Linked List: November 27, 2018

Tuesday, 27 November 2018

‘Rams’ Philadelphia Premiere Tomorrow Night ★

Local note: the Philly premiere of Rams, hosted by director Gary Hustwit (of Helvetica/Objectified/Urbanized design trilogy fame) is tomorrow night. I wouldn’t miss it.

Rams is a documentary portrait of Dieter Rams, one of the most influential designers alive, and a rumination on consumerism, sustainability, and the future of design.

Other upcoming screenings around the world are listed here.

Amazon Web Services Introduces Its Own Custom-Designed ARM Server Processor, Promises 45 Percent Lower Costs for Some Workloads ★

Tom Krazit, reporting for GeekWire from Amazon’s AWS Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas:

After years of waiting for someone to design an ARM server processor that could work at scale on the cloud, Amazon Web Services just went ahead and designed its own.

Vice president of infrastructure Peter DeSantis introduced the AWS Graviton Processor Monday night, adding a third chip option for cloud customers alongside instances that use processors from Intel and AMD. The company did not provide a lot of details about the processor itself, but DeSantis said that it was designed for scale-out workloads that benefit from a lot of servers chipping away at a problem.

Makes you wonder what the hell is going on at Intel and AMD — first they missed out on mobile, now they’re missing out on the cloud’s move to power-efficient ARM chips.

Tangentially related: Microsoft Windows now supports 64-bit ARM.

‘Hustlers, Hoaxsters, Pranksters, Jokesters, and Ricky Jay’ ★

90s-era documentary about the life and work of Ricky Jay, with appearances by Ricky Jay, David Mamet, and Steve Martin. Don’t let the VHS quality turn you off — I watched this last night and it’s so good.

Vulture has collected a bunch of other great Jay videos available online, and Deceptive Practice is on iTunes and Amazon Prime.

What’s the Deal With the Dearth of Third-Party iPad Pro Smart Connector Peripherals? ★

Andrew O’Hara, in a piece at AppleInsider under the rather scathing headline “Apple Has Destroyed the Potential of the Smart Connector on the New iPad Pro”:

Second is the poor adoption we’ve seen from outside companies, which the shift will not help. Apple touted at launch that third-parties could make use of the port, and they even reiterated strong support with products in the pipeline just last year. Now that the port has completely moved, anything in the works based on the previous port location is dead-on-arrival.

Since the original incarnation, only Logitech has put accessories on the market. They’ve launched multiple versions of their popular Slim Combo Keyboard (review) as well as a simple charging dock, the Base, which we also examined.

The new Smart Connector placement does seem more limiting, but I think the Smart Connector was a disappointment on the previous iPad Pros in terms of third-party peripherals. Two products from Logitech — a keyboard and a dock — and that’s it. And of course with the new placement, neither will work with the new iPad Pros.

It seems a bit weird for Apple to add a port that is primarily used only for one product — Apple’s own Smart Keyboard Folio — but that’s the way the previous Smart Connector turned out. I’d like to see more third-party keyboard options that use the Smart Connector, but that didn’t pan out last time.