prof

mike1 said:

It's worth noting that Home Depot did not accept any type of contactless payment options. It wasn't only Apple Pay that wasn't available.

Of course. Basically the title should read: "Home Depot and H-E-B are finally arriving in the 2020s by adding contactless payments"... which is absolutely ridiculous. Here in Europe you have to search very hard to find a shop that doesn't take (contactless) payments since various radical security improvements over the last couple of years have enforced payment fulfilment providers to replace their card readers a few times and it would be ridiculous to swap outdated technology against slightly less outdated technology without contactless payment support.

The only problem with parental controls is that they're so halfassedly implemented that they're close to useless. There're whole guides explaining in detail how to circumvent them with ease and yet Apple decides to do shit about it, e.g. https://www.wikihow.com/Hack-Screen-Time. Even Android Parental Controls are much tighter nowadays than Apple.

There're so many issues which could be easily fixed that this is really laughable.

There're issues related to Apple wanting to ensure that they can milk the parents by making it hard to restrict what and how can be installed on the devices. Heck, I don't want to have to supply in credit card in the first place and rather allow my kids to spend their own money or vouchers on apps and other iAPP (you know, to learn financial responsibility), but nope. I would like to completely prevent the use of certain apps or even uninstall them remotely, but nope, uninstallation is not possible and I can't set the allowed time to zero as Apple insists the minimum is 1 minute. I also can't set time windows in which an app is allowed, either Downtime is on, or it's off so it's all or nothing for each day.

Then there's issues with the settings: Why can't I prevent making specific configuration changes like the time settings, why does it have to be pretty much all? And why can't I change or at least see the actual settings but only allow/block changes?!?

Then there's the maddening loopholes: If I want to block/limit YouTube, I want the whole f'ing phone to obey those choices! Not having to block the app and all individual country domains and then still see that if someone sends an iMessage with a link, they can just watch the "preview" in Messages as well as other messengers, or embed them in a Keynote presentation and watch them that way! Or browse to duckduckgo.com and watch them embedded on that website.

And last but certainly not least: The screen time accounting is faulty as hell; I see a screen time of 8 hours but all Apps accumulated only account to a much lower number, like 2h. WTF?!? I've mitigates the timezone and the app reinstall trick, yet something fishy is still going on.

If I had been aware of that nonsense beforehand, I would have never allowed my kids to have iPhones as the ability to limit their lust to become smartphones zombies was pretty much the only key argument in favour of doing so!

I for one do want a smaller phone but certainly not the iPhone 17 Slim but rather the iPhone 17 Mini! I still think it was the perfect form factor but unfortunately I have to take what's available. And yes: I also do want better battery life, but I disagree very much about how to achieve it. My iPhone 7 used to last a week to 10 days, my iPhone 13 and 15 only 3 to 4 days under the same circumstances despite having a better and larger battery and way more power efficient processors. Why's that? Simple, because the OS is doing a lot more shit in the background I absolutely do not care about and there's no way to effectively turn this off; low power mode is a true joke.

Fun fact: the iPhone SE 2020 was truly terrible in that regard, small battery AND a less efficient processor AND iOS doing it's background madness are a horrific combination.

While I don't support those "only in 'murika" bogus lawsuits, I would note that the data usage governance of iOS sucks big time. Even in low data/low power mode with disabled software and update downloads, "System services" from time to time like to go nuts and chew through 100MBs of data in no time. Happens to me multiple times a year when I'm on a local 1GB data plan abroad just to being able to use the occasional ride hailing, maps or transport card recharge. Last year I was even stranded on a remote South Korean beach because of that and had to find a restaurant with Wi-Fi just so I could re-up the data plan because System Services/"General" decided to download 800MB of "whatever" without my consent.

Just looking at my current usage, out of 2,86GB since the last reset 2 months ago, 1,06GB is attributed to System Services/General, with the next highest system service being Messaging at 98,5MB.

nubus said:

Hard to see anyone on Android switching. You have Samsung A56 and Pixel a9 both featuring 120Hz variable rate displays with more brightness. Even A55 did so. They all have flexible cameras (multiple lenses) and they are available in.... colors! Their AI features do work and in far more languages priced way below. 16e is not the switcher phone.

If 120Hz and high brightness are the only killer features you can find on an Android find that users care about, then they might as well stay on Android. The camera on those midlevel Android phones are utter crap and the A18 runs circles around the Exynos 1580.

sloth77 said:

I voted Remain in the UK back in 2016.  But as an Apple user, I can't say hand-on-heart that I would do so now, with the shenanigans the EU is pulling with Apple.

It is a shame, as some of the EU regulations have been decent - like the USB-C support.

As a user in the EU I see zero problem with that approach. Sure we get less features but most of them will only be available with the latest devices anyway so not a huge loss for the vast majority of users. Also we do get things that other countries won't get like alternative App Strores. And of course we don't get the anti-features that UK would like their users to enjoy like broken privacy and security...

If Apple prefers to play hardball and reduce their own new device sales for people thinking like you, I can totally live with that as the vast majority of regulations provide quite a benefit and a cooldown of the Apple market would also reduce the device prices.

A recent data breach exposed sensitive information including social security numbers for billions of people globally

Sure, leaked social security numbers for billions of people globally... for a concept that is very much unique to the US (and of course it's billions of citizens).

No one needs "artificial inflation" (or "AI") battery management. Adding a few no-brainer options to iOS like letting a phone stay permanently in Low Power Mode, giving a few more controls on how to save power and allow iPhones older than iPhone 15 to also limit charging to less than 100% would be a good start.

Useless and hopeless... fixing the existing mechanisms to actually work would be a good start. Why I would want to limit regular communication is a mystery to me (maybe someone should revisit the name iPhone) -- that's the main reason why my kids have a mobile phone to begin with. Who gives a crap about sexting (and other things prude Americans can't stand) in Messages and Facetime if Apple makes it impossible to really block shite "social" media apps and websites that make it super easy to even accidentally stumble across much worse stuff!

dewme said:
Very interesting. 
I’m surprised that Apple’s legal department didn’t deal with this concern earlier. GPL has long been a slippery slope for creating legal issues that can potentially result in your proprietary product code being opened up to public use. This has been the case for close to 20 years. I recall the Linksys WRT54G router being in the crosshairs until they caved and released their product source code. 

Every product I worked on after the Linksys case had to go through the legal team to ensure we were not exposed.