Ethan Zuo

Samsung making less repairable earbuds: “It’s evolving, just backwards.”

Adhesive pull tabs are wonderful. I wonder why Apple won’t use them on their Macbooks (and why more electronics designers aren’t using them as well). They’re low-cost, very convenient, take up very little space, and are satisfying to pull.

I wonder how Apple manages to keep thermals under control. Usually, the top of the SoC is cooled in most phones, but it looks like the only method of cooling this device is through the back of the logic board. I know it works, but it just doesn’t seem like the best solution.

According to WD and Tom’s Hardware, the SN550 actually uses Host Memory Buffer (HMB), which allows the drive to utilize system memory (set at 64 MB for the consumer version, but we don’t know how much it is for the Xbox Series X). Also, I would think that Microsoft has done lots of optimization to make sure the drive performs as well as possible.

The tweeter in the Xbox 360 was used for making the startup noise when you pressed the power button. I would have liked to seen it present in this Xbox as well, but oh well.

Microsoft usually doesn’t make money on their Xbox consoles, since they already make enough money from their cloud service and selling data of Windows 10 users—in fact, they actually lost $125 for every original Xbox sold. But that’s good for the consumer, since we have what’s basically a beefy Zen 2/RDNA2 high-end gaming PC (in terms of hardware) at that price.

I’m really interested in the PS5’s cooling. Sony definitely made a big deal about the liquid metal thermal interface in one of their videos. I think they put a black sponge around the die to keep excess liquid metal from spilling everywhere though. Definitely worth taking a look at.

Really happy to see that Apple is bringing back Magsafe to at least some of its products. I wonder if it’ll eventually lead to completely sealed phones with no physical connector (and therefore no connector wear), but I think that would make data recovery harder.

Magsafe (or any other magnetic connector) is really convenient and pretty durable. I wonder why Apple abandoned the standard for a while.

Wow, it’s kind of a mystery as to how repairable current Surface products are until you open them. On one end of the spectrum, we have the Surface Pro X and Surface laptop 3, and on the other hand, we have…this.

I don’t get why adhesive pull tabs aren’t used here. This things more expensive than most desktops and laptops, and people shouldnn’t have to toss it just because the battery gets old.

I love how they know it looks like a bean.

On an related note, this would make the most expensive pot of baked beans ever.