Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large. 

Really? Come on, man

It really grinds my gears to see guides like this: the best PS5 accessories for 2022! As if we are able to simply walk into any Best Buy and Target today and buy one these gaming consoles. A solid year since both the PlayStation 5 and the XBOX Series X have launched, and supplies are still heavily constrained. Unless your’e willing to pay extortion prices on eBay (I’m not), to snag a unit you practically have to keep an eye on supply drops everywhere. Miss them by minutes and stock will be gone again.

On a similar vein, yesterday Nvidia announced the latest top-tier gaming graphics card: the RTX 3090 Ti. Meanwhile, plebs like us still can’t buy a regular RTX 3080 for MSRP. Supplies are so low that practically every place that sells it is charging double. Why doesn’t Nvidia concentrate on making more 3080 cards instead of releasing yet another new card?

I understand why there is a shortage, but it doesn’t make it less frustrating.

However, I really don’t need a gaming console. I hardly have time to game in between my other hobbies and happenings. A PlayStation 5 would just sit and collect dust like my PlayStation 4 did. I currently don’t even have a television to plug a console into. My Pro Display XDR famously only have one input (thunderbolt 3) with no physical controls. A PS5 will work, but there’s no way to control screen brightness or turn on HDR. The $5,000 Apple display truly is the most niche of products. But I do love mine!

I honestly think my days of gaming are over, at least for the foreseeable future.

Romance of the three kingdoms.

Equilibrium

Finally. After six of the longest week in my human history, the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip has arrived on my desk. Never before have I waited so long for a piece of hardware. The chip shortage is real. God speed to my fellow travelers in the massive Reddit thread of people awaiting their orders.

50 days. I’ve gone 50 whole days without my main computer. In order to pay for a specced-out brand new MacBook Pro, I had to trade-in the old one (I say old; it was a 2019 model, which is still plenty fresh and capable). With the gift card in hand, then I was able to put in an order for the new unit. The last time I did this, I was only without a computer for about a week. This go round, the wait for truly awful.

The mighty supply chain, man.

I’m the type of person who hates the in-between times of things actually getting done. Especially something as crucial as replacing my main laptop, the one with my entire digital life on it. Compounding the frustration is the fact I can’t control any of it. What can I really do if Apple can’t build their latest MacBook Pros fast enough? At least with something like a broken appliance I can stay up all night if necessary to fix the problem. And I’ve done it. I can’t go to sleep knowing my monitor isn’t functioning correctly!

So yeah, it’s been a rough six weeks. I couldn’t get into the groove of life at all. Something just wasn’t quite right until the new MacBook Pro was in my hands. Soon as the backup was done transferring over from the Time Machine disk, I felt mentally whole again. Everything in my life is back to an equilibrium (selling the family’s leased Hyundai Tucson was another big thing on my plate), and I can simply get on with it.

The new deck.

Waiting for aluminum

Now that I have a Pro Display XDR safely secured to my desk, I am really itching for the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip to arrive. I still can’t believe that it is scheduled to take seven weeks from when I first ordered it to (October 23rd) to ship to my door. The global chip shortage is real. Even so, even knowing I’ve got about three weeks of wait to go, I can’t help but check the order status page once every few hours, hoping against hope that perhaps I might get the new MacBook Pro sooner.

There’s even a thread on Reddit where all of us waiting for our Apple laptops can commiserate together.

I count myself lucky that I was able to get an iPhone 13 Pro on launch weekend. Apparently the stock of those things, plus the new Apple Watch, are highly constrained as well.

The chip shortage seems to be getting worse, if you’re following the news. BMW announced that they are doing away with touchscreen on most of their lineup until further notice, save the expensive models with an ‘M’ badge. As an owner of a BMW M2 Competition with a touchscreen, I can say it would be no big deal to me if I were confined to only using the physical controls. I hardly touch the screen anyways, because I hate leaving fingerprints on it.

That’s a bit idiosyncratic to me for sure. If I had a BMW on order and now suddenly the dealer is telling me there will be no touchscreen function, I would be annoyed. Getting $500 back in return doesn’t really help the situation when there is an absolute shortage of new cars, and I’m probably paying MSRP (or above) for the BMW in the first place!

I’m so glad I’m not in the market for a new car right now.

Especially for a GM vehicle. Similar to BMW, they’ve announced they are also cutting features from their lineup due to the chip shortage. Instead of touchscreen, GM is doing away with heated seats. This move is baffling to me because heated seats is a feature that is universally loved, and we are heading into the winter season. On cold mornings I really appreciate the heated seats and heated steering wheel of my M2. I would hate to lose those functions just because the world has ran out of silicon chips.

I would bet a not insignificant amount of potential GM car buyers will look elsewhere. Losing touchscreen function is either here nor there; losing heated seats? That’s a deal-breaker in my opinion.

Way back home.

The chip shortage

The global semiconductor chip shortage is no joke. I ordered a new 16-inch MacBook Pro with the “M1 Max” processor during the preorder period back in the last week of October. The laptop isn’t scheduled to arrive for another month. The delivery timeframe given by Apple is the first week of December. The struggle is real, the direst of first world problems.

I am very anxious to get my hands on these properly “pro” laptops with the vaunted Apple silicon. For work, I’ve handled the regular “M1” Macs, and their speed is always amazing. The M1 Pro and the M1 Max chips should be yet another significant leap forward. More exciting for me is the mini-LED display of the new MacBook Pros: full local dimming with variable refresh rate up to 120Hz. It’s basically the $5,000 Pro Display XDR, but in a laptop-sized package. Delicious.

Too bad it’s four week out. I’m hoping Apple will surprise me and get it to me much sooner than early December. I’m taking the entire Thanksgiving week off from work and it would be lovely if I have the brand new MacBook Pro to play with.

Or perhaps a PlayStation 5. Sadly, after one whole year since launch, I still cannot simply walk into a Best Buy or click on Amazon to buy one of these next-generation consoles. I’m far too old and don’t care about gaming enough to play the lottery game or wait in lines (virtual or physical). Good thing there isn’t really a new game that’s impelling me to buy a PS5 now. We’re closing in on nine years since the release of Grand Theft Auto 5, Rockstar Games; how about a new one, eh?

The waiting game continues.

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