crudman

whittonm said:

Oooh, a credit card, this is an insanely great Apple innovation!  Canadians must be going crazy waiting for it!  /sarcasmoff

Sarcasm appreciated, but if the features for the Canadian variant are the same as the US card it -is- going to be innovative. There are currently no Canadian issued cards that waive the foreign exchange fee (2.5%) for example. 

I think the reasoning for this being an Apple-targeted suit is that Apple has a patent (at least one, maybe more) to detect and lockout the device of the driver specifically. Here's a link: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=%28455%2F456.4.CCLS.+AND+20140422.PD.%29&OS=ccl/455/456.4+and+isd/4/22/2014&RS=%28CCL/455/456.4+AND+ISD/20140422%29

 I'm not saying I agree with this (other than people shouldn't be idiots when driving), just trying to provide some context and clarity. 

blastdoor said:

EsquireCats said:

This highlights an interesting phenomenon – Apple's technology is hamstrung by the necessity of producing in the 10s of millions. While other manufacturers do not have this problem and could implement lower-yield, cutting edge technology... yet they don't. When it comes to smartphones, we really don't see any genuinely original or innovative technological firsts from anything but the iPhone.

Well... I think Samsung sells quite a few phones, and they've managed to go OLED way ahead of Apple. 

Gruber makes an interesting point, which is that color accuracy with OLED kind of sucks. That could be a legit reason for Apple sticking with LCD. 

This I think is the key point. Due to lack of manufacturing capacity/capability, Apple has pushed forward with improving (significantly) LCD technology to the point that it's BETTER than OLED in many ways. OLED really isn't as great as many would have you think. If you look at the actual data it's not as energy efficient as they'd have you believe. And based on the improvements that Apple has made to LCD tech I'd say it's quite possible that Apple doesn't make the shift to OLED. 

OLED feels like just another spec race that Apple hasn't played to date. And I think that's okay. The screen on my 7 Plus is fantastic and my battery life rocks. Why do I need OLED?

thewhitefalcon said:

14nm vs 10nm isn't going to 'save space' in an iPad. Manufacturing process has nothing to do with physical chip size. 

It could if the 10nm process improves battery efficiency to the point that a smaller battery could be used while keeping use time at the 10 hour mark. Smaller battery = less weight. 

fastasleep said:

crudman said:

I don’t have a HomePod but have seriously considered one (I’m loaded up with Sonos and love them but choice is a good thing). One question I’ve got related to phone calls is Skype and other VOIP apps. We use Skype and Jabber at work and I’d love to use HomePod for those - how well do they work? Unfortunately my work machine is Windows based but Skype I can (and do) route through my iPhone. 
Personally I also use FaceTime audio all the time as most of my family and personal contacts have iPhones. While this article doesn’t mention FT-A or FT-V calls I assume that’s the same as regular voice calls, correct?

I think you're barking up the wrong tree. There's no third party app integration with HomePod. I also haven't seen any indication there's FaceTime integration, though receiving FT Audio calls seems like it'd be possible if not now then in the future.

That’s unfortunate - with the hardware and audio tech it seems like HomePod would be the ideal speaker phone for business. Certainly in my situation (primarily working from my home office and on calls 3-5 hrs per day) it would be fantastic, especially with the HD audio quality in most VOIP platforms. Ah well...