Blog
High Flight – Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr.
“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr. – Killed 11 December 1941 (age 19)
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
my eager craft through footless halls of air….
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
– Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
John Lennon – October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980
Remembering Pearl Harbor
midway512 – The Oberg Color Film Footage of Pearl Harbor – December 7, 1941
This short documentary tells the story of Harold & Eda Oberg, & the film footage they recorded of the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941. The couple captured shots during & after the attack on Hickam Army Airfield.
Apple Event – One More Thing – Apple Silicon MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini
The Next Generation of Mac

Apple Silicon M1 Chip
- First System on Chip (SOC) for the Mac
- Unified Memory Architecture (UMA) – High bandwidth, low latency Apple-designed package accessible to the entire SOC.
- 5-nanometer tech
- 16 Billion Transistors
- 8-core CPU
- 4 high-speed cores. Worlds Fastest CPU cores
- 4 high-Efficiency cores. Best CPU performance per watt
- 3x performance per watt
- Integrated 8-core GPU
- Worlds fastest graphics
- 16-core neural engine
- 11 trillion operations per second
- Machine learning accelerators
- Secure Enclave
- Hardware-verified secure boot
- Automatic high-performance encryption
- macOS run-time protections
- Activation lock
- Image Signal Processor (ISP)
- Video noise reduction
- Greater dynamic range
- Improved auto white balance
- ML – enhanced face detection
- Media encode and decode engines
- Thunderbolt/USB 4 controller
MacBook Pro 13″ M1

Performance
- Up to 2.8x faster CPU performance over the previous generation.
- Up to 5x faster GPU graphics performance.
- Edit 8K ProRes video in DaVinci Resolve without dropping frames.
- Up to 11x faster machine learning (ML) performance.
- Up to 2x faster SSD performance.
- Up to 3x faster than the best-selling Windows laptop in its class.
- Battery performance
- Active cooling system (a fan) for increased performance.
- Up to 17 hours of wireless internet browsing.
- Up to 20 hours of video playback. Six hours longer than before.
- Longest battery life ever in a Mac.
Specifications
- Apple M1 chip with 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine
- 8GB unified memory
- 256 or 512GB SSD storage
- 13-inch Retina display with True Tone
- Magic Keyboard
- Touch Bar and Touch ID
- Force Touch trackpad
- Two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports
- Enhanced camera ISP
- Studio quality mics
Price: 256GB – $1,299.00 or 512GB – $1,499.00
Available from Apple today, November 10, 2020. Ships next week.
MacBook Air M1

Performance
- Up to 3x faster CPU performance over the previous generation.
- Up to 5x faster GPU graphics performance.
- Edit multiple streams of 4K ProRes video at the same time without dropping frames.
- Up to 9x faster machine learning (ML) performance.
- Up to 2x faster SSD performance.
- Up to 3x faster than the best-selling Windows laptop in its class.
- Battery performance
- Silent fanless design
- Up to 15 hours of wireless internet browsing.
- Up to 18 hours of video playback. Ten hours longer than before.
- 2x Battery life on video calls.
- Longest battery life ever in a MacBook Air.
Specifications
- Apple M1 chip with 8‑core CPU, 7‑core GPU, and 16‑core Neural Engine on the MacBook Air with 256 GB SSD
- Apple M1 chip with 8‑core CPU, 8‑core GPU, and 16‑core Neural Engine on the MacBook Air with 512 GB SSD
- 8GB unified memory
- 256 or 512 GB SSD storage
- Retina display with True Tone
- Magic Keyboard
- Touch ID
- Force Touch trackpad
- Two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports
Price: 256GB – $999.00 or 512GB – $1,249.00
Available from Apple today, November 10, 2020. Ships next week.
Mac mini M1

Performance
- Up to 3x faster CPU performance over the previous generation.
- Up to 6x faster graphics performance
- Up to 15x faster machine learning (ML) performance
- Up to 5x faster than the top-selling PC desktop
Specifications
- Apple M1 chip with 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine
- 8GB unified memory
- 256 or 512GB SSD storage
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports
- Two USB-A ports
- HDMI 2.0 port
- 3.5 mm headphone
Price: 256GB – $699.00 or 512GB – $899.00
Available from Apple today, November 10, 2020. Ships next week.

macOS Big Sur will be released on Tuesday, November 12, 2020
My Thoughts
Problem: Both the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air only have Active two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports.
The slide in the MacBook Pro presentation says that there is up to 16GB of RAM and up to a 2TB SSD but they are currently not for sale on Apple.com.
The entry level MacBook Air has a 7-core GPU rather than an 8-Core GPU.
The entire motherboard of these computers is about the same size as a desktop DRAM module. It is like someone stuffed a high-end workstation into a board not much bigger than a stick of chewing gum. Apple eliminated more than they added. Basically, the whole computer is on one chip. The other chips on the motherboard are for communications and power delivery.
Apple eliminated many of its biggest vendors and brought all the value that they brought to the table in-house. Communications chips are the only major value add in these computers that Apple doesn’t control.
Marques Brownlee – Apple M1 Chip: Let’s Talk!
Resources
Training Day – CoreML, CreateML and Object Detection
Tom Baranowicz – Training CoreML Object Detection model from scratch using CreateML
Lets Build That App – CoreML: Real-Time Camera Object Detection with Machine Learning – Swift 4
Resources
- Apple – Machine Learning
- Apple – Core ML Models
- Apple – Sample Code – Recognizing Objects in Live Capture
- Apple – Framework – AVKit
- Apple – Framework – Vision
- Apple – Class – AVCaptureDevice
- Apple – Class – AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer
- Apple – Class – AVCaptureOutput
- Apple – Framework – Core Video – CVPixelBuffer – An image buffer that holds pixels in the main memory.
- IBM Cloud Annotations
- TensorFlow Lite Example Apps
- Turi – Create Intelligence