sirozha

My town is inundated with H1B-visa Indians who have replaced 50% or more of American IT personnel. About 35% of doctors are Indian on H1B visas. They have pushed Americans out of the jobs here, and these are not manufacturing jobs. These are high-tech and medical jobs. As a result, housing prices are  through the roof. These temporary Indians are buying several houses each on interest-only loans, knowing full well that they are going to have to leave within 5-6 years and can simply abandon their houses (if the market turns down) with no consequences. Their monthly mortgage payments are significantly lower than apartment rentals because of the ARM-type loans that they take out.  In the meantime, they are collecting rents on the multiple houses that they purchased with no credit history and no permanent status here. How can a temporary worker buy a house in the US on a mortgage is beyond comprehension. We have not learned anything from the 2009 housing crash. 

If we don't want to manufacture anything, we don't want to build anything, we don't want to work in agriculture, we don't want to study sciences, we don't want to work as engineers, we don't want to be doctors, what the hell are we good for? Are we going to be pigs for the rest of the world to raise until we get fat enough to be slaughtered? 

We can have robotic factories built in the US and train our citizens to maintain and program robots. If we don't know how to do this, let's invite Chinese, Japanese, and Germans to help us out, pay them handsomely, and learn how to make our own crap efficiently by leveraging the latest robotic technologies for manufacturing. This could not be done three decades ago, but with the advance of technology, it is now possible. 

I’m having this problem with a band of dust along the right edge of the 27” Apple LED Cinema Display. The dust is not between the LED display and the outer glass cover. It’s actually inside (or behind) the LED display itself. 

ihatescreennames said:

Does this doorbell require a subscription or connecting to some service provided by Netatmo?

No. It has a built-in SD card reader that you can install up to 32 GB SD card in. Additionally, it can save footage to Dropbox and to an FTP server. There is no pay-for cloud storage offered by Netatmo.

Google and Microsoft are tremendous cash machines. The fact that Google isn’t making money on Chromebooks doesn’t mean
thay Google is not making money. By offering Chromebooks Google prevented Apple
from making many additional billions of dollars by not being able to sell as many iPads to schools as they could have, had there not been a cheaper alternative available. Google also denied Apple more than 75% of the smartphone market. Google may not have made much money on Android, but they surely prevented Apple from making hundreds of billions of dollars more. At the same time, Google is killing it in its core business, which is advertising, and Apple can't touch Google there no matter how hard Apple tries. 

Microsoft failed in mobile OS, but Microsoft is killing it in the Enterprise software while steadily approaching the 1 Trillion capitalization after a lost decade under Ballmer. So, whereas Microsoft’s mistakes are behind them, Apple seems to be walking into the lost decade now. For one, I do not understand what all those tens of thousands of Apple engineers are doing because nothing revolutionary that should take so many engineers to create has come out of Apple lately. 

Maybe we are about to see a new revolutionary product come out of Apple this year. Otherwise, I simply don’t understand what Apple has been doing lately. 

As for the improvements in iCloud and Apple maps, they are simply laughable. I try Apple maps every six months, but it’s just as bad as it has been for years. It gets me lost every time without a fail. As for iCloud, the storage portion of it is so rudimentary! I still can’t share folders with my wife, who is on the same Family Sharing account. Hence, we can’t work on the same project (like taxes) in parallel. This is such a basic functionality that Apple can’t figure out that iCloud storage is not even suitable for simple tasks done by traditional families. 

I hated it when I was told by friends that they would PayPal me the funds because I would have to pay the fee if they PayPal'ed from their credit card. At least, with Apple Pay Cash, it's the sender who pays the fees and not the recipient. This makes a lot more sense. With PayPal, "friends" would charge it on their credit cards, and I would end up paying the fee.

sflocal said:

I'm a huge fan of Tim Cook, but I have to disagree with him here.  Sure, the tariffs will hurt in the immediate timeframe, but with what China has been doing for ages, I'd gladly take a little pain now for a long term gain in the long run.  China needs a strong smack in the face and a message sent that we (the world) will no longer continue the status quo.

