roc

Admit? Like it's a secret he's trying to cover up?

Apple people simply don't care. They know Apple's "late." (Inasmuch as someone else has done a similar thing, or used a similar piece of tech "first".) Because Apple is almost always late.

Late to touch. Late to smartphones. Late to fingerprint readers. Late to face identification. Late to attention detection. Late to wireless charging. Late to big screens. Late to music streaming. Late to video services. Late to the TV. Late to the wrist. Late to the wireless headphones. etc.

Let's assume some measurable number of people might do this, purely for arguments sake. Why does the resale value of old iPhones not reflect these devices being "unusable?"

Good.

Now add a distinction between IAPs for consumables vs features vs content.

The whole problem is that the batteries can't deliver that performance.

They can throttle the chip to what the battery can deliver or it will crash. Maybe Apple's more conservative on the throttling, and some amount of performance could still be achieved without a crash, but there's zero chance Apple's putting a "make my phone unstable" switch in Settings.

I'd say "your notification tray", but it seems like the majority has already lost that one.

Apple needs to do way better at informing the user when the battery is notably degraded, and when that degradation is leading to notable throttling.

Particularly, when as the throttling is severe (more than 25% or so) and when the user is encountering it with any frequency.

Who in the world would run right out and buy a new iPhone if their last one became unusable in one year?

People switch to the iPhone because of their longer usable life compared to the competition. People pay more for old iPhones compared to the competition because of their longer usable life. Not only is it not in Apple's interest to make self-destructing phones, to even accuse them of that requires ignoring the entire history of iPhone adoption and resale value.

Further, there is no "one year" for batteries. Batteries with more charge cycles degrade faster. Batteries that push peak performance more often degrade faster. Batteries that spend time in extreme heat and cold degrade faster. Because of this, a simple anecdote of "throttling after a year" means even less than usual.

No-one has data on how much throttling is going on, but Apple. The best proxy we have is the aggregate purchasing decisions of people who had iPhones, and the prices of used iPhones. And people with iPhones overwhelmingly keep buying iPhones. And the prices of used iPhones aren't going anywhere. This "Apple makes self-destructing phones" theory needs a rest.

I don't think you can have such a number, as it hinges so heavily on unknowable future usage and environmental factors.

And frankly now that sudden shutdown isn't a thing, I don't think it matters much. Apple just has to communicate the situation better when processor throttling reaches severe states.

I don't think geeks get to throw stones on shorthand.

For Mb vs MB vs MiB alone we've lost any and all credibility.

Good old fashioned junk mail, background check services, and consumer research?

Even if they keep their literal word and don't sell your actual history, and you use SSL so they can't see specific content, they can certainly make money by identifying traffic profiles by domains/times/frequencies/etc.

Through leaks like this one. Leaks that can be partially validated or corroborated, but which (by their nature) cannot be entirely proven true.

And those leaks were very transparently beneficial to a person/group who are also going to benefit from this one.

I don't trust the CIA at all. But I don't trust Wikileaks either. I see way too many self-described "skeptical" types who aren't approaching any of this with any shred of skepticism.

The problem with this comparison is that, while it's not remotely easy, it's far easier to compete with Facebook or Google than to compete with an ISP.

Facebook barely existed 10 years ago. And it wasn't until maybe the last five years that it was recognized as a competitor to Google.

Compare that to Google Fiber's 7 year slog.

It would make perfect sense if they'd bundled a controller (and/or made it more straightforward to have ipads/ipods/phones usable as controllers) and put an A8X in it.

It would've been the middle ground. Not just streaming, but not as hardcore as an XBox/PS4 (which weren't $250 when the AppleTV launched.)

The big mis-step of the 4th gen AppleTV is that they didn't pick any direction for it. It's a bit like the first-gen Watch. They just threw a bunch of crap at the wall and expected the early adopters to sift through it.

I would guess:

1. Because the mindset of work > leisure is rewarded in the U.S., so wealthier people aren't choosing work because they're wealthier, they're wealthier because they choose work.

2. Because they have more leverage not only in how much they work, but in what work they do. If you draw a stark line between your job and what you enjoy, naturally you'll want to minimize that work and maximize your leisure. But if you actually enjoy your job...

It didn't? I distinctly remember the same sort of FUD progression with regards to the ozone hole.

  1. It wasn't actually happening/a problem. 
     (It's hippy nonsense. [insert sarcastic comment about saving butterflies])
  2. It was happening, but it was natural, not caused by human activity 
     (The ozone hole grows and shrinks naturally throughout the year! And its been bigger and smaller in the past!)
  3. It was happening, caused by human activity, but there wasn't anything we could do about it 
     (We can't force the other countries to change, and if they won't change it'll keep growing anyway!)

