xw39011

There is no cash cost to the device.

If you're accepted to the program, the deal is you agree to report any vulnerability found to Apple first in exchange for 12 month access to a research device and automatic consideration for the bug bounty program.

> every ARM vendor other than Apple has failed to move the needle on ARM performance since 2017

You must mean, performance relative to Intel, not absolute performance. Clearly Qualcomm has improved Snapdragon over time as have a number of other Android SOC vendors.

But I wonder if it's even true, have ARM vendors other than Apple failed to move the needle on performance (let's call performance single thread geekbench) relative to Intel? If someone is up for tracking down all the numbers I'd read that blog post. :)

What company doing VLSI, with more than say 500 employees, doesn't have some kind of presence in Israel? That's got to be a short list.

The thing is, when one has a user base the size of Apple's what "feels" right actually covers a very large range of possibilities. Even when Apple "excels" and covers most of that range, there's still a ton of people left out. Which leads to every Apple thread on HN filled with users bemoaning Apple's poor choices.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

> The second difference is that the iPhone foretold how people were going to use phones in the future.

I don't know if I buy that. Watch the original iPhone announcement. Steve spent most of the time talking about what a great phone it was and how much better voicemail is. Connecting to the internet was tacked on to the end of the presentation.

"Now, what’s the killer app? The killer app is making calls!"

I don't think that's foretelling how people were going to use phones in the future.

On the other hand, row fast or you fall down virtual Niagara falls sounds like an entertaining game and might make the rowing interesting... to me anyway.