Technology Ramblings

When it comes to automating your home there are a lot of choices out there.  From the early days of things like X10 and Powerline (PCS) to today's mix of Zigbee, Z-Wave, Insteon and WiFi. So how do you make the right choice ?   Over the years I've purchased and installed dozens of different home automation devices from lighting to thermostats to cameras, doorbells & locks, irrigation, fireplaces, etc.  You name it I've probably installed it. So here's my take on the current state and how I'm making my purchasing decisions. First - you need to make some decisions on what you really want to automate.  Is it lighting, security, HVAC, Water mgmt, whatever.  The good news is there is a broad choice.  The bad news is there is a lot of crap out there. The one common ground you'll find is that for the non-WiFi systems to work you either need a "gateway" or "bridge" device that then connects to your home network - sometimes wired - somet...

Whole Home Audio systems are just a cool thing.  The ability to fill a home with music whether from a single source or playing different content in different areas of the home is just a nice thing to be able to do. And while these systems have been around for a while, new technologies in terms of the content choices, control of the systems and how you distribute around you home can raise questions on the best approach for your budget. The following is a discussion on key use cases and design criteria that will help you make a decision.  I have designed and built several systems over the years and am preparing to do a new one - so I'm going through the very process I am going to describe. To me there are three key design criteria that you have to have a clear decision on in order to build the system that best meets your needs. The first criteria is content - basically what do you listen to.  Is is over the air (OTA) content like AM/FM or Satellite Radio ?  Is ...

IDC released it's 2018 Q2 Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker report yesterday and there is one interesting change to note. First WW sales in Q2 of 2018 were down 1.8% to 342M units in Q2 with the biggest drop being outside the top 5 in the "others" category where sales fell 18.5%. Samsung is still #1 WW but saw year over year unit sales fall 10.4% to 71.5M units and a 20.9% market share.  Sales of the new Galaxy 9/9+ are not as brisk as expected.  But the big news is that Huawei surpassed Apple as the #2 WW OEM with a whopping 40.9% year over year sales increase to 54.2M units and a 15.8% market share.   Even with the rejection by US Telco's - that's a remarkable feat and shows that the growth potential outside the US is still huge. Apple sales were nearly flat @ 41.3M units a 0.7% increase over 2017 and carry a 12.1% share.    The other Chinese OEMs did well also - #4 Xiaomi saw a 48.8% sales volume increase to 31.9M units and at that pace ...

So here we are a little past Mid year in 2018 - so here's a quick check in on the PC Market. According to IDC - the industry saw the first sales increase in over 6 years of 2.7% to 62.2M units sold worldwide vs 60.6M in 2017. The top five OEMs (HP, Lenovo, Dell, Apple and Asus) control over 77% of that market as the "Others" category continues to consolidate - showing an 11.4% drop in sales.    MS does not report Surface sale unit numbers - but based on their $1.094B revenue number and an estimated average selling price of $1000 - you can guestimate unit sales around 1.1M or around 1.7% market share.  Surface is weird as well since depending on the model may be considered a tablet or a PC and therefore counted differently. Total PC sales for H1 of 2018 are around 122- 123M units - so really about the same as last year.   So unless there are some earth shattering new releases that drive significant demand or some major upgrade cycles - 2018 should come in...

On July 25th - MS released two Windows 10 builds - build 17723 (RS5_Release) to Fast Ring Insiders and 18204 (RS_PreRelease) to Skip Ahead Insiders. While both builds were identical in terms of their contents - the 18204 build indicates the beginning of the 19H1 or Redstone 6 branch as far as Insiders are concerned. So in effect the development "window" for 19H1 is going to be effectively 9 months if MS sticks to current release rhythm.  So not sure if this means we will get a much larger feature set in 19H1 or if MS is just hedging to insure a clean release which has been a bit of an issue (re: 1803). As mentioned both builds were identical and contained nearly 40 fixes, plus some unique feature adds like the "mixed reality flashlight", the Emoji 11 collection, some time accuracy updates and kiosk mode updates.  So many features that the vast majority of folks will never use. I configured all 3 of my test machines for Skip Ahead - so all upgraded to 18204. ...

During this weeks MS Inspire Conference (i.e. World Wide Partner Conference) - Satya Nadella performed a "demo" of both an Android and Apple devices he referred to as MS 365 endpoints.  In Satya's mind - the phone itself is not as important as the MS apps running on it. Basically these were devices that primarily utilized MS apps - so from Outlook, Office & Cortana to Bing and Edge.   The concept did peak my interest a little and I figured I'd give it a whirl and see how much of a MS 365 endpoint I could make out of an Android device. So I started with a 2 year old Moto G4.  This is an entry level device that costs around $200 and runs Android 7.0.   After a complete reset of the device and initial login using my Google account - I started the transformation. So I started with the MS Launcher - followed by the usual suspects of Outlook, Office Apps & OneDrive.    The next tier of apps include Office Lens, Translator, Skype, Corta...

On July 6, then July 9 MS released Windows 10 builds 17711 and 17713.   Build 17711 was primarily a bug fix build (nearly 30) with some updates to Edge,  some Fluent design updates and an update to the Registry Editor.  17711 was also the official end to the Windows Sets feature - which was dropped for the RS5 branch. Build 17713 again added some Edge, Inking and Windows Defender Updates as well as some updates to old favorites like NotePad.  The nice new inclusion was improved login and support for Azure Active Directory (AAD) and the ability to register your machine with the AAD.   With Sets now gone - 17713 also did a reset on the Skip Ahead Ring.  All Insiders were returned to the Fast Ring and Skip Ahead registration will be opened up soon.   Similarly - RS5 builds will now be marked as RS5_Release and we soon see a new fork for RS6 or whatever the next branch of Windows is probably sometime in August.   As with re...