radarthekat

Globalism lifts the entire world up and betters the lives of billions.  As a retired serial software startup entrepreneur from the Boston area I’ve  lived in The Philippines since 2016 and have watched it happen here.

Meanwhile, in more advanced economies those offshored jobs are replaced with better, higher-paying jobs in STEM, engaged in R&D, engineering, product management, creative design, and entrepreneurial pursuits that create whole new industries.  We shouldn’t want those offshored jobs back; we should want our children to pursue careers in the above fields or other more rewarding endeavors.  Bringing back manufacturing jobs is not a very productive use of human capital in an advanced society that could instead educate its populous to pursue more expressive careers and lives.

jetpilot said:

So check and see if my information was compromised by submitting my personal information on some random website? Uhhhhh...no.

araquen said:

I am skeptical. Apple Intelligence is not a product, and everyone gets that wrong. Apple Intelligence is functionality that is intended to enhance and improve the various platforms Apple has (macOS, iOS, iPadOS, etc). How do you monetize that without monetizing the OS? An OS Apple offers for free.

I highly doubt Apple will start charging again for their OS, just to monetize Apple Intelligence. Rather, what Apple is more likely to do is use Apple Intelligence to enhance the user experience for services. Perhaps “Enhanced AppleTV+” or “Enhanced AppleMusic” where the AI infrastructure is used to enhance the users’ experiences on those services. And I am on the fence about charging for that extra functionality. If Apple boosts prices for their services, it would be for far more than just “look it has AI now."

At the end of the day, it is easy to predict how Apple is going to do something once you understand that Apple is a hardware manufacturer first and foremost. Their goal is to have you buy their devices, originally the Mac. Even the iPhone was originally intended to be a supplement to the Mac, and Apple shifted gears when the iPhone proved to be as widely popular as it had become. But regardless of device - Apple wants to sell you their hardware. And they want to justify the premium consumers pay. So EVERYTHING ELSE Apple does is intended to be a value-add to make it worthwhile to have invested in Apple’s hardware. Everything. Mail. Messages. Pages. FaceTime. Numbers. Keynote. AppleMusic. Apple Arcade. iCloud. AppleOne. All the software and services are there to give your Mac, your iPad, your iPhone something to do without being dependent on the “kindness of strangers.” Because Apple hasn’t forgotten (nor have long-time Mac users), there was a time where developers were cheerfully refusing to develop for Apple offerings.

People call it “walled garden” but that assumes an even playing field. For decades, Apple has been on the periphery of popular tech, and barely anyone was developing for the Mac. The iPhone was largely developed because prior to that, not a single cell phone manufacturer would provide interoperability between their devices and the Mac (and I loved my Motorola flip phone, but its lack of connectivity to my Mac was a royal pain in my ***). The iPhone was the first cell phone Mac users could sync with their computer. From that point, Apple’s offerings remain consistent with: how do we (Apple) provide solutions that extend the efficacy of the products our customers already own? How do we keep improving the value of our brand to our consumers?

Apple’s goal isn’t to sell us an Apple Intelligence product. That’s Google’s world. Apple’s goal is to use Apple Intelligence as the infrastructural foundation for having Apple solutioning a “personal digital assistant” for their customers. That isn’t a product. It is core functionality of the hardware and software systems Apple provides.

But pundits (especially those driven by the limited vision of Wall Street) can’t understand this, so keep getting it wrong.

Trust me. Once you start looking at Apple as a hardware manufacturer first and foremost, whose business model is based on the idea of providing a boutique experience for their customers (who have paid a premium for such treatment) you’ll have a better understanding on how Apple intends to leverage its software and services solutions.

Psamathos said:

This seems like a whole load of posturing and blackmail to me. Basically they are saying "we can't enable screen sharing to apps that Apple hasn't authorised because they might allow data to go somewhere that violates the users' privacy". Well, you know, you could always ask the user, couldn't you? Maybe a dialogue box the first time you connect to an app that's not signed by Apple isn't the absolutely perfect user experience, but it's an awful lot better than killing the feature all together. Given that Apple's own app store doesn't have a perfect record on vetting applications, that same pop-up-on-first-connect would probably be useful for Apple App Store apps too.

So no, this isn't EU regulation causing problems. This is Apple causing problems and attempting to blame the EU, because it doesn't want to loose its insanely lucrative monopoly by which is takes 30% of the entire value of the App Store for its own profit.

AppleZulu said:

Kuo is going to have problems recovering from this one. We’ve been over this. MacOS, which also runs Mac Pro workstations with multiple screens, is not going to become bloated up to run a touch-based user interface. That’s why iPad will never run on MacOS. So a big, folding-screen touch-based MacBook makes no sense. A big, folding screen MacBook that isn’t touch-based makes even less sense. So ultimately here, Kuo’s prediction is not going to happen. 

So I guess this will become a test of just how far sites like Apple Insider will go to let Kuo get away with changing his predictions until they finally become credited as “correct.” That’s because, for Kuo to ever turn this one around, he’s eventually going to have to morph this prediction into the one folding-screen prediction for Apple that might actually happen: a folding-screen iPad. A folding screen Mac isn’t going to happen. A folding screen iPhone isn’t going to happen. Both are fundamentally gimmicky ideas that would require too many sub-optimal compromises in quality to produce the gimmick.

A folding iPad, however, has some utility.  That utility would be simple and straightforward: making a large-screen tablet more portable.  At the same time, it would avoid the pitfalls inherent in folding screes for either of the other devices. It wouldn’t need an additional external screen (and the OS bloat to run it) like an iPhone would. The folding mechanism also would be far less prone to damage from wear than would an iPhone, which would be compulsively retrieved, opened and closed dozens or hundreds of times all day, every day. Unlike a folding-screen Mac or iPhone, a folding iPad would require virtually no changes or additions to the operating system. Maybe it would require an additional line in the code to equate the folding and unfolding action to the current opening and closing of a folio cover, but that’s about it.

So the question is, when Apple never releases a folding-screen MacBook, but maybe does make a folding iPad, and Kuo changes this ridiculous prediction, will the rumor sites swallow the nonsense, forget the folding-screen MacBook prediction and sing Kuo’s praises once again when he announces that he meant to say “iPad” all along?