melgross

I posted this a little while ago on a previous article here today, but no one seems to be reading that article so I’m reposting it here.

” Both my wife and I here in NYC, along with our daughter in Dallas Texas had problems ordering this morning.

despite being early and waiting for the store to open (late), the store app we were all using didn’t seem to want to process our orders. First there were problems in getting the store. Then finally, almost fifteen minutes later, there were errors telling us to try again later. Again finally, it began. At the very end when I was ready to double tap the button for Apple Pay to go through, I was told my session had expired and I had to reorder my phone from the beginning. My wife went through the same thing and then was told that Apple Pay wasn’t installed, so she had to pay directly with AmEx.

my daughter had the same problems I had, but was also finally able to get one. She got lucky and is getting hers next week. But because of the problems and likely because of the popularity of the model and configuration, mine won’t be arriving until between Oct 6 and 22nd. My wife’s between the 8th and 24th.

usually the store opens a couple of minutes late, but we’ve never had problems like this before. I would have believed the problems were ours but for my daughter, with a different account halfway across the country, also having the same problems.

anyone else here have problems?”

ralphie said:

hmlongco said:

Interesting that the periscope telephoto zoom actually seems to be a fixed focal length 120mm eq.. Like the brushed titanium finish, and the new action button.

The addition of Spatial Video was a surprise, as was reverse charging the Watch and AirPods.

That is NOT a periscope lens.  It appears Apple bailed on the periscope, and went with some other fixed focal length zoom technology.  What a shame.  At least with the 14 PM you had 0.5,1,2,3x zoom, 15PM leaves a big gap between 2 and 5x.

Do you know what a periscope lens is? It’s not necessarily a zoom. It’s a lens that’s bent, optically, by 90 degrees. That’s exactly what this is. Apple uses several prisms to shrink the length of that lens within the camera. That gives more room inside the phone for other things, such as a bigger battery. Maybe next year we’ll get true optical zoom as well.

jellybelly said:

melgross said:

…I’ve got a bunch of TB 3 and 4 cables gathered over the years. I’ve got three TB docks and what’s the point unless you can use them at full speed? But a regular cable likely costs Apple around $5-7, while a TB 4 cable might cost them around $15-20. That may not seem like much, but remember that a product sells for around 2.5 to 3.5 times the part cost. So that would be a big difference to the consumer who likely doesn’t need it and would throw it in their pile of other USB C cables and just pull a random cable out to use.

so, if we’ll need the speed, we’ll just buy it. I mean, if we’ve spent all that money for the higher end phone to do photos and video, another $50, or so, won’t be a bother.

I agree.  I have existing TB3 cables.  

A serious problem is the lack of any labeling of capicity on USB3 cables OR ports ( on hubs an on computers).  

For now, pulling a “random cable from a pile” is a crap shoot and could make serious difference in performance that’ll have most scratching their heads.  
I’ve seen some ports on a few hubs that label as 5GBs or 10GBs for USB3  port speed (simple as small font 5 or 10) and that is so important.   I wish there was room for more obvious (larger) labeling AND that cables were also labeled if they are not universal — and apparently they are not (especially in power delivery let alone speed). USB-C is a blessing and a curse-ed big mess.  

Labeling would solve the mess, because I do like the physical coupling design and if labeled, I can choose to use an available cable to my needs.  Cables should also be labeled for Thunderbolt (TB) capability and power transmission capability. 
A similar problem is Thunderbolt ports not revealing if they are sharing a Thunderbolt bus or if they have own dedicated chipset.  Eg. On a MBP with 4 TB ports only, if each side (left and right), each with two TB ports) is sharing a TB bus, most people don’t have the knowledge that the maximum devices to connect is six per bus connection (as in six connections per left and right ports).  Usually three per port.  And lack of knowledge that if all three connections are in active use that it divides the throughput—so labels could help, or onscreen notifications.  
I don’t mind if a data drive and it’s backup are on same bus as I am only using data drive during normal use.  And when backing up, it’s usually when a ‘minor’ speed difference doesn’t matter—both because the backup is incremental and it’s when I am not at the computer. Plus unknown to many is that Thunderbolt does negotiations between attached devices sand lessens CPU involvement. Cool fact eh?
Soooo, regarding labeling I say Geeeeesh!  At least dear Apple and third parties: label cables and ports—please, pretty please? 

I agree. tB cables do have the Thunderbolt graphic on the connectors though, but don’t always say 3 or 4. I write that on them. At least all of mine do. But USB has been a real pain over the years going back to the beginning. Then, confusion was deliberate as manufactures who had USB 1.1 ports didn’t want people to know that. So when the new naming between USB 1.1 and USB 2 came out, the names were designed so that people couldn’t tell, without already knowing, whether Hi Speed cables (or ports) were faster or slower than Fast cables. I ended up labeling all of my USB cables, otherwise I had no idea what they were. Then we got charging cables. Some don’t pass any data, others are only USB 1.1 while others are USB 2 speed.

honestly, I’ve never seen the point to all of this.

I’ve got a bunch of TB 3 and 4 cables gathered over the years. I’ve got three TB docks and what’s the point unless you can use them at full speed? But a regular cable likely costs Apple around $5-7, while a TB 4 cable might cost them around $15-20. That may not seem like much, but remember that a product sells for around 2.5 to 3.5 times the part cost. So that would be a big difference to the consumer who likely doesn’t need it and would throw it in their pile of other USB C cables and just pull a random cable out to use.

so, if we’ll need the speed, we’ll just buy it. I mean, if we’ve spent all that money for the higher end phone to do photos and video, another $50, or so, won’t be a bother.

waveparticle said:

melgross said:

waveparticle said:

melgross said:

waveparticle said:

"There's been a decoupling between what's happening in the economy and consumers buying phones," 

The decoupling is caused by US government trying to decouple China from the world. 

No, not really. If anything, it’s China that’s been doing that by their actions. At any rate, it’s the worldwide high inflation rate that’s been at the center of all of this. But anaerobic e sales, as you can see from the chart gave been dropping for years. A major reason given is that the worldwide market is saturated. People are go,ding on to phones, tablets, comluters, etc. for a longer time.

No! The fact of the truth is the decoupling started when Huawei is being totally banned by US. 

No, it started because Huawei is well known to be very close to the communist party in China and has had dubious security coupling to it. I know at least one person here who panics whenever that’s said, but it’s true nevertheless. Additionally, when China began to occupy islands and atolls in the pacific claimed by other countries and began building naval bases there, that didn’t help. Neither has the expanded rhetoric over Taiwan. Oh, I’m sure I missed a number of other things. 

Your history is a failure. Philippine and Vietnam were not countries. They were occupied by US and France. And US and France agree that South Chines Sea belongs to China. You cannot use proximity of the islands to decide who owns then. History decides just like Falkland Islands. With regards you should realize that you only have suspicions not facts. Huawei is a Chinese company. Of course it has ties to Chinese government. You cannot separate Chinese government from CCP. Furthermore, Microsoft and Google and all other US companies are close to US government. Your accusation is menaingless. 

Very strange unerstanding of the world. I doubt very much that anyone would agree that the Philippines and Vietnam are not countries. The rest is just nonsense. You and Avon should room together.