dtoub

22july2013 said:

“Maybe the future of social media is one social media engine used exclusively by conservatives, and a different one used exclusively by socialists.”

Why do you think all of us progressives are socialists? 

I quit Twitter yesterday evening after Musk reinstated TFG after lying that stuff like that would not happen until a committee that remains undefined would meet. Having once said I would leave if Trump were reinstated I was not going to go back on my word. I have no need to participate in a right wing fantasy of another billionaire. 

And in the same vein, it would be wonderful if when there are several networks in a building that have previously been used by that iPhone, the phone would default to the one with the strongest signal. I’m switching to a mesh network in my home all because I can be standing next to one router (Verizon) yet my iPhone or iPad will connect to the barely present network from way upstairs, and vice-versa. I’ve reported this multiple times, but sure, more Animoji...

Was a devoted user of airmail and spark and ultimately both fell short, miserably, and I’ve been quite happy with Mail. Airmail is buggy and has terrible support and the worst interface I’ve ever seen. Spark is missing some basic features like rules and the ability to turn off threading or sort a thread in descending order and has been saying for two years now that these are under consideration yet never delivers. Yeah, I miss snoozing messages but Mail has never lost an email I was sending or drafting. Not so much with Airmail. And Spark wouldn’t display Exchange invites as invites if the invitation contained attachments, as they often can and do. So I missed meetings as a result. Readdle never fixed that despite many back and forth emails with logs and other details. Spark can’t change fonts or parse some emails properly (Airmail also messes up many received emails with regard to parsing). Plus some email programs just bite the dust suddenly. Remember Newton Mail? Gone. Alto? Gone. Sparrow? Gone. 

If an email program fails at basic functions, it doesn’t matter if they can snooze or send emails later. I would love to see more innovation from Apple on Mail but it handles Exchange really well (better than Airmail, Canary or Spark) and is reliable. I tried Outlook and had hopes for it but that didn’t work well for me either. YMMV. 

zoetmb said:

tipoo said:

What makes the most sense to me - 

-Air goes away, Macbook takes over 999 starting tier  
-Non touchbar/two TB3 Macbook Pro just becomes the 13" Macbook, maybe introduces a non retina display as a  further budget model as this rumor. 
-Macbook Pro is differentiated by touchbar, 4 ports, and now ULV quad cores 

Without paring down the line like that, it becomes redundant and un-Apple with a 13" Air, 13" Pro, 13" new budget model, and 12.9" Macbook. 

The Air can only go away if Apple is willing to lower the MBP 13" (without Touch Bar) by $300, which isn't going to happen.   The Air can still have a place if the lower model is reduced from $1000 to $700, but that's not going to happen either.   But if it did, I'd bet Apple would sell tons at $700.    It would be a good way to get computer users to buy into the Apple eco-system with the strategy that their next computer would be a model up the line.  

And you're not going to see a 2TB machine in this price range from Apple for a long time.   Apple charges a $1200 differential to get from 512GB to 2TB and $1400 to get from 256GB to 2TB.   These prices are only made possible by Apple's choice to not use standard storage modules that are plug and play.   This and the inability to replace batteries and memory as one used to be able to do in MBP's gets me so angry that my current late-2016 MBP is probably going to be my last Apple computer.   And for my money, the Touch Bar is a complete waste - I'm sorry I opted for that as it accomplishes almost nothing.  

Completely agree. I’m still using my late-2013 MBP that has MagSafe, a big much of useful ports and a 1 TB SSD. No dongles. And the keyboard is reliable. 

Was interested but no volume controls? Only six hours battery life and two additional charges? I’m sure it sounds good and I do love my old QC20’s from Bose. But honestly, when my Back Bay Audio true wireless earbuds get 8 hours on a charge, have a small case with four additional charges, sound awesome and with Comply memory foam ear cushions have great passive noise cancellation, I just can’t convince myself to buy these. I’d love active NC, but with comply ear cushions, the Back Bay Duets are nearly as good as my wired Bose QC20 earbuds with ANC. For $42 vs $279, the extra benefits of these new Bose earbuds don’t seem worth it. And the Duets control volume. They don’t have Qi wireless charging or USB-C nor fast charging. But that’s ok with me. The sound is awesome. 

I have a late-2013 MBP and have no plans to upgrade. Whether or not the “new” keyboard has a fix for the issues that have been plaguing the earlier models and they just won’t say for legal issues, the fact remains that one cannot fix the keyboard without a pretty nontrivial process and expense (which will not be borne by Apple after its repair program ends). These MBPs are not cheap, even at the low end, and for that price a consumer should expect reasonable durability. There is dust in my office-it’s unavoidable. Never has caused any issues with my MBP, but again, I’ve had this since 2014 and it’s been rock solid. 

Truth is, there is no real evidence that anything more than a $50-70 Oral-B or Sonicare basic electric toothbrush is necessary. None of these features in smart toothbrushes amount to better oral health. The only features that are helpful and proven are brushing for two minutes, so the two-minute timers on the basic oral b or Sonicare toothbrushes are all that’s needed and saves folks a lot of money compared with the ones touted here. Yeah BT is often cool and maybe if that motivates someone to brush then great. But no features here are clearly beneficial for most people nor are they cost effective. 

I have used pretty much everything out there and was very wedded to Airmail until it just got too buggy and the developers became nasty and useless. Spark isn’t (yet) all that Airmail is in terms of functionality. But it works reliably with pretty few bugs. And more features are coming, plus the UX is so much better. Yes, Spamsieve isn’t yet supported. But it usually was unreliable in Airmail as well (Airmail would stop moving spam to the spam folder; it was not a SpamSieve issue). I leave Mail open in the background and that works well for now.