I’m very curious to see how the 5G rollout proceeds over the next several years in terms of getting the TCP/IP speeds up. From what I’ve read so far, the algorithms of the TCP/IP stacks are not properly tuned for the performance characteristics of the link. That’s challenging.

It took a few years before UMTS/HSPA (3G/3.5G) and then LTE became fully optimized for the characteristics of the networks and the apps that use them. It’s a matter of balancing speed, latency, network utilization, and battery life (entering/exiting dormant states).

I have a personal policy of avoiding buying any new phone in the first week or two that it goes on sale. I like to wait a bit for the factories to get fully in the swing of making the new model and perhaps even going through a minor hardware rev if needed.

The last phone I waited in line to buy on the first day was the iPhone 3GS in 2009, and that was partly as a protest against my then-employer, Microsoft, for messing up the whole doomed Kin project that was going to replace the Sidekicks we’d been working on when MSFT bought us.

It was defective and would randomly crash, which I could tell was not typical iPhone behavior. I found some really neat stuff in the debug logs when I synced it with my Mac, like AT commands for the modem and lots of panics from cache RAM parity errors. I exchanged it right away.

I was very impressed at the time (2009) with Apple’s advanced diagnostics tech in the store. The guy at the service desk plugged the Mac at his station into my iPhone (old-school dock connector) and the diagnostic GUI popped up a bunch of warnings about kernel panics & errors.

And he was like, “yep, looks like it’s defective”, asked if I had a backup of all the data (I said yes) and he put it into the factory erase screen and said ok, confirm you want to wipe all the data on your old phone, and I tapped confirm and then got a new replacement phone.

I noticed the replacement iPhone had slightly better feel on the power button as well, so ever since then, I try to avoid preordering brand-new products.

I also saw how the process worked from the inside, working at Danger/Microsoft and Google, so I know the preproduction cycle.

Ideally, you work all the bugs out during the EVT, DVT, or PVT phases. https://blog.seeedstudio.com/pa/ 

Here’s a handy timeline I just stole from Seeed Studio’s site:

Apple of course are real taskmasters about quality, so I’m sure the first-day products are probably not going to have a high defect rate. Hardware quality in general is so much better now than, say, when I was buying Commodore Amiga stuff (then again, that was on Commodore, lol).

Here’s what impresses me about how Apple has refined the iPhone over the years. They’ve done it in such a way that you can have an iPhone 7 or newer and not feel completely left out, but each new model adds something and eventually you feel the urge to upgrade on your own.

I mean, that’s their theory, or their marketing philosophy. It’s very much like the automobile industry does.

My grandma subscribed to Consumer Reports magazine and I avidly read every issue she gave us when we visited, because I was fascinated by the advertising and testing.

The impression I got after reading many issues of car reviews from them is that quality control is extremely important, it’s how the Japanese automakers (and Europeans) beat the US carmakers for a long time, and cars in general are much more reliable than 40 or 50 years ago.

It used to be that a car would be totally worn-out at 60,000 miles (100,000 km) and you’d basically send it to the junkyard. Worn-out tires, brakes, engine, suspension, everything. Or you end up having to replace basically the entire car. But now all of the parts last longer.

I’m really excited about the iPhone 12 series. I’m pretty sure I want the blue 128GB regular size, and one of the magnetic cases. Very stylish-looking. Hopefully the magnets don’t erase too many hotel key cards or credit cards or any other important magnetic stripes.

I actually wiped my hotel room key on two separate occasions completely accidentally by absentmindedly putting my Sidekick phone (with the magnetic swivel hinge) into the same jeans pocket as the key card.