It seems like this is based on the same operating principle as their CGM devices. It's buried a bit on their website, but these things utilize a needle to jab the actual electronic sensor into your skin, which is part of the process to apply the wearable. They claim it's "painless", but I'd imagine it probably feels something like having a splinter stuck in your arm.

You've gotta remember, people with diabetes are regularly stabbing their fingers to check their blood sugar, so developing something of a higher tolerance for that sort of discomfort probably comes with the territory. I don't think this really would have wide appeal for folks who are just trying to monitor their diet, unless a less invasive sort of sensing method could be developed.
 

Ultimately resulting in less content being accessible to Canadian citizens. Granted, the US pulled a similar sort of fuckery with TikTok, so we're not exactly on the highest of horses when it comes to leading by example. An open global internet was a nice idea while it lasted.

I noticed the lack of subpixel rendering right away when docking my MacBook Neo and thought I'd overlooked a setting somewhere. The text rendering is pretty bad if you're otherwise accustomed to looking at high DPI displays. The solution I'd found online literally is "get a better monitor".

At any rate, what I'm pointing out is that the out-of-the-box experience with hand-me-down peripherals can often be sub par. Some fuzzy text and having to remember your function keys are remapped might be a bitter pill you're willing to swallow for $600*, but at $900 it's almost criminal.

* The Mac Mini actually went on sale for a low as $399 before all the pricing craziness started, which seems like an absolute steal now. At that price, yeah, no shame whatsoever in hooking it up to an old crusty monitor, mouse and keyboard.

*looks at prices of that GeForce RTX 3090 with at least 24GB of VRAM*

Nah, I'm good fam. Not selling a kidney to run a local AI model.

It still doesn't include a monitor, keyboard and mouse. The original assumption was you'd just use the peripherals from your previous machine, but macOS doesn't support subpixel font rendering, so text looks pretty bad on 1080p monitors (which are still surprisingly common). Then there's the keyboard, which unless your previous machine was a mac, you'll probably need a new one of those, too. That just leaves the mouse, which kind of seems like punishing yourself if you've replaced everything else.

I realize there are use cases where Mac Minis are used headless, but the idea was supposed to be that this is Apple's entry-level desktop computer for people who aren't keen on the all-in-one iMac form factor for whatever reason. If you do need the rest of the stuff to make a Mac Mini into a plug-and-play setup, $900 is a far cry from the total out door price you'll be spending.

I saw that in a movie once.

Apple Jacks up the Price of the New Mac Mini

Yes, I realize the hypocrisy of using AI to criticize market conditions resulting from AI. The way I see it, might as well get a laugh out of this whole situation, because I sure as hell ain't getting cheaper hardware anytime soon.

Probably worried about competition from Tesla's Robotaxis.

Even when it was $500 with the wink-wink, nudge-nudge education discount, the Mac Mini still felt like a bit of raw deal for an incomplete desktop computer.

But starting at $900? I can see why they recently partnered with that scummy "pay later" company to offer a leasing option.

I thought it was mostly Nvidia making the hardware for AI data centers? Yeah, Apple has leaned into AI on the consumer side of things (and supposedly some people were buying up all the Mac Minis to run OpenClaw), but I doubt they're the driving force behind the RAMpocalypse.

Except that Amazon absolutely flooded the market with those things. If you really don't want to pay $80 for one, they're going for quite a bit less on eBay all day long.

Although, if your argument is that this is just a shiny bauble that one can do without if the price isn't acceptable, I'll give you that. There's plenty of cheaper options in the SFF PC market if you're flexible on the "Runs macOS" aspect.

I read that as "Tutorial For Making a Cybertruck". Figured it went something like:

1. Sell Pi on eBay.
2. Buy Cybertruck.

Almost everybody has everything they need to make hamburgers at home. By that logic, McDonald's shouldn't exist.

What the record industry has, is a massive promotional network for the content they churn out. Without that, you'll just be rocking out to your own AI creations in your car.

The kid's father actually has pretty decent taste in music, because he sometimes has a Bluetooth speaker going while he sits outside to smoke. It's just a typical teenage rebellion thing. Probably be one of those things when he's middle aged that he'll look back on and think was actually cringey in hindsight, like Limp Bizkit was for a lot of Millennials.

So, die of skin cancer instead of Alzheimer's?