Good morning!

SanDisk Desk Drive. In an era where we’ve become more attuned to cloud storage (it may be convenient; but many of us ignore the inherent risks), physical storage drives are becoming rarer on workstations. They shouldn’t, and believe me, I still trust one for a Mac’s Time Machine backups, and also an offline copy of everything else that’s scattered on cloud storage accounts. You may be wondering why I am sounding unusually chirpy, that too about an external storage drive, but that’s probably before you lay your eyes on this. It is nothing like those boring, black coloured slabs, we accepted as external drives for most of our youth and the advancing years since. The puck design gets attention, as does the red racing stripe round its circumference. You’re also paying a stiff premium for these looks—the 4TB option costs Rs 39,999 while 8TB capacity sets you back by Rs 72,999. At this price, it is really meant for the pro workflows. Designers, artists, musicians and anyone with lots of data they can ill-afford to lose.

There is nothing out of the ordinary with pricing for this external solid-state drive (SSD). A Samsung T7 Shield also costs around Rs 37,000 for the 4TB option, while a Crucial X6 4TB with slower speeds (up to 800MB/s compared with 1000MB/s) will set you back by around Rs 30,000. Neither look this good either. There is a reassuring heft to the SanDisk Desk Drive too (not everything needs to be featherweight) at around 268 grams and the thickness is around 40.2mm (that’d be roughly five iPhone 16 Pro Max, stacked). It carves a place on your workstation and makes that its own.

The SanDisk Desk Drive’s puck-esque design gets attention, as does the red racing stripe. That’s before you get to the substance beyond style

     

Beyond these rather unique (and you’d agree, elegant) looks, there’s a lot of performance. That is, 10GB/s theoretical top speeds for data read and write. Except the difference here is, a SanDisk Desk Drive needs external power. That’s also where a lot of its speedy potential is coming from. As well as reliability (for the trivia enthusiasts, SanDisk’s own Extreme Pro drives have had documented data loss struggles, attributed eventually to the lack of external power). I’ll not bore you by droning on about synthetic benchmark tests, but this registers ever so slightly faster data read and write speeds than the Samsung T7 Shield and has a significant advantage over the Crucial X6. All in all, the SanDisk Desk Drive has come together rather well as a package, which you may not have realised you need. At least not just yet.

PEOPLE

Earlier this week, I sat down for a conversation with Jake Dyson, chief engineer at Dyson. The brand you probably very well know (and may have used a product too) for their attention to detail. Over the years, their air purifiers and vacuum cleaners have set the performance benchmark in their respective categories. And now, as Jake Dyson tells me, the brand isn’t “afraid to go into industries where people already are perceived as leading those industries.” The context to that is Dyson’s second generation, and perhaps more serious than before, headphones called OnTrac. They succeed the first generation cans called Dyson Zone, their trademark design element being an attachable air purification visor that made you look like Bane from The Dark Knight. That was Dyson sticking to what it knew well (that is, air purification) with a new experiment (audio and wearables). No longer are they clinging to the comfort zone.

We’re focused on designing products for people, that solve problems: Jake Dyson

While I’ll detail the OnTrac in the coming weeks, all I can say for now is, the signature and attention to detail is pristine. Dyson-esque, as you’d expect. A solid foundation, as it inevitably gets into the ring with the incumbents, Sony, Sennheiser and Bose. Not to forget, Sonos too is making its first moves in the premium headphones space. As well as the updated Apple AirPods Max, will undoubtedly get anyone with a fat wad of cash, interested again. Sound is, as I often say, subjective. The music you and I listen to may be completely different. How we perceive sound, similarly unique. That said, what you and I will instantaneously know is good sound. An unaltered, pure sound signature. Not many headphones do that (Sennheiser used to, but I don’t have recent experience with their Momentum headphones). Sony tends to lean towards bass bias, while Bose tends to have a warmer sound signature. The Dyson OnTrac is totally flat on the EQ, which means the finer elements in a soundstage come through.

“We're not afraid to go into industries where other brands are perceived as leaders. We want to make better products and solve more problems,” Jake Dyson, Chief Engineer at Dyson tells HT.

Jake Dyson tells me about their research-based approach to build products, the idea being to tackle daily problems for users. For that, the core element of the research is the user. “There's the beauty of our hair care products and the fact that we can reduce damage of the hair for Indian users,” he says. That is just one example. I have, over the years, voluntarily taken part in Dyson’s dust studies in India (the only effort from my end was to accept sharing dust and particle laden purifier filters for Dyson’s researchers to work with)—and that I hope (and Jake Dyson says it does) helps the company create better purifier filters. We all need that, a timely reminder as we embark into the pollution season again.

TIMELINE

I had a feeling last week that once iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and MacOS Sequoia 15 and watchOS 11 roll out (and to my amusement, human behaviour is all to predictable), many from the influential noise collective on social media would end up being very angry. And very confused. Purely because most (and I’d observed this from a distance) were confused about the contours of iOS 18/iPadOS 18/macOS Sequoia, Apple Intelligence and the roadmap, as Apple’s always kept it clear. The updates that rolled out last week, significant improvements in their right (look at that Truecaller app finally find form, for example), are just the foundation for now.

Over the years, it has always been the .1 updates that’ve introduced and defined new functionality with iOS.

A lot of the Apple Intelligence smarts actually arrive with iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1 which are expected in the first half of October (more in subsequent updates). It’ll include call recording with transcription and removing things from photos. That is also when I intend to write my detailed take on the new OSes, because as they are, yet to be completed. Work in progress, with a level of definitiveness. In case you haven’t updated, I would suggest you do—and that stems from my experience with the three operating systems across the iPhone, iPad Pro and Mac.

Over the years, it has always been the .1 updates that’ve defined new functionality with iOS. By that definition iPadOS, and indeed macOS. Not the very first versions, that release in September every year. Guessing the ‘Gen Z’ influencers with a keyboard and lots of opinions, don’t have that historical context. iOS 17.1 added AirDrop transfers over the internet, when you step out of range. An year prior, iOS 16.1 brought support for third-party apps in Live Activities as well as the iCloud Shared Photo Library. iOS 15.1 introduced SharePlay and ProRes video. iOS 14.1 added 10-bit HDR video playback and editing in Photos. It has just been that way for years.

PARTNERSHIP

Not exactly the type of tech conversations we have every week, but I thought this is too cool to not chat about. Formula 1 and LEGO have announced that beginning next year, F1-inspired LEGO products, for all ages, will be launched. Neither organisation says what exactly will make this portfolio, but based on what we’ve seen thus far, it’ll be something F1 and motor racing fans of all ages would surely love. The 2023 McLaren Formula 1 and the Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 E Performance sets, as part of LEGO Technic, give us a glimpse into the future. These don’t come cheap though, with the former sporting a price tag around Rs 20,000. Premium pricing should be the norm for upcoming F1 branded LEGO sets too.

CRYSTAL BALL

By the time you read this, the Meta Connect 2024 developer conference will be drawing to a close. We’ll chat about that next week. It is always a fool’s errand to predict what may be on the agenda will undoubtedly be virtual reality (VR) headsets—perhaps more affordable successors to the Quest 2 and Quest 3. Even though the Apple Vision Pro may be struggling for traction beyond the initial excitement phase, Meta may not want to miss a chance to show it can do the same, if not better. I’ll be more than interested in whether Meta and Ray-Ban have a successor to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The current iteration is just about perfect as far as the design goes, and Meta AI integration gave it fresh legs, but an iterative update may well be needed to keep the interest going.

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