Category: 4. Technology

Another hint has surfaced that Apple is preparing to eliminate the physical SIM card tray from iPhones in more countries this year.

In particular, a source familiar with the matter has informed MacRumors that retail employees at Apple Authorized Resellers in the EU are required to complete a training course related to iPhones with eSIM support by Friday, September 5. There are 27 countries in the EU, such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands.

Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 17 series on Tuesday, September 9, which is just four days after employees must complete the training.

The training information is available in Apple’s SEED app, which is used by employees at both Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Resellers around the world, so it is quite possible that the eSIM-related course extends beyond the EU.

In the United States, all iPhone 14 models and newer lack a SIM card slot, and instead rely on digital eSIM technology. Apple has yet to eliminate the SIM card tray in any other countries, but it likely will starting with the iPhone 17 series.

The Information broke the news last year:

Next year, however, Apple is planning to eliminate physical SIMs in more countries, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

The report did not mention any specific iPhone 17 models or countries.

At a minimum, the ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air will lack a SIM card tray in most if not all countries, according to Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. However, there is a decent chance the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max will also be eSIM-only internationally. There might be a few exceptions still, though, such as China.

When the iPhone 14 series launched in 2022, Apple promoted eSIMs as being more secure than physical SIM cards, as they cannot be removed from an iPhone that is lost or stolen. In addition, at least eight eSIMs can be managed on an iPhone at once, eliminating the need to obtain, carry, and swap SIM cards while traveling.

Apple has a support document with a list of carriers around that world that support eSIMs.

Google has been working on improving its Quick Share functionality for some time now. The company has already enabled quick file transfers between your Android device and Windows PC or Chromebook. According to reports, Google is also working on the ability to share files with iOS and macOS devices.

Receive and Send modes

In any case, the latest update to Quick Share is now being released to some users with a new interface, very similar to the one that Samsung devices running One UI 8 have. The most notable change is the split between “Send” and “Receive” modes. There’s a button to switch between the modes at the bottom of the screen.

New Quick Share

Once you open up Quick Share, the Receive mode will appear by default. It now highlights your device’s name more prominently, while requests from other people sending you files are more easily visible and accessible.

As for the Send tab, it now integrates a file picker that allows you to choose multiple files from your device, and they don’t have to be the same file type either. A preview is also available before you send the files.

Via

Obsidian is known for its flexibility, and one of the things I love about it is the ability to use my preferred cloud storage service to sync my vaults across all devices. As a Microsoft 365 subscriber, I already have 1TB of OneDrive storage, which is why I decided to give this combination a shot.

Not only does the seamless background sync give me peace of mind, but it also allows for an incredibly powerful organizational structure. I can now manage all my essential project files in a unified folder in OneDrive. It’s a system that truly reflects the way I work: interconnected, accessible, and ready for sharing.

Using OneDrive to store and sync Obsidian files

No need to pay for the Obsidian Sync add-on

While Obsidian offers its own paid Sync add-on, which is excellent and provides features like end-to-end encryption and version history, the beauty of Obsidian is its core philosophy: your data is yours, and you can store it wherever you choose.

Since my entire digital life is already organized within OneDrive, it was the natural and most logical choice for me. I didn’t see the point in paying for a separate service when I already have a robust, multi-platform one at my fingertips.

The process has been surprisingly smooth and reliable. I already have OneDrive running in the background on my Mac and Windows desktop. When creating a new vault, I can simply select a relevant location in OneDrive and get going in no time.

The synchronization speeds have been surprising (in a positive way). I have had no issues accessing the latest version of my files on my phone and tablet.

Any changes I make on one device are pushed to the cloud and then appear on other devices almost instantly, which has been crucial for my productivity.

OneDrive goes beyond storing my Markdown files

It’s my digital ecosystem

With graph views, backlinks, a rich plugin ecosystem, and canvases, Obsidian is brilliant for creating and connecting knowledge. But it’s only one part of my larger digital ecosystem.

This is where OneDrive comes into play. I’m a heavy user of PowerPoint presentations and Excel data analysis, and for me, the magic of this workflow is bringing everything related to a large and complex project into one single, unified space.

For example, I recently managed a marketing campaign. I created a main folder in my OneDrive called ‘Project – Spring Campaign 2025.’ Inside this folder, I have a sub-folder for my Obsidian vault, which I named ‘Campaign Notes.’

This is where I stored all the unstructured, linked information: meeting notes from brainstorms, a breakdown of key deliverables, my personal to-do lists, and quick thoughts.

But alongside that folder, I have my ‘Campaign Budget.xlsx’ file, the ‘Pitch Deck.pptx’ presentation, and a sub-folder for high-resolution images.

