### Issue 1248 - Thursday 12th November, 2020

## In Today's Issue

- Telstra to spin out its infrastructure assets to 3 seperate companies
- Google Photos ditches the free photo storage we all loved
- NSW makes using a digital check-in system for recording visitors mandatory
- Apple Silicon M1 SoC new Macs and related activities etc etc
- Cheap Blackmagic Speed Editor, PS5s on Vodafone plans, Tenda wi-fi smart plugs, IT career fundamentals short course, 10% off (some) Macs at JB Hi-Fi

## The News

### Telstra to spin out its infrastructure assets to 3 seperate companies

Telstra spun off its infrastructure to a standalone business called InfraCo in 2018 as part of its T22 strategy to streamline their operations and cut costs. Today it's T22 a step further and splitting the Telstra Group into three entities: InfraCo - Fixed (ducts, the pipes, fibre, data centres, subsea cables, exchanges, etc), InfraCo - Towers (passive, physical mobile tower assets) and "ServeCo", a placeholder name for the company that'll "own the active parts of our network, things like software defined networking" and "radio access network equipment on our mobile towers, our spectrum holdings, and the electronics that light up the fibre in our fixed network". The AFR reckons Telstra is doing this to prepare itself to buy the NBN and avoid the wrath of the ACCC.

### Google Photos ditches the free photo storage we all loved

After five years of storing unlimited "high quality" backups of everyone's photos for free, Google is taking this popular feature away from Google Photos. It'll now store 15GB of pics for free, anything more than that and you've got to pay for more storage on your Google account, which is shared with Drive, Workspace and all the other Google crap you've got going. This doesn't apply to Pixel smartphone owners however, they'll be able to keep uploading an unlimited amount of high quality (i.e: compressed versions of the originals) to Google Photos. The change takes effect June 1st 2021 and your existing photos won't be counted towards the 15GB, just new photos. Casey Newton makes the excellent point that so many great photo services (Everpix, Loom, etc) were driven out of the market due to Google Photos' free service. Now that it's ending, those services will probably never come back. Competition killed, mission accomplished.

### NSW makes using a digital check-in system for recording visitors mandatory

NSW is making it mandatory for businesses to use an electronic based method of recording customer/visitor contact details, ideally using the NSW government's Covid Safe Check-in feature within the Service NSW app. For those without a smartphone or if the system they're using craps out, businesses can manually record details on paper, but it has to be digitised within 24 hours (e.g: Word or Excel) so it can be handed over to the government immediately if needed. Personally, I really like NSW's approach to venue check-ins as no personal info is shared with the business and because the vast majority of businesses will be using the government provided platform, you don't need to have your details shared with a multitude of privately run services. Victoria is apparently developing its own similar QR code based solution, but honestly this seems like a great use of COVIDsafe - what a missed opportunity.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Apple Silicon M1 SoC new Macs and related activities etc etc

I'm still pumped about Apple's M1 SoC, so here's some very Apple-nerd niche stuff about it and the new Macs using it that I stumbled upon the last 24 hours:

- For some reason Apple persists with a 720p camera on the Air & MacBook Pro, but Apple reckons the M1's image signal processing will make it the best 720p you've ever seen.
- The M1-based Mac mini has 2 fewer USB-C/Thunderbolt ports than the previous Intel-based Mac mini. That's kinda annoying. If I had to guess, Apple chose to give the M1 fewer PCIe lanes as a trade-off for something else on the SoC.
- Some GeekBench scores of the M1-based Macs have gone up. 1687 single-core makes it faster than any Intel Mac. 7433 multi-core (all 8) score puts it not far off with the iMac Pro/Mac Pro! Surprisingly the scores of the Air, MBP and Mini were more or less the same. I would have assumed the Mini would crank a little harder not having to worry about heat & power.
- Got an eGPU and want to use it on your fancy new M1-based Mac? Too bad, throw it in the ocean immediately - they aren't supported, even the Blackmagic one that Apple co-developed. Want to use two external displays on the Air or MacBook Pro? Throw that 2nd screen into the ocean too, as the M1-laptops only support a single external display. Again, I think Apple made a design decision here to trade-off supporting more than 2 displays to gain something else in the SoC.
- Here's all the differences between the MacBook Air & 13" MacBook Pro. They're very similar, but I'd still go for the Pro as I don't trust passively cooled laptops. CPUs need fan to work at their peak performance!

## Bargains

- Buy Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve Studio for $440 and get a free Speed Editor hardware editing console/deck (normally valued at $450 on its own)
- Vodafone is selling the PlayStation 5 on a repayment plan like it was a phone - $21/m for 36 months
- 2x Tenda SP3 Smart WiFi plugs - $9.95 + delivery from Shopping Square
- JB Hi-Fi has 10% off Macs, but not the new Apple Silicon ones or the iMac Pro
- IT Masters is offering a free 4-week short course on IT career fundamentals. Nice if you're looking to change careers into IT.

## The End

📻 Lazerray - TV On The Radio

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