bikertwin said:

Are you a medical insurance industry executive? Use Pages in "Empathetic" mode to make your medical care denial sound more empathetic to the person whose health you're destroying! They'll love you for it.

"Create fun, original images for your document with Image Playground."

"Create fun creepy, original disturbing images for your document with Image Playground."

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That’s OK. Over two million people visit the Prado in Madrid every year, just to see the creepy, disturbing images painted by El Greco.

RG2154 said:

“Apple's iPhone 17 Slim is a wrongheaded approach that ignores what I really want”

Fixed your headline. 

Indeed. The author somehow conflates “What I’d really like” with what “Enough potential buyers to makes this a worthwhile development effort.” Not all that many years ago, tech reporters who were enamored of future phones rather than smart phones, kept harping on the overriding importance of swappable batteries. The marketplace, pretty much everywhere where people had sufficient disposable income, however, decided differently.

Whether the author knows it or not, my experience at least is that Apple never introduces a new class of device without focus and beta testing.

As a former US government employee, I see nothing unusual about this, but it certainly is annoying. But really, an Apple corporate employee who can't afford to buy his own iPhone/iPad/MacBook with his employee discount?

The only concern I had was when my then employer decreed that agency email (run from an Exchange server, so it couldn't be forwarded) should only be read on an Agency-owned device. That became an issue when on foreign travel (you had to have approvals up to the Headquarters level), and standard advice on travel to certain countries (fortunately, ones I didn't have to visit on TDY) included purchasing burner phones/laptops before departing on the trip — and dumping them before returning to the US.

In my case, I was fortunate, that the operational work I was involved in was served by a mail server we were allowed to operate for mission-related communications without the official prohibition, since it was an international mission and we had numerous foreign partners with whom we had to communicate operational information. So I could happily go on foreign travel without a government-owned device and wait until I got back to work to read the stupid management pet tricks (30 or 40 online training notices per year, a dozen or more pointless, non communicative missives from management, notices about jewelry sales at the cafeterias [seriously], &c.). Or, more likely, just can them.

DAalseth said:

22july2013 said:

DAalseth said:

I fully expect 47 to push through a law requiring Apple to build in a back door. With that, there will go our security. 

How would you feel if the back door only was installed for non-American iPhones. Would you be comfortable with that? When you say "our security" are you talking about Americans, or citizens of the world, including Hamas?

Trump doesn't have the constitutional authority to create any law. Maybe you know that, but the way you worded it sounded like he has some degree of law-making authority.

First the President has had a huge amount of power to control the agenda and what goes to and through Congress. Especially if both the house and senate are controlled by the same party. If he wants a law to declare chicken masala illegal, he could get it and this SCOTUS will back him up on it. A back door on our devices for ‘national security’ would be something he could do without breaking a sweat. 

Second, back doors are always bad. Trying to restrict them to just this or that group is a minefield that is doomed to failure. Security for the law abiding will be compromised, police and security will abuse the power, the keys to the ‘secret’ opening will get into the hands of criminals. That is an absolute gold plated certainty. Meanwhile groups like Hamas will just use alternative software options and systems to render their communications immune to spying and the back door. So no, any back door is a bad idea.


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Outside of tax cuts, which Republicans love with a gusto, getting legislation through a Congress with narrow majorities of the President’s party is tougher than you appear to think. Absent the opposition party’s controlling one or both houses of Congress, the power struggle becomes Congress vs. Executive branch. Senators in particular like to believe they always have the upper hand.

GTJayG said:

It doesn't help that by default in the US, Apple's own shipments via UPS do not require signature.

Not my experience for higher ticket items, that is, anything with a CPU (not certain about AirPods). Wonder if that varies by stat for city.