Was reading and realized that Boot Camp doesn't work with Apple CPUs. So with an Apple Silicon Mac you have to use Parallels, which officially supports ARM64 version of Windows 11. It will run Windows x64 apps in their Prism emulator. Windows games, especially high end ones or ones with anti-cheat, may be a problem and Microsoft links to Windows on Arm Ready Software for a crowd-sourced list of games that work. Parallels itself only supports DirectX 11.1 and OpenGL 3.3 which also limits game availability.

Parallels has a single-purchase Standard Edition ($100) and subscription-baed Pro ($120/year) and Business ($150/year) Editions. For Pro and Business Edition their comparison chart says "Run professional graphics-intensive Windows applications and multiple virtual machines" and I haven't found what they mean by that. Assuming I need Pro it's rough paying yearly especially since it may or may not run any given game.

Another option is CrossOver which is front-end for Wine. CrossOver would run under Rosetta 2 and this CrossOver review says games probably work ok. AppleGamingWiki has a CrossOver page with notes on getting things to work and it has a Parallels page for using Parallels for Windows gaming. In practice CrossOver doesn't support as many games as I thought, so much so that I resorted to running Boot Camp with Windows 10 Home.

There is also Whisky which is essentially similar to CrossOver. Whisky uses Apple's Game Porting Toolkit (which in turn is a dev kit that uses Wine so that Windows devs can see how their game will run in Apple Silicon Macs). Doesn't support as many games as CrossOver but I feel those games would run faster since CrossOver doesn't yet support Apple Silicon natively.

I guess when I do get an Apple Silicon Mac I'll still have my old Intel MBP with Boot Camp to run games (and even then high-end games struggle). But I do like using just one machine for everything but always-on server stuff.

Addendum:

Microsoft's New AI Computers Struggle With Hundreds of Popular PC Games

Talking about MS's Copilot+ PCs which are Arm-based with Windows 11 and Prism for emulation. Half of the 1300 tested games had problems and I think mostly higher-end ones. Then again Qualcomm Snapdragon are not great performance chips.

Apple Watch Series 10
- Summary: slightly bigger, thinner, lighter with a better CPU.
- biggest display, 30% bigger than series 6
- wide angle OLED display, up to 40% brighter viewed from angle
- always on updates every second instead of every minute
- thinnest Apple Watch ever, 9mm
- play music or podcasts through Apple Watch
- 50m water resistance
- fastest charging Apple Watch ever, 30m to get to 80% charge
- polished titanium case option
- carbon neutral product
- S10 CPU, 4 core neural engine (suppress background noise during calls)
- Apple Intelligence: medical reminders, loud environment detection
- AI: overnight monitoring: ovulation, vitals, sleep stages, sleep apnea
- built-in depth gauge, water temperature, Tides app
- starts at $400, +$100 with Cellular

Apple Watch Ultra 2
- Summary: no significant changes.
- training mode for exercising
- offline maps
- new finish: satin black
- starts at $800 and includes Cellular

AirPods 4
- Summary: an effective Active Noise Cancellation in this form factor would be amazing
- H2 chip
- improved audio architecture
- Personalized Spatial Audio
- nod and shake head actions
- voice isolation (so other party only hears your voice)
- Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency Mode
- Adaptive Audio and Conversation Awareness (output volume adapts to environment)
- Charging case supports wireless charging
- AirPods 4 $130, with Active Noise Cancellation $180

AirPods Max
- Summary: slight changes, not enough to call it AirPods Max 2
- new colors
- USB-C
- Personalized Spatial Audio
- AirPods Max $550

