emig647

First off, I completely agree with  here. Utilizing MDM certificates to obtain their goals is extremely irresponsible and they should know better. 

With that hat being said  may not be so innocent. I have worked for a company in the past where they suddenly kicked an app of ours out of the store after it being there 7 years with monthly updates. The reasoning was quite vague. We had phone calls, escalated it up the chain but they just kept repeating the rule instead of telling us how it even applied to us. The crazy thing was we had other apps that did the same thing but they were hung up on this one. In the end we changed categories and the name of the app and then it was perfectly acceptable. But the entire lack of specifics is where the frustration stemmed from. We would have been more than happy to change the app if they could tell us what to do or what specifically was wrong.

If these companies got the same runaround I can easily see how they could draw parallels to  sherlocking the industry. There seems to be a communication breakdown somewhere. 

Why does Apple have to win the home automation market? Can they not just be apart of the quality devices home market? Like computers and other devices, I'm not interested in cheap knock offs that are going to fail, especially when it comes to devices in my home. I want items that are going to last for years and are not going to be replaced every few years.

So far that has been working out. I'm quite happy with my LiftMaster garage door openers, Ecobee3, August smart lock and hue lighting. Everything seems to work well, and can control it all from my watch or phone. It will be interesting to see how much more automated homes can become (predicting renewable energy compatible devices with energy use and gain anticipation algorithms). I am waiting for a good blinds set up, so far I have found them all to be ugly, but other than that I'm not sure what else I would want. 

** One point that was not mentioned in the article was that the AppleTV can be a hub too. I'm not sure why there is a focus on the HomePod. I do not own a HomePod, not sure I will.

*** Another point missed: Siri needs some serious refactoring to be a true competitor in this market.

swineone said:

I'm a university professor and I'd love to teach Swift to my students. Unfortunately, very few of them can afford to buy Apple gear (not that I could mandate them to if they preferred Android anyway), and funding for our university is very hard to come by, so having an iPad for every student is absolutely out of the question. I wish Apple would release a web-based version of Swift Playgrounds, or perhaps an Android app.

Check out the Swift open source website. Releases for Ubuntu / Debian are maintained. There are also some wrapped versions for Fedora / CentOS out there, but not official releases. https://swift.org/download/

It is worth noting that the Swift 5 stable ABI does not apply to dynamic libraries (dylib). I believe Apple said that would come later this year. This means you can't really use Swift if you distribute libraries for others to use.

bobolicious said:

Is the i7 no longer an advantage over the i5 ?  
One thing I had really hoped for VESA flexibility like the iMac Pro...

I'm assuming you said this because there isn't an i7 build config? If that's what you meant, it is more that the i7 and i9 are so close in performance (and price) that Apple probably just decided to go with the one with the better performance instead of BTO clutter.

I don't buy this report for the simple reason of the thermal issues they cornered themselves into last time.