The beauty of this is that when I’m working on a specific Markdown note in Obsidian, I can easily open the corresponding Excel sheet to reference budget numbers without ever leaving the main project folder.

If I’m updating my pitch deck in PowerPoint, I know exactly where to find my detailed meeting notes in Obsidian vault to refresh my memory on a key decision. Everything related to the project lives in one place.

A secure collaboration experience

Another reason to choose OneDrive over others

The ability to centralize all my project materials is one thing, but sharing that entire project ecosystem with others seamlessly is a whole new level of efficiency.

When I was collaborating on that marketing project, I didn’t have to share a dozen different files via email. Instead, I simply shared the main folder directly from OneDrive.

The best part is the control it gives me over security and privacy. I was able to set a password for the shared link and ensured that only my colleagues, who had the password, could access the sensitive information within.

I also set an expiry date on the link, so I didn’t have to worry about the folder being accessible indefinitely after the project was complete.

It’s a win-win situation for everything involved in the project. My colleagues didn’t need to be heavy Obsidian users; they could still access the PowerPoint presentation and Excel files, as well as view the Markdown notes directly in their browser as text files. Overall, this combination unlocks a secure, simple, and effective collaboration in no time.

Complete your Obsidian setup

After weeks of fine-tuning my workflow, I can confidently say that the combination of Obsidian and OneDrive has been the most impactful change to my productivity in years. The seamless syncing gives me peace of mind and lets me focus on capturing and connecting ideas.

If you are looking for a simple yet powerful way to build a unified and reliable knowledge system, look no further. This is the solution that bridges the gap between powerful note-taking and practical file management. You can even take the entire setup to the next level with several useful Obsidian plugins.

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Roy Zia Ur Rahman

ISLAMABAD, Aug 31 (APP):Every WhatsApp user knows the struggle: you type a quick message and then pause. Does this sound too blunt, too formal, too casual? Now, WhatsApp is stepping in with a brand-new AI-powered tool called Writing Help that promises to take the guesswork out of texting.

The feature is built on Meta’s private AI processing technology, which ensures that while it generates suggestions and alternative phrasings, neither WhatsApp nor Meta has access to the original or modified messages. Privacy, WhatsApp’s strongest selling point, remains intact.

Writing Help allows users to polish their chats by offering corrections, alternative word choices, or entirely new versions of a message. A short draft like “Send report” can instantly transform into “Could you please share the report at your convenience?” for professional communication, or “Hey, mind sending over that report ???” for a lighter tone. It feels like having a personal editor built into the keyboard.

Using the tool is simple. After typing a message, users can tap the emoji panel in any chat. Alongside emojis, GIFs and stickers, a new pencil icon appears. Tapping this opens Writing Help, where suggested rephrased versions are displayed instantly without requiring copy-paste or external apps.

Meta insists that the feature does not compromise privacy. A digital rights expert in Islamabad noted, “The tool will only succeed if people trust it. Privacy is WhatsApp’s backbone, and Meta appears keen to protect that.”

Pakistani users are already looking forward to its arrival. A young tech enthusiast, Roy Dawood, told APP that people are waiting eagerly for the official launch, while IT student Aimen said it would allow young people to add better, more expressive words into their messages when their own drafts fall short.

Industry analysts explain that Meta’s larger goal is to keep users inside WhatsApp rather than moving to AI platforms like ChatGPT. This reflects a broader shift: integrating AI into apps that are already part of daily life.

Currently, Writing Help is available in select countries and in English only, but Meta has confirmed a wider rollout in the coming months. With WhatsApp deeply embedded in Pakistan’s daily communication, experts believe the feature will soon reach local users as well.

Ultimately, the introduction of Writing Help is not just about editing text — it signals a new phase in digital communication. As one researcher summed it up: “We moved from typing to voice notes. Now we’re moving from casual writing to AI-assisted writing. It’s the natural evolution of communication.”

Every time I build a new PC, some decisions absolutely haunt me. One of these is how much RAM to get, and since it’s now a business expense, I tend to overspec how much I’ll actually need and then feel bad about how much I just installed. At least, until I start opening dozens of Chrome tabs, and then all is forgiven.

But it wasn’t always like that, and I used to carefully weigh how much capacity I needed with the MT/s and timings I wanted, and then decide if I was going to buy half now, and the chance that the particular RAM kit would exist when I had more budget to get the rest. My first custom gaming PC fell into this category, where I overspent getting the black and yellow DIMMs I wanted, then went back to Newegg after three days of anxiousness to buy another 8GB of Avexir Blitz DDR3 because I was worried it would disappear from sale.

