Apple has agreed to pay a sum of €318 million (around $350 million) to
settle an Italian tax fraud case, according to a report from the
country's daily newspaper La Repubblica.
Later this year we will likely see a retrospective claw-back of hundreds of millions by the Australian government and of Billions by the Irish government at the behest of the EU.
So, the blackmailing has finally paid off for these EU crooks.
I'm not going to screech about Apple needing to "go private", because such nonsense will never happen. However, if this punitive pursuit of back taxes by EU scumbags snowballs, it will cost Apple a boatload. Tim will have to take the hit and be fired. It's even possible the Apple board of directors knows this is coming, thus the recent announcements, including Williams taking the COO spot.
You have it entirely backwards. Apple only introduce technologies when they work the way Apple want them to, taking everything into consideration. Samsung on the other hand will introduce a new technology just so they have bragging rights, even if there are huge downsides to using said technology that are not obvious at first.
What was the technology that suddenly made a larger screen size meet Apple's requirements and where you can point out superiority over all preceding large screen phones?
A combination, but the main one was obviously production technology among Apple's suppliers of Low-Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) displays. This has been covered here about ten times over the past three years.
Before the release of the iPhones 6 and 6+, Apple was already using 75% of the world's production capacity of LTPS displays. When the 6 series launched, they suddely needed 50 million displays per quarter, some in a new pixel density.
There was no way display makers could handle Apple's orders prior to a capacity build-out in 2012 and '13. Digitalclips is right about other aspects of the total big-screened package. They needed to shrink the case, round the edges and downsize the battery, which means they needed to develop another new processor and new software.
I think we'll find the same complex of production constraints around OLED display supply, plus the usual quality and longevity considerations. Finally, the issue of cost. Two suppliers had to gain competence and then compete for Apple's business, and Samsung probably needed to suffer a little, in order to bring costs down.
I'm not going to screech about Apple needing to "go private", because such nonsense will never happen. However, if this punitive pursuit of back taxes by EU scumbags snowballs, it will cost Apple a boatload. Tim will have to take the hit and be fired. It's even possible the Apple board of directors knows this is coming, thus the recent announcements, including Williams taking the COO spot.
Tim will not be fired. He cannot be blamed for these countries incompetencies. Apple is not doing anything that most other companies around the world are doing. This whole "tax" issue is surfacing because the world economy is collapsing and all these countries are getting desperate to find ways to bring money in. The easiest thing to do...
"Let's look at our own tax laws for possible loopholes left by our own incompetent law makers and force these companies to pony up for our mistakes."
"Yeah, change the law, so that what was once perfectly legal, is now illegal... and fine them for taking advantage of it."
Using my AW in sun light frequently... don't see that problem.
The 'problem' is that Apple phones don't have OLED screens at the moment while Samsung phones obviously do, so OLED has to be considered to be an inferior technology right up to the minute Apple releases a phone with an OLED screen when suddenly it will become the best technology since sliced bread and the ass-covering will take the form: Apple's OLED panels are better than anyone elses and all those that existed in products before the iPhone can be discounted as grossly inferior. There will be claims that OLED panels have only become good enough because Apple has secretly been researching the OLED tech that is in the new panels, based on Apple marketing inventing and using some term like 'retina' in describing 'their' new displays.
I have argued with people that claims of burn-in are grossly exaggerated and are limited to extreme cases, but no doubt any panels Apple uses will be touted as being somehow superior to all others and free of the non-issue because Apple has solved the 'problem' because of some marketing spiel.
Think of all the BS arguments on AI for years about the inferiority of phones with screens larger than what were in iPhones - right up until iPhones got them. It's exactly like that nonsense.
If Apple shifts to OLED on their iPhones / iPads, I'm willing to bet that it's related to this patent:
“Honestly …we could have done a larger iPhone years ago,” Cook said. “It’s never just about making a larger phone. It’s about making a better phone in every single way.”
