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Regress instead of progress. AM had the nice property that it worked somewhat in mountainous areas, but it didn't sound very good. It had the nice property of

Regress instead of progress. AM had the nice property that it worked somewhat in mountainous areas, but it didn't sound very good. It had the nice property of range. FM sounded better than AM but had to be more-or-less line-of-sight. It also had the nice property of range. DAB+ is like an abandoned FOSS project that everyone jumped on like it was Zoom before naked dudes were jumping into online church services and online elementary school classes with zoombombing. 5G is boondoggle unrelated to radio for cellular connectivity that requires much more infrastructure since sub-mmw can't go through many materials at its higher frequencies. I swear it's a conspiracy (theory) to sell 50x more tower gear than 4G LTE. We already have gigabit 4G LTE, sub-mmw 5G just seems uneconomically undeployable at-scale. Technologies shouldn't be adopted simply because they're new or being pushed by vendors. Heck, Apple doesn't even have any 5G phones because 5G may not survive once the major carriers wise-up.

jayflux 6y ago
> Technologies shouldn't be adopted simply because they're new or being pushed by vendors. Heck, Apple doesn't even have any 5G phones because 5G may not survive once the major carriers wise-up. I’m pretty sure the next generation of Apple phones (iPhone 12?) will be 5G compatible, when the current generation came out 5G was barely deployed (still isn’t in a lot of places). So that’s more a matter of timing than Apple not believing in the technology.
- gumby 6y ago
  > I’m pretty sure the next generation of Apple phones (iPhone 12?) will be 5G compatible... that’s more a matter of timing ... agree with your reasoning, not your conclusion. I don't think there will be material 5G buildout by the end of 2020 (even before the Covid-19 crisis I didn't believe that). So unless there's an important market with significant 5G buildout (not sure anybody really has "significant" and certainly none of the important markets do) they'll continue to wait. This is especially true as current 5G devices have larger physical size and abysmal battery life. Apple can't fix that problem on their own; part of the problem is build out and part of it will need to be solved through the experiences of the radio chip vendors and their current customers. Compare this, say, to WiFi 6 which Apple already deploys in their 2019 iphone 11 and 2020 ipads. hat is a little ahead of the curve (chip sets are OK but there's little deployment yet). Wifi base station deployment will trickle out and until then there's no negative cost for Apple's users (i.e. no effect on battery nor size).
  - paypalcust83 6y ago
    Apple's waiting to see if 5G implodes and is replaced by something else better or equivalent that doesn't cost the carriers nearly as much to deploy and maintain. It seems crazy to have to deploy 1-2 orders-of-magnitude more equipment just to provide coverage equivalent to gigabit 4G LTE, and having to deploy inside of buildings as well; it fails the common-sense "smell" test and I think it will be dead by 2024.
reaperducer 6y ago
AM had the nice property that it worked somewhat in mountainous areas, but it didn't sound very good. It had the nice property of range. AM can sound better, but it requires people to buy new radios, and the whole point of AM is that it's cheap. I had a Sony AM Stereo Walkman, and if the station was broadcasting in AM Stereo, the sound was considerably better. Not FM quality, but not too far off to my ears.
Dylan16807 6y ago
5G isn't just millimeter wave tech that's super fast but blocked by basically everything. On the frequencies that 4G uses, 5G is a moderate upgrade. Somewhat better speed, notably better latency. 5G will also add more wifi-adjacent frequencies, only slightly higher than existing networks use, which sounds like a perfectly good idea to me in dense areas.

jayflux 6y ago

> Technologies shouldn't be adopted simply because they're new or being pushed by vendors. Heck, Apple doesn't even have any 5G phones because 5G may not survive once the major carriers wise-up. I’m pretty sure the next generation of Apple phones (iPhone 12?) will be 5G compatible, when the current generation came out 5G was barely deployed (still isn’t in a lot of places). So that’s more a matter of timing than Apple not believing in the technology.

gumby 6y ago
> I’m pretty sure the next generation of Apple phones (iPhone 12?) will be 5G compatible... that’s more a matter of timing ... agree with your reasoning, not your conclusion. I don't think there will be material 5G buildout by the end of 2020 (even before the Covid-19 crisis I didn't believe that). So unless there's an important market with significant 5G buildout (not sure anybody really has "significant" and certainly none of the important markets do) they'll continue to wait. This is especially true as current 5G devices have larger physical size and abysmal battery life. Apple can't fix that problem on their own; part of the problem is build out and part of it will need to be solved through the experiences of the radio chip vendors and their current customers. Compare this, say, to WiFi 6 which Apple already deploys in their 2019 iphone 11 and 2020 ipads. hat is a little ahead of the curve (chip sets are OK but there's little deployment yet). Wifi base station deployment will trickle out and until then there's no negative cost for Apple's users (i.e. no effect on battery nor size).
- paypalcust83 6y ago
  Apple's waiting to see if 5G implodes and is replaced by something else better or equivalent that doesn't cost the carriers nearly as much to deploy and maintain. It seems crazy to have to deploy 1-2 orders-of-magnitude more equipment just to provide coverage equivalent to gigabit 4G LTE, and having to deploy inside of buildings as well; it fails the common-sense "smell" test and I think it will be dead by 2024.

reaperducer 6y ago

AM had the nice property that it worked somewhat in mountainous areas, but it didn't sound very good. It had the nice property of range. AM can sound better, but it requires people to buy new radios, and the whole point of AM is that it's cheap. I had a Sony AM Stereo Walkman, and if the station was broadcasting in AM Stereo, the sound was considerably better. Not FM quality, but not too far off to my ears.

Dylan16807 6y ago

5G isn't just millimeter wave tech that's super fast but blocked by basically everything. On the frequencies that 4G uses, 5G is a moderate upgrade. Somewhat better speed, notably better latency. 5G will also add more wifi-adjacent frequencies, only slightly higher than existing networks use, which sounds like a perfectly good idea to me in dense areas.