redefiler

macgui said:

Fucking idiots on parade.

Of course people are going to complain when a characteristic is significantly changed, as they should. Frequency response is not subjective. Alter it and the resulting audio is altered. Whether it's argued to be good or bad is subjective. Whether it's there or not isn't. Some of you a) don't own a HomePod so don't care or b) are tone deaf and audio fidelity is lost on you.

Those of you complaining about users being upset would whine like little bitches if Apple put out a firmware update that gave a purple tint to your display. Or if it changed your monitor's resolution from 2560x1440 to 1920x1080. But not to worry as 'it's subjective'. 

I haven't heard either version of the HP yet. But while most people lauded the audio quality, a few people who took the time to critique the sound said that it lacked presence and the mid-bass crept up into the mid-range. This is common problem for a lot of modern small speakers— tailoring the sound to be bass-heavy at the expense of balanced frequency response.

Regardless of which version is preferred, anybody should be ticked if a change to their purchase, after the fact, negatively affected them. 

Uh... small, even medium range speakers cannot offer a balance frequency response.   They lack the physical ability to reproduce bass frequencies.  All of these little jive speaker systems use psycho-acoustical filters (tricks)  to make non-deiscerning ears think everything is ‘bumpin’.  It’s not.  This goes for all headphones as well, you need something 8” or larger to even play effectively in the bass range.  Hint: feeling bass is not the same as hearing it.

There’s a separate issue of almost universally hyped speech critical frequencies around 1.5-4khz.  Basically after years of collective heavy headphone usage  and resulting escalation of conversation volume/environmental noise, most of you have hearing damage in those areas.  Manufactures designing their systems to boost these frequencies is the same phenomena as Costco cranking the color saturation and brightness of their TVs at the door to compensate for extreme outside glare and catch the attention of even the most blind customers passing.  This has been happening since the 90’s for all major brand consumer audio systems.  Trusting people to parse this stuff is impossible thanks to decades of marketing hype, including anything from the  ‘audiophile’ community.

As for consumers splitting hairs over perceived bass response on these plastic ‘convenience’ speakers, based entirely on artificially boosted harmonics in the 180 to 300Hz range... that’s just Dungeons & Dragons level acoustic roleplaying fantasy. 

leavingthebigg said:

Hey Mike Wuerthele, here is the Twitter link to Marco Arment's tweets about why Google apps are no longer supported by Workflow: 

https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/844918589803184129

If I had not read Marco's tweets nearly two weeks ago I would have thought Apple dropped Google app support because it was Google as you had written. Others will just take your writing as truth and blame Apple due to not having a clearer understanding of why app support was dropped. Maybe an update to this article could be provided to clear up what occurred.

I agree.  The false negativity Mike cast on Apple has already spawned several cliché 'monkey-see, monkey-do' pile-ons here in the comments. 

Sloppy.

Mike Wuerthele said:

redefiler said:

fletchy said:

WhatsApp support wasn't dropped...
you can still forward an audio using workflow (or any other app in the share sheet)
the problem is the file, is only playable on VLC since it's an opus file...
before 2016, WhatsApp audio files were playable because they were aac...

you can also send any file through workflow using WhatsApp, which is also supported which means workflow did NOT stop support for workflow...

on the other hand, google chrome, street view, Uber, pocket and some others are no longer supporter because as Marco Arment specified, previous to the acquisition news, devs were sent a one page permission to sign in order to keep their app supported by workflow (something Apple always does to protect its back) which he (Arment) did...

And chances are, companies like google, Uber and pocket didn't bother to do so...

but considering WhatsApp is still supported as much as it was before, not more nor less, it means they did sign the agreement...

So... what your saying is that an entire chunk of this article is conflating known app version changes and basic App Store clerical details into fantasy software dev team motivations?  Sounds less rumor site, and more fan fiction.

I think you're reading a bit too much into the text of the article.

Well from the exact words you wrote, looks like your take on this aspect was way out in conspiracy theory land.

Weird that you tried to verify with Marco, but then came up with what you did.  Seems like there's enough to write about with Apple and Workflow without the off base editorializing. 

Mike Wuerthele said:

Soli said:

StillWilling said:

Tiring this is, your incessant desire to politicize this website.  You will lose us if you keep this up.  If we want politics and fake news and such, we can watch CNN or Fox or whatever.  Please, make this a pleasant site for dedicated Apple users.  Thank you for your hard work in the past, and, I hope for the future.

The man has an iPhone. This is an Apple-focused website. He's the first POTUS to use one. He did call for a ban of Apple products not too long ago. This article makes perfect sense, and it's not a political statement.

For those members complaining about articles like this, copy this and put it on a sticky.

Once more, Apple being as large as it is and as socially and politically involved as it is will by definition draw articles involving politics. The POTUS, calling for an Apple ban during the election period, and using an Apple phone is notable for an Apple-centric publication.

We don't write stories to offend the readers. If you're offended by what we write based on your political affiliation because of what you are interpreting from an article that isn't an editorial, then that is on you.

If it forces you away from perhaps the LEAST political-oriented Apple publication, that is also on you -- but just go, and don't make a big scene about it.

Regardless of what party is in power, the President's office can be respected, while perhaps still not respecting the man. If you're screaming now about respecting the office AND the man, were you doing so a year ago? 

There's a very old saying, that Band of Brothers on HBO repeated: "Salute the uniform, not the man." Regardless of how you fall, he is the legally elected American President. But, that doesn't, and has never, put his conduct or behavior above reproach.

We kept this thread open as an experiment, to see how well our commenters would stick to the commenting guidelines. How well do you all think it's going, hm? 

I'm a reasonable guy. I've never locked a thread here. I'm getting close. Keep it civil.

