tjwolf

Update done - no prob.  Oh how I wish Apple stayed in the router game :-(  While it’s been rock solid for 6 straight years, its age is starting to show.  Maybe they’ll surprise us and integrate one in their next gen Apple TV or their upcoming HomePod - this tackling another of today’s pressing issues: proliferation of ugly cables and devices on your TV cabinet!

Soli said:

So Amazon made their deadline, but it's probably buggy and missing features to make their self-imposed deadline. I just hope they fence off their free-to-stream and rentable content so they don't overlap.

What an arbitrary thing to say given that you probably have zero inside knowledge of Amazon's development schedule.  For all we know, the app has been sitting there ready for months or more, just waiting for Apple and Amazon to hash out the business terms.  Further calling your statement into question is the fact that they could have waited another 15+ days and still made their self-imposed deadline if they felt the code was too buggy.

MplsP said:

I totally believe this is faster than using a card - chip cards may be more secure, but they are SLOW! Apple Pay is neat and really convenient, but the majority of the stores around here either don’t accept it, or it’s not clear if they do or not so I end up using my credit card instead. “I refuse to shop at a store that doesn’t take Apple Pay” - seriously??? We are no where near any sort of standard for NFC payment systems, so the patchwork is going to continue for a while, and completely cutting off 60% of your shopping options because you’re too lazy to pull out your credit card seems a bit daft to me.

Many people use the Cartwheel app for store discounts, so they already have the bar code up to scan, so this isn’t adding any steps for theml, and the additional 5% discount with the red card is reason enough for me to use the red card instead of my Discover or Master card. 

I thought NFC based terminals were standardized - that’s why they all accept both Apple Pay and whatever the heck the Android NFC payment method du jour is called.  It’s just that many merchants haven’t figured out how to turn that feature on (or keep it on) and some - like Target - deliberately disable it.  I could have sworn I used Apple Pay at a Target store a few days after it came out, only to see it disabled the next time I visited the same store.  Target keeps touting their Wallet apps features when asked about NFC based payment methods - it’s like your typical Republican politician deflecting whenever asked a question that requires a fact-based answer.  It’s fine that they have a nice app - but let your customers decide to use it, NFC, or whatever other form
of payment they prefer.  They’re not mutually exclusive!

But aside from not trusting Target to keep my CC/debit/bank info secure, this “store-specific” app is just not scalable.  Imagine if every store had “their” app - soon I’d have to have a couple dozen apps to install!

As an aside: I thought Apple Pay supported rewards/store cards through which Target could provide its discounts and collect customer usage.  Or have I begun to hallucinate? 

darkpaw said:

"Apple Music is effectively a "halo" project, used as much to keep people buying iPhones as generate new revenue."

Who buys an iPhone because of Apple Music?

Off-topic: Apple Music ballsed-up my iTunes library. My carefully-curated, fully-ID3-tagged library started since the first version of iTunes was mangled so much I had to wipe it and start again. Thanks for that, Apple.

Obviously nobody buys an iPhone *solely* because of Apple Music, but lots of people buy iPhones at least partially because of the additional Apple services - including Apple Music.

Off-topic: I don't use Apple Music, but I love Music Match!  For $25/year, I got a high quality version (ie. Apple's version) of my 300 CD collection I ripped (at low quality) a long time ago.  After I signed up, I subsequently deleted my local library (backed it up of course), and Apple rebuilt it with the high-quality version :-).  I could stop the service and end up with a much better library :-)  But I have kept it - because it lets me keep stuff in the cloud without using up my storage allocation.

cybertopian said:

"As you would expect, there's a financial consequence to integrating the sheer amount of processing power into such a small device," Wrong statement. The X is sharing its "amount of processing power" with the 8 and 8 Plus because they use the same A11 SoC. He could better refer to the screen and Face ID sensors.

He also said "integrating" and "into such a small device".  The X doesn't share the same size enclosure with the 8 Plus.