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Re:Apple Watch Series 5
by matthewmacleod on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @03:02PM
(#20932058)
Also decodes and plays audio, takes ECGs, monitors movement and sleeping patterns in real-time, communicates with people on the other side of the planet using a high-bandwidth global communications network, and receives and decodes positioning signals sent from space.
Re:Apple Watch Series 5
by peterwwillis on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @03:32PM
(#20932552)
And all of that requires 2 Cray supercomputers, unlike, say, the Apollo flight computer, a 2mhz cpu w/ 2048 words of ram and 36k of rom, in 1966
And all of that is available to tens of millions of people for a meager price.
Re:Apple Watch Series 5
by peterwwillis on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @10:53PM
(#20936151)
I don't really care if it costs $1, it's still ridiculous that people today strap two supercomputers to their wrist so their wife on a business trip in Beijing can tell them over live high-def video to feed the cat.
> it's still ridiculous that people today strap two supercomputers to their wrist so their wife on a business trip in Beijing can tell them over live high-def video to feed the cat.
Or so a person in Hong Kong can say I love you to their grandmother about to pass away in a hospital.
Re:Apple Watch Series 5
by peterwwillis on Wednesday September 11, 2019 @10:14AM
(#20940434)
They've also had these weird devices called 'telephones' for a while now, seems you can accomplish a similar feat. (Also, do people really need to say goodbye to their loved ones randomly in the middle of the day on their watch?)
Not necessairly. My point was that he/she was using an example that painted the Watch/Modern Phones in a bad light, while you can find examples that paint them in a good light as well.
Also, Telephones do not have nearly the same connection that video calls create. I call my younger sister, who is around 9ish, in a different country twice a day, and she regularly asks me to video her because she wants to give me kisses and wants to see me. That is possible in a normal voice call as well but its not nearly as connecting and personable as video calls are.
Edit: Some info that I found online. According to this article from 2015 [1 ]the apple watch is equivalent to two iPhone4s (Not sure I believe that but if true incredible). Also this quote:
"Meanwhile, the Cray-2 supercomputer from 1985, which is the fastest machine in the world for its time, is now only equal to an iPhone 4."
Another quote :
"The Apple Watch performs about 7 billion FLOPS"
According to wikipedia [2]:
"The Cray-2 released in 1985 was a 4 processor liquid cooled computer totally immersed in a tank of Fluorinert, which bubbled as it operated.[8] It could perform to 1.9 gigaflops and was the world's second fastest supercomputer after M-13"
So assuming that all of the information is correct then it is indeed true that the Apple watch from today is many times more powerful than a super computer from the 1980s.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3098315/The-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_supercomputing