mbdrake76

It's pity they're not putting storage capacities in the terabytes on these things to allow you to download all your iTunes movie purchases - because if you don't download them, and the content provider pulls it from the iTunes store - you're screwed.  Just had a title removed from my library that I bought in 2015 for this reason.  As I have 1.75Tb worth of movies and that Apple storage is incredibly expensive, keeping them in the "cloud" seems the only reasonable way of doing it.  But no. 

And you don't get any recompense or any notification whatsoever from Apple prior to the title being withdrawn.  It makes buying movies from them a massive risk (even worse with other digital stores such as Amazon or Google Play as you don't get to download them as a file as you do with iTunes - assuming one has a computer, of course).  Subscriptions to Apple TV+, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, etc. are fine - you know what you're getting and you're willing to accept that you'd lose access to them if you stopped subscribing or if their licensing no longer permits them to stream the title. 

So for me, the Apple TV has lost its appeal somewhat.

What about Microsoft buying pretty much every games development studio under the sun?  They've been consolidating quite a few of late - more so than Sony has, that's for sure.  Will there be any games companies left that aren't owned by Microsoft or Sony?

brian.on.android said:

I think people would lay off Apple if they would just allow third party payment systems fully.

Developers already spend $99+ a year for distribution of their apps in the app store. 3rd party payments require $0 for Apple to maintain because they use zero of Apple's infrastructure outside of the phone you already paid for.

Apple doesn't need to take a cut in your entire business.

I'd rather go through Apple with any payment related issues than countless other payment processors such as Worldpay, Cleverbridge, Stripe, or whatever is being used.  But nobody seems to be giving a damn about the consumer and what they think about all this - just the profit margins of Apple and the app developers.  Apple will still charge their cut regardless of whether you use their or a third party payment processor.  Apple will still want payment for hosting the app (along with vetting it - which I will say they desperately need to improve upon - but Google also needs to up the ante too).  The key issue here is how much they're charging for that service.  It's up to the developer whether that's worth it or not.  Nobody has a God-given right to any particular platform.

As for the annual $99 - that's barely anything.   Having run a small ISP, there were significantly greater annual charges than that, plus the rest.

I've been using a Dell XPS for the past two years alongside a MacBook Pro (2016 and most recently 2017 - but I have owned and used Macs going back to the iBook G4), and to me, the XPS has been a far nicer experience than the MBP. Firstly, no [censored] keyboard problems unlike the MacBook Pro which suffered from a stuck Command key on a couple of occasions. Secondly, the display on the XPS has been fantastic. It has a super sharp image and gets the job done. The form factor of the XPS is also very good for keeping space in a bag to a minimum. Windows 10 has been a pain in the arse, of course it has, but I can also think of issues with MacOS too. But, despite in its infancy, I *love* the Windows Linux Subsystem. In short - you try both and pick what you like. I happen to have favoured the XPS for now.

M68000 said:

Why are people so up in arms about this?  If you have nothing to hide why are you fighting Apple’s attempt to make the world safer from criminals and sick people?   This “ceo” made the amazingly stupid comment about “presumption of guilt”?   Well,  at least in the United States a person is innocent until proven guilty.   

I’m frankly amazed by the feedback in this forum in the last few days,  people who trust and love Apple and now don’t want to help Apple try to make the world safer.  

If you work for any large company I hope you know that any email, chat messages and files on company computers can be looked at and scanned by security and network admins.

if you want total privacy,  get rid of cloud storage and maybe go back to using a typewriter LOL

Apple does not want their products used for crime and is making an attempt to do something about it - what is so hard to understand?

Your employer has the right to monitor your activities at work - but certainly not at home.

My general concern is if things were to go wrong, and things can and do go wrong.  We're Apple users, we expect things to go wrong!  Due to a bug or hash mismatch (okay - the odds of it triggering a false positive are very low), it could be possible for completely innocent images to be flagged up incorrectly.  Apple hasn't exactly the most marvellous reputation for dealing with sensitive and urgent problems when accounts are closed for something the account isn't responsible for.

But, as many other people have said, it doesn't have to stop there.  The same tech can be used (or expanded) to check for other content that, say, governments can enforce on Apple to weed out and notify them of any infraction.  This has the capability (mind you, most things do) for abuse.

HOWEVER..

