mdriftmeyer

danvm said:

cpsro said:

Apple already forged into the uncharted territory of facial recognition for the masses, so everyone knows it's possible and practical. It's scary Microsoft hasn't mastered it after years to get it right, though. But that's just like Apple to make technology work so well that people forget the complexity.

MS had face recognition since the release of Kinect for X360 in 2010, and it worked extremely well.  After that, they had Windows Hello in the Surface Pro 4 since 2017, and every Surface device have it.  Apple came later, and acquire PrimeSense, the same company MS use to build Kinect, to develop FaceID.  And as today, the only devices with FaceID are iPhones and iPads.  So it looks like MS has "mastered" facial recognition for many years.  But maybe you didn't knew.

MS had rudimentary face recognition on Kinect. Today's FaceID is orders of magnitude more advanced.

Fatman said:

Two major factors that helped Apple survive — 1. the success of the iPod/iTunes and 2. Microsoft’s infusion of cash and commitment to continue to make Microsoft Office for the Mac.

The cash infusion came with Apple dropping a $10 billion dollar protracted lawsuit that both parties agreed was a waste of energy and resources. As a sign of good faith those one hundred and fifty million non-voting shares worth of stock and four major releases of MS Office on the upcoming OS X made it clear that Bill thought the idea of making even more money on the OS X platform was a good idea.

mangakatten said:

It is often mentioned that Apple was 6 months from bankruptcy when they acquired Next. What was the deal for Next? What would have happened if Apple did go bankrupt? Would Next be able to continue on it’s own? Seems like a kind of stupid idea to sell to Apple at that time. If Steve Jobs wasn’t their boss, would they ever had agreed?

We were three months from bankruptcy before Steve laid off 5,000 [half the employees with one-third ready to go on twelve weeks paid sabbaticals] and then took twenty-three marketing departments and converged them into one. Then the hardware gutting down to a two by two matrix with a few products yet to be achieved--one being the iPod. Those changes occurred during 1997, and by early May of 1998 the iMac was released.

We were about to have an IPO at NeXT but believe me it was not a multi-billion dollar IPO and with the fact the world was embracing Java instead of WebObjects/EOF/NeXTSTEP would have meant a very short-lived IPO or eventually become another Java Service Provider. Everyone of my fellow NeXT colleagues were either psyched about the merger or psyched that their phones were ringing off the hook for double and triple their current salary offers. I wish more had come along with the merger because we lost some exceptional people due to short-term greed. I have yet to know one who did not regret not taking their shares to Apple.

smaffei said:

Sold my last Apple TV today. 

Once LG got the Apple TV app there was no point. Anyway, there has been multiple discussions in AVS Forums that the Apple TV 4K hasn't implemented HDR10 and Dolby Vision properly (it's been wrong since release and Apple hasn't fixed it). The absolute black is actually gray.

Of course there is a point. The point is the AppleTV works as a smart hub, a video library system for content, games, etc. The upcoming system will have far better Audio support codecs than any SmartTV.

stanhope said:

Can we take this opportunity to call to mind all of the haters who dissed the Apple watch with such authority and fervor?  I have watches worth literally tens of thousands of dollars sitting in a jewelry case while i wear my Apple watch worth about $500 each and every day.

Same result will happen with News+ and TV+. The haters will be proven wrong.