Alchemy

It is really entertaining to see so many comments in blind support of Elon and his actions.  

Twitter got over 90% of it's revenue from advertising!  Advertisers want to attract customers, not insult or alienate them.  Twitter is a communication network that needs to offend as few people as possible while keeping information available to as many people as possible.  It has become a source of news and entertainment for millions of people worldwide and with that comes a tremendous amount of responsibility to try and ensure that it is as accurate as possible.  It also needs to protect peoples private information and try to eliminate scams, con artists, etc.  It is under the watch of numerous governments agencies around the world and has direct legal responsibilities.  Twitter is not "free speech" it is more "civil discord".  

Elon has absolutely no clue as to the responsibilities and obligations that Twitter has to various regulation agencies around the world.  He also has demonstrated that he has no clue on how to run the business, nor does he have any magical plans on how to make it more profitable.  Elon got mad at Twitter because he got in trouble for tweeting false and irresponsible claims about Tesla and some of his other companies (claiming Tesla was going bankrupt or going private causing stock prices to fall).  He also got mad because he got push back on some of his off the wall tweets criticizing rescuers of trapped miners or the SEC because he had to follow the same rules as everyone else.  

Elon let his ego get the better of himself and made an "I will show you" statement by making a legally binding offer for Twitter at a ridiculously high price.  He then tried to back out by trash talking Twitter.  He was then forced to complete the deal and then claimed he was going to relax most of the content guidelines.  This caused half of the advertisers to halt spending during a wait and see period.  Twitter revenue dropped in half the day Elon walked into Twitter all because of the Elon's actions and comments.  He started by digging a very deep hole.  

Elon then immediately cut half of the work force without any knowledge of the work those people did and without any understanding of the government labor laws.  This is substantiated by the fact that Twitter had to ask many to come back to work.  All major changes in management/culture deal with changes in the workforce, but typically it is done methodically by order of importance and hope that some will voluntarily leaves (much cheaper than severance and unemployment expenses).

Elon came in with a blind iron fist and such an ignorance of the business that it created a toxic work environment.  Elon's immediate failure of the verified/sponsored check marks shows just how naive he is about the Twitter business and how he does not have any real ideas on how to improve profits.  He didn't really want to own Twitter and he is just throwing things at the wall hoping he gets lucky.  Twitter had financial issues before Elon got involved, but he has made it much worse.

People in these tech companies know how to work hard and put in extra hours, but they will only do it for something they really believe in and have a passion to make it work.  Elon insulted all of the Twitter employees with his arrogance, ignorance and ultimatum.  Report are that about 75% of the employees did not agree to the ultimatum.  Most of the remaining employees either have working Visa issues or are being cautious about leaving before they have another job.  In other words, all of the ambitious, confident and top achieving employees have left.  I can't imagine how anyone that excels in their job could stay in such a toxic environment.  Those that say these people are leaving because they do not want to work hard is totally clueless and doesn't know what motivates brilliant people.

Elon's only hope is if he can fire sale the remains of Twitter to another company that can resurrect it back from the dead, hire back a good portion of the workforce and bring back the advertisers.  Elon would lose his $44 billion and be able to wash his hands of the whole ordeal.  As it stands, he is at risk of losing his control over Tesla and SpaceX!  Twitter has the assets and structure to build back quickly and then gradually add more revenue sources, but not under Elon.

MacQuadra840av said:

sdw2001 said:

I just can’t with this Billie Eilish thing anymore.  We get it.  She’s talented.  Apple is pushing her as the next John Lennon.  

Actually, she is not talented.  Her music is dull.  There is nothing special about her, but somehow writing a song in your bedroom with your brother is supposed to be something no one has ever done before.  It is bizarre how Apple is pushing this, but sorry, it is not going to get more people to subscribe to or watch AppleTV+ to see some kid running around wearing oversized baggy clothes because she has no self esteem and thinks she is entitled.  Just sweep her under the rug like Lindsey Lohan.

This may come as a surprise, but I don’t think you are the demographics that Apple is looking for with this project.

MplsP said:

I've asked this question repeatedly and have yet to see a single person answer - what legitimate need is there to have speeds in excess of LTE speeds for a smart phone? Yes, 5G is theoretically faster, but LTE is fast enough for everything you do on a smart phone. It has lower latency, but latency isn't an issue for smart phone use either. It has higher bandwidth, but the majority of the time, the wireless bandwidth isn't the limiting factor. So I'm left to see 5g as a transition to something that allows future growth but has no current or near-term real-world use. 