Adobe already do this with their cloud services.  This is outlined here:

https://www.adobe.com/uk/legal/lawenforcementrequests/childsafety.html

So those using Lightroom Desktop/CC or Lightroom Classic which syncs photos to the Adobe Creative Cloud are already having their photos scanned with CSAM technology when it's uploaded to their servers.  I've not seen any articles that mention this, or any feedback that Adobe has to say on it.

I can definitely see why Apple wants to implement CSAM on the iPhone (and perhaps give Apple a chance to say to law enforcement - hey, you don't need to crack the phone - we do the job for you!) - and it'd be one of the few companies that aren't already doing so (Google already do it through many of their products and services already - https://transparencyreport.google.com/child-sexual-abuse-material/reporting?hl=en), but it does somewhat go against their privacy matters mantra.

rob53 said:

Lost me when the article mentioned Dell. Could care less how a 4-year user of Macs thinks any Windows PC compares to a Mac. It doesn’t, no way, no how. 

I pick whatever tool gets the job done regardless of whether it is a PC or a Mac. Happily switch between them. There's plenty of stuff that a Mac is absolutely brilliant at, and similarly for a Windows based PC. This mindset that X is far superior to Y and nothing else matter is absolute BS.

The EU Commission apparently wants to do people's thinking for them.  I was never under the impression there wasn't any competition.  Everybody knows about Spotify, and I'm fully aware that I subscribe via the web site and pay there and not the App Store.   I know this because of the articles on the web site and I know how to look things up and pay attention as to what's going on. What a load of old twaddle from the EU commission.

hodar said:

So, basically Parallels remains a waste of money for anyone who bought an M1 Mac.

Rehash MY user case; which is probably a significant number of user cases.  Why did I buy Parallels?  Why pay $$ for this program?

So, I can have the CAPABILITY to boot, and run WindowsXP, Windows 7 and Windows10 disk images, and either run programs on my Mac that are not available outside of the Windows environment, so I can play old games I purchased before I switched to the Apple ecosystem, and so I can play more games (emulation mode, which is surprisingly good) on my Mac, and play online with my friends who use PC games.  Open Parallels, run any version of Windows I chose, launch Steam and play online games with my friends (games that are not available on the Mac.

For work, Excel on Windows has the capability to allow me to write scripts in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA); for reasons I don not understand, these advanced libraries are simply not available for the Mac community.  So, while my Excel workbooks have ~60,000 lines of VBA to allow it to link into the corporate database and dateline quality assessment info, I cannot do the same thing with my MSFT Office license for Mac.  So, I have 2 different licenses.

Now, I have no choice but have multiple computers at home.  Because programs that USED TO work flawlessly, no longer function at all.

You can still buy Intel Macs.  And for me, Parallels is not a waste of money on an M1 Mac.  I use a Debian 10 ARM VM under Parallels for work purposes and it's not had a single impact on my work or processes.  All the Microsoft apps I need for work are either Universal Binaries already, or awaiting to be (so are being run via Rosetta 2).  Apart from some performance issues relating to Rosetta 2 and anti-virus apps (one of which has now been fixed), there has been very frew issues running an M1 Mac in an existing business environment.

I pay Wasabi and Backblaze B2 around $5.99/terabyte, so iCloud is cheaper. But, as the article states, functionally it just isn't the same as I can set-up policy rules and keys to content. Apple needs to open up iCloud and provide an API or provide an S3 compatible service which would enable it to integrate with all manner of services.

Perfectly happy to allow Apple to be the whipping boy for this - hopefully other digital stores will get the point as a result.

In the 500+ purchases of movies via iTunes/Apple TV, I've been fortunate (at least to my knowledge as Apple doesn't tell you if you're losing access to a title) to lose just one movie, thanks to the distributor pulling it from iTunes.  About 3 months later, they pulled the same film from Amazon Prime.

In terms of downloading and backing up movies and media, this is becoming unrealistic to expect consumers to do this - especially when primary consumption is via the Apple TV device, iPhone, iPad, or whatever.  NASes and high-capacity hard drives are, I feel, still a thing for the more proficient user.  Besides this, you can only download the SD or HD version of the movie (so 4K is out) and you can't download the iTunes Extras if there are any.

So yes, I think Apple needs a kick-up the arse for this.  But so do the distributors and studios, and all the other digital platforms.