linkman

I would be mostly satisfied if AM just gives me the correct directions each time. I'm by no means a frequent user of it, but I have had several times in the past two years where it directs me to a totally wrong location -- which I only found out after attempting to drive there and get into an endless loop once I'm close to what AM thought was the destination. Not encountered recently, but I also hope they fixed the problem where it would provide directions to an identically named place that is 1000+ miles from my current location instead of the one that is <5 miles from my current location.

I think we can look at this two different ways:

1. It's not a problem. After all, the telephone company drops off a big and nearly useless book containing names, addresses, and phone numbers of lots of subscribers on my porch every year. Heck, they even provide (or at least used to) a list of numbers to telemarketers in electronic format.

2. Facebook really screwed up again and probably got their stuff hacked and someone will initiate a class action lawsuit and hundreds of millions will be eligible for free credit report monitoring for a year (value: nearly zero).

GeorgeBMac said:

macplusplus said:

GeorgeBMac said:

macplusplus said:

rossb2 said:

I think Apple are making too many laptops, with the air. They dropped the 12 inch. But the air that is left, I find it pointless. It is not light enough to really be an air. Plus it is only a 7 watt TDP processor, and only two cores. For those reasons alone I would go with the pro. I feel that Apple should be concentrating on economies of scale with the pro, and just selling that. Splitting your customers off on to the air seems wasteful at this point.

MacBook Air is an excellent corporate laptop to be sold by ten thousands. That is economies of scale...

That's true -- at least for some.
But being a non-repairable, non-upgradeable machine it becomes a disposable consumable from the perspective of most IT departments.  Frankly I have never worked with one or for one that would go there.

Enterprises don’t repair or upgrade. They trash and get new. Within a deal of ten thousands, repairs and upgrades are already covered by the deal. Corporate accounts work differently than individual accounts.

As I said, that has not been my experience.   Quite the opposite really.  One of the manifests of most IT departments is to operate cost efficiently -- which is one of the reasons why they control the purchasing and distribution of equipment.   So, throwing away a $1,500 piece of equipment for a minor, easily fixed problem like a failed harddrive is incompatible with their mandate.

In 25 years in the field I have never seen one act the way you describe.    I have no doubt that they are out there -- many are perhaps contractors supporting networks for mom 7 pop operations.   But no major IT department would waste money like that.

My company's (100000+ employees) IT department policy is to repair anything covered by warranty and trash it if there's a failure out of warranty. We always buy an extended warranty which usually puts it at 3-5 years of coverage. Any upgrades (including laptop battery replacements) are paid for by the business department. We also schedule replacements of desktops/laptops around the end of their warranty period. There are a few exceptions (like mine where I have a desktop as my primary PC and a laptop as a secondary -- the laptop's warranty expired 1.5 years ago).

My personal take on the corporate policy is that they replace personal computers too soon. The performance and reliability improvements don't warrant such a short cycle. Most of the bottlenecks of performance for business use are I/O related and server-side. Any increases in equipment failures are mitigated by having readily available spares/loaners, all important data on servers or backed up, and quick recovery time by standardized imaging.

designr said:

As I understand it though, current legal doctrine and precedent in the US at least, is they cannot compel you to enter or otherwise give your passcode. Is that correct?

That should be true, but some instances seem to have trampled on the 5th amendment lately. Recently it seems that upon entering the country at the border they can require it (this is different than being compelled in a criminal trial however). This case certainly appears to contradict the self-incrimination clause: https://www.bostoncriminallawyersblog.com/massachusetts-appeals-court-affirms-contempt-order-petitioner-unlock-iphone/
Edit: this one too: http://www.fox13news.com/news/local-news/judge-jails-man-for-failing-to-unlock-phones

Mike Wuerthele said:

jkrarup said:

Some carriers have apps that you can install on the phone which will help identify or block known Spam callers. AT&T has one called AT&T Call Protect. There are also third party apps that you can purchase or subscribe to that also filter out Spam. Also set up a contact with the number 000-000-0000 and block this contact to block "UNKNOWN" callers. "UNKNOWN" callers are callers that block their caller ID so there are no number to identify them.

Unfortunately, the carrier apps seem to be losing the arms race to the callers. AT&T Call Protect started strong, but at least for the last three months, it has fallen far, far behind in blocking and identifying bogus callers.

I want it to be good, it was good when it launched. It isn't anymore -- at least not right now.

AT&T's Call Protect is $3.99 per month, and is only for business and postpaid customers. None of those requirements are appetizing to me. It lost me before it even launched.