greg uvan

I don't like Google Maps because of privacy issues. I mostly only use Apple Maps. But then, I visited a small city in Quebec, and Apple Maps basically pretended like it didn't exist. The satellite imagery was super blurry, and all in black and white. There were very few points of interest marked. 

I bit the bullet and installed Google Maps, because I needed to find a place to eat breakfast with my kids. It blew my mind apart, to see how far ahead Google is than Apple. Considering the absolute poverty of Apple's data in this city, Google had street view of every street in the town. AND, it had 3D models of many major landmarks, such as the main cathedral. 

I love Apple, and I am super glad to hear that they're still putting their shoulder behind the grindstone and are committed to improving Maps, because compared to Google, they have a very long way to go. Maybe that's not true in big cities like San Fran or New York, but in smaller places it is very much the case.

MacPro said:

greg uvan said:

I actually avoid Google as much as possible. I have about 250 Google owned domains listed in /etc/hosts that point at 127.0.0.1. The idea of using a Google owned webbrowser, where every keystroke and every click could in theory be mined by the great all-seeing eye, just makes me sick.

Care to share that section of your host file?  I'd love to paste it in.  I already have a few in but not a large list.

Here, I made a github repository for them for you, (for everyone.)

This one lists over 200 domains for blocking Google, but you can still use google.com for search, in a pinch.

https://github.com/gnacu/hostblocking/blob/master/google

And this one, for extra measure, lists 895 for blocking Facebook. Another worthy endeavor. Word of warning, Instagram embeds around the web stop working. If you still want these, you'll have to selectively remove some of these entries. 

https://github.com/gnacu/hostblocking/blob/master/facebook

urahara said:

I still like Spotify more, bacause you have here playlists created by other users.

Apple Music has playlists created by other users. 

When you create a playlist of your own, you can go to the "For You" tab, then click on your face, and you can manage the list of your own playlists that you share publicly. 

When you follow other people, friends or famous people, you see their personal playlists, and can even subscribe to them. They're live updating, just like the ones produced by Apple themselves.

Call me a free market guy, but this just sounds like straight up censorship. I'm from Canada, and the Canadian gov't pulls the same crap. It's nominally to protect Canadian artists and workers. But it makes me angry that there is content that is on the internet, technically available globally, that we cannot access for political reasons. It's also infantalizing of the Canadian population. A) That we can't decide for ourselves what we'd prefer to watch, and spend our money on what we actually want to spend our money on, and B ) That Canadian artists can't compete on a global scale. Yes they can. If a Canadian production is good, people everywhere, including in the US, will lap it up, not because there is some law forcing them watch it, but because it's great content. So, governments should stop treating us like children, and let us spend our money to watch whatever we want. And if that content is coming from America, then, that's where it's coming from. </rant>

It's funny, and Samsung is completely shameless. 

However, it doesn't have anything to do with "class" that Apple doesn't mock Samsung in its ads. It's just classic marketing, when you're ahead of the competition, you never mention the competition. Samsung is behind Apple (on certain metrics, not all) and the advertising paints a picture of Samsung as the scrappy underdog taking on the Apple Goliath. When Apple was the underdog of the PC world, they had absolutely no issue, it certainly wasn't inhibited by their class, running comparison ads against PCs and Windows.

If Samsung weren't running these dumb comparison ads to Apple, we'd wonder what was wrong with their marketing department. 

The logical inconsistencies don't matter that much from the advertising perspective. It's just a gimmick, most people aren't paying attention to whether Samsung sells dongles on their website.

I'm not a big fan of his speech rhythm. It sounds overly read–from–a–script. The intonation rises and falls in strange and off putting ways. 

The content of the video is fine, but the delivery is distracting. This is just constructive criticism, I'm not trying to be a dick. I think you should try to have a more naturally flowing, conversational voice. 

I tried to use it, and then didn't find it interesting or compelling and would stop using. Then I'd read an article mentioning it, and go, "Oh yeah, why aren't I using that?" Then I'd check it out, see a few new posts from some artists, think, oh neat. Then I'd stop using it again.

I don't know 100% why that is, but, part of it is that I only care to follow a few artists, and they don't post all that often, so there was no reason to check every day. And no notification of new content. And the enthusiasm to check would just drain away until I wasn't looking at it at all. I imagine my experience was common, if others even tried as hard as I did to find it useful.

News that it's going away is not the least bit surprising.

First, the ~ in the path doesn't specify "this Mac" it specifies the current user's home folder, wherever that may be. 

But, there is a much easier way to get to the library. Click the Go menu in the finder, press Option, the Library appears in the list, click it.

By the way, the Command-Shift-Period shortcut is an excellent tip. 

We would all do well to remember the adage, you should never meet your hero. For example, Gandhi probably beat his wife, do we think that's a great idea? No. But he's still Gandhi, and his resolve and his accomplishments are still admirable. 

People are complicated messes. They are admixtures of admirable and shameful characteristics, especially if you bring their entire life under scrutiny. We need to be able to detach the admirable character from the flawed human underneath, and that's what a good story does.

Ultimately, the story isn't about the man and his failings, it's about a character who did something amazing.

DAalseth said:

matrix077 said:

Like I said, a big missed opportunity users can’t apply for one right away after the keynote. 

I’ll get one immediately when I can. It ticks all the boxes for me. 

I could not agree more. I'd have one today if I could. Unfortunately who knows when it will come to Canada. ApplePay itself got to England, Australia, and some parts of Europe, before it came to Canada. I'm not holding my breath.

I'm in the same boat, being in Canada. I would hop on this in a minute if it were available here. I wanted to use ApplePay so much, that I went out and got an American Express card as that was the first to support ApplePay in Canada. Took another year or so before MasterCard and Visa became available. I use ApplePay, with Apple Watch (my favorite way to use it) every day. It works brilliantly. Groceries, Tim Hortons, etc. The gas pumps have to accept contactless for it to work, but many of them around here do.