radarthekat

The many arguments Apple put forth in its appeal showed prejudice on the part of the court, several major departures from established precedent on application of the Sherman Act, legally disallowable application of inference, barring of defense expert witness, allowing the Justice department to withdraw testimony from at least one of Apple's expert witnesses when they didn't like the answer given to the Justice department's own questioning, then allowing testimony from the government's own witness when asked substantially the same question, etc.

The details were too extensive to impart here, but here is one example of the court's behavior: Anti-trust law does not allow a judgement of conspiracy where the actions, negotiations, and ultimate agreements between the accused parties is consistent with those same actions, negotiations, and agreements being carried out without resorting to conspiracy. The court must view these as non-conspiratorial unless there is direct evidence of a conspiracy. The supreme court's example of what would constitute direct evidence is that of a CEO confessing that the chairman of the board directed him to meet with a competing CEO in order to fix prices. But the judge in this case offered nothing other than circumstantial evidence of a conspiracy based upon her confidence one existed. What she presented, in a single paragraph of her ruling, would not meet any precedent and directly conflicts with many previous rulings. 

Good this is finally fading from history.

Prefers is not always equal to prefers.

I’m enjoying life here in the English-speaking Philippines, where most folks have either an Android or a feature phone.  It comes down to cost.

My iPhone 8+ 64GB cost me 51,500 pesos at the iStore (a very nice chain of Apple Authorized resellers here).  That’s about $1000.  And that’s about five months salary for the person who I interacted with while in that store.  Many people earn half that, equivalent to about $100/month.  So there’s the rub; it doesn’t break down by language spoken.  Prefers really means prefers only among those whose budget would allow them to opt for either.  For the vast majority of the world, that’s just not the case.

But back in Boca Raton?  Yeah, people prefer iPhone.  And expensive Verizon mobile plans.   And high rise condos.  And, from what I could tell in the 7 years I lived there, Mercedes over BMW.  No accounting for some people’s preferences, eh?

boltsfan17 said:

I'm really curious if Apple is actually going to do this. As much as I love VR, the segment is pretty much dead now unfortunately. The biggest drawback with VR is the pixelation, and that's even with expensive models for PC use. I can't fathom Apple making something that's 8k resolution. That would have to be a pretty insanely powerful processor box for the glasses. 

I doubt they will drive the entire 8k screen.  It’s there for resolution only, with output placed where the eye is looking, just a bit of overlay info here and there.  You need a display that is transparent and with pixels that can be written to directly, no refresh rate on this type of display.  The processor just turns on and turns off individual pixels, with most remaining off at any point in time.  Text output, small iconic images, basically information, like a heads up display. It shouldn’t be used for presenting whole maps or floating dinosaurs; those use cases would be far too distracting and therefore potentially dangerous.  A fine line will be walked with this type of user experience.  

“That might be particularly relevant in the case of Apple, which typically claims a 30 percent cut from in-app transactions but gets to keep all of the revenue from services like Apple Music.”

Another way of saying this is that Apple Music remits 100% of it’s revenues to Apple, whereas Spotify remits only 30%, and only for subs signed up through the App Store/in-app purchases.  Seems Spotify has the better deal.

Soli said:

dantheman827 said:

So does this mean that every Apple facility generates its own power or that the total sum of all power generated by Apple is enough to run all their facilities and the excess renewable power is re-distributed onto the grid?

The latter, which means that (I think) London Apple Stores aren't going to have solar panels on the roof, but that their NV solar farm sends more back to the grid, which probably isn't getting registered by the UK, but maybe they are using wind turbines in the countryside so that each country is 100% renewable for the power it's using. Lots of potential avenues for calculation this which will undoubtedly lead to more questions, but still a remarkable achievement in its own right.

It doesn’t necssarily mean Apple generates all its own power.  It can also mean Apple sources its power from utilities that generate power from clean and renewable sources.  I recall living in the Boston area a decade ago that I had a choice on my power bill which of several sources I wanted to sign up with.  My power still came from the local generator company, but they had in place agreements with many others to essentially pool their output so that customers could support renewable projects across the country.  There’s a name for this sort of arrangement, I just forget what it’s called.  If enough customers demande$ their power come from renewable sources, that’s where the money would flow and more such generation would be built out.