Alger
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Chinese video platforms reportedly axe Apple's 'Hi, Speed' livestream
Apple is the smartest, most valuable company on Earth. China has a ruthless, repressive, totalitarian, imperial government and their society has no regard for pluralism or diversity in any political or cultural aspect of its society. Its leaders are utterly unaccountable to the people they supposedly serve. Chinese "business" is all about the Communist Party in corrupt sweetheart deals with ruthless, robber-baron, nepotistic capitalists. Chinese despise foreigners at home and treat hosts in other countries like garbage. I'd gladly pay a couple dollars more for a phone than have any piece of it made in China.tommikele said:JWSC said:That’s it China. Just keep going. Just keep giving Apple more reasons to diversify manufacturing out of your country. The sooner, the better. And good riddance.
The Chinese are the ones who are in a position to say good riddance to Apple and not the other way around as you claim.
You don't know too much about business, do you?
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Apple TV+ commissioned 'Foundation' after a one-sentence pitch
"I figured out a way to have some of the characters extend their lifespans."In other words, a completely different story.I'm a huge sci-fi fan and finally forced myself to finish Foundation (the first book) because of this impeding TV series' release. I had tried few times before and always had put it down out of sheer boredom, but figured I just wasn't sophisticated enough as a teenager. In ripe middle age now, I find Foundation's "ideas" are elementary and never investigated at their core ("psychohistory" is never even explained except by begging the question); the characters all one-dimensional, boring as cardboard (and all the women are even less than one-dimensional, except physically) yet pompous & verbose; the plot is fundamentally about power-grabs and militarism – not exactly groundbreaking "ideas" – about at philosophically imaginative as a James Bond novel, minus any sex appeal.
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Apple's HomePod mini review: the speaker for the rest of us
Couldn't agree more. 1) My full-size HomePod has impressive "heavy" sound, but in general the bass is set way too high and there's no way to adjust it. Apple prides itself with music appreciation, but without an equalizer you just can't take such a device seriously. 2) Literally each and every time I play music from my Mac or iPhone to my HomePod, I can 100% count on there being some connectivity issue. I walk in the door, tell my iPhone to play its music on HomePod, it does, then 15 seconds later it loses the connection, for no reason. Every. Time. Reconnecting wastes about 3 minutes of my time, then the connection drops again at random intervals after that - 10 minutes, 30 minutes, between songs/videos, just randomly. I paid $349 for it 2 years ago and, although I still use it in my work-from-home office, I wouldn't buy it now at 1/2 that price and the Mini just sounds like more of the same, only weaker. Surely they could have figured out a way for it to play music from a phone using only Bluetooth, like at the beach (it requires WiFi to function at all, and only 802.11n?! - sorry, what year is this? This product is off-brand because it's riddled with compromises and seems behind the times. My HomePod's reliability is as if it wasn't even made by Apple, to connect with Apple products. I hope this isn't an indication of what's to come from them.MacQuadra840av said:This review makes no sense at all. The majority of the article identifies all the flaws of the mini, and carries over all the flaws from the first failed HomePod, yet somehow they give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. Apple cannot even clear them out at $199 on sale, yet they come out with another severely compromised product and overprice it at $99. AI forgot to bring up the failed Wi-Fi issue with the mini. Many reports coming in of the mini's Wi-Fi failing constantly, and rebooting it only fixes it for a few minutes before Wi-Fi fails again. Wi-Fi is required for the product to function, so basically people are left with a round ball that does nothing. It is odd that Apple now powers the mini with the silicon from the discontinued watch 5 and makes it run tvOS(?), but then again, they powered the original HomePod with the outdated and discontinued A8. Even worse, they are using an outdated Wi-Fi protocol because the mini only supports 802.11n! Even their discontinued AirPort Extreme from 2013 supported 802.11ac! No wonder it is failing on Wi-Fi networks. It is like they are making these things from their own bargain bin of leftover and outdated parts. (Remember when Apple made lousy PowerPC 603e computers by jamming a 64-bit processor onto a leftover Quadra 32-bit board? That is how they are building these HomePod products).
I honestly don't know why people think the HomePod sounds good. It is far too heavy on the bass and too boomy, and Apple refuses to incorporate tone/EQ controls so people can tailor the sound to their own liking. It is Apple's way, or no way. Too many restrictions on a speaker that take away the enjoyment of its sole purpose - to listen to music. Sorry, but the 4.5 rating is a joke.