There's really no difference in the playbook between it and global warming. It's just the financial incentives to delay are much stronger with carbon.

Even the "equivalent replacements" for CFCs were widely regarded as overpriced and far worse at the time. (I still hear people bemoan the loss of freon AC to this day.) It's not so different from solar/wind vs fossil fuels.

Basically, yeah. Some stuff is necessarily distinct. But an awful lot of it is not. And given the way this tech is advancing, and the cost of retrofitting, most of the stuff people will first encounter and install will fall under the umbrella of "not distinct".

(e.g. people are going to buy an Echo or a Dropcam long before they refit their house for smart switches/outlets/bulbs/appliances.)

As terrible as this idea is for phones -- it's perfect for home automation.

Having each and every widget doing its own network and software stack is just a mess. Nevermind having to power all these gadgets.

There's very little reason to have more than one base in a room, that could handle all the non-switch/non-outlet duties. (cameras, air quality sensors, motion sensors, mics and speakers for echo-type interaction, tv input, etc.)

If all those features were just modules that stacked on top of a base (and could be swapped independently), you'd really have something.

The environmental conditions of a 'scorched' Earth aren't themselves that big a problem. The bigger problem is the disparity between how many people are on Earth now, and how many people we can support in those new environmental conditions.

As usual: humanity's primary challenge is humanity.

If the choice is between data security and a few family members being unwilling to click an email link, I'd choose data security.

Let's face it: the kind of people who only look at your photos when they're very convenient to look at aren't interested to begin with. Nothing of value is being lost.

It did when the alternative was the entire educational process behind knowing what they need, what tradeoffs are inherent, what the price should be, what vendors provide it at the acceptable price, what drawbacks come with those other vendors, living with those drawbacks, etc.

Technical people like to pretend it's the easiest thing in the world to "know" how much computer someone needs and to buy it. But if you're non-technical, all you hear is technical people saying "trust me". Which is precisely the same thing Apple is saying.

And, yes, we show them lower sticker prices. But Apple has a far better track record of delivering customer satisfaction than technical people recommending beige boxes. So, for anyone with the money, why in the world would they care for two seconds about "too much computer"?

"Aww shucks. I bought too much computer and loved it, instead of listening to the geeks, getting just enough, and hating it."

For some users, sure. But that'd be about the user, not the platform. And more specifically, that'd probably be mostly about the time and place of use, not even the user.

If those same people had a 27" screen during that same slice of time and space, they'd probably be doing the same thing.

When you already know which vendors you're using. If we get our misc bits from newegg, I might search newegg, but I don't need google.

Well, yeah, at the scale of "real research" it doesn't really work. But you wouldn't want to do that on a tiny screen even if copy/paste was up to it. You probably wouldn't even want to do it on a laptop screen. That's just a tool/task mismatch.

Are taking notes, managing projects, sending emails, outlining documents, etc not active?

Don't all the browsers offer some implementation of 'cloud tabs', cloud bookmarks, and/or 'read later' sorts of features? Who needs copy/paste?

Since when does search correlate to productivity?

Communicating, managing projects, taking notes, reviewing/signing documents, sending payments, drafting designs, outlining documents, finding/ordering kit -- are these not productive?

Yeah, you're probably not doing hardcore document creation, or real research, away from a keyboard, comfortable chair, and a nice big screen, but that's not the shape of all productivity.

Luckily, patents aren't granted for ideas, but for specific executions. Granted, the execution is generally defined at a higher level than, say, "this exact chunk of silicon". But it's at a much lower level than the "idea".

> can anyone argue that the anti-vaxxers don't have a point when they're on about exactly this sort of profit-driven evil from Big Pharma

Yes; they do not have a point as regards vaccines.

Because vaccines are so essential to public health, they're very closely regulated and monitored by the FDA. Samples from each and every lot of each and every vaccine are passed to CBER and tested (for efficacy, sterility, etc) at several stages of production, and licenses for distribution are granted per lot, based on passing those tests.

The FDA knows exactly what they want from these drugs, what the active agents are and how they work, and how to test for them. They don't accept cleverness or variations. There's essentially no profit in this process and no room for profit.

I'm guessing you're talking about the recent spike in shootings? That spike has a long way to go to reach the peaks of the 70s and 90s.

Because cities without New York's policies saw the same drop in crime?