kdupuis77

F_Kent_D said:

I myself didn’t have any issues with any of it TBH. I don’t have child pornography on anything I own and neither does anyone I know so I have nothing to worry about. They never were going to physically look at every photo, these are hash scans for particular data in the file details itself, not the actual photos. I also allowed the notifications setting on my 11 year old Daughter’s phone to notify me of potential unacceptable messages being sent or received. Let the paranoid people kill what could actually help end the CP sickness that’s more of an issue today than ever. 

It is an interesting balance between privacy concerns and the greater good of combatting the spread of CP online. I take my privacy very seriously and feel I very slightly come down on the side of preferring Apple not routinely scanning all my files and photos, but I can also appreciate the potential benefits of doing so to potentially aid in catching these predators as well. I dunno, it's a tough one but if you parallel this to "stop and frisk" and people saying "If you have nothing to hide, you won't have any reason to be worried" it does seem to contravene reasonable search and seizure without any probable cause to blanket troll through our data. Getting back to the Apple ecosystem, this is also akin to the AirTag privacy concerns vs. effective theft deterrent/tracking capabilities debate, though of course much more serious of a problem.

But I'll also be real, I am 1000% sure Google, Microsoft, etc. are scanning my data already looking for illicit content and merely ways to sell me more stuff anyhow lol. I agree with an earlier poster that Apple will likely contain their hash scanning to iCloud data stored locally on their own servers and just not publicize this information while leaving CSAM off of people's local hardware (which, as more and more customers move towards 100% storage of their data in the cloud, will be nearly just as effective one would think - I just migrated everything on my MacBook Pro/iPad/iPhone into iCloud fully myself this past summer, with just the occasional Time Machine backup taken to the HDD in my fire safe).

Either way you look at it, there is a growing percentage of people, of a particular ideological persuasion, that would have us all believe these predators (pedophiles) are just merely "minor attracted persons" and seem to want to normalize this deranged euphemism for them. Sickening.

Oh man, if I had the Music Voice Plan (and could only listen to music using Siri) I probably wouldn't get to listen to much music haha. It works fine on my iPhone and MacBook but man is Siri dumber than a doornail with music requests on HomePods. I've got 4x Minis throughout the house and it's such a fight with amnesia Siri I just end up controlling playback from my phone or watch to avoid the frustration. Can't imagine having to RELY on Siri alone haha.

Apple_Bar said:

beowulfschmidt said:

If I'm sitting in a restaurant and some jerk at the next tables disables the AirTag on my keyring, I'm gonna be really upset.

Is there going to be a way to determine whether some idiot has disabled my AirTag without pulling out the Find My app?

restaurant, airports, flights, concerts, college, that jackass family member (we all have one).

the bigger ? what to do after that jerk disables the item… Contact Apple? Will it pair again? Wish a Metro Bus run over the jerk who disabled the AirTag?

To clarify, what they mean here is that the user could play a sound to aid them in locating the AirTag itself to then, assuming of course it is on their person or in their own belongings and not on someone near them, they could proceed to PHYSICALLY disable it. There is no way to remote disable an AirTag from any device not signed into the iCloud account to which it is registered. I tried this out with an AirTag I registered to my wife's iPhone (car keys) and my iPhone identified the tag near me and gave me the owner's phone number (formatted as: XXX-XXX-1234) and had a button that brought up some information on how to physically open up, an AirTag you find on you, and remove the battery to make it stop tracking you.

So there shouldn't be anything to worry about them being remotely disabled. It's a strange fine line between preventing stalking and alerting thieves to the presence of a tracker in your stuff I guess.

Also the other day I had her car, to get the tires replaced and some other stuff, and after about 8 hours of being out of the house with her keyring got the audible beeping on the drive home that night. I also received a notification that another user's AirTag was moving with me. I was able to silence the notification indefinitely (don't care, its one of two vehicles we use interchangeably) which is nice at least. And I also have it set to not alert her if either keyring is left at home or her place of work (Not gonna get far in New Hampshire leaving work without car keys haha). Also, for the past month I have never got the alert when we were carrying these keys around all day long and were together (ie. near her iPhone) which is good considering I just got a wallet that conveniently lets you slip one into an exterior slot that I carry daily. I hope Apple does eventually open the system up to allowing multiple members of the same family to track communal AirTags like we can already who with our Macs, iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches and AirPods... I registered the AirTags to her since she tends to misplace her keys a bit more than I lol. So now if I leave my home without my Apple Watch, iPhone, Wallet and Truck Keys Apple will sure let me know about it haha.

Ya know, I'd be happy if Siri could just turn music off on our multiple HomePods without telling me "I'm sorry, there is nothing playing. I can't stop"... And then ACTUALLY stopping the music that WAS playing lol. There is no way in hell I will ever deploy Google or Amazon devices in our home, but man Siri can be stupid sometimes! Just wish they'd focus on stuff like that than millisecond performance "gains" like this...