It is foolish to assume that just because you don't see a real need doesn't mean that it will not be utilized.  No one could image using a phone for real time streaming of videos just a few years ago.

There are real needs and perceived needs (or wants).  Do people really need mini video clips for ever picture they take, do they need bokeh effect on their pictures, do they need to video conference multiple friends, etc....  It all comes down to marketing the latest technology when you are expecting people to pay $1,000+ for a phone.  People need to feel that their old phone is no longer good enough and that they "need" the latest technology.  The next big jump in technology (out side of camera tricks) is 5G.  People hold onto their phones for several years and they will not be interested upgrading to the next iPhone if it is considered obsolete.  It will be considered obsolete if it doesn't have 5G, because customers have been told it is coming soon.

Greyhound is a very good movie.  Very entertaining.

friedmud said:

Makes sens to me.  I develop massively parallel scientific computing applications to run on some of the largest supercomputers in the world.  Nearly everyone in this field uses Mac laptops and workstation... and then runs on the Linux based supercomputers.

Why?  Because they're UNIX based.  So we can develop our software in a UNIX environment but still have all the GUI goodness of OSX and still have access to Microsoft Office (which everyone hates - but you still have to use).  Oh - and they "just work" with roaming wifi and random projectors (which _still_ cannot be said of Linux laptops yet... sigh).

Microsoft has recently realized this (they don't care about scientific computing though - but the same is true in web-programming where the servers that are targeted are running Linux)... and finally made a decent Windows Subsystem for Linux.  It's not 100%... but it's way better than any alternatives from before (... Cygwin).

Also: this is an awesome achievement!  Congratulations Katie and the rest of the team!

Correct. My son is a PhD Plasma Physicist working on Nuclear Fusion and they all use MacBooks. 

MplsP said:

Alchemy said:

MplsP said:

I've asked this question repeatedly and have yet to see a single person answer - what legitimate need is there to have speeds in excess of LTE speeds for a smart phone? Yes, 5G is theoretically faster, but LTE is fast enough for everything you do on a smart phone. It has lower latency, but latency isn't an issue for smart phone use either. It has higher bandwidth, but the majority of the time, the wireless bandwidth isn't the limiting factor. So I'm left to see 5g as a transition to something that allows future growth but has no current or near-term real-world use. 

It is foolish to assume that just because you don't see a real need doesn't mean that it will not be utilized.  No one could image using a phone for real time streaming of videos just a few years ago.

There are real needs and perceived needs (or wants).  Do people really need mini video clips for ever picture they take, do they need bokeh effect on their pictures, do they need to video conference multiple friends, etc....  It all comes down to marketing the latest technology when you are expecting people to pay $1,000+ for a phone.  People need to feel that their old phone is no longer good enough and that they "need" the latest technology.  The next big jump in technology (out side of camera tricks) is 5G.  People hold onto their phones for several years and they will not be interested upgrading to the next iPhone if it is considered obsolete.  It will be considered obsolete if it doesn't have 5G, because customers have been told it is coming soon.

I don't deny that some heretofore unconsidered application may arise. There are plenty of examples of that in technology. My point is that there is no current use. 5G is not a technology that is rolling out to finally make cellphones do what people have been trying to do but haven't been able to because of technology limitations. That being the case, any future, real-world uses for the technology in cell phones will take at least a few years to develop and won't even start to develop until there is some semblance of availability of 5G. We're looking at at least mid to late 2020, likely 2021 at the earliest for that to happen, any of these unknown uses will likely not become widespread until 2022 or 2023 at the earliest. at that point, we're 4 years out. Add to that that the 5G standards haven't even been finalized and the fact that the first people who actually (try) to make use of new features like this tend to be early adopters that upgrade their phones more frequently. The end conclusion that I draw is that not only is including a 5G modem in a 2019 phone essentially useless, there may well be drawbacks due to the fact that the standards, technology and chip designs are all still developing. 

It would seem the biggest reason to include 5G is so you can claim that you have it, not because it's actually necessary. I've been around long enough not to care about things like that.

Edit: If other countries roll out the technology faster than here in the US, that could change the development equation and would certainly affect the iPhone's marketability in those countries. My view is an admittedly America-Centric one.

I think you are being too smug in your assessment of the technology.  The cell phone market (really should call it handheld computers) is all above selling competitive advantages and 5G is a major perceived competitive advance.  New infrastructure improvement initiatives could be launch at anytime.