WEEKLY WHEATIES #2406
Computing Storage, Streaming, Gemini, Tim Cook
In this newsletter:
Post: The Mechanics of Computer Storage
ICYMI: Streaming Video
ICYMI: Google Gemini
POTW: The House that Tim Cook Built
The Mechanics of Computer Storage
Last week, I talked about the importance of restarting technology. I briefly discussed how computers talk - in binary. But to add a little more — essentially, all apps, files, and even the operating system itself are always stored on a hard drive. At least for the long term. We’ll talk about short term storage on RAM in a bit.
To reiterate, binary uses ones and zeros in the coding language. To create an app, image, or any other type of document, the ones and zeros are organized in pages and pages of code. The more involved the app or image is, the longer the code is. As you can imagine, these files become larger and larger, taking more processing power to read the full length of the code. This is one reason why larger files take longer to open and manipulate than smaller files. Typically speaking, text documents are much smaller in space than images, and images are less space than videos.
Hard drives have seen many iterations over the years, including: physical light bulbs (bringing about the term debugging), punch cards, floppy disks, and the hard drives you may be familiar with today. However, the first versions of hard drives used magnets - a magnetized pole would indicate a “One” while an unmagnetized pole would indicate a “Zero.” They also had platters in the form of disks, giving them the name “hard disk drives.” Today, these hard drives are known as Solid State Drives (SSDs). Side note: I would not recommend buying a computer today without an SSD. They are a bit more expensive for the same amount of storage but are exponentially faster and last much longer.
On current hard drives, all information is now stored in a form of electricity by way of very small capacitors. Just as mentioned with CPUs, these hard drives do and can go bad over time. To be clear, this is the same components used in RAM with one exception - when the power is off to the device, RAM erases everything that was stored on it. Remember, it is temporary. The apps and files stored on the hard drive also never move location. At least, unless the user updates something, moves them from one folder to another, or some other interaction requiring it to.
The operating system itself, along with applications, have to access and read code for multiple types of files, again, making them take longer to open. You’ve seen this in action before, but may have never thought about it, or considered it. Opening a basic text file opens very quickly. Opening an image file takes a bit longer, and a video takes even longer. Now, in some cases, your phone or computer may be fast enough that to your human eye, they all opened close to the same time. But on the back end of things, each file takes progressively more computing power and storage, causing it to act a bit slower - at least from the computer’s standpoint. If you have a much older phone or computer, you can probably notice this much easier.
As these apps and files are opened, they temporarily move from your device’s hard drive to the device’s RAM. RAM stands for Random Access Memory. Your device is accessing memory (in the form of apps or files in this case), that is now stored in RAM. It’s random, because as it is placed in RAM, there’s no rhyme or reason where it’s place, only that it’s available.
Now, let’s compare hard drives and RAM to a mechanic. It doesn’t matter what type of mechanic, only one that uses tools. Typically, they will have their tools stored in a toolbox. Having multiple or larger toolboxes helps to store more tools. Compare the toolbox to the hard drive. It should be organized to help find what you need when you need it. Everything has a place, and there’s a place for everything. The larger the hard drive in terms of storage, the more apps and files that can be stored.
Let this also stand as a reminder that keeping your computer files neatly organized not only helps you find what you need quicker but allows the computer to access it quicker over time. In case you’re wanting to ask - Yes, I’m a fan of an empty desktop. I’m also a fan of an empty inbox.
RAM can be compared to a mechanic’s workstation. You would remove tools (as needed) from the toolbox and place on the temporary workspace. It’s limited in how many tools can be placed down, but they are very quick to access. And there’s no specific spot for any tool - it finds any open spot on the table. You can imagine, the larger the RAM storage, the more apps or files that can be open.
However, depending on what you’re working on, at some point, a larger workspace is unneeded. For example, there’s arguably nothing you’d ever be working on that would ever require every tool to be used. Similarly, there’d be no reason to ever have every program and file on your hard drive open at the same time. Since RAM prices are much higher per gigabyte (GB) compared to hard drives, RAM storage space does have a point of diminishing returns. There’s also a limit on how much the operating system can physically access, but there’s no need to get into that.
Typically speaking, I suggest a minimum of a 256 GB SSD and 4 GB of RAM. That is only if you’re using your computer for menial tasks and not storing a lot of data. Hard drive space is kind of up to you. Compare what you currently have versus what you plan to do. RAM is a bit of a different story. As soon as you start working with photo and video editing, wanting to play video games, or need multiple, resource-intensive apps open at the same time, you may want to upgrade to 8 GB, if not 16 GB. Anything much higher than that, at least nowadays, is a bit overkill - unless you know exactly what you need it for.
Are you staying organized?
ICYMI: Streaming Video
Roughly a year after Netflix started cracking down on password sharing, Disney, Hulu, and ESPN are getting ready to follow suit. Starting March 14 (maybe sooner for others), password sharing will not be allowed outside of the household. Defined on both sites, Hulu and Disney, “’Household’ means the collection of devices associated with your primary personal residence that are used by the individuals who reside therein.”
On the other end of the spectrum, TikTok appears to be incentivizing creators to post longer videos on their platform. While TikTok is a free app (I promise you, they aren’t completely free), creators can paywall some of their longer videos to steal traffic from YouTube, according to The Verge.
ICYMI: Google Gemini
According to a popular Chatbot leaderboard, the newest version of Google Bard - Gemini - is now competing head-to-head with ChatGPT. It has also been upgraded to generate images and work on mobile devices. While it doesn’t appear to outperform the newest model of ChatGPT, it is ranked higher than the free version on OpenAI’s site. Bing’s Copilot version is still free and is using the higher ranked GPT-4 Turbo model. Either way, they are both comparable and I suggest using the one in the ecosystem you like to live in. Over the last year, we’ve seen each have its flaws with updates always in the works. Look for their feature set to continue to grow in the immediate future.
POTW: The House that Tim Cook Built
With all the headlines this past week being about Apple’s Vision Pro now available, I thought that would be a good time to look at this mini-documentary put together about their CEO. It’s a great overview of the history of Tim Cook’s legacy with explanations on the how and why of some of the best consumer electronics on the market. At least, arguably.
Check out FrontPageTech on YouTube