Cook went on to say that Apple wanted to make sure the display, battery, and software were ready for the bigger form factor before shipping. For example, Apple developed a one-handed mode for the bigger iPhones that pops the top portion of the screen down so the user can reach it with one hand.
That one-handed mode must have taken them years to develop, given their noted lack of software prowess. Samsung already had a on-handed usability feature. Large screened phones were obviously very usable even without such a feature. Their practicality and popularity was not reliant on their being such a feature. Tim Cook's comment was disingenuous.
Tim's comment contained quite a few factors, hard to state they were all disingenuous especially when you are discussing Samsung in comparison who copied the iPhone down to the minutest detail when it came out. I assume you don't accept that fact though.
Using my AW in sun light frequently... don't see that problem.
The 'problem' is that Apple phones don't have OLED screens at the moment while Samsung phones obviously do, so OLED has to be considered to be an inferior technology right up to the minute Apple releases a phone with an OLED screen when suddenly it will become the best technology since sliced bread and the ass-covering will take the form: Apple's OLED panels are better than anyone elses and all those that existed in products before the iPhone can be discounted as grossly inferior. There will be claims that OLED panels have only become good enough because Apple has secretly been researching the OLED tech that is in the new panels, based on Apple marketing inventing and using some term like 'retina' in describing 'their' new displays.
I have argued with people that claims of burn-in are grossly exaggerated and are limited to extreme cases, but no doubt any panels Apple uses will be touted as being somehow superior to all others and free of the non-issue because Apple has solved the 'problem' because of some marketing spiel.
Think of all the BS arguments on AI for years about the inferiority of phones with screens larger than what were in iPhones - right up until iPhones got them. It's exactly like that nonsense.
spoken like a true troll on this forum. here, don't forget you membership card!
You have it entirely backwards. Apple only introduce technologies when they work the way Apple want them to, taking everything into consideration. Samsung on the other hand will introduce a new technology just so they have bragging rights, even if there are huge downsides to using said technology that are not obvious at first.
What was the technology that suddenly made a larger screen size meet Apple's requirements and where you can point out superiority over all preceding large screen phones?
do yourself a favor and read the Ive interview in the New Yorker. he answered your question specifically. thinness. they began with big displays first, of course, since the iPhone began as a tablet. but even at the iPhone 4 stage they were too chunky in his opinion. that changed w/ the 6.
The 'problem' is that Apple phones don't have OLED screens at the moment while Samsung phones obviously do, so OLED has to be considered to be an inferior technology right up to the minute Apple releases a phone with an OLED screen when suddenly it will become the best technology since sliced bread and the ass-covering will take the form: Apple's OLED panels are better than anyone elses and all those that existed in products before the iPhone can be discounted as grossly inferior. There will be claims that OLED panels have only become good enough because Apple has secretly been researching the OLED tech that is in the new panels, based on Apple marketing inventing and using some term like 'retina' in describing 'their' new displays.
I have argued with people that claims of burn-in are grossly exaggerated and are limited to extreme cases, but no doubt any panels Apple uses will be touted as being somehow superior to all others and free of the non-issue because Apple has solved the 'problem' because of some marketing spiel.
Think of all the BS arguments on AI for years about the inferiority of phones with screens larger than what were in iPhones - right up until iPhones got them. It's exactly like that nonsense.
If Apple shifts to OLED on their iPhones / iPads, I'm willing to bet that it's related to this patent:
Even though this patent relates to iPad, I can't see a reason why it can't apply to iPhone.
Given the patent is based on silicon it probably isn't compatible with the manufacture of flexible OLED panels so it might not be practical given where the tech seems to be these days.
Rumours suggest the Galaxy S7 might have an iris scanner expensive enough it may force a price rise. If such a thing can be made to work well with sufficient convenience it may render physical contact fingerprint recognition based authentication obsolete. My Nokia has no physical buttons on it's fascia and to me it makes phones that do seem inelegant and passé in terms of design and aesthetics. If iris scanning works, phones could be made to look a lot nicer..