AirPods Pro 2
- Summary: adds hearing protection, test and aid features
- Hearing Protection (machine learning reduces loud noises 48k times per second)
- Hearing Test (five minute test, needs iPhone app)
- Hearing Aid (boosts specific sounds you need depending on your hearing loss)
- FDA approval pending for Hearing Test and Hearing Aid

iPhone 16
- Summary: faster and adds yet another hardware control
- 6.1" standard, 6.7" plus
- Camera Control - click and slide control
- A18 chip, 6-core cpu (2 performance, 4 efficiency), 16-core neural engine
- 17% more memory bandwidth, 3 nm technology
- 30% faster than iPhone 15's A16 Bionic with 30% less power
- 5-core GPU, 40% faster than A16 Bionic with 35% less power

Apple Intelligence
- Private Cloud Compute - server-based intelligence with verifiable privacy
- PCC runs on 100% renewable electricity
- Writing tools - rewrite or proofread your text
- Dynamically create new emojis
- Image playground
- Search for photos, specific moments in a video
- Auto select photos and create a video based on your description
- Summarized emails and notifications
- Siri enhancements
- Visual Intelligence - point camera at something to get relevant info

Camera Control
- flush to surface
- click to launch camera, click again to take photos, click and hold for video recording
- haptic feedback
- light press for clean preview and show current camera setting, slide to adjust setting
- light double-tap for more camera settings, slide to choose setting

Camera Features
- 48 MP Fusion Camera: 40 MP with mode for 12 MP 2x Telephoto, 4K60 Video in Dolby Vision HDR
- 12 MP Ultra-Wide Camera, macro photography
- Spatial Capture using both cameras
- Redesigned Photos app
- Remove objects fromm photos using Apple Intelligence

Gaming
- 30% higher sustained performanced
- hardware accelerated ray tracing (5x higher frame rates than software)
- Tencent Honor of Kings: World will be released for iPhone 16

Pricing
- iPhone 16 $800 with 128 GB storage
- iPhone 16 Plus $900 with 128 GB storage

iPhone 16 Pro
- Summary: for people who want a slightly bigger screen and/or better cameras
- 6.3" Pro, 6.9" Pro Max

A18 Pro Chip (improvements over A18)
- Larger caches, next-generation ML accelerators (directly programmable)
- Advanced media: ProMotion display, Always-On display, USB 3, ProRes video recording
- New video encoder
- New image signal processor

Photography
- 48 MP Ultra-wide camera
- third camera: 12 MP 5x Telephoto camera

Video
- 4K120 video capture

Audio
- 4 studio quality microphones
- Audio Mix: machine learning to separate background elements from speech
- Voice Memos app: layer recording on existing audio, saves only recorded audio

Pricing
- iPhone 16 Pro $1000 with 128 GB storage
- iPhone 16 Pro Max $1200 with 256 GB storage

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Personally I'm fine with my Apple Watch 7 and iPhone SE and my next ones will probably be SE models. I love AirPods Max but since there is no real update guess I don't have to buy one and will stick with AirPods Pro (2nd gen).

ANC is actually a great feature and if AirPods 4 have good ANC with an air gap allowing outside sounds into your ear then that would be superior to in-ear headphones.

Overall AirPods 4 with ANC is the most intriguing announcement.

Sat Aug 31 2024

Sleep 0530 to 1230 (7 hours)

• Discworld humble bundle, $18 for 39 books. Unfortunately they're Kobo.com books and I don't want to depend on a 3rd party service (and I hear Kobo reading experience is not great).

Sun Sep 01 2024

Sleep 0530 to 1230 (7 hours)

• Humble Bundle for Lost Works of Gygax. A bunch of RPG supplements and adventures not written by him but based on his works. For various D&D-like systems and a bit too varied for my tastes -- I don't really like shovelware-like bundles.

Mon Sep 02 2024

Sleep 0630 to 1145 (5-1/4 hours)

• * I found out about Cost of Attendance which is all costs associated with going to a college. UC Berkeley Student Budgets (Cost of Attendance) estimate for new students living in a residence hall is $49k. CoA is before any financial aid since that varies a lot.

Tue Sep 03 2024

Sleep 0345 to 1130 (7-3/4 hours)

• Marc Miller passed Traveller IP to Mongoose Publishing. It's nice because Mongoose has been doing a good job with Traveller and it maintains continuity once Miller passes (he's in his 70's).

