Apple’s Space Ambitions are Real

Last summer, a couple weeks before the iPhone 13 announcement, Chinese market analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote that the iPhone 13 would include satellite communication capability.

Huh?

This was a bolt from the blue. No other Apple analysts were writing about satellites at that time.  And while Ming has a very good track record based on finding out from Apple’s supply chain about likely details in upcoming products, there was nothing about this satellite tip that even made sense, since it didn’t seem to involve hardware at all.

Generally speaking, a Ming tip is a hardware tip, but this one was not.

Ming’s prediction was widely and quizzically […]

By |June 3rd, 2022|2022, Companies, Internet, mobile technology, networking, space, Uncategorized|217 Comments
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2021 Prediction #4: WiFi 6 is a bust (for now) as Bufferbloat returns thanks to ISP greed

Remember Bufferbloat? It’s a subject I was among the first to write about a decade ago, starting with a prediction column just like this one in 2011. The problem at the time was that every video or audio application — the big bandwidth consumers — was trying to solve performance issues through pre-buffering. You’d launch Netflix (just one example — they all did it) and it would pause for a few seconds filling a huge buffer intended to smooth-out any playing glitches. Except performance didn’t improve and in fact got worse because of buffers buffering buffers. These extra buffers were defeating TCP/IP’s own flow control mechanisms, often leading to total […]

By |February 4th, 2021|2021, Internet, networking, Predictions|36 Comments
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