citpeks

I'd like to hear Apple executives' spin on this question.  I suspect their answer would be in the same vein as to why Apple neglected to give the iPad weather and calculator apps for the longest time.

For VisionOS, and in the context of an AR environment, translucency makes logical sense, to give the user a more complete picture of their environment.  On your desktop and on your device?  Much less so.

To be fair, this is not the finished product, but some of those PR shots, like the Safari address bar and the music player, look like readability, and thus usability, disasters.  And if history is any guide, Apple only manages to fix the most egregious missteps, not all of them, before shipping the final product.

And calling it Aqua 2.0, or Aero 2.0 doesn't make it any better.  Those designs were hardly perfect, and recall that Jobs originally wanted a non-functional Apple logo centered in the middle of the menu bar, before common sense returned.

So call a spade a spade and admit that these are mostly aesthetic, not functionally beneficial changes.  I can't imagine there are many users who think that making things harder to read is going to make them more productive, or the product easier to use.  But they are most certainly outnumbered by those more concerned with the sizzle, not the steak, and this will probably make them happy.  That's the culture we live in now, like those who think how their food looks is more important than how it tastes, and they must tell the world about it through apps like Instagram.

Condemning a product based on a rumored battery capacity?  How about let's see what the finished product is, and more importantly, how it performs.  Apple has always designed for performance/usage goals, not necessarily the best paper specs, and the cell capacities in iOS devices have regularly "lagged" behind those of competitors'.

BTW, the six-year old iPhone XS I still use has a 2658 mAh cell (10.13Wh, which is a more telling figure that doesn't omit voltage), and ~84% capacity after a bit less than 700 cycles.

And dual cameras with OIS, A12 made on a 7nm node…the power efficiency of components hasn't been standing still in those six years…the battery cell is one component of many that comprise the device.

The Air is likely to be a niche product, and those attracted to it shouldn't be going in blind to whatever compromises it may end up having.

Meanwhile, the U.S. still lacks a GDPR, American data brokers run amok selling peoples' data unimpeded, including to the U.S. Government, Section 702 repeatedly gets rubber stamped, and the corporations that fail in their duty to protect PII suffer little, or no repercussions for their failures, even when such breaches are publicly disclosed, or when word leaks after attempts to keep them hush hush doesn't work.

When will Congress take care of its own business. at home?  Or stand up to the FBI's next attempt to force back doors on the U.S.?  And watch was the agencies tasked to protect the people's interests are neutered, or dismantled?

Still more editing needed.

The headline still leads with the DOJ demand for Google to spin off Chrome, but mostly talks about ending the Google Search payola doled out to various frenemies, including Apple, Mozilla, etc.  Chrome is barely mentioned at all except in the misleading headline.

As others have pointed out, Chrome is not a search engine, but a browser.  Two complementary, but still separate, Google products that should not be conflated, like the headline and story suggest.  Google Search works with any browser, and Chrome works with any search engine.

In combination, they strengthen Google's market power, but that still does not make them one and the same.

Despite the neat technology, things like touchscreen laptops, convertible laptops, and foldable phones have not set the market on fire, and remain in their particular niches.

Apple has quite clearly been working on their own version, and if/when it ships, unless it brings something extraordinary to the table, it will probably won't be the mainstream choice, especially at the elevated prices that foldable phones command.

The iPhone 17 "Air"  also strikes me as answer to a question few are asking, and doesn't make an obvious business case.  In general, the sales figures for the larger screen non-Pro models haven't been great compared to the others in the lineup, so the investment to develop a gimped, but extra-thin model must amortized over more than one model with limited appeal.

I suspect Apple is using that development work on the ultra-thin Air as the test bed and foundation for the what will underlie the foldable iPhone, to allow it to maintain a reasonable thickness when folded, and perhaps some degree of elegance, with the possible omission of Face ID as a sacrifice to cost constraints given the other added technologies involved in the folding design, with the hinge, as well as both a primary flexible display and secondary outer display jacking up the BOM to an unrealistic degree, even for a $2000 phone.