I was absolutely correct on this occasion, as the company stopped making DDR3 shortly after, and after one or two DDR4 releases, it disappeared altogether. But I also got lucky by buying two RAM kits at different times and having them both work together perfectly, which I later discovered wasn’t always the case. As always, our usual advice applies, with getting ample memory to begin with, so your PC doesn’t need upgrades straight away.

That’s going to be 32GB of DDR5 for any new build, and really, with RAM prices being so low, you can easily go for 64GB as two 32GB modules and be happy for a long time. But what happens if you need more later? Let’s go over why mixing RAM modules hasn’t been the best idea historically, and where we are now.

RAM is RAM isn’t it?

Ahh, you’d think so but it really isn’t

Let’s get the most common misconception out of the way so we can dig in. Yes, you can mix RAM kits together. You can run different speeds, timings, and capacities and still boot, but it isn’t before you think that’s solved things.

Take laptops, for example. It’s common to see weird RAM capacities that aren’t the result of two equal SODIMMs, and the reason it’s not much of an issue is that laptops often run at JEDEC minimums or not far off them, and the performance deficit from running two mismatched modules is less of an impact. Plus, when was the last time you saw a laptop with four RAM modules? When it’s only two, they have direct wiring to the CPU and have less potential for issues, and the loss of some performance for the larger capacity is worth considering.

On desktop platforms with four RAM slots, the physical and electrical properties of the changed architecture make a big difference, and mixing RAM kits can cost you performance, and definitely style points, since they’re not tucked away. However, you should still be able to boot.

You might not get the same speeds your kits are rated for, and if you mix capacities with DDR4 you get into a flex mode where the smaller DIMMs run in dual-channel but only the corresponding portion of the larger DIMMs will run in dual-channel and the rest will be single-channel, potentially bottlenecking memory-heavy tasks.

Manufacturers love this one sneaky trick

The other thing is that manufacturers, and particularly memory manufacturers, love to change out the memory ICs used in their kits. The worst offender (if you can call them that) is Corsair in my experience, where you could get three or four revisions of the same SKU with different memory modules and varying performance. What’s more, there’s no guarantee that buying two, two-DIMM kits on the same day will get you the same IC inside, and I’ve had this happen many times.

This is partly why four DIMM kits fetch a big price premium, as they have to be tested stringently to work together. If you absolutely need tight timings and no fuss, you need to get a matched kit that is equal to the number of RAM slots your motherboard has, whether that’s two, four, eight, or more.

So what can you do to avoid issues

Avoid certain configurations, and plan ahead

So, not all is lost if you absolutely have to mix and match RAM kits, but there are a few things to keep in mind. Most of this is carried over from previous RAM generations, but DDR5 has a little change in that it’s hard to get four sticks to boot on some systems, let alone run with anything approaching optimal performance:

• Purchase full kits to match your RAM slot amount
• Match specifications exactly if you have to mix kits
• Ensure your BIOS is up to date
• Avoid four-DIMM configurations if possible

This might not guarantee performance, compatibility, or anything really, but it will help and there will always be some edge cases where particular RAM kits won’t work together or with specific CPU and motherboard combinations.

DDR5 has a strange quirk

For every previous generation of RAM, the advice was to use two DIMMs for dual-channel operation, and put them in either A1+B1 or A2+B2 (check your motherboard manual for which pairing) to get the best performance. That’s mostly correct for DDR5, but because of the faster speeds and the move to a pure daisy chain topology for the RAM slots where A2 and B2 are directly wired to the CPU socket (and optimized for signal time), there is a crucial difference in how you should install RAM if you’re installing four modules when they come from two kits.

With DDR4, the modules from the same kit would go in A1 and B1. With DDR5, the advice is to put them in A1 and A2, so that the sequential serial numbers would be on the slot wired directly to the CPU and the slot that is daisy-chained to that one. This gives you the best chance of fast speeds and lower timings when using four DIMMs, and I can confirm that I get a few hundred MT/s more out of two kits of two DIMMs when doing so.

Mixing RAM kits isn’t the death knell some would have you believe, but it’s not great, either

I hate to say it, because I was one of the min/max gamers, but mixing RAM kits isn’t the end of the world. For laptops, the increase in capacity outweighs any other potential drop in performance, especially for the types of document-heavy tasks they’re suited for. On desktop platforms, your system should boot at JEDEC minimums even if you have the most cursed combination of four single DIMMs from different manufacturers. Or it may not, because DDR5 is a little tetchy and the IMC on DDR4 supporting CPUs have always given me issues. But it should boot, at least, and depending on the rest of your system configuration you might not notice much of a drop in perfomance.