This is the same Appleinsider that featured several Daniel Eran Dilger articles with unnecessary biased partisan political content?  And during this last presidential election cycle?  Comparing Steve Jobs to Hillary Clinton a month before the vote... seriously?  

There's a time to get off your high horse, and there's also a time to face the reality that you've been riding a miniature pony all along. 

It's completely disingenuous to put this all on your readers now.  Your editorial staff cultivated this, and turned off a lot of people with your site's petty and unrelated political content.  You lost the moral high ground long ago, Appleinsider squandered its ability to be non-partisan when you started trading in this garbage yourselves.   Your 'editorial' cloak of invisibility is pretty ineffective when you can't manage to find one picture of Trump with a phone to pair with your article.  Your reply about the photo further betrays a petty, shallow team pol bias.

And yet here you are still engaging in more of the same within your response "if you're screaming now about respecting the office AND the man, were you doing so a year ago?"  Why are you even trying to go tit for tat in a political team comparison?  This kinda crap is why YOU and APPLEINSIDER have lost respect and benefit of doubt. 

Further who are you to judge people's behavior?  Where do you get off with the moralizing about anyone?  This is the site people go to for Apple product news and development rumors.  The lazy politician content is one less article you could have written about something tangibly Mac or iOS related.  This kind of click bait garbage is beyond boring, and that's an even worse condemnation than the blatant partisanship.

I suggest readers use an ad blocker on this site, there's no reason to reward Appleinsider with more ad revenue until something changes. And I suggest you clean up your editorial practices, seriously check your political bias (it's clearly showing), and print a prominent apology to readers explaining how you're going to prevent this in future.  Because now you're stuck, you've got a bad rep and it will continue to taint any related content you post.  The work of washing this stink of hack political partisanship is entirely on you and Appleinsider.

apple jockey said:

As of this writing, Wikileaks has yet to provide any evidence that the tools of our security services exposed by them today were used in any way against American citizens. Therefore these tools were lawful and necessary to defend against our many adversaries. Obama had nothing to do with this conversation(Wikileaks) or in Trumps rants against him. Our enemies and their purposes are helped tremendously by this massive intelligence exposure. Russia in particular will have their evil deeds advanced by this, and not to forget, China, Iran, North Korea and any extremists with a technical core.
Gaslighting, by the definition I have read, was not my intention. Yet, my coarse expression of my point was uncalled for.
wikileaks is not your friend or mine, certainly not the friend of liberal western democracy, which is why we are allowed to express such divergent positions safely. In a perfect world, less covert actions, secrets and warfare against our sworn enemies would be nice. The world is in upheaval, the bad actors feign good intentions and the good actors are brushed with whatever demeaning black brush serves the evil doers purpose. And now we have a good percentage of our citizens cheering Wikileaks or exposure of our intelligence agencies and their methods.
i don't see the value in it. Sorry. 

So you believe in shooting the messenger? Wikileaks is an information outlet, ascribing friendship roles is a sure sign that you're started off on the wrong foot.  Who cares if it's Assange or MSNBC as long as it's genuine, data is data.   So far they have a perfect record of releasing authentic materials.   Truth is your enemy because it exposes corruption in our government?  That's weird logic, seems more like a faith based statement.

Our intelligence agencies are under direct authority of the President, with oversight by Congress.  When the President sidesteps those laws and oversights, he is not a friend of freedom or the people, that's a dictator.  There's no excuse for his actions on this.  He was misusing his position and vastly overstepping his power.   These weapons are creepy even when employed against enemies, unforgivable when deployed against his own people.  These Obama directives are of the same nature that the Stasi used in East Germany, where everyone is guilty and under suspicion and monitoring by the government.  History didn't judge that very well, and those heavily invested in the Obama personality cult would do well to remember that.

You talk of 'enemies' but tell me, which Obama foreign policy decision or action involving Russia, wasn't a net positive for them?  

Guess who dropped the Iranian arms embargo at Russia's request?  Why did the Russians want the embargo lifted, because they wanted to sell military arms and nuclear technology to Iran.  This wasn't any secret, the Russians lobbied for these things specifically and Obama was like "yeah cool, whatever".  His crappy Middle East policies have also resulted in some pretty sweet arms deals for Russia with Egypt, Syria and now Libya using Egypt as a middleman.  But you're worried about the real estate mogul, turned tv game show host with a weird haircut who stays up late to say silly things on Twitter?  Right...

Here he is taking to the former Russian leader about pulling missile defense systems from our allies in Europe, which emboldened the Russians invading and annexing Crimea, threatening Ukraine and Poland, expand their energy pipeline schemes, while Obama emboldened them by capitulating at our allies dismay on missile defense in Eastern Europe.. Translation: Obama sold out our allies (including one of our best in Europe. Poland) and the result was almost entirely favorable for Russia and growing Putin's personal wealth.

Here's Obama even caught on a hot mic telling the Russian president Mendevel he'll have more flexibility pulling the missile defense shield from our allies in Eastern Europe after his election 

He wanted to wait until after the election to sell out our allies in the Czech Republic and Poland, fearful of Russian aggression, and all the folks on the left put their fingers in their ears, but are now spreading silly conspiracy theories about Russian hackings and hookers peeing on mattresses for Trump.  He even mocked Romney in the campaign for calling Russia "our number one geopolitical foe".

After dropping the missile defense program, Putin pledged to meet with GE, Obama's single biggest campaign contributor, now doing bigger business than ever in Russia, yet no red flags for you?  What's Trump going to do in comparison?  Charge them premium rates on mini bar items at his hotels?  Fail for a fifth time to make a real estate development deal in Russia?  Sell a second home in Florida to a guy from Russia?  Those are hardly James Bond villain worthy schemes, and pretty stupid to lose any sleep over.