What was the technology that suddenly made a larger screen size meet Apple's requirements and where you can point out superiority over all preceding large screen phones?
do yourself a favor and read the Ive interview in the New Yorker. he answered your question specifically. thinness. they began with big displays first, of course, since the iPhone began as a tablet. but even at the iPhone 4 stage they were too chunky in his opinion. that changed w/ the 6.
Do yourself a favour and stop drinking the cool-aid. The thinness excuse would be an example of Cook being disingenuous. The iPhone 5s was released in Sep. 2013. It had a 4" screen and was 7.6mm in thickness. The Huwai Ascend P6 was released in June 2013, had a 4.7" screen and was just 6.2mm thick. The Sony Xperia Z Ultra was released in July 2013, had a 6.4" screen and was just 6.5mm thick and was waterproof to IP58. The Lenovo K900 was even earlier; released in April 2013 with a 5.5" screen and was 6.9mm thick. OLED panels are thinner than LCDs so they aren't going to lead to a thicker phone.
What was the technology that suddenly made a larger screen size meet Apple's requirements and where you can point out superiority over all preceding large screen phones?
For that answer you have to look at the history of the iphone.
When the Iphone was originally released it was an amazing device, full web experience, photo gallery, with smooth scrolling and pinch-to-zoom all running smoothly on hardware that is unimaginably slow and weak compared to today's hardware. 13 TIMES SLOWER than even an Iphone 5, only 1 core running at four tenths of a GHZ!, a tenth of a GB of ram.
The Iphone ran so well on such weak hardware because of many optimizations apple made to the OS. One of those was the fixed pixel layout of apps.
So when it came time for higher resolutions, Iphone 4, apple could have gone with a standard resolution like 720p, but then their apps would be fractionally scaled and it would be ugly. So apple went with "retina" and doubled the resolution in each direction, thus allowing for apps to be scaled evenly. After the switch to retina, apple needed to give developers time to update their apps to the new resolution.
when it came time for a larger screen, Iphone 5, apple could have gone with a different screen aspect ratio, but again the existing apps would have suffered. instead they kept the horizontal resolution the same and added to the vertical resolution only, this allowed legacy apps to be letter-boxed. it was at this time that Apple introduced AutoLayout to IOS (IOS 6) and reccomended developers use it; but again, apple had to give developers time to update their apps to use AutoLayout.
After a cycle, many/most apps had been updated to use AutoLayout and apple could use any screen resolution they wanted. thus we got the Iphone 6 with varying screen sizes and a different aspect ratio than before.
...so OLED has to be considered to be an inferior technology right up to the minute Apple releases a phone with an OLED screen when suddenly it will become the best technology since sliced bread and the ass-covering will take the form: ...
Rarely is one technology superior or inferior in every way. There are many attributes to a display technology; 1) Brightness 2) Contrast Ratio 3) Color accuracy 4) Viewing Angle 5) Resolution 6) Sub Pixel Layout 7) Cost 8) Sunlight Readability 9) Reflectivness 10) Thickness 11) Response Time 13) image retention 14) Longevity 15) Power Usage
When OLED screens were first introduced, they excelled at Brightness, Contrast Ratio, and view angle, but failed pretty badly at the rest on this list. Since then, they have improved measurably, so now they exceed LCD in Brightness, contrast ratio, Response time, Viewing Angle, thickness, and power usage (depending); and are equal to LCD in most other measurements. However they still suffer from issues with longevity, image retention, and cost (though these have improved recently)
Comments
I'm not going to screech about Apple needing to "go private", because such nonsense will never happen. However, if this punitive pursuit of back taxes by EU scumbags snowballs, it will cost Apple a boatload. Tim will have to take the hit and be fired. It's even possible the Apple board of directors knows this is coming, thus the recent announcements, including Williams taking the COO spot.
Before the release of the iPhones 6 and 6+, Apple was already using 75% of the world's production capacity of LTPS displays. When the 6 series launched, they suddely needed 50 million displays per quarter, some in a new pixel density.
