patsu

macplusplus said:

That benchmark only reveals a modest improvement of the Intel chip, not of the MBA as a whole.

Actually it means nothing in terms of machine performance, because the SSD controller is tied to the T2 chip, not Intel and the benchmark cannot take that into account, obviously. Since the SSD controller is driven by the T2 chip the two processors work in tandem, probably in a high level of parallelism.

Yep. The T2 performs quite a few tasks, including system and storage management, image signal processing, and audio. The main CPU and GPU will be more free compared to old MBAs.

The benchmark may be outdated or misleading on the new Macs.

maestro64 said:

To your point, I think China is ahead on the whole electronic pay situation, reason I said this a business associate just got back from a trip in China and was traveling outside the cities and the person who was his in country host, stop at a road side vegetable stand and bought some snack for the drive and the person at the stand took electronic payment. They had one of those NFC readers attached to his phone. I still run into store and retailers in the US with POS terminal which show the NFC symbol but have not active the ability to take Apple Pay.

Yep. In China, a merchant doesn’t need a POS terminal to accept money. Most of them use QR code. Alibaba and Tencent dominate the payment processor market.

However even in China, Apple’s early decision to support the credit card companies’ EMVCo tokenization payment standard has long lasting implications. The central bank in China are forcing payment processors, including QRCode ones, to integrate with UnionPay’s EMVCo platform. This decouples the monolithic, end-to-end QRCode payment providers, and allows the central bank to manage the payment industry better. They also extended the EMVCo tokenization infrastructure to support standard QRCode payment in the process:
https://www.nfcworld.com/2017/07/19/354016/emvco-standardizes-qr-code-mobile-payments/

Other countries like Thailand and Singapore are also building their national payment platforms around similar infrastructure.

Back in US, when ApplePay first announced their adoption of the tokenization specs to support the credit card companies, existing payment processors were forced to pivot too. These monolithic businesses were trying to position themselves as the ‘choke point’ of the value chain to suck all the passing user payment data. ApplePay was first to push for enhanced user privacy _and security_ in payment. 

Looking back, ApplePay helped establish a global payment standard when everyone else was just trying to “be the bank or credit card company themselves”. It was a strategic opening move.

gatorguy said:

Why do you care "what's wrong with Android"? Just sit back and enjoy watching the fire as it burns to the ground as you've been expecting and predicting for a few years now. 

  Except to try and make iOS look better and possibly distracting from discussion of shortcomings, what else? Didn't Tim Cook somewhat recently voice his disappointment with the slow uptake of Apple Pay? I doubt he's happier about it because Google Pay has been slower.  Just enjoy iOS because it fits so well. You don't need Android in order to make believe everything is A OK. At it's root there's something lacking in the design and/or benefits and usefulness  of current mobile payment services. Consumers just aren't driven to use it, and much less demand it. 

In any event a number of the most engaged Apple fans here have said over and over they're tired of hearing about Google and their assorted services, Android included. Apple and iOS is strong enough to stand on its own and does, no Android needed in order to make it so. 

A number of years ago, Android folks and other pundits mocked iPhone for the lack of NFC. It is interesting to see where Apple is now compared to the doom-and-gloom picture they painted.

gatorguy said:

Absolutely! Here you go.

https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013

...and it was the EFF who credited the report to an intern, the term they used and not mine. BTW the complaint was lodged with the FTC, not the FCC . Far too many government acronyms aren't there? I have trouble keeping them straight myself. 

lol. Why don't you include the latest report (2017) ?

gatorguy said:

According to the report Apple had been paying about $10 in Qualcomm royalties, (the Qualcomm rate tops out at a max of $30 per device) as a result of rebates Qualcomm was giving Apple in return for not challenging their patents or royalty basis. Qualcomm believes that Apple broke that agreement by conspiring with Samsung to in effect act as the hatchet man. Apple frames it as simply an informal discussion between two business partners rather than a strategy to bypass the agreement.  Lots of other great detail too in the Bloomberg source article.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-04/apple-and-qualcomm-s-billion-dollar-war-over-an-18-part

It's irrelevant. When Apple decided to sue Qualcomm, whatever benefits "for not challenging their patents or royalty basis" were already thrown out of the window. They don't really need Samsung to push the Korean regulator since FTC also started their own antitrust investigation.