avon b7

sflocal said:

elijahg said:

So much for SSDs being reliable enough to be soldered on. Apple's now going to have to replace $600 logic boards rather than $100 SSDs. Perhaps this is why the Mini is not quite as monolithic as it could have been...

No one ever said SSD drives were 100% fault proof.  The can and do fail, just like hard drives and RAM chips.  They’re rare but it happens.  

This is a non-issue.  Apple is backing it up even without Applecare.  Name any other company that does that out of warranty?

It is anything but a non-issue.

I'm in the camp that prefers non-soldered SSD and RAM. I'm also on board for repairability by design.

Repair complexity, repair turnaround cost and data privacy are the three big issues.

Knowing that faults occur, components can be defective on leaving the factory and many warranties are short, designing a piece of equipment that cannot easily be repaired or requires the replacing unaffected parts as part of the repair, is simply bad design from the outset in my book.

When a particular model begins accumulating problems (like the butterfly keyboard issues on recent MBPs) they become time bombs.

Replacing failed parts with 'good' parts but which share the same design or manufacturing fault is not really a solution IMO. If something fails and requires a warranty extension, the extension itself should not have a cut-off point below the 'vintage' point if the replacement part is identical to the part for which the extended warranty covers.

The argument that says Apple's machines are so well designed and put together that you will probably never hit upon a problem is poppycock. The butterfly keyboard could stop working due to particle accumulation at any time and without warning. Idem a defective component (whether it was defective at the factory or not). The same applies to components that suffer 'wear and tear' like batteries. Your statistical mileage may vary but even if it is a small 'insignificant' amount of users that are affected, if you are one of them, you are effectively borked. If you are out of warranty, you are well a truly borked - by design.

If the machines were so reliable, Apple could do what many manufacturers do (and only do when their products are truly unlikely to suffer failure or are easy/cheap to repair) offer a long warranty.

The problem is that Apple has turned warranties into a business in itself.

In the case of storage, no one wanted to tackle the issue of privacy. If a storage element died or suffered intermittent issues in warranty, Apple requires you send the part back to them with no contractual guarantee to protect what was on the storage element until its destruction. That is still the case, only mitigated somewhat by less machines using hard disks and encryption becoming more commonplace.

And as Robert Walters just indicated, I have never been contacted pro-actively by Apple to make me aware of any repair programmes related to my Apple equipment. Nor has Apple contacted me about the reimbursement of the difference between the amount charged for an iPhone 6 battery replacement and subsequent reduction  in price for the service. I used to get AppleCare on every Mac I bought so they had my contact information duplicated. On the other hand I used to get lots of marketing mails from Apple Europe.

On one occasion when I found out about a repair programme for a MBP which had ended a few months before, I was politely told that nothing could be done and that was the end of the story.

Soli said:

mac_128 said:

Ah the strawman arguments begin.

 But if someone actually made that argument, yours is a very clever retort. ;-)

Your "I've seen it on TV so it must make sense" argument is the straw man. That's why your comment is being made fun of. If you had a real argument as to how the state-of-the-art for 2018 will allow for a display, touch element and protective covering (and potentially a digitizer) to last well past typical usage without showing any signs of wear-and-tear, and how this is filling a market void that wasn't possible before now you would've mentioned it—you certainly wouldn't have said it works perfectly fine on Westworld.

We see this same ol' shit from the same people who get all goggly eyed at some new technology without weighing its pros and cons, or its long development cycle.. TV panels are a classic example of this happening over and over and over again.

Also, consider how long it took after OLED was invented, and then how long after OLED panels were being sold, and then how long before OLED panels were being mass marketed (mostly via Samsung since they had such a major investment in it) in smartphones before Apple jumped into the fray in 2017.

Do you understand why they waited that long to add it to their flagship device? Do you understand why the Apple Watch had OLED out of the gate with its UI designed around maximizing blacks? Do you understand why Apple's OLED displays, even though sourced from Samsung, are much better than the average OLED display on a smartphone?

