glnf

9secondkox2 said:

AppleZulu said:

Now China is halting exports of certain rare earth metals and magnets. They have a monopoly on them, and the US needs them. I'm sure @9secondkox2 ; will tell us how this was all part of Trump's brilliant master plan as well. He has our best interests at heart, and has thought all this stuff through, you know. Don't you fret. Everything's fine.

Pretty sure the current admin is prepared for chin to pull every last one of their cards. The Chinese government is a lethal combination of petulant, proud, and evil. You don’t stir that up unless you’re prepared to do some serious stuff. China is not a free country and is not run by benevolent people. China has a public plan to reshape the world in its image. They need standing up to now more than ever. Tarriffs are small potatoes. 

From where I stand (Europe), what you say sounds equally true for the current US government. „The Trump government is a lethal combination of petulant, proud, and evil. The US in it’s current form is not a free country anymore and is not run by benevolent people. Trump has a public plan to reshape the world for his benefits. He needs standing up to now more than ever.“ I‘m not talking about the american population or culture for witch I have a great admiration. I‘m talking about your current government. It really terrifies me and not in a good way. 

lkrupp said:

substance said:

How is this app that much different any app that has 'everything-and-the-kitchen-sink' built into them (like Facebook had they not broken Messenger out into a separate app)? 

And why is WeChat so popular in China?  What's to prevent the latest and greatest chap app to come around in a year or two to knock it off its pertch?

Why so popular? Probably because the dictatorship wants it to be since it almost certainly has access to all data flowing through it. The Chinese people have no freedom of speech, no right to assemble to petition the government (think Tiananmen  Square), no right to a political opinion (unless it conforms to the dictatorship’s), no real religious freedom. Look what the dictatorship did to Tibet (a cultural genocide) and now the Uighurs (a physical and cultural genocide. Watch the latest PBS Frontline show). The Chinese people are only a half-step above the poor souls who were unfortunate enough to be born in North Korea.  

I live in Switzerland. I started using WeChat when working with a Chinese design company. It is simply brilliant. It is extremely convenient for communication, sharing files and organising work. It handles all sorts of file format, reduces the size and transcodes from one format to the other. You don’t even have to be aware of it. Just post, receive and distribute. It is totally clutter-free, transparent and responsive and there is a great (yet super simple) client for MacBooks. After a while I started noticing that quite a few of my colleges in Switzerland also love WeChat. It is not widely used here, so we (have to) stick to WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. But I wouldn’t mind doing all in WeChat. It really combines simplicity and ease of use in a hugely versatile, powerful and fun application. Shame it is also so problematic. 

mattinoz said:

So what's in a modem that is different / hard compared to the M1?

Seems an odd statement to just hang out there.

You are (also) dealing with analogue signal processing at incredibly high frequencies. Designing a microprocessor is stacking up Lego bricks, designing a G5 modem is wizardry and magic with thrown in quantum effects. So to speak.

I‘am deeply worried. That’s how Trump operates. He started a trade war to distract from his failure to stop the war in Ukraine (on day one, as he promised before the election). Now that his delusional „Liberation Day“ turned out a megalomaniac failure, what next? Real nukes opposed to economic nukes? He sees enemies everywhere except maybe in Russia and North Korea. We better give him something to be proud about. Otherwise he is prone to set the world on fire. One way or the other. 

randominternetperson said:

What proportion of Apple's revenue comes from Final Cut Pro? I suspect they could gain a complete monopoly of the market and it wouldn't make a material difference to Apple Inc.

Apple doesn’t make much money with its professional software offerings like FCP or Logic Pro. That’s obvious (and generous from Apples side) since these packages are not only very affordable but not sold on a subscription base. I bought FCPX some 10 years ago and had all the updates without ever paying again. What a great offer! FCP makes Apple indirectly money by selling Apple Hardware and it also functions as a great platform to demonstrate the power of Apple computers.

viclauyyc said:

sflocal said:

viclauyyc said:

Well, it looks good on number in the presentation. But let’s not forget the Ultra is comparing with a 2 year old Xeon. 2 years is a lot in computer technology. Not to mention, arguably AMD’s Epyc is the fastest CPU in the PC world. 

Let’s hope the future Mac Pro will be even faster with 4/8 sets of CPU. But it might cost $8000 on the entry model.

Intel's offerings until just recently have remained stagnant on the Xeon side.  It's only right to compare it with Apple's current Mac Pro offerings, even though it's 2 years old.  It's still incredible how Apple has pushed the performance envelope in those two years where Intel was nowhere to be seen.

While AMD's offerings is also impressive, when compared in terms of performance-per-watt, ASi outperforms them both.

Honestly, I don’t understand why Apple is so emphasis on performance/watt. Sure save energy is good and less noise from fan. But no one really care if their $100000 sports car use much less gas than the next car. People care about how fast it can go and how it handle the corner, not gas/miles.

The low power consumption also indicates how much room there still is for further performance gains. Desktop systems are usually limited by their power consumption and more important by the heat that has to be dispersed from tiny areas on the dyes. Apple proves that they have plenty of headroom with their chip design.

I totally see the mothers side. I, as probably most adults not familiar with these sort of games, would never expect the possibility of spending this ridiculous amount of money on loot-boxes and the likes for power-ups and fancy digital clothes.

No-one in the right mind would throw over $10,000 into a mobile game. So why is it possible in the first place? For oligarchs? If I see a multi $1,000 item on my bill I either remember the purchase (eg. a new MacBook) or I expect a mistake by the bank or a fraud. I would never think of a mobile game my nice is playing.

Remember the days when mobile phone roaming costs abroad could add up to the 10,000s? I have quite a lot of friends (here in Switzerland, we have borders everywhere) that walked into this trap. They simply had no clue, that their phone bill of a few $10 a month could explode into the 10,000s eg. by taking a walk close to a border and ending up in the wrong network. They never willingly agreed to these costs. You could argue, that they forgot to make the right settings on their phones but they where totally unaware of the possible costs involved. It is like buying chewing gum without looking at the price and being charged $1,000 at the till.

For me with a slight hearing loss this function is an absolutely blessing. It offers an easy and affordable access to a hearing aid when the situation requires it. I look forward to all the possible improvements in the future when Apple manages to integrate AI isolation of voices (like they do very successfully in FCP). I hope Apple will succeed here in Europe against the strong lobby of the hearing aid industry. For the time being Apple could just call the function in France and other relevant countries „equalizer“ opposed to „clinical grade hearing aid“ and leave it on.