dewme

sbdude said:

dewme said:

ferdinandcc said:

Oh man, if ever there were an article that AppleInsider should lock down comments on for political reasons, it’s this one.

There are no politics involved here. This is simply a result of predictive analytics and algorithms that are driven by big data sampling with too little consideration for factors that may have skewed the raw data that’s driving the prediction algorithms. 

Unfortunately the aggregated raw data for some topics and associations is inherently biased by factors that are outside of the realm of the data collection and predictive logic and algorithms. This may be due to any number of reasons. 

In other words, this really falls into the “garbage in garbage out” category. I recall that just a few years ago if I typed the phrase “The doctor  …“ the next word predicted would be “he” or a male doctor emoji. Apple has obviously added compensation logic since then to consider ways the next word prediction may have been influenced by inherent or historical bias or skew in the raw data. 

A lovely thought, but probably naive. It's equally possible to be an algorithmic bug as it is a programmed response. This is the world we live in.

Obviously I disagree in part because I’ve worked on predictive algorithms and understand the dependencies that these algorithms have on the quality of the data. In fact, removing the sampling bias is in a way a post processing fix-up (compensation) to add a human based understanding to correct the unintentional bias in the prediction logic. 

Apple Notes could certainly benefit from some functional improvements. I’d love to see it upgraded with far better outlining capabilities, which is one of the things that attracted me to OneNote many years ago at version 1.0. Over the years I’ve been using OneNote less and less mainly because it has a very convoluted user interface and it long ago reached the point of feeling onerous and bloated. At one point it incorporated (and may still have) a shared whiteboarding  capability. No matter how many times I tried to use it, everyone including myself found it clumsy and unintuitive. Maybe it’s better now, but I’m not going to bother with it. Other features in OneNote seemed to suffer from some of the same difficulties as MS Word, like font and style instabilities. But the table functions work well, which Apple obviously took note of.

Eventually my frustrations with OneNote (on all platforms) led me to try more lightweight applications like SimpleNote and Apple Notes. Neither of these come close to OneNote in terms of total functionality or capabilities. However, I’ve dialed back my expectations and limped along with whatever these programs do offer. For jotting down a quick note or capturing an idea there’s nothing faster than SimpleNote, which is so basic that it makes Apple Notes feel “heavy.” I also use Textastic for note taking and it has the superb ability to format programming language code/text rather nicely. A similar capability in Apple Notes may be nice, but it’s probably too domain specific for most Apple users.

I’m totally in favor of Apple adding more capabilities and refinement to Notes. At the same time I’m hoping they don’t go too far like I feel Apple did with OneNote. Keep it small, light, fast, and intuitive and always say focused on the user experience without compromise.

Apple's update process is one of the crown jewels of the company. Sure, I'd like to have a little more control over when updates are performed and how they are managed on my devices, but the reliability of Apple's update functionality itself is enviable and without equal for anyone who's had to provide similar (but never quite as good as Apple's) product firmware and software updates for deployed and in-service products. It's been about 16 years since an Apple update "bricked" one of my devices, an iPod Touch. Since it was my first Apple product I wasn't aware of some of the recovery options available to me at the time. I probably could have fixed it myself, but when I brought it into the Apple Store they looked at it, took my case off my iPod, and slapped my case on a brand new replacement iPod. I was in and out of the store in 5 minutes.

The only other time an Apple update failed me was when I installed a Beta 1 version of macOS with APFS on a Fusion drive equipped Mac before Apple had officially recognized that APFS didn't play well with Fusion drives. But that was a Beta thing and the only one you can blame for messing up your machine with a Beta version is yourself. Time Machine rescued me after a total rebuild of the Fusion drive. It took at least one more major release of macOS for Apple to get APFS working correctly with Fusion drives. I've since had no problems. The up side is I learned a lot about Fusion drives in the process, which allowed me to add several more years of useful life to my 1 TB hard-drive-only Mac mini (2014) by adding a 500 GB M.2 SSD and rebuilding the two drives into one 1.5 TB Fusion drive. Huge, huge improvement.

