willcropoint

AutigerMark said:

Looks good at the top, but why does it have to mean thicker bezel's over the entire circumference of the phone?

wisey said:

seanismorris, I agree with you that many of the inferences in the article are poorly justified and not credible.  The claim that a “glut” of exploits for iOS is responsible for the lower price of exploits being sold suggests that there is a limited budget for such sales and the prices fall when there are too many of them.  I don’t think that there is evidence for such market limits.  

One would also imagine that the more malicious and damaging the exploits, the higher price that organizations would pay for them, suggesting that Android exploits are more malicious and damaging.  

As you point out, the other reason why prices for Android exploits are high is because there are more Android users.  

More exploits for iOS is consistent with the greater wealth of iOS users.  The fact that Apple responds quickly to the presence of exploits and almost all iOS users upgrade their operating systems relatively quickly means that exploits are more rapidly and definitively neutralized, reducing their value.

swineone said:

After I had some batteries on Apple products die on me (and had to spend obscene amounts of money replacing them, because on top of Apple repairs being expensive, my country has some of the highest tax rates in the world piled on top), and being an electrical engineer, I decided to do some research on the scientific literature with regards to what could prolong the battery lifetime. Here is the executive summary: 1. Temperature: the main killer of batteries. Do everything on your power to keep the computer (and hence the battery) as cool as possible. For instance, using your phone for navigation in the car, which by itself heats the phone a lot due to GPS usage, plus having the sun shining directly on it, is just awful. If you do this often, try to leave the phone in the shade or right in front of the car's A/C vents to cool it. The inductive chargers I'm familiar with dissipate a lot of heat so I don't use those for the iPhone. 2. State of charge (battery percentage) and depth of discharge. Batteries degrade faster if fully charged. Some of the research indicates they'll also degrade if nearly depleted, and it appears a good compromise is about 60% charge. Too bad Apple won't allow you to connect the power adapter but disable charging (more on that at the end of the post). It might be very useful for those who don't need the full battery range, like me. Also some of the research indicates, as pointed out in the article, you should have shallow depths of discharge, i.e. 5 discharges from 60% to 40% are better than 1 discharge from 100% to 0%, although technically both are counted by the gas gauge IC as 1 cycle. 3. Charge rate. Try to charge the device as slowly as possible. Although the research isn't clear on the point of diminishing returns, one thing is certain: fast charging is harmful to the battery, so avoid it (the worst example being USB-C to an iPhone). This is probably what kills Apple Pencils so quickly -- at least the 1st gen, non-inductive-charging one (I speak from experience, having had one replaced with 9 months of very light use on it). I wouldn't even recommend using the iPad 12 W charger, but rather the iPhone 5 W one, even to charge the iPad. An interesting trick: you can use your iPad USB-A charger plus a USB-A to USB-C cable to charge the newest MacBooks very slowly if not in use (if in use, it'll at best maintain the charge with very light use, or deplete it at moderate to heavy use). 4. Cycle count. Best thing to do would be not to put in the cycles if possible, although if points 1 and 2 are not respected, even a battery that hasn't been cycled at all will eventually die. This one is simple: try to connect the charger as often as is feasible. Even if you're taking it out for a quick half-hour session, leave the charger connected. For MacBooks, there are also some settings to be used with the pmset command in Terminal to make sure the computer goes to standby, since it is not unusual to lose 10% charge (i.e. 1/10 of a cycle) over less than a day if you close the lid but don't go to standby. The computer will take a bit longer to wake up but depending on your usage patterns, it pays to do this since it could add up to as much as 30 cycles a year, which is far from negligible -- it's about half what I put on my computer over a year of use. I have written an app for MacBooks that is able to keep the computer at the desired charge level with the power adapter connected but not charging. I use it to keep my computer at 60% charge following point 2. I thought of releasing the app, but I'm certain that as soon as I do it, someone at Apple will take notice and close the API I use to do it (same reason why I'm being intentionally vague here). The point is, the capability is there, but Apple has a long history of stopping at nothing to prevent users from doing legitimate things with the devices they paid hard-earned cash for. This same API could be used on iOS but unfortunately it requires root access and I'm not willing to jailbreak my phone over it, if it's even still possible. Hope this helps someone.