bells

GeorgeBMac said:

He is quite right to shame Apple.   They should be ashamed.

Their blocking the use of bluetooth for necessary apps will cost tens of thousands of lives. 

Trump already has the blood of almost 70,000 on his hands.  Does Tim want the blood of that much and more on his hands?    When your mother, father, wife or child is dying this ideological argument for "privacy" tends to lose its appeal.

Was it too difficult to read the whole article? Did you miss the part where Apple and Google created an API that France could have elected to use that would accomplish the same goal more effectively without compromising security?

So it isn't an either or situation. No doubt France has been far more effective in addressing Covid-19 then the US, but in this instance France is blinded by its hate of American companies. I also find it ironic that France hit Apple with a big penalty for updating IOS in a way that effected performance for older iPhone, but here it wants Apple to adopt a solution that will kill battery life. The hypocrisy is amplified by the fact that Apple has given France a solution. 

Apple also has to worry about what it is willing to do for one Country it will have to be willing to do for all. This access can be abused and Apple will have a hard time putting the cat back in the bag once released. 

mjtomlin said:

georgie01 said:

seanismorris said:

My amateur projections saying the number of infected will quadruple over the next 2 week (in the USA)...

I really hope I’m wrong.

You may be right and of course that would be very bad, but we as a country desperately need perspective. As of now, if the coronavirus deaths quadruple they will still be less than projected deaths for the flu. It also very likely that the death rate is strongly skewed toward a higher death rate since those who are suffering are mainly the ones being tested.

I only say these things because our panic and overreactions to the coronavirus is causing more problems than the virus itself. We need to take it seriously, but we need to have perspective and patience.

Point 1. Anyone who suspects they may have is being tested, not just “those who are suffering”.

Point 2. You cant base “overreacting” to what the numbers show NOW. This isn’t about NOW, its about preparing for what might come, if you dont do anything NOW. This ignorance is EXACTLY why the US has sharply risen in the passed week - no one took it seriously when they SHOULD have - long before it became a problem. With an epidemic you have to fix it before it begins, otherwise its too late.

Point 3. “If the deaths quadruple” ... We havent even started with the body counts yet. The US is going to surge and surpass all other countries combined due to the lack of national leadership and management. 

Comparing the flu to Covid-19 isn't helpful. People who get the flu know they are sick pretty quick, can stay home and get better without infecting people. With Covid-19 you don't know you are sick right away, so you go around infecting people before you known you are sick so it it is much more contagious. 

The flu has killed about 23, 000 over the last six months in the US. Covid-19 is approaching half that in about three weeks. Many health officials also believe the actual number is much higher because people were dying with the same symptoms but not being tested for Covid-19 because we didn't have the testing ability and it wasn't part of the national attention until the last few weeks. 

The real concern is the strain being put on the health system, which if overburdened cannot treat everybody infected, including all the people who have other health problems.  This is already being seen in hospitals across the country. 

Point 1. It would be nice if everybody who suspected they had it was being tested. Unfortunately, the federal government is so incompetent despite knowing for at least three months this was coming we don't have enough tests to do it on anybody who suspects they have it. That is how it should be though. Failing to have the tests available despite having plenty of time to do so was a major muck up. 

Point 2. You are right, but it should be pointed out that the guy in the White House and Fox News was telling people it was a hoax. Maybe that was so they could dump their stocks. Nonetheless it is hard to take it seriously when the people who are supposed to be protecting the country seem to have little clue on what they are doing and telling everybody there was nothing to worry about. The numbers are also going up because initially we lacked the ability to test everybody who needed to be tested and obtaining the results was slow. The ability to test is improving so the numbers are going up. None of this should be surprising though since the guy in the White House got rid of the Office in the White House responsible for preparing for a pandemic. So all the people with the experience in this area and responsible for formulating a national response were canned. Not that it would matter to the current guy in the White House because he thinks he knows more than the scientists. 

Point 3. You may be right in terms of the US surging and the numbers quadrupling. Thankfully some of the State governors have demonstrated some leadership and we might contain the numbers despite the White House. The whole country should have been locked down a month ago, and we probably would have been coming out of this now. 

bonobob said:

tundraboy said:

It's not as if Apple is immune from a competitor imitating their unpatentable technology and making tons of money from it.  Cough, Microsoft Windows, cough.

Apple’s biggest sherlock of all time is when they copied their windowed gui from, cough, Xerox PARC

That analogy is flawed. Apple paid Xerox to look around for ideas.

Plus Xerox’s GUI was running on a huge mainframe. Apple had to design the Mac from the ground up to work on 128 K machine. It was an engineering feat at the time.

The whole premise of being Sherlocked is flawed.  First Sherlock came out before the more feature rich Watson. Watson itself was inspired by Sherlock.  It was foolish for Watson to think Apple wasn’t going to add more features with each OS update. 

neilm said:

Good thing Apple has never hired anyone from a competitor or supplier, and then tried to entice that person's erstwhile colleagues to follow.

/s
(In case your sarcasm detectors aren't yet fired up this Monday morning.)

It would help if you took the effort to actually read the article. This guy allegedly not only created his company while still working at Apple (that would be OK), but did so while utilizing Apple's time and resources. That is a breach of his employment obligations.