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.

michelb76 said:

Anyone else have issues with safari logging you out of every site all the time? I have this issue since I updated to 14.4

I travel a lot for work, so I thought it was because I had been overseas for months and it was picking up my location change... But I've been reading many users having this issue. It's crazy annoying! Constantly having to login to EVERYTHING now, not even just banking sites..

Anilu_777 said:

People forget that if you store photos in iCloud you have to still keep them on the phone. If you delete them they’ll also delete from iCloud. I have always purchased the 256 GB phone and only recently have I found it going above half-full. I have Apple One for the family so its 2 TB of storage means no-one will lose their photos. If the family helps pay it’s worth it. 

That is actually not the case. If you are using iCloud to backup your photos, they will ALL be stored in the cloud. However, what your iPhone does is up to you. iPhones typically come with the "Optimize iPhone Storage" option turned on. This means by default, if you start running low on local storage, your iPhone will start wiping photos and videos off your device to free up space... When you go into the Photos app you will still see all your content, but when you tap on older photos/videos it will stream them off the cloud using the internet. If you don't have internet access and try this, you will get an error on videos and you will only see the tiny thumbnail (blown up to fullscreen, so lossy looking) until your internet connection is restored. If you disable the "Optimize iPhone Storage" by choosing "Download and Keep Originals" then yes, 100% of your library is kept on your iPhone and if you delete anything it deletes the corresponding file in the cloud.

This is essentially how it works on a MacBook and iPad as well with infrequently used apps and files if you leave it setup this way. If one paid for iCloud storage and routinely had a decent internet connection you would not even realize this is happening. I work on cargo ships out to see... So I keep optimization disabled on all my Apple devices so I can view my files and photos when offline.

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!

Well, considering I have a Xerox multifunction... EVERY MacOS update "breaks" the ability to print lol. Seriously, Xerox sucks the big one for keeping up with Apple updates and new drivers (Usually lagging 9-10 months after each major release, at least back when my model was still "supported"). Oh well, other than the bimonthly working around to get this stupid thing printing normally again, it has been rock solid and I still have 34 years of generic toner in stock... So someday I'll be able to get that sweet sweet Canon-Mac love lol. Best solution for the last 2 years has been connecting it to wifi and using IPP w/ a manually assigned IP address and generic PCL drivers for both my wife and my MacBooks... Any combination of AirPrint/Bonjour/Xerox Drivers (Right?!) and I get 85 sheets of alien script every time I print a shipping label or a document lol.

And I wouldn't touch an HP printer with a 39.5 foot pole after the last two I had to setup for family members (internet REQUIRED just to print w/ USB?? & Ink Subscription jammed up your arsenal lol no thank you!)

Seriously though, just setup a Canon multifunction for my mother-in-law and the print and scan install so easily w/ their software and does everything 100% perfectly via wifi, ethernet and USB. Big fan of these and Brother to a slightly lesser extent. Just have to remember: ALL printers suck lol.

"PC LOAD LETTER?!, WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?!?!?!"

chasm said:

This comment is being written on a 2019 MacBook Pro with that keyboard, and it has never given me any issue.

Now that's just one case, but IIRC Mike here at AppleInsider has mentioned that he kept track of store data about keyboard repairs during the period the program was most active, and didn't see a huge bump over normal everyday "I dropped my drink into my keyboard" type problems.

If you were affected, of course, it was annoying and the initial solutions before the program came along were not good at all. But not everyone with such a keyboard had the problem, and that's a verifiable fact.

Is that a 16" 2019 MacBook Pro? Just wondering, because the 16" model was the first to revert back to the usual scissor-style keyboard switches. I didn't have any problems with my 2019 16" Intel MacBook Pro keyboard... But absolutely did with 2x different Touch Bar MacBook Pros, a 13" and a 16", w/ that butterfly keyboard. The 15" MBP went back to Apple twice for top case replacement. First time was sticking S key that would register S randomly in sentences, and like 3-15x when pressed... 2nd time was the exact same issue but with the 9 key. I keep my computers immaculately clean too. Was able to pry the S key off the first time and blow a small amount of dust out (fixed the issue for a day or two), but getting it back on there was extremely more difficult than popping back on the scissor-style caps were/are. The 13" MBP had same issue but with the tab key. At least Apple handled it for free, but not great losing your sole computer for 1-2 weeks in the process. Absolutely loving the M-series MBPs now, 0 complaints there! That last Intel model had me teetering on going back to a windows machine after 20 years w/ Apple now lol.

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.