Xed said:

DenverBrownGuy said:

"Some buyers might also be enticed by the built-in 4K webcam as well"

This implies the 4k (~8.3MP) is better than the 12MP camera. Just saying...

Several things to consider beyond some spec sheet listing (which is usually something I point out to people claiming how a non-Apple product is inferior because some listed spec is higher than what Apple offers, not the other way around).

First of all, note that the MP doesn't account for the aspect ratio. I think 4K @16:9 is around 8.3 MP. What does FaceTime use?

Additionally, this camera has been plagued with issues and I'm not sure it's been resolved. To me, this issue is particularly odd because it seems like something you'd expect Apple to not only want to get right before shipping, but have no issue getting right seeing as how it's using technology you'd think they mastered years ago with the known camera component and A13 Bionic chip.

It's a relevant point about the cameras. I'm not sure the MP of the Studio Display's FaceTime camera but I do know it is a wide angle camera, which likely accounts for the higher 12MP rating given the larger size than standard 16:9 4K resolution. The camera is wide angle and cropped down to 16:10 for normal usage.. And when the crop pans dynamically across the camera's sensor to track a person speaking, that is what Apple refers to as "Center Stage".

I love my Studio Display by and large, but the FaceTime camera is indeed atrociously bad. I mean, I say that as an avid 20+ year Apple Kool-aid drinker lol, it's pathetic in a $1600 product that they couldn't do any better than that and seems like a massive oversight for a company so focused on the user experience. At least it is convenient to have it built-in instead of the old $40 Logitech webcam I had duct taped on top of my old monitor... Although that thing too had better image quality haha. Overall still please with my new display, just wish they could have done better there. And for the same price as the Samsung "knockoff" I'd rather have the real deal on my desk!

jamnap said:

Note: there is a bug in watch 10 as it will not display any of the weather info on your watch.  wonder if this latest update is the fix

Yes! I’ve been seeing the same with my new Series 9. Like sometimes I look at my watch and all the weather complications are blanked out.. and they won’t work again until I manually launch the weather app it seems. 

I think I'm going to miss lightning eventually when I upgrade. Yeah, USB-C everywhere will simplify some things but I really like the robustness of the lightning connector better myself as there is no board inside the female socket to break and lightning is just a big hole which I think makes extracting troublesome pocket lint that much easier/safer. Realistically, nowadays I use MagSafe for practically everything anyhow (iPhone, Apple Watch & AirPods) so I think the last 100 times I plugged something in via lightning was mostly my Magic Trackpad and Keyboard and then everyone once in a while off an Anker battery pack when traveling (as it is a more efficient use of the battery power than using my MagSafe Duo in a pinch). Would've been nice for Apple to chuck one tiny Lightning to USB-C adapter in the box... But we all knew that was not going to happen (Because what would MOTHER NATURE-lady think?!?!) lol. As another poster mentioned, plenty of cheap/reliable-enough adapters for sale in multipacks on Amazon at least... $29 is insane.

chasm said:

bloggerblog said:

Netflix was the first and the name is synonymous with internet videos. Every smart TV has it preinstalled.

I was on Netflix in the early days, when they had more variety, but every year I look around to see if it can woo me back, and every year my main thoughts are "this is just like bad commercial TV, only without the commercials." Too much junk, not enough things I would be interested in, by tastes vary of course and mine are probably off the mainstream.

I tapped out of Netflix 3 years ago and recently took a week free trial just to see how it was nowadays... Oh man, you aren't kidding on scraping the bottom of the barrel! Browsing through Netflix now feels like looking through the $3 DVD bins at the local WalMart haha... Just terrible, heck even Amazon Prime video has more worthwhile stuff in it to watch now.

There are definitely use cases for enough people out there to make this product viable… otherwise, Apple would not be sinking R&D money into it lol. They know there is a market segment to exploit and eventually they will be able to bring the costs down to make it more affordable to the mass market, like many of their past devices. I am a merchant mariner myself, and I am dreaming of being able to slap a Vision Pro in my bag so I can have a 100” screen and surround sound strapped to my face while lying in my rack at night out to sea haha. A very limited usage case, but for example maybe you got some guys out there don’t have room for a giant screen in their apartments nor have someone they need to share it with eh? And my potential usage case is merely as a “toy”… there are plenty of professional uses for the Vision Pro with a larger potential customer base.

Ya know, ever since Prime used to be $79 a year they send that same tired email, every flipping year, explaining how they justify increasing the cost of my Prime renwal by extolling the tremendous value that is Prime Video! We rarely ever watch anything on our "most expensive" streaming service (Prime video) that happens to include "free" 7-10 business day shipping (but yes of course, 2 day handling time prior to shipping if you read the terms and conditions sir!). Like f*ck gonna be paying Jeff Bezos any more money... At this rate, if I give them more hard-earned money, they'll be forced to slow my shipping times down again lo.