2000. I was using the original (wired, 1st gen) Bose headset for many years before upgrading to the wireless variant (around 2012 I think, so already over 10 years ago). This product has been flawless for me. Almost infinite battery life, perfect audio performance (including noise canceling of course) and seamless Bluetooth connectivity to any device. The only sign of ageing has been the micro-USB charging port. But not a big deal, as they easily lasted a return transcontinental trip on ...

It seems Apple has plateaued. iPhone 15 is identical to iPhone 14. Just has a different (mandated by the EU) charging connector. Everything else is the same. I mean of course there are changes / improvements, but probably none of them are noticeable for the users. Not to discredit Apple's work: the insane price aside, this is probably the finest phone ever made. Thanks to the USB-C connector, after 15 years it will likely be my first iPhone. And maybe the last one? I am replacing the 6-years old Blackberry , which has aged beyond hope. Still works, but is slow by today's standards and - my biggest complaint now - is not waterproof. But it seems all that could have been invented in a phone, has been invented. Of course you can start adding foldable screens and other fancy concepts, but it is disputable they make the device better (which is very subjective). The #1 feature i want from a phone is that it is robust, always working. Foldables are not as robust as simple one-piece-br...

GoPro has just released the 12 version of their flagship Herp Black camera. It brings many improvements despite being based on (almost) the same hardware as the predecessor - the GoPro 11. And it marks the trend by being the first camera capable of connecting to a Bluetooth audio device. For playback but most importantly - for recording. Almost everyone today uses wireless Bluetooth audio for calls, teleconferencing, music, audiobooks. Action cameras (and just about any cameras) suffer from poor microphones. There is the whole crazy market of wireless microphones dedicated to work with video cameras.  While the obvious would be to just use Bluetooth to record audio. But the digital camera industry had failed to see the obvious . So hopefully, as the GoPro 12 fills this gap, the other manufacturers will follow. See the review by William Brawley , in particular the demo video of using Apple AirPods as the Bluetooth audio source . Obvious, isn't it?

In 1970s, when Poland was ruled by the communist's party, there was a popular saying: Everyone lies but it doesn't matter because no one believes anyone Fast forward 50 years and the situation has not materially changed. It is not even related to communists. Everybody lies. But we need to believe some people some time. Although it is hard in all the communication noise surrounding us. I pointed to this problem in relation to Artificial Intelligence back in January 2023 . I think at that time I had access to GPT-3. Now it is the all-heralded GPT-4 and still the amount of false information it spits out worries me. I wonder though, what is the level of trust people have in what the LLMs are spitting out. As everything they produce is super eloquent and even makes sense at a glance. The example illustrated here is the question about the Channel Sounding feature of the upcoming Bluetooth Core specification. In short - what the GPT says - is all wrong. But it is wrapped in such a fl...

I mentioned briefly the issues fir Western Digital / SanDisk portable SSD drives losing all recorded data briefly in the July 2023 post . Fast forward a month now and we have lawsuits against the company saying Western Digital "engaged in a scheme to mislead consumers". It is impossible for consumers (or even professionals) to test / fully evaluate products for their true capability of delivering on the claims. But drives are meant to store data. This is fundamental. Of course they have their MTBF ratings and ultimately will fail over time due to mechanical or electronic wear, but this is not the case here. The SanDisk drives can lose all data at once even if carefully treated and rarely used. Typically most of us expect the companies value their brands the most, as a brand value is most tedious to build and may take a brief moment to collapse. Western Digital somehow does not understand that. Or they don't care, which is also a plausible theory, as they have already bee...

One big gap which exists in one of the most popular consumer device categories is the missing link between standalone cameras and smartphones. I wrote on this a number of times before . Of course the fundamental gap is the lack of a full-stack communications standard. One that would allow any phone to connect to any camera without a special dedicated app for that particular camera. It sounds super obvious and in the past there even was a digital camera working group at Bluetooth SIG. But that group never produced anything (any specification) reaching the adoption phase. Clearly members of that group did not have enough motivation to create the standard They clearly thought they would achieve better results doing it in a proprietary way. But even in a proprietary way - they failed. The cameras' smartphone apps are infuriating - writes Richard Butler at DPReview. Yes they are. This statement probably does not apply to the latest - meant by design to be connected - photo and video ca...

Software has been eating the world. On one end this is really powerful. The dream of a hardware product being continuously improved with "just" software updates. This has clearly worked for computers and smartphones. Of course to some extent, as there always comes a point when a new update is not enabled on "old" hardware. But generally everyone expects whatever they buy today will be a better prodict tomorrow. And in a year or two. The other side of the coin are products which simply should work as-is, and nobody is expecting any updates to come. Yet these products are very often too software-driven. And when this embedded software has bugs, the products may suddenly fail. There are many stories like that. Some examples: SanDisk Extreme SSDs abruptly failing (and the follow-up story ) Sonos Arc soundbar " pop of death " Mazda FM radio bricked Of course they are just examples what can happen (and does happen). The SanDisk issue is particularly nasty, as i...