There was no way display makers could handle Apple's orders prior to a capacity build-out in 2012 and '13. Digitalclips is right about other aspects of the total big-screened package. They needed to shrink the case, round the edges and downsize the battery, which means they needed to develop another new processor and new software.
I think we'll find the same complex of production constraints around OLED display supply, plus the usual quality and longevity considerations. Finally, the issue of cost. Two suppliers had to gain competence and then compete for Apple's business, and Samsung probably needed to suffer a little, in order to bring costs down.
Tim will not be fired. He cannot be blamed for these countries incompetencies. Apple is not doing anything that most other companies around the world are doing. This whole "tax" issue is surfacing because the world economy is collapsing and all these countries are getting desperate to find ways to bring money in. The easiest thing to do...
"Let's look at our own tax laws for possible loopholes left by our own incompetent law makers and force these companies to pony up for our mistakes."
"Yeah, change the law, so that what was once perfectly legal, is now illegal... and fine them for taking advantage of it."
http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2015/11/apples-most-advanced-oled-display-invention-to-date-surfaces-with-a-fingerprint-reader-under-the-display-of-an-ipad.html
Even though this patent relates to iPad, I can't see a reason why it can't apply to iPhone.
do yourself a favor and read the Ive interview in the New Yorker. he answered your question specifically. thinness. they began with big displays first, of course, since the iPhone began as a tablet. but even at the iPhone 4 stage they were too chunky in his opinion. that changed w/ the 6.
Rumours suggest the Galaxy S7 might have an iris scanner expensive enough it may force a price rise. If such a thing can be made to work well with sufficient convenience it may render physical contact fingerprint recognition based authentication obsolete. My Nokia has no physical buttons on it's fascia and to me it makes phones that do seem inelegant and passé in terms of design and aesthetics. If iris scanning works, phones could be made to look a lot nicer..
When the Iphone was originally released it was an amazing device, full web experience, photo gallery, with smooth scrolling and pinch-to-zoom all running smoothly on hardware that is unimaginably slow and weak compared to today's hardware. 13 TIMES SLOWER than even an Iphone 5, only 1 core running at four tenths of a GHZ!, a tenth of a GB of ram.
The Iphone ran so well on such weak hardware because of many optimizations apple made to the OS. One of those was the fixed pixel layout of apps.
So when it came time for higher resolutions, Iphone 4, apple could have gone with a standard resolution like 720p, but then their apps would be fractionally scaled and it would be ugly. So apple went with "retina" and doubled the resolution in each direction, thus allowing for apps to be scaled evenly.
After the switch to retina, apple needed to give developers time to update their apps to the new resolution.
when it came time for a larger screen, Iphone 5, apple could have gone with a different screen aspect ratio, but again the existing apps would have suffered. instead they kept the horizontal resolution the same and added to the vertical resolution only, this allowed legacy apps to be letter-boxed.
it was at this time that Apple introduced AutoLayout to IOS (IOS 6) and reccomended developers use it; but again, apple had to give developers time to update their apps to use AutoLayout.
After a cycle, many/most apps had been updated to use AutoLayout and apple could use any screen resolution they wanted. thus we got the Iphone 6 with varying screen sizes and a different aspect ratio than before.
Rarely is one technology superior or inferior in every way. There are many attributes to a display technology;
1) Brightness
2) Contrast Ratio
3) Color accuracy
4) Viewing Angle
5) Resolution
6) Sub Pixel Layout
7) Cost
8) Sunlight Readability
9) Reflectivness
10) Thickness
11) Response Time
13) image retention
14) Longevity
15) Power Usage
When OLED screens were first introduced, they excelled at Brightness, Contrast Ratio, and view angle, but failed pretty badly at the rest on this list. Since then, they have improved measurably, so now they exceed LCD in Brightness, contrast ratio, Response time, Viewing Angle, thickness, and power usage (depending); and are equal to LCD in most other measurements. However they still suffer from issues with longevity, image retention, and cost (though these have improved recently)