twolf2919

CheeseFreeze said:

This move from China is smart. What was Trump expecting? He'll eventually have to back off. 
Meanwhile, unelected billionaire Musk is ravaging through government organizations, which is completely unconstitutional.
Why did Americans choose this joker? He is a serious danger to the world. 
I was about to emigrate back to the US, but we cancelled it when the election went sideways. Who wants to live there?

This is just a shot across the bow.  If Trump gets in a tit-for-tat - virtually guaranteed given his ego - watch China "investigate" Tesla next.  China is Tesla's biggest market outside the US and it uses the Shanghai factory to export Teslas to other countries as well.   China might be the player that will finally bring  TSLA's ridiculous valuation down to earth if that happens.

tmay said:

twolf2919 said:

Opt-in would make sense since agreeing to it will likely mean giving up some privacy to ChatGPT servers in the cloud.

If I had guts, I'd short AAPL stock - it's been rising for the past few months simply on analysts' expectation that Apple will make big announcements regarding AI.  I.e. letting the world know that it isn't behind in AI, after all.  But if, instead, we find out that they are indeed hopelessly behind - by essentially offering us another company's AI on their devices - the stock will go down, for sure.

And this sounds about right - Apple hasn't managed to improve Siri in 10+ years.  There's no reason to believe Apple could inject a massive improvement into it in the 1-2 years that AI has become a hot topic.

You seem to discount that fact that Apple has something on the order of 1.45 B iPhone users, and it those users haven't abandoned Apple from the lack of noticeable Siri improvements, then likely, there isn't any impact to Apple from "leading from the back" in AI. pp

I haven't discounted that.  I have no doubt, any existing Apple users - including myself - will appreciate any significant  new features Apple bestows on them.  But if Apple's great AI announcement turns out to be a partnership with OpenAI, where interactions are sent off-device to ChatGPT servers, it's hard to see how that would lead to some great "super" upgrade cycle as analysts are currently predicting.  After all, if all the heavy lifting is done in the cloud, why would you need a new phone?  Just install iOS 18 on your existing device and you're ready to go!

On the other hand, if Siri received a real overhaul using AI and finally became a really useful personal assistant - with my privacy kept intact by using an on-device LLM - I'd certainly stand in line for a new phone that has the required power/RAM to do this.

hmlongco said:

The Samsung Ring is basically a fitness, health and sleep monitoring device. It doesn't do notifications, answer questions, or act as a spy camera. Nor does it need to.

A couple of things that an Apple Ring could do is authentication and payments. For auth, think of an Apple Watch and how you can authenticate it by unlocking a paired iPhone. Once "unlocked", it could authenticate you to Macs, phones, tablets, and even, perhaps, your car or front door.

For payments, just hold the NFC chip to a reader and tap your fingers together.

Have an  Ultra and it's a bit bulky for a sleep tracker. Ring might be better.

All these things are true - and I even agree that ApplePay payments would be more convenient than with a watch or phone.  But are these small improvements worth the cost in the original device and,  more importantly, the added hassle of charging another device regularly?  The answer is probably 'no' for anyone who already has an Apple Watch and a 'maybe' for most  others.  Not a resounding 'yes' for anyone, really.

Apple doesn't need an iPhone SE to make Apple Intelligence a hit - it needs Apple Intelligence to have a killer feature!  But so far, it's been utterly disappointing in this regard.  Sure,  summaries of your notifications or emails are useful and so is the object removal in Photos and the writing aids.  But none of these things would be reason for someone to either buy a new iPhone or even upgrade from their current one.   The only thing that I can think of that would move the needle is a much improved Siri.  If she could finally get closer to being the assistant we were promised a dozen years ago, THAT would really help the most people - and, thus, lead to more iPhone sales.  Alas, I'm on the 7th beta of iOS and Siri - while mildly improved (it can now answer some basic questions in the context of a previous one) - still haven't gotten much better.  There are just so many areas where it's so utterly retarded.  Case in point from just yesterday: I was driving and asked, Siri, through CarPlay, to "Play the album 'It's OK to not be ok" - and it played the last album I listened to before :-(  I don't have an accent and spoke very clearly - yet Siri didn't have a clue.  I even repeated the command.  Still the wrong response.  That album is in my music library and bought within the last year!  I ended up manually selecting it.

My point is that Siri is still more frustrating than helpful on most occasion.  The slight improvements I've seen since iOS 18.1 betas have certainly not been ground shaking.

Must be a slow news day when a lengthy article complains about Apple's "wrong-headedness" on the scantiest of rumors regarding the iPhone 17 "Slim".  First of all, we don't know how much slimmer - some rumors, since that's what you're basing your entire article on - state that it'll barely be a millimeter thinner.  We also don't know what "smaller display" means - it could be that it's merely smaller than the Max - but still larger than the Pro.  Lastly, the fact that there are always people complaining about battery life doesn't mean much because it's just a vocal minority on tech forums that always squeals..  I bet the vast majority of iPhone users are perfectly fine with battery life.  I have the 16 Max and just came back from a flight to Asia and another one to Spain.  Never had a problem with battery life.  But, then, like most folks, I just watch movies and browse the web while on the planes.  But still - lasted fine.

