Dan_Dilger

M68000 said:

zoetmb said:

According to WebMB, cold and flu viruses can last on a surface from a few minutes up to 24 hours (not 9 days) and is quite weak after just a few minutes.   According to the CDC, "It’s currently unclear if a person can get 2019-nCoV by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes."

So it’s just a “cold” or “flu” then?   Does Webmd also explain why China has cities with millions of people on lockdown for just a cold or flu?  And why other countries are doing quarantines ?

A coronavirus is a specific shape of virus. This new strain, like existing/known versions, causes a respiratory (lung) infection that causes cold symptoms. 

The "common cold" is a generic term for a variety of viral nose/throat/upper respiratory infections, including coronavirus and rhinovirus and is often a mix of viruses.

China is calling the resulting disease of this new coronavirus a form of pneumonia, which is an inflammation of the lungs. 

The "flu" is a viral infection caused by Influenza, a family of RNA viruses more distantly related. It's similar but usually involves a different set of symptoms. 

Making up the idea that a cold virus can survive on a metal surface for days doesn't sound credible It sure doesn't help your case if you just randomly "picked it up somewhere" if you also don't seem to realize that colds and flu infections can be life threatening, or a serious contagion. the Spanish flu that killed millions was also "just a flu."

The very reason why cold viruses like this new coronavirus are believed to be spreading by cough droplets is because the virus can't dry out and stay viable. 

If the virus remained virulent as a dry film on surfaces, it would be spreading differently than it is. 40k infected is a very large number, but Wuhan is a city of 11 million people. So the reported number infected "only" amounts to 3/100ths of the population of that city, but the fear of it rapidly spreading to more in the city--or to China's other massive cities--would be extremely difficult to manage, especially without a clearer understanding of how it spreads and how to control it and what treatment people who have developed an infection need to survive it. 

lmac said:

One of DED's favorite forms of storytelling is rewriting history to make Apple and Jobs seem to have thought of everything, but let's remember that we don't write articles about flops. You never see DED defending the genius of Ping, the iTunes social network, or the Apple HiFi. Still, there are lots of things in this article that qualify as spin, or that are just plain false. 1) When the iPad came out, people were stunned that it was just a scaled up phone that couldn't make phone calls, and not a more capable device. They were correct about its early limitations. 2) The product name almost sunk the launch, with people comparing it to feminine hygiene products. 3) The predicted dominance of the eBook and magazine industry never came to pass. 4) Jobs totally missed the importance of the App Store and 3rd party apps, which came later, and really had much to do with the success of the device. 5) Job's insistence that a stylus and keyboard were unnecessary have since been reversed, so which is it? Is Apple on the wrong track today, or did Jobs get it wrong in the beginning? 6) The iPad push into the K12 classroom as a textbook replacement is over. Schools are replacing aging iPads with Chromebooks that cost less, are more rugged, easier to manage, and simply do more. 7) The one big thing Apple got right was to make the iPad the best tablet money can buy, and to keep making incremental improvements. Staying above the low-end competition is what Apple always does, but it paid off because the low end Android and Amazon tablets are clunky, sluggish, and non-intuitive in comparison.

First off, the comments are here for you to discuss the article and offer feedback, not to throw out as much slanderous, fact-free character assassination you can just to divert attention from the subject. Stop doing this. 

Second, I have written about a series of unsuccessful concepts or product flops Apple has made, including Ping and iPod HiFi. There's even mention of Ping in this very article, making it a bizarre example for you to use in slandering what I write as "just plain false."

1) This subject is also mentioned in the article. You clearly didn't even bother to read it. The idea that "people" who thought iPad was just a scaled up phone "were correct about its early limitations" is probably the stupidest takeaway one could make about the iPad launch. 

2) The fact that a few neanderthal trolls giggled to themselves about iPad sounding like "pad," as if the only meaning of pad were a feminine product, is incredibly stupid, at least in part because one the most popular and reputable notebook brands was IBM's ThinkPad, which nobody associated with a hygienic pad between 1992-2010. Nobody cared about what a few misogynistic idiots said, and it clearly had zero impact on iPad sales. So again, totally false claim on your part that "the product name almost sunk the launch." Quite embarrassing that you'd try. to claim that given that we know how well it sold. 

3) True it didn't become the digital magazine Jobs imagined, but that was largely because magazines were already to dead to revive in any form. Nobody else had any better outcome in trying to build a market for digital content, and Apple's current News+ remains the best option there is. Not sure what point you have here. 

4) Totally false. This is even discussed in the article. 

5) Apple has always sold third party stylus tools for iOS screens, and Jobs comments about a stylus being "wrong" when he introduced iPhone in 2007 related to it being required to navigate the UI of a device, as it was for Newton and Palm Pilot and some smartphones. Jobs was obviously correct then as the market demonstrated, and Apple is performing well today by selling Pencil as a drawing device and not forcing users to have it just to make use of iPads, as the market is again demonstrating. 

6) Sounds like all you know about Chromebooks is from Mark Gurman, who flat out lied in his reporting. I wrote about it, you should check it out.

7) This is meaningless to say, because CNET and the Verge were claiming that various waves of other tablets were the "the best tablet money can buy" across the last decade, and everyone was making incremental advancements. Windows tablets, Honeycomb, Nexus 9, and various other Android models have tried to compete in the high end with iPad like pricing, and they still failed.

bigtds said:

Soli said:

I can't wait for Ralphie to come in here saying that iPads aren't real computers.

I guess my phone is a "real" computer too. There is nothing the iPad can do that my phone can't. The iPad didn't even have a usable file system until recently.

Phones sales may have some impact on PC demand, but it’s pretty clear that virtually every tablet sold kills a PC sale. Look at PC sales data next to the timeline of iPad sales and it’s impossible to believe that iPad devoured conventional PC sales.

Microsoft called iPad a PC back when it was trying to sell Windows RT. Jobs called it Post-PC. Is Mac a PC? 

wizard69 said:

By the way I must point out that this article is screwed as far as accuracy goes.   Metal and Vulkan are ver similar and derived from the same basic infrastructure.   As such Vulkan is as good or even better than Metal in the role it fills.   That is just one problem with this DED article that needs to be pointed out, too many take these articles book, line and sinker.   

Specifically what is your issue? The article does not say Vulkan fails to fill a role. It says Metal 2 is increasingly focusing on compute tasks, while Vulcan is aimed at graphics. That’s not incorrect. 

cat52 said:

sflocal said:

These politicians are only making a ruckus to ensure their re-election.  Nothing more.

I bet the protestors in HK would beg to differ.

While politicians do like to grandstand regarding all sorts of trivial matters, this is one example where speaking out can make a difference. So if Apple decides to swallow its moral compass, there is no harm in others reminding them to do the right thing. And if you really would like to see China's govt topple, then remaining silent and preserving the status quo isn't going to get it done.

What nobody really mentions is that HKMap also exists as a web app, and that nobody depends on Apple having the "courage" or whatever to keep hosting this in the App Store. Also, the delisting has no effect on users who already downloaded the app. This is purely virtue signaling by politicians who are in no way capable to do anything about it, and who are also doing very little to address real problems right here in the USA.