woochifer
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Qualcomm opposed to Nvidia's $40B takeover of Arm
The article glaringly omits the fact that among the companies listed, Apple is the only one that doesn't license the actual core designs from ARM. Because Apple has a perpetual architectural license from ARM, they can design their own completely customized core designs while licensing only the instruction sets. Apple has only used their own custom core designs since the A6. Because Apple is one of the original ARM founding partners, I would assume that they have layers upon layers of safeguards built into their licensing terms before they spun off their stakes.Qualcomm also has an ARM architectural license. But, as their in-house core designs became less competitive compared to ARM's Cortex reference core designs, Qualcomm abandoned designing their own custom cores and began incorporating modified versions of the Cortex cores into their Snapdragon SoCs instead. Qualcomm's reliance on the ARM reference cores, makes them way more vulnerable to any changes that might occur under Nvidia ownership.Of course, unfair licensing terms and abusive monopolist practices is something that Qualcomm is well versed in. They know well what it's like to dish it out, and probably don't want to find out what the receiving end tastes like.Apple's only vulnerability would be if the ARM reference designs begin to surpass the performance of their custom cores, and they're forced to consider licensing ARM's reference core designs to remain competitive. But, that seems unlikely to happen for a while considering how Apple can tweak both the OS and the CPU design to meet specific performance goals that might differ significantly from the rest of the market.
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Apple got tablets right, and created a whole new market with the iPad 12 years ago today
The iPad was revolutionary because it created entirely new markets. Most of the comments here want the iPad to add more functions to make it more like a notebook computer. That totally misses the point.At one end, you have users like my mom and my aunt. Neither of them had ever figured out a mouse and keyboard-based interface, so they didn't use PCs at all. At the time that the iPad came out, they still used flip phones as well. They knew that networked devices were increasingly the only to do a lot of household functions, but it wasn't until the iPad came along that they had a device that could perform those functions AND do it in a way that was inherently intuitive for them. Jobs argued many times that making a device simple and intuitive is inherently more difficult than adding complexity just to check off a longer feature list or cover every conceivable use case.I almost viewed the iPad as a miracle worker. My mom and my aunt had never surfed the web, never viewed online videos, never used smartphone apps (or computer applications for that matter). I originally talked my mom into buying an iPad so she could do video chatting with her grandchild who lived 400 miles away and had just started talking. We also set her up with an Apple TV and our Netflix login, and she began using the iPad for much of her TV viewing. There's nothing simpler than a touchscreen and swiping through programming choices, and having that iPad was really the only way that she could have ever gotten into the computing world.People like my mom and aunt are not going to upgrade their devices very often (she doesn't even bother to update her apps that much either). It was only when some of her favorite apps were no longer supported on iOS 9 that she upgraded from an iPad 2 to a new iPad last year. The iPad was also the gateway to buying and knowing how to use an iPhone. The ease of transition on the iOS platform cannot be overstated, especially for a senior. Using the automatic backup from iCloud, both the iPhone and iPad were quickly setup with no changes to any of the settings or where the apps appear onscreen.Because of her eyesight, my mom much prefers to use the iPad over the iPhone.The tablet market is where it is precisely because its most common use patterns do not drive rapid upgrade cycles, and you don't have the carriers dangling upgrade offers with tablets like they do with phones. The iPad is fundamentally a lean back device, and the concerns for those users differ from people who want more of the lean forward functionality built into a laptop. In much the same way that people complain about the iPad being less than optimal for certain types of content creation, the same standard applies to laptops that are less than optimal for content consumption.
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Hackers selling data on 100M T-Mobile customers after server attack
davgreg said:
Do not worry, your data has already been compromised.MacPro said:Next T-Mobile Ad, 'We 5G have coverage everywhere, so is your data!"
Between all the differing hacks over the years, your info sits in some database for sale.
Cannot believe that anyone would be stupid enough to give a Social Security number for a cell phone.Cannot believe that anyone would be stupid enough to give a Social Security number for a (name product sold on credit). Anything involving a credit check will entail handing out the SS#.Just when I thought I would convert my prepaid TMo account to a postpaid account, this happens. Looks like I'll stick with prepaid service.
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Compared: New 2022 iPhone SE vs 2020 iPhone SE
jMacPro said:Does anyone know why the 256gb option is being advertised as a storage size upgrade?The iPhone SE2 was certainly available in a 256gb option. Even if apple had discontinued this option, I know it was available new as recently as last summer/fall.Personally, I was hoping apple would release a 512gb SE3.I just don't get why the 256gb is being written about as a storage upgrade when the storage options seem the same as the SE2.Because Apple discontinued the 256 GB option for the iPhone SE back in September after the iPhone 13 came out. They've been eliminating the larger storage configurations for all of their older models for a while now -- going all the way back to the iPhone 3G. Other iPhone models that eliminated the larger storage option before the rest of the lineup was discontinued include the iPhone 4s, 5s, 6, 7, 8, XR, and 11.I suspect that the demand for the largest capacity tier drops a lot after about the first year of availability. With the SE, the people who buy early tend to be the ones who value the higher performance, and more of them will opt for the larger capacity. As an iPhone model gets older, then the buyers tend to be more budget conscious and less likely to choose the higher capacity options.The SE 2022 adds back the 256 GB option, but obviously they're reserving some features only for the higher priced models. if you want 512 GB, you need to go with the iPhone 13. If you want 1 TB, you need to go with the iPhone 13 Pro.Once the iPhone 14 comes out, then look for Apple to delete the 512 GB option for the 13 and remove the 1 TB option for the 13 Pro (unless they discontinue it after one year like they did with the 12 Pro).
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macOS Ventura 13.2.1 is here with bug fixes and improvements
maltz said:Indeed, one of the best Mac OS X versions ever (10.6, iirc) resulted when then spent an entire major version adding almost NO user-facing changes, and spent all their effort on cleanup. I would love to see them make a standing policy of that, say, every 5-8 years.Let's not forget that Snow Leopard had some showstopping bugs in the earlygoing, particularly the guest account bug that could wipe out user account data if the upgrade was done from a guest login. And Snow Leopard also had a much lengthier list of incompatible apps.Version 10.6.8 is the one that everyone fondly remembers as a fast and rock solid OS (definitely the most reliable version of OS X that I ever used). But, it took a while to reach that point.
