Smart Home Diary: Adding HomePod, smart(ish) heating and Nanoleaf Rhythm

I explained in my first HomePod Diary piece that there was one smart home issue we needed to address: while I’m happy to use Siri to control everything from my Apple Watch or iPhone, my partner would often find that she wanted to switch lights on or off while her phone was in another room. We’d partially addressed this with Hue dimmer switches, but wanted more flexibility.

Some kind of smart speaker was the obvious solution to this, and the HomePod would have the advantage of being able to act as a HomeKit hub too.

In my HomePod Diary, I’ve been focusing mostly on music, but I’m also happy to report that the smart speaker has also passed the Steph Test …

more…

Final Cut Pro X: Revisiting the Synology NAS, this time with 10GbE

I’ve used a Synology NAS to store Final Cut Pro X libraries in the past, but the process wasn’t very straightforward at the time, and performance was never good enough to convince me to use it over the long-term. This was especially true as I started to dabble more in 4K workflows.

As we all know, the iMac Pro features built in 10GbE connectivity, which opens up the possibilities when it comes to using a NAS as a Final Cut Pro X storage solution. Final Cut Pro X also received updates in the last year in order to better facilitate working from network attached storage.

Is a 10GbE NAS a viable storage solution for Final Cut Pro X users?

more…

Tim Cook FastCo interview: Apple not a follower; working on products well into 2020s; not in it for the money

FastCo yesterday named Apple the most innovative company of the year, and it has today followed up with an interview with the company’s CEO, Tim Cook.

When you talk about your company as often as Cook does, it must be incredibly hard to come up with new things to say, and many of his comments are well-rehearsed. But there are a few interesting snippets …

more…

AT&T names first three cities for multi-gig 5G service, nine more to follow

AT&T promised it would start rolling out what it claims will be the first true mobile 5G service before the end of the year, and it has just announced the first three cities in line to receive it.

We plan to offer mobile 5G to customers in a dozen cities, including parts of Dallas, Atlanta and Waco, Texas, by the end of this year. We’ll announce additional cities in the coming months.

The company says that the commercial rollout follows multi-city trials …

more…