My opinion of this is that what we are facing is karma. We wanted cheap products, and the corporations wanted cheap labor. We found cheap labor in China 35 years ago, and we have been enjoying cheap products made in China for nearly two generations. In the process, we have lost our ability to manufacture domestically. We no longer have manufacturing engineers, who are all either dead or retired. We will now have to hire Chinese engineers to teach us how to set up manufacturing processes domestically. While we have lost the manufacturing capabilities, the Chinese realized that they needed to have the IP rather than being an assembly line for the West. So, they have come up with all sorts of schemes to obtain the IP. They stole, they copied, they required joint ventures with western companies who wanted to sell in China, etc. First, they copied mindlessly, but then they realized that they needed to learn the technology. So, they started sending their students to the US and other western countries, and the Chinese government paid full tuition, room, and board for their students. The requirement was to bring back whatever the IP the students could steal from the universities. When the students graduated, they received Green Cards and offers to work for American companies in the US. They started stealing IP from the companies they were working for. Fast forward two decades, and we now have Huawei that's applying for more patents than any other western high-tech company. Huawei is a leader in 5G cellular tech. They are no longer stealing IP; they are now creating IP based on the two decades of copying, stealing, learning, and finally inventing. 

Because of our stupidity and greed, the Chinese are living in the 21st century country, whereas most US cities look like they did in the early 1900s. Our railroads are dilapidated, while the Chinese are riding is bullet trains. We have not won a single war since WWII (except the Grenada invasion), while having the largest defense budget in the world that exceeds the defense budgets of the next six countries combined. China has built the second strongest military in the world while having spent a fraction of the US defense budget. If, God forbid, there should be a war between the US and China, it's absolutely not clear who would come out on top in a conventional military conflict. A war with China would be the most catastrophic war that the US has ever entered.

The Chinese have executed flawlessly on their modernization program. We are the only ones to blame for what happened. Had it not been for our greed, the Chinese would still be living in adobe huts with roofs made of straw. 

If batteries were replaceable, this wouldn't be an issue. You can qualify a battery as a consumable item if it can be easily replaced. Because Apple decided to glue batteries in (both in their phones and in their computers), it's no longer a consumable item unless the entire gadget is qualified as a consumable.  

If DED lived in Russia, he would be a pro-Kremlin pro-Putin media apologist, judging by the fervor with which he bashes everything Android and defends everything Apple. 

I am an AAPL shareholder, and I want Apple to succeed and grow, but there is no reason to slam and bash everything Android because that creates a false sense of security and helps Tim Cook and the rest of Apple leadership rest on their laurels while some real innovation happens on the Android side of the equation, which makes Android more and more compelling choice. This will become increasingly the case if - God forbid - the tariffs on Apple products materialize in the near future. 

Those who continue to bash Android are basing their uneducated opinion on the Android (and Android handsets) of a decade ago. Pick up the modern Android phone (not a Samsung one) and spend a few days with it. You will see that Android today is a formidable alternative to the iPhone. Then, you will understand how badly Tim Cook is squandering the advantage that the iPhone once (and perhaps still) has had over Android. While Cook is innovating with Emojis, Animojis, and rainbow watch faces, Google is breathing Apple in the neck with their real innovations. A few examples are Google Maps, Google Assistant, and Android Auto. If Apple continues to remain complacent, I don't even want to think about what will happen to my investment portfolio. 

echosonic said:

This is the most overblown BS I have seen in my lifetime.  Pure hype.  The entirety of the American media should be dissolved for creating this panic.

Corona killed what, less than 100 Americans?  Swine Flu killed 23,000 Americans, nothing.  Measles?  Nothing.  H1N1?  Nothing.  EBOLA?  Not a damned thing.  

One basketball player gets a cold and the whole country loses its f#$(%(&  mind.  

Glad I have cash on hand because the market is having the sale of the century, and all its going to cost is the economy, and thousands of jobs.

Shame on all of you lemmings who are playing along.

It’s not about how many people have died so far. It’s about the mortality rate and how easily and fast this virus spreads. If we allow half of the population to be infected this year, there will be millions of Americans dead from this virus by the end of 2020. 

The replacement cloth is available from Apple for a cool $599.