twolf2919

I guess the CT scan didn't venture further "south" to reveal the glory of the battery dongle - the epitome of Apple design prowess?

Well written analysis of this ridiculous DoJ action.  But I think in one of your rebuttals to the DoJ claim regarding iPhone preventing 3rd-party apps  in messaging, you ignore a key phrase you even include yourself:  "from sending or receiving carrier-based messages,"  None of the apps you say have no problems being on iPhone - you point to WhatsApp - have the ability to send/receive *carrier-based message* - i.e. SMS/MMS.  At least as far as I know.

johnfrombeyond said:

Hmmmm, if a company would rather shut something down than sell it, that means there isn't any financial reason that TikTok exists today. A for-profit company would take the cash rather than lose everything. I wonder what value TikTok has to ByteDance and the Chinese government then? All that data on American citizens and a strong propaganda tool maybe?

Don't worry, once TikTok is gone, there will be plenty of US-grown alternatives that will thrive and take its place.

That's not the reason.  TikTok was created with intellectual property from the rest of BytDance at its core - i.e. proprietary algorithms.  To sell TikTok - which only makes 25% of BytDance's revenue - would mean giving away the IP that makes the rest of  ByteDance successful.  And the US only represents a small part of TikTok's global user base, so it's pretty clear that closing down shop in the US is financially preferable to giving away the goods of the whole company.

As another commenter eluded, it strikes me as odd that Apple would license a core technology - they've stated numerous times that they want to control all the core components of the user's experience.  So this is either a false rumor or an admission by Apple that they're hopelessly behind on AI and need outside help to be perceived as being on the AI bandwagon.

dewme said:

twolf2919 said:

I think the article is incorrect in stating Apple has 2 billion active users - it has two billion active devices.  Big difference.

Sure. What would you suggest as a more accurate measuring stick for number of users?

I do understand the difference. Some people like me have many Apple devices. But other households share Apple devices like HomePods, Apple TVs, and even iPads between family members. They’re definitely extrapolating from the one somewhat deterministic data point to one that is far less deterministic. They could have been more clear about their size being an estimate or approximation, but with such a large magnitude number it may be irrelevant to identifying the scope of the opportunity for growth. 

None of what you write is relevant.  There is no need to suggest a more accurate measure - the sentence written by the article's author would have been just as valid had they used the word 'devices' rather than 'users'.  But it would have been accurate.

Apple has been trying to get game developers to bring their titles to iOS for a long time.  I read somewhere that the biggest hurdle to greater adoption isn't the hardware per se, but the API.  Apple keeps improving and highlighting the capabilities of its own APIs rather than supporting the ones game developers already use.  Those developers don't have the time and/or inclination and/or money/resources to re-write their games from scratch to use Apple's APIs.

I'm not a game developer, so I don't know whether that is true.  But I am an application developer and it rings true - I definitely wouldn't want to write totally different versions of my application for Windows, macOS, and Linux - it is one of the reasons the Java programming language/platform become so popular in the application/enterprise space.  Which brings me to a question: are the programming languages used to write those games on other platforms even available on iOS?  I know Java isn't, but I think that had more to do with it requiring a runtime environment (i.e. an interpreter/platform) - maybe compiled languages such as C/C++, etc. are allowed/supported by Apple?