In hardware terms alone, Apple has been delivering an incredible run of Macs arguably since 2020, and easily since2021. There are quibbles, sure — the display notch still bugs some people, the keyboard material wears poorly, and repairability has declined — but these are, overall, pretty sweet machines. The Macsannouncedthis week seem like they will continue that hot streak.
I happen to be in the market for a new Mac, perhaps this year, and I should be spoiled for choice. I kind of am — the Mac Mini and Mac Studio are both alluring. But I am sadly attached to the room offered by my beloved 27-inch iMac, and Apple’s new lineup of displays is a sore point.
Those prices are, respectively, $2,100 and $4,500 in Canada. I am not a stranger to spending a lot of money on a screen — I bought a Thunderbolt Display at $1,000 — but that is a lot of money for even the basest of base models, especially since I have no idea whether the sketchy firmware issues have been resolved.
It is not that these displays are bad — far from it — but it is extraordinary that we are ten years removed from 27-inch Retina iMacs that started at just $200 more than the Studio Display is today. Only recently are we seeing more choice in 27-inch 5K displays at considerably lower prices, though without Apple’s very nice stand and quality of materials. At least the XDR has a seemingly new panel.
Three of the seven models in the Mac lineup require an external display. Apple has two choices: one really advanced one that costs as much as a generously-specced Mac Studio, and another that feels like it is stumbling along.
Anyway, here I go again looking for a sick deal I will not find on a Pro Display XDR. Those things really hold their value. Pity.
Seed Studio offered me a sample device (see specs) for exchange for an article on my blog and I accepted. The device came a few weeks ago so I am fulfilling my part.
When it came, I went to their page and searched for some example code to test and I picked GitHub Stats example. The documentation is pretty good but it describes the usage with original Arduino IDE which is not my weapon of choice. Some time ago I noticed PlatformIO added support for this device so I wanted to use it.
I started by creating a new project.
Then I pasted the source code in but it ended up with an error:
src/main.cpp:2:10: fatal error: WiFiClientSecure.h: No such file or directory
.pio/libdeps/seeed_wio_terminal/Seeed-Arduino-FreeRTOS/src/FreeRTOSConfig.h:54:3: error: #error architecture not support! #error architecture not support!
After some investigation I found out I’m missing a build flag:
build_flags =
-DARDUINO_ARCH_SAMD
Next error was:
src/main.cpp:3:10: fatal error: ArduinoJson.h: No such file or directory
--- Available filters and text transformations: colorize, debug, default, direct, hexlify, log2file, nocontrol, printable, send_on_enter, time
--- More details at http://bit.ly/pio-monitor-filters
--- Miniterm on /dev/ttyACM0 9600,8,N,1 ---
--- Quit: Ctrl+C | Menu: Ctrl+T | Help: Ctrl+T followed by Ctrl+H ---
No ACK, R00
No ACK, R00
Device reset detected!
ESP-AT Lib initialized!
Attempting to connect to SSID: homestead5
………Connected to homestead5
Starting connection to server…
Connected to server!
headers received
closing connection
3
1
17
One negative note though, to use the WiFi, I had to upgrade it’s firmware as described here. The problem is, that the utility works under Windows only so I spent some time installing Windows. But the guide mentions Linux version coming soon so hopefully it will come soon.
To conclude, I like the device, it’s nice big display and that it works with 5GHz WiFi. It’s ideal for displaying some quick info downloaded from the Internet or smart home data.
Login