Wed Sep 04 2024

Sleep 0500 to 0900, 1030 to 1430 (8 hours)

• Dinner with CSr, CJr, Steph. Deliver from Izakaya Mai. I got Yaki Udon which was ok won't order again.

Thu Sep 05 2024

Sleep 0615 to 1215 (6 hours)

• Bought DCC Dying Earth Bundle of Holding

Fri Sep 06 2024

Sleep 2345 to 0130, 0600 to 1300. (8-3/4 hours)

• B&H Foto and Electronics have a MBP 14" M3 Pro 36 GB 1 TB for $2300 ($300 off). Additionally you get tax off if you use their Payboo credit card, though when I read the details not sure if it pays your current bill or is in-store credit for a future purchase. Still, that's the target specs for when I buy a new MBP later this year.

Bundle of Holding bundle for Dungeon Crawl Classics: Dying Earth. This is based on Jack Vance's Dying Earth books and there was a previous RPG from Pelgrane Press. This one requires DCC Core Rulebook (which I have). For $37 you get:

DCC Dying Earth boxed set (core sourcebook)
DCC Dying Earth - Casebook of Arcane Apocrypha (one of the Kickstarter stretch goals)

DCC Dying Earth module #0 - The Black Obelisk
DCC Dying Earth module #1 - The Laughing Idol of Lar-Shan
DCC Dying Earth module #2 - The Sorcerer's Tower of Sanguine Slant
DCC Dying Earth module #3 - Magnific Machinations at the Great Exposition of Marvels
DCC Dying Earth module #4 - Mind-Weft of the Moonstone Palace
DCC Dying Earth module #5 - Penumbra of the Polar Ape
DCC Dying Earth module #6 - The Great Visp Hunt
DCC Dying Earth module #7 - Phantoms of the Ectoplasmic Cotillion
DCC Dying Earth module #8 - The House on the Island

This is everything but module #9 and some other KS stretch goals.

I do like having lots of adventures and Goodman Games adventure PDFs are fairly pricey so getting them in a discounted bundle is nice. I have the Pelgrane Press Dying Earth RPG so I'm inclined to buy this one.

I learned about the Schumer box with standard consumer credit card info and I've seen these before and didn't realize they had a name. Let's look at my credit card Schumer boxes


Apple Card

Go to main page: https://www.apple.com/apple-card/
Go to bottom and note 3 link for Apple Card Customer Agreement pdf

Fees: None

This is one of the simplest ones you'll see because Apple wanted their card terms to be plain and not confusing and not nickel-and-dime their customers. There is interest charge if you carry a balance.

Note that Apple Cash is a different product and that has only one fee: 1.5% transfer fee from Apple Cash to a debit card.


Amazon Visa

Go to main page: https://www.amazon.com/amazon-rewards-visa-signature-card/dp/b007urftyi
And a little below click Pricing & Terms

Chase Pay Over Time has a 1.72% monthly fee which is how they make money for short term loans and I guess why these payment plan services are a growth industry. Although Apple Pay has interest free pay-over-time service it's only for Apple products bought from Apple.

Foreign Transaction Fee: None

I like to use this card for foreign transaction purchases, especially via PayPal because PP defaults to USD then charge a 3% fee.


American Express

Page with all their credit card agreements: https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/company/legal/cardmember-agreements/?inav=us_footer_card_agreements
Find your CC (I have Blue Cash, probably Everyday not Preferred)
https://www.americanexpress.com/content/dam/amex/en-us/company/legal/cardmember-agreements/public-site-2024-q2-pdf-cmas/cps-lending/blue-cash-everyday-06-30-2024.pdf

Interest rate of 22% is really good as my other two are close to 30%

Plan fee 1.3% per month -- I think this is the pay something in installment plans.

Foreign Transaction fee: 2.7% -- so don't use AMEX for foreign transactions.