rols

I've found FaceID much better in almost every way. I often have wet hands either from cooking/washing up or just finishing a workout and TouchID was terrible in those cases. That was common enough that FaceID really shines. I also find the whole interface motion much more intuitive, the number of times I pressed the home button and thought it was too soon, pressed it again and ended up with Siri or Apple Pay instead of an opened phone was .. quite large. Now I just put a thumb on the screen and move it around and it feels very natural. 

It's not just the initial unlock which is better, for apps which used to require touch ID to unlock the app you'd see the touchID symbol, then have to place your thumb to authenticate. Since you're already looking at the screen, FaceID starts scanning you and moves though the process before you really notice it happened and without you having to do anything except keep looking. 

The only instance in which FaceID is worse for me is phone lying on the desk I'm sitting at. I can't unlock it in-place which I used to be able to do with an index finger on the button, I have to tilt it up enough to face me so I can scan my face. I don't know if that's something software may be able to fix with the current hardware or it will require an even larger dot projector/scanner which can look 'sideways'. Even with that less-optimal case, I find FaceID better than TouchID ever was. 

Blunt said:

Apple nailed it. You can tell by counting the trolls.

You can tell by what actually happened in the market. I'll take Singapore as that's where I live. The pre-orders and telcom-orders were, as usual, dominated by scalpers buying the max of 2 units in the hope of making a quick buck. But Apple kept enough back for line-up that there was no point in paying over RRP, and with the flood of telcom (non-returnable) phones the scalper market collapsed. The scalpers returned their phones, Apple offered them same day for in-store pickup, most of the rest of the scalpers saw the game was up and returned them and lots of people didn't bother to pick up their telco sets (even less valuable as they couldn't be returned to Apple). It was a virtuous circle. 

A few, very few, made a quick buck. Most scalper phones were DHL delivered and hand-returned and then sold to real customers. 

Kudos to Apple for perfect pricing and the nimble-ness to get phones they knew would be returned intact back out for same-day pickup. The scalpers will try it again next year but the game is up, the more who play, the less anyone has a chance to win. Happy for all the real customers who picked up a phone this weekend at, or below, RRP, which they actually want to use. 

wlym said:

"Rather than Adobe trying to hype up the Healing Brush as the reason to pay for an all-new Photoshop"… Except Adobe's now doing something worse, with little recourse for subscribers: pushing out half-baked, buggy software, with new "features" that few are asking for while very often ignoring the bugs each new release adds to the list. Back in the days when I could buy Photoshop (and Illustrator and Indesign), I could wait out a buggy release or ignore one whole "upgrade" entirely. Now, if a colleague or customer automatically updates their version(s) of Adobe CC, I have to as well or I won't be able to open their files (Photoshop is more forgiving than AI or ID in this regard). In general, the "features" are getting less and less useful (Photoshop reversing SHIFT to constrain proportions is one egregious example) as well but I imagine Adobe needs to offer a bullet point list of "new!" every now and then to justify the expensive subscription. I guess they have little to lose as they have a monopoly on industry essential design software for the foreseeable future. So, after years of paying Adobe for a subscription, the moment I decide not to pay anymore, I can no longer open a single file I created in their software. How is this fair? Why are you cheering?

I thought this was a fair synopsis of many of the things wrong with Adobe's subscription model and by inference a lot of other subscription models too. I refused to purchase Adobe CC subscription because it would lock me into paying forever to continue to be able to open files I'd created when I did have said subscription. Adobe used to have to actually improve their software so that people would upgrade at least every now and again, and I didn't mind that. If I didn't want shiny new feature X and hadn't bought a new camera, I could just use stick with the version I had until I did. Now if you want Adobe you have to subscribe (apart from Photoshop Elements which can still be bought) and their incentive for improving the software is diminished. 

 The company in 2017 updated its App Store Guidelines to reflect a change regarding code bases and templates that effectively requires developers to create a new $99-per-year account for each client app.

That stretches the truth somewhat. You can release as many apps on one developer account as you like. If you have 20 clients and write each an app, one account. What Apple clamped down on were template apps where the developer writes an app for Joe's pizza and then sells it to Jane's pizza as well by changing the artwork and the address and then goes on to Bob's pizza, Frank's pizza etc etc putting out the same app re-skinned for dozens of clients. Why did Apple do this? Because they don't want lowest common denominator apps which are really mostly just adverts for businesses clogging up the store, they want imaginative apps that are distinctive. It's also true that most of those apps were free, so one developer for $99 a year was able to put multiple (cr)apps in the store which Apple had to host and for which they would receive nothing. 

They did actually roll back part of those rules and say you can have a template app but the client themselves must submit it so yes in that case, each client needs an account. $99 a year is Apple's charge to host your advertising app .. and Apple also offered free developer accounts for non-profits, churches etc to ensure they had an avenue to have an appstore presence. 

I'm pretty sure this one gets tossed. 

Sounds to me that if anyone is infringing on copyright, it's Cleopatra. And it's not even necessarily that they are wilfully infringing, they may believe, correctly or not, that they do have a license to distribute this music; this music has been around long enough it's passed through a number of hands. 

The complaint against Apple, if it is properly summarised in the article, is ridiculous. The idea that Apple should be able to find out that less than a hundred of the 50 million or so tunes they have on iTunes doesn't have a proper license, despite I'm sure signing contracts with Cleopatra in which that company asserts they do have the correct rights just because .. it's Apple .. stretches credulity. 

phirenze said:

When the eff are they going to update the MBPs?  Seriously it's been years and this thing get updated after a year. I don't get it.

Be careful what you wish for. I like my macbook pro with its two USB-A ports which get lots of use. I really don't want to see those become one or even two USB-C ports so the thing can just be made thinner. Don't mind them updating the pro, as long as it stays pro and comes with lots of different sized holes to stick things into.