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Apple's HomePod mini review: the speaker for the rest of us
Apple are not a political party or movement to be loyal to at all costs. They are a product, branded as the best overall, and I've purchased more than $10K worth of Apple products because they are the best experience overall, not because I like the name. I also own a large amount of Apple stock, so I want the company to continue their breathtaking success - I just don't see how they're going to grow their smart-speaker market with this product.williamlondon said:
Perhaps Apple isn't the company for negative nellies?! -
Child spends $16K on iPad game in-app purchases
Jeesh, you tech people are harsh, and apparently none of these commenters are parents or have ever cared for anyone other than themselves. It may be the parents' "fault", _technically_, in the sense that they may have made a mistake, unwittingly, not adjusting the settings or spotting notifications amongst the hundreds we all see every day, most of which mean nothing. That does not give Apple and the gaming companies, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, any moral standing not to have an OUNCE of empathy for an obviously beleaguered parent, and simply void these purchases and refund the money. Doing anything else would be heartless and unnecessarily predatory. The worst-possible morally justifiable consequence for this would be cutting off the customer's future purchases. Parenting is hard, VERY hard, and only gets harder; these mega-wealthy corporations have no business piling on to that.
No games aimed at children should be allowed to rack up charges more than a few dollars a month. Anything more than that simply means there was some lapse of supervision, and it may have been accidental.
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Apple releases macOS Big Sur 11.5.2 to the public
Seems a little naive that the richest tech company in the world doesn't already spy on the contents of your hard-drives, when they're plugged in. Or photos on your iOS devices, whether they're marked for cloud storage or not. Makers and traffickers of kiddie porn and other abominable visual content, and myriad other heinous commerce enabled by the internet, should be prosecuted and jailed, and I trust actual law enforcement authorities to do it right; but I certainly don't trust any corporation, of any political leaning or do-gooding posture, to do the police's work for them. And if you think that this is just a private company trying to help democratic law enforcement do its job, think for a minute about what other countries where Apple does massive business – like the largest, most authoritarian country of them all, China – consider to be criminal behavior. People are going to jail in China simply for saying that Hong Kong should secede and pointing out that Uighurs are being treated like Jews were in Nazi Germany. Is Apple going let Chinese authorities spy on Apple customers for crimes against that state? And if/when MAGA takes over our government and enacts its openly-professed agenda of putting those not loyal to the Big Liar in jail (or lynching them, as they planned to do in D.C. on Jan. 6) is Apple going to help them round up such "enemies of the people"? The day I hear Apple take a hard stand against savage repression in China is the day I would consider trusting them to arbitrate whether my devices' memory hold criminal content.JFC_PA said:
Don’t want to be scanned for kiddie porn? Don’t opt in for iCloud Photos. An external hard drive or two can suffice.xyzzy-xxx said:Since Apple is turning iOS into a platform spying their paying users I will wait until the content of this update is disclosed before installing it...
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Apple extends existing Apple TV+ free trials for a second time
Saying something that's free is "not worth it" is the very definition of trolling. ATV+ has substantial content, which not everyone may think is substantial (or good) _enough_, but plenty of people do. The fact that it's free completely negates the statement of the content not being "worth it". By definition, it has no monetary value, so the only "worth" would be to those investing their _time_, and that's a completely subjective valuation. Troll city.fred1 said:
And just how do you know this?crowley said:
You'd be right, except what JazzMonkey said wasn't an opinion, it was a troll. Stupid trolling should not be respected.fred1 said:
Does that include your response to why I said. It’s negative and unsupported by any justification. Just curious . . .greginprague said:
Lame negative comments unsupported by any justification for the position deserve whatever negative feedback they get.fred1 said:
Oh no no! Don’t post a negative comment about Apple TV+ here! I made that mistake once and was subjected to an unbelievable amount of criticism and insults. Don’t touch the sacred cow!JazzMonkey said:Even when its free it’s not worth it.
There are several great series and a couple good movies. I don’t know if we’ll pay for it, but certainly disagree that it’s a waste at free. We’ve watched See, Morning Show, For All Mankind, Defending Jacob, Truth be Told and now finishing Tehran. All are worth the time spent. Also enjoyed The Banker and Grayhound on the film side.
My point, since you also seemed to miss it, is that people should be free to express their opinions here without being subject to character assassination and rude remarks. Since they’re opinions, they don’t need evidence, proof, justification or any other reason for being. You like what Apple TV+ offers, JazzMonkey and I don’t. None of us is right or wrong, correct or incorrect, justified or unjustified.