I, and perhaps quite a few others, are in an even worse predicament: we rely on x86 apps that were never even ported to macOS!  In my case, for the last 15 years, I've had to run Intuit TurboTax for Business in a Windows 10 VM on my x86 MacBook Pro.  Intuit - a pretty large software house - has never seen the need, despite user pleading, to publish a Mac version.  But besides shaming them in forums like this, not much I can do.  Anyway, it ran just fine in a Parallels VM over the years, so I resigned myself to keeping an x86 Mac around just for that - and for building x86 Linux installers (again in a VM) of a commercial app I support.  But that Mac is getting a little long in the tooth.  I had hoped that Parallels would provide a Rosetta-like solution so I could run x86 VMs on an Mx Mac at some point.  And, to their credit, they recently came out with such a thing - but very crude and very slow.  Not really useable really, from what I hear.

I wish Apple provided a performant x86 interpreter a la Rosetta to the VM makers, so those of us who need to use or build x86 apps can do so on current Macs.

nubus said:

twolf2919 said:

The announced tariffs on Japan, Korea,  Malaysia, and Khazakstan are tariffs the US will begin charging for goods coming into the US from those countries.  As far as I know, Apple doesn't import goods - INTO THE US - from any of these countries.  It is importing parts from them into China, Taiwan, and  India - so these US tariffs are irrelevant, no?

Mac Studio and more are assembled in Malaysia. Transshipped parts are hit by 40% to block China from shipping through other countries. But mostly tariffs are "Country of Origin" which translates into "where was it assembled". Even if the actual assembly is like 2% of the total cost.

It does block Apple from moving production to the US. If Apple produced chips in the US, exported for assembly, and imported... the entire phone would be hit. The only way to avoid it would be to let all components and assembly happen in the US. Much easier to keep parts manufacturing in place but shuffle assembly to a low-tariff, semi-low-wage country. Cost of repairs is likely to increase as batteries, displays,... are delivered directly and take the full hit from tariffs. The list of suppliers show the countries used to sources parts from: https://www.supplychainreports.apple/Apple-Supplier-List

I agree with everything you said - but it doesn't really negate my point that Apple is not really affected further by the initial list of countries announced on Monday.  Even if Apple is assembling Mac Studio in Malaysia - that country's tariff went from 24% tariffs before today to a whopping....25%.  And Mac Studio isn't one of Apple's big sellers, so an additional percentage point in tariffs on them won't even be  a rounding error on their quarterly statement - or disappear entirely if it simply raises the Studio's price.  Initially, many companies, including Apple, have tried to keep prices low because the tariff landscape was still in flux, but as soon as it becomes clear what the permanent tariffs will be, I think those companies will forward those costs onto the American consumer.

"a combination of unrealistic expectations, fictional narratives, and ignored progress won't stop it from being a key part of Apple's ecosystem" - I don't think anyone had unrealistic expectations!  The expectations were totally realistic, based on what Apple teased at the 2024 conference.  And it's not that everyone is ignoring progress - it's just that most of the AI progress is in areas that are pretty niche (not many people feel the need for AI generated images such as in Image playground or need email summaries) and, in others, it's just a step improvement (e.g. object recognition in Photos).  Removing unwanted objects from photos is a pretty nice feature that might be useful to anyone taking photos.  But I find it awkward/unintuitive to use - and the results are often not perfect.

In summary, I think everyone expected a much better Siri in at most a year's time.  That wasn't an unreasonable/unrealistic expectation given what was demoed in 2024.  Apple simply shouldn't have demoed and subsequently advertised that feature if it couldn't deliver it.

Readability in Safari has hit a new low with macOS 26.  By letting web pages affect the color of the bookmark bar, address bar, and tab bar, it's become pretty much impossible to find the active tab when the web page has dark/black background and it's impossible to read bookmark labels when the web page has a white background.  Maybe it's only because of me using "dark mode"?  But if that's the case, don't Apple engineers test their sh1t in dark mode?  Utterly ridiculous.  I think Apple tried something similar in a previous release, where they let the web page "bleed through" to those areas when you scrolled - but at least then there was a way to turn that off.  I don't see any way of turning off this behavior this time.  Am I missing something?

But overall I find macOS 26 much snappier than iOS 16 - and it's still in beta, so that's a good sign.

anonymouse said:

twolf2919 said:

Anybody else feel like the White House calling these fines "economic extortion" is like the pot calling the kettle black?  Trump's tariffs are exactly that - economic extortion - just on a much grander scale.  The whole Trump Presidency, thus far, has been about extortion: demanding universities accept Trump agenda or face withdrawal of grants - pure extortion.  Sending the DOJ after individuals and corporations unless they do his bidding - pure extortion.  Preventing law firms from being able to get into Federal buildings unless they submit to his whims - extortion, pure and simple.

The Trump Administration is the most extornist Administration in American history.  For them to call the EU simply enforcing their laws (that are disadvantageous to American companies) extortion is just hilarious.

Tu quoque is not an argument. No matter how extortionist US policies may be, that has no effect on whether EU policies are extortionist or not. Trump can be right, possibly by chance, for all the wrong reasons, and regardless of whether he does the same or worse, or whether he even understands the issues.

Or, are you arguing that two wrongs make a right?

I am not.  Simply stating that people who live in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones.  But I actually don't think the EU's fines are extortion at all, since their demand is within the law.  Extortion is a criminal activity.  The particular law Apple was fined for is that Apple doesn't allow app developers to point to alternate app stores that might be cheaper.  Assuming they have the same law for other app platforms - e.g. Android - it's not even singling out "American" companies (although the affected platforms happen to be American).