What is virtual RAM? | Ask Us Anything

Welcome to the first episode of Ask Us Anything where we gather your questions from the internet and answer them. In this episode, someone asked us about Spatial Audio and whether it’s available for Macs. And also what is virtual RAM and what’s good about it?

When will Spatial Audio be available for Macs?

This question is from _ben2725_ from Instagram. Firstly, for those of you who don’t know, Spatial Audio is Apple’s head-tracking audio technology. It allows for a more immersive experience as it sounds like you’re hearing things from all around you.

Last year, they added Spatial Audio for Apple Music, which means that certain songs will be compatible with the new technology.

Here are the compatible devices for Spatial Audio:

Coming back to your question. So apparently there’s already support for spatial audio on Macs. However, I can’t seem to get it to work on my unit. I am currently using the AirPods Pro and the MacBook Pro 16” and when I try to play music from it, the Spatial Audio option cannot be found.

But I’ve seen some tutorials online that managed to turn Spatial Audio on their macbooks. So if you want to give it a try here’s how you do it. 

Make sure that you’re wearing your AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, AirPods (3rd generation), or Beats Fit Pro, and that they’re connected to your MacBook Pro.Click the Control Center icon in the menu bar, click Bluetooth, then find your AirPods or Beats in the list. To turn on spatial audio or spatialize stereo while you’re playing multichannel or two-channel stereo content, choose Spatial Audio or Spatialize Stereo.

Why smartphone have virtual RAM?

This question is from Nurhan Danish from RKMD.

Virtual RAM has been really popular lately as you can see smartphone manufacturers like Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi and even Vivo providing virtual RAM on their devices. So what does it mean? Basically, your smartphone can separate some part of the storage and consider it as RAM which helps in better memory management or multitasking.

However, having extra virtual RAM may not necessarily provide extra performance for gaming but it may prevent more apps from getting killed in the background. It all depends on how the feature is optimised by the respective manufacturers.

What’s the difference between different monitor screen types?

This question is from Pui Siang Roo from RKMD. Yes, there are different monitor screen types. The three main ones are TN, IPS, and VA.

If you want to know the full details on these, you can read Raymond’s article here, but here’s the short of it

• IPS has the best viewing angles and best colour reproduction.
• VA has the best contrast.
• TN historically has fast response times, but bad viewing angles.

TN used to be the “budget” one, but nowadays each type has displays in every price range. If you’re on a budget, we would still recommend second-hand or cheap VA or IPS panel.

How much is the Macbook Air education price?

This question is from Rambo from YouTube. So if you are a student who is planning to get a new MacBook or iPad for your studies, you can actually get them through Apple’s education pricing, which usually knocks around 10% of the original price.

This promotion is also only available for newly accepted college students, teachers and staff at all levels.

In Malaysia, the 13” M1 Macbook Air is originally priced at RM4,399 for the base model with 256GB of storage. But with the education pricing, you can get it for only RM3,959. The higher spec model with 512GB of storage is going for RM5,399. With the education pricing you will only have to fork out RM4,959.

Plus, they are also currently having a promo where they are offering free AirPods for students and college staff who purchase a new Mac or iPad device. The free AirPods offer is running from 6th January until 7th March 2022.

With the offer, you can buy an eligible Mac or iPad along with a pair of AirPods to enjoy a savings of RM589, which is the current retail price of the 2nd gen AirPods. From the T&C, you are able to get the latest 3rd gen AirPods or the AirPods Pro but you’ll have to pay the extra price difference (e.g. RM240 for 3rd gen AirPods and RM510 for AirPods Pro). As a reference, the 3rd gen AirPods cost RM829 while the AirPods Pro is going for RM1,099.