I'm sure Apple considered potential heat issues of running an update on devices that are still in their packaging. Apple has significantly lightened up on their packaging over the past few years. They  don't cocoon their devices in foam or Styrofoam that would seriously trap the heat. The fact that they can power up a packaged iPhone using MagSafe tells us that the gap between the phone and the charging pad must be fairly thin and trap less heat.

All companies have resource limitations and must strategically prioritize how they allocate their limited resources to different initiatives. In addition to resources there are also strategic goals and the matter of focus. It comes down to deciding where they want to apply their focus and how they want to invest in everything they've decide to go after. It's not a case of everything in their focus getting the same level of support. It's a prioritized, tiered system where the most strategically important things get top priority for resources while lower priority things get lower priority for resources. At some point lower tier things may get no priority and are abandoned or postponed indefinitely. There is no such thing as "everything we do is top priority." Saying that is like saying "we have no priorities."

It's pretty clear where Apple's priorities are today and where their priorities were leading up to today. Products like Apple TV and HomeKIt are still alive, as is the iPad mini and iMac, but they certainly aren't getting the kind of love that iPhone, Apple Vision Pro, "AI," Apple Silicon, and MacBook Pro/Air are getting. My guess is that Apple puts its highest priority on products that can dominate the markets they serve. In my opinion, HomeKit is probably in a slow burn mode because of open standards based initiatives like Matter and Thread. Apple can certainly play in an open standards based market, but can they dominate such a market? In terms of Matter/Thread compatible devices, Apple doesn't really have a big footprint when it comes to the number and variety of devices it sources into that market. My guess is that Apple will keep their finger on the pulse of what's happening in the open standards area, but they probably feel no compelling reason to try to drive that market. They'll jump in when an opportunity presents itself where they can differentiate their offerings from the crowd and reap the benefits with a relatively low investment in resources, but the bulk of their strategic investments will continue to be areas where they become the de facto standard by driving the market and dominating when it comes to profitability. 

I'd say the market for general purpose networking gear like AirPort routers is not even on Apple's lowest level of funded initiatives. They currently have no need to play in that market.

I believe this is all about influence and control. Governments everywhere are totally freaking out about the influence that tech companies and social media have over the masses. Whether the influence was earned, forced, or obtained through some sort of subterfuge, like the promise of some sort of global kumbaya of like minded equals, does not matter. Governments want to believe that they are the ultimate guardian, controller, source of truth, arbitrator, and overlord over their flock of citizenry, both minions and elites alike. 

It would be helpful to discuss this DOJ action without a cloud of politics hanging over it. Politics makes everything suck no matter which side you're on. It simply flips the bozo bit to 1 (ON). Once the bozo bit is enabled, logic disappears.

What would be helpful for me is if someone could recall a previous instance where the US government intervened over the business matters of a non-monopolistic, non-exclusive, non-commodity, highly competitive business in a still growing and thriving market to achieve an actual benefit, quality of service improvement, or lower cost to consumers without destroying or distorting the entire market to the point of no return. Commoditization is what happens when innovation dies, Everything the DOJ is alluding to in its case against Apple is to try to force Apple into become a commodity.

All I can think of are the commoditization of markets like gas stations and drug stores where what was once the entire focus and reason for these businesses to exist was basically destroyed once they reached commodity status. Part of this was caused by government intervention in the marketing of things that made those stores unique, i.e., gasoline and pharmaceuticals. The primary money making focus of gas stations is no longer selling gasoline, automotive service, or improving the gas buying experience. It's about selling beer, soda, candy, week old hotdogs, and lottery tickets. Drug stores are much the same. The actual pharmacy part of a typical drugstore today is a little glassed-off cubbyhole tucked way in the back of the store, way behind the rows of Cheetos, candy, greeting cards, cheap toys, hair colorant, and refrigerated soft drinks.