When I built my current PC, I decided to fill out all four DIMM slots on my motherboard, because not only did it look great, especially with the RGB lighting enabled, but it also felt like I was getting more out of this setup. I could’ve gone with two 32GB sticks, but instead, I opted for four 16GB modules, thinking that was the smarter choice. However, after using this build for a while, I realized the reality didn’t match my expectations, and the aesthetic appeal didn’t make up for the headaches I’ve had to deal with.

I’ll admit I was not nearly as experienced back then, but I still should’ve taken the time to browse PC hardware threads on Reddit. Over time, I learned that filling every DIMM slot pushes the CPU’s memory controller harder, limits overclocking headroom, and introduces stability issues. Looking back, I could’ve just bought a pair of dummy RAM modules to fill out the slots for aesthetics, while keeping my system far more stable and flexible with two 32GB sticks. After dealing with the consequences, I can tell you exactly why I regret this configuration.

Stability becomes a real problem

Filling all slots puts more strain on the CPU’s memory controller

The biggest issue with running four sticks of RAM on a motherboard that supports dual-channel memory is stability. You could probably get away with installing four RAM modules if you’re still on the DDR4 platform, but on DDR5 motherboards, things get a lot trickier. That’s because DDR5 is already more demanding on the CPU’s memory controller, and once you populate all four slots, the chances of hitting the rated XMP or EXPO speeds drop significantly, often forcing you to loosen timings, raise voltages, or lower the frequency just to keep things stable.

Even with DDR4, you can sometimes encounter stability issues like I did. For instance, my G.Skill Trident Z Neo RAM kit worked just fine at 3600MHz with my Ryzen 9 5900X when I first built my PC. But when I upgraded to the Ryzen 7 5800X3D last year, I started running into random freezes, BSODs, and boot failures until I lowered the frequency to 3200MHz. Later, I learned that the 5800X3D’s memory controller isn’t as forgiving as the one on the 5900X. So, if you plan to swap CPUs down the line, you’re better off going with two sticks to avoid these stability issues in the long run.

Manual overclocking is a no-go

Since my RAM isn’t stable at rated speeds, I don’t have any headroom

With two RAM sticks installed, you’ll typically have some flexibility to push beyond the XMP or EXPO speeds. I’ve done this before when I had two DIMMs on my older PCs, and the system remained perfectly stable after slightly raising the voltage. However, I never had that headroom in my current PC, even though my RAM modules managed to run at the rated speeds with my Ryzen 9 5900X. When I purchased the kit, I wanted to tighten the timings, but I quickly learned I had no room to do so when my system failed to boot.

As you’ve learned from above, things only got worse after switching to the Ryzen 7 5800X3D. Instead of overclocking, I ended up downclocking my RAM to 3200MHz for the sake of stability. I’m not saying you won’t have any room for manual overclocking if you run four sticks. Sure, if you get four single-rank sticks, you may be able to tune it a bit because it doesn’t put as much strain on the memory controller. Unfortunately, my RAM modules are dual-rank, so any hope of overclocking goes out the window as long as I have four sticks installed.

Compatibility issues

Four RAM sticks can make upgrades unpredictable

Just because your four carefully matched RAM sticks work fine with your build right now doesn’t mean they’ll stay that way if you change anything down the road. Like I said earlier, stability wasn’t a problem even at EXPO speeds until I switched to the Ryzen 7 5800X3D. Despite using the same RAM kit in the same motherboard, the memory controller variation between my two processors was enough to introduce stability issues and prevent the RAM from hitting the advertised frequencies.

Likewise, even a BIOS update or moving the kit to another motherboard can trigger new problems. Since four sticks push the memory controller harder, any small change in firmware tuning or board design can throw off stability. The more sticks you run, the more likely you are to encounter boot failures and memory errors. That’s exactly why you’ll often see lower supported speeds for four DIMMs on motherboard QVLs. If you don’t want to spend hours tweaking settings in the BIOS whenever you swap components, your money is better spent on two higher-capacity modules.

Four sticks aren’t worth the looks alone

Populating all the DIMM slots definitely has aesthetic appeal, but it’s not worth the trouble unless you really need the maximum capacity possible. If you’re in the market for DDR5 RAM, I highly recommend sticking with two modules unless you want more than 128GB capacity for a workstation. Don’t forget that you always get dummy RAM modules for a fully populated look without compromising stability or performance. For instance, Corsair offers RGB Light Enhancement Kits for its Vengeance and Dominator series, which mimic the RAM modules and sync with your lighting. This one mistake that I made reminded me that the smarter choice is always the simpler one, especially when it comes to PC building. Chasing looks and raw numbers rarely pays off in the long run, but prioritizing stability gives you peace of mind every time you boot up your system.