If you do understand all that then I can't fathom why you're jumping in head first before of a very, very unfinished demo of skunkswork project that Samsung just had to do a "me too" release because some unknown company called Royole announced something called FlexPai.

tl;dr: Slow your roll fold, Mac.

Well, 2018 is drawing to a close but for 2019, Huawei has already gone on record as saying they will have a folding screen shipping on one of its phones.

Samsung probably wanted to get the announcement and demo out to say 'whatever appears in the coming months, don't forget we will also have a folding option too'.

Apple did something similar with the HomePod. 

At this point, what is important is the message, not the product.

StrangeDays said:

avon b7 said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

quinney said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

sirozha said:

Anyone is courageous enough to jump in a big way? Price is good, and in the past, AAPL always recovered from these catastrophic-looking dips. Will it this time?

I would, because I like what I see here as far as opportunities go, but I don't feel that it's ethical for me to do so.

How so? Do you have information not available to the public?

I do not. There is no legal obligation for me to NOT buy, but I personally feel that it is unethical to do so, given that AI is my job, Apple is my beat, and our audience is not small.

It's a personal decision and that has to be respected but I don't see anything unethical.

It's your private investment and if you don't have insider information, then AI being your job and having a large audience shouldn't be considerations IMO. Apple being your beat, if anything, makes any purchase more informed. 

But whatever you do, don't forget to inform the wife! 

That isn’t how it works. Writers can’t have personal stock in companies they cover because then their fortunes are tied to the company’s, blowing any idea of being impartial. You can’t be expected to criticize or expose a company if it’s against your financial interests to do so. This is a fundmental pillar in conflict of interest ethics. 

You are very much mistaken. That is what disclosure is for (if you consider it necessary in the first place). As I said, this is a personal decision.

We are talking about a private, risk based investment. It would be very different of a writer were being paid by the company or seeing privileges.

It could be argued that just being a simple fan of the company (or hating a competitor) blows any idea of being impartial, too.

As a tech writer (reviews etc), credibility is earned and only earned. It is something you gain precisely by being as impartial as possible. You can be a fan, you can hate another company, but your ability to write on both companies in one or various pieces and set aside any underlying bias is key to your ability to earn credibility.

No one is perfect and readers are fully capable if factoring that into their conclusions.

If in doubt, disclosure sets things very straight.

franklinjackcon said:

I really don't understand all the IDC/Gartner bashing. Anyone that uses the figures professionally, knows the data has limitations. Is it perfect? No way, but it's one input when making a business plan or measuring sales people if caution is used. The alternative is making your own guess. Most people understand that any market is made up of segments and the high-level, global figures are nice in press releases but useless for anything else anyway. You take that finer data and cut it to best reflect your own use.

You hit the nail on the head.

The first paragraph of this article (and where I stopped reading):

"Two research groups that estimate global PC shipments not only served up incorrect data as fact, but also used the bogus figures to reach entirely false conclusions about Apple's Macs in the global PC market"

As far as I know, those two research groups made it clear that the figures were estimates and provided information on how the results were reached.

I haven't checked, but I wonder how many 'spin' articles have been based on estimates by these same two firms when the numbers have been favouable to the Apple 'narrative'.

Few serious investors would base ANY decisions on two estimates by analysts.

StrangeDays said:

saltyzip said:

This phone will always be known as a 2018 Apple device that doesnt have even a full HD (1080p) screen.

Apple being Apple and saving money anyway they can to keep their shareholders happy. Scamming consumers who dont know better. I thought it was all about the screen, so why not even provide a 1080p screen on a 2018 device that starts from £749 disgraceful!

Go away. 

Why? They are valid points.

This is a late 2018 phone. In reality it's a 2019 flagship phone with a flagship price. It is lacking in areas where you wouldn't really expect it to.

For me, the lack of a fast charger and headphone adapter (I think that is missing too) in the box is very disappointing.