marktime

After years of owning AppleTVs I am still frustrated by the friction in switching from one "channel" to another. AppleTV is great for long-lasting sessions such as watching Netflix or streaming movies off my media server but trying to bounce back and forth from live streams on CNN to MSNBC to NBC is an exercise in frustration. You would think that Apple could come up with some "favorites" mechanism that could go directly from one favorite stream to another instead of my having to continuously navigate through each channel's menutree as I switch from one to another.

I won't even dwell on the propensity of each App/channel to forget that I'm signed in and require me to re-authenticate yet again with my service provider.

It seems that Apple still is not applying "it just works" type product improvements to AppleTV.

MacPro said:

foggyhill said:

You really have no clue what California looks like huh? 

California has the most diverse driving conditions of the whole US, high humidity is probably the only checkmark it can't do.
Snow, check, tall mountains check, very raining condition (far north) check, desert check, heat check, cold check, high traffic check, pedestrians heavy places (San-Francisco and central parts of LA) check, high altitude check, winding roads as fuck, check, most insane freeways ever, check, very high speed roads, check.
All of this is a very compact space.
It's the ideal place to test a self driving car.

Its coming way way way faster than you think. Right now, the obstacle in many situations are more regulatory than technical.

You missed a couple .  Last time I drove the coastal route from San Francisco to San Diego which I've done quite a few times,  I got rerouted around earthquake damage in several places and coastal erosion.  Otherwise one of the most beautiful drives I know of.

All very good but you don't have potholes like we do in the North East. That's the only reason I can think that Tesla (designed and manufactured in California) has neither a spare wheel nor run-flat tires. When the salesman told me that if you get a flat, you should call Tesla, and they will sent a flat-bed tow-truck to pick up the car, I turned around and walked out of the dealership.

I'm not convinced that "designed and tested" in California works for the rest of the country when it comes to cars.

The best reason to use ApplePay on the web is so that your credit card number is not stored on some vendor's hackable servers. I've been using Citibank's virtual credit card numbers for years whenever I buy something on the web because they are onetime use credit card numbers that can't be reused if they are stolen. Citibank virtual credit card numbers work great but (a) they only work with a Citibank credit card and (b) I have to log in to Citibank and generate a credit card number each time.

The pain-in-the-ass of dealing with a stolen credit card number makes it worth the hoops I have to jump through in order to use them. I have been notified too many times by vendors who've had malware issues - I just received a letter this week from Kimpton Hotels that any credit card used at certain properties between Feb 16th and July 7th may have been compromised. Even if I'm not responsible for the charges who needs the headache of calling the credit card company to issue a new card and disputing any fraudulent charges. With a onetime use credit card number - who cares if there's a security breach at the vendor.

With ApplePay the "virtual credit card number" is generated automatically and I can choose any of the credit cards that I've registered with ApplePay. I am so looking forward to being able to use it.

To add to davidswelt's comment. The Verizon credit for bringing your own equipment goes up to $25/month if you have an 8GB or more data plan. That's worth $600 over a 2 year "contract". I have five phones all off-contract that share a 10GB plan. The phone service costs me only $15 per line (net cost) while the data plan costs $80/month for a total cost of $155/month (plus taxes) for 5 lines sharing 10GB.

Given that you have to surrender a working (and salable) iPhone 6 or 6S in order to get the $650 credit it's not such a great deal. I prefer paying full-price and taking the $25/month credit. Which, by the way, does not end. So if you upgrade only every 3 years then the line savings are $900/phone.

This is really a non-issue for Apple. Foreign taxes paid are a credit against Apple's US tax liability. Assuming that at some point Apple repatriates its cash to the US, as long as the marginal US tax rate at that time is greater than what the EU is claiming this won't have any impact on Apple's overall tax liability. Apple has never been against repatriating the money, they have been against paying a 35% tax rate when their competitors (Samsung et. al.) get to pay a much lower than the rate. At a 20% rate I'm sure Tim Cook would bring a lot of that cash back to the US.

Otoh, whatever is paid to the EU is tax money that the US won't collect. This is more of a grab by the EU on money that would otherwise end up in the US Treasury. You would think that the US would be a lot more energetic in fighting the EU on this.