chasm

In addition to avoiding fees on any card by paying the balance promptly within a month, paying regularly and promptly also does wonders for your credit rating, though to really maximize your credit rating, it's best to (occasionally) carry a small outstanding balance for a quarter ever few years. People who religiously pay zero interest because they are so prompt in paying off their debt don't get the best ratings from the CC companies for fairly obvious reasons, but there's no need to pay very much interest if you are careful in when it's worth paying off a balance a bit slower than "all at once within the month."

I’m very disappointed that so few commenters actually read the article before commenting. As stated in the article, this has exactly ZERO to do with the apps “competing” with Screen Time, and EVERYTHING to do with using unauthorized APIs to copy the feature, and using the feature as an excuse to collect data about children illegally.

it SHOULD be obvious to anyone with two functions brain cells to rub together that Apple has ZERO issue with apps that do similar things to existing Apple apps ( see also: every word processor, voice recorder, and Calendar app), but they have to follow THE RULES.

 This is absolutely not Apple being anti-competitive; this is the spyware “flashlight“ apps debacle all over again,  only this time Apple is acting quickly to prevent violations of law, as well as violations of its rules for developers,  specifically with regard to private APIs.

 Thank you to those few commenters who “get it,“ and a big raspberry to the rest of you. Literacy or reading comprehension classes might help. 

lorin schultz said:

Thank you for the warning.

What is adware and how do I protect myself from it?

As noted above, the absolute best way to avoid any sort of Mac malware is to:

1. NEVER install a Flash update in response to a pop up via a web browser. ALWAYS use the system preference panel to handle Flash updates (if you must have it at all).

2. Stay away from pirating sites and basically any site that promises you free versions of stuff you would normally pay for. Also stay away from PC-oriented download sites that sometimes offer Mac software as well (download.com, softpedia.com, etc). Get your Mac downloads from either the Mac App Store, the developer directly, or MacUpdate.com. No other sources should be considered safe.

3. MalwareBytes has proven itself to be a good citizen when it comes to finding and stopping adware (the major threat a Mac user might actually come across if they follow the first two rules) and malware (far more rare, and not even a blip on the radar compared to the PC and Android worlds). Download the free version and run it, say, bi-weekly.

The only real difference between the free version and the paid version is that the paid version is "active" by which I mean it proactively scans downloads and sites for issues automatically; the free version is "passive," by which I mean it won't monitor or stop anything -- but it does a nice job of cleaning up any malware/adware you've accidentally gotten, if you remember to run it periodically. I recommend the paid version for people who aren't going to remember to run the free version on a schedule, or who need active protection because they're just going to keep falling for clicking fake links in emails (or Flash install pop-ups, et al). Just to be clear, I have zero connection to the company other than being a long-time user.

We don’t really know enough to make a good judgement on this, but there are three scenarios I think are probable, and one of them is likely to be close to what happened:

1. Intel found out about the Qualcomm settlement when we did, and the raw sewage hit the ventilation system. “but in the smartphone modem business it has become apparent that there is no clear path to profitability” should have been amended to add “without the iPhone as our main customer.” Let nobody say that Intel can’t react quickly and decisively when surprised.

2. Contrary to a number of comments here, Apple actually had three possibly suppliers of 5G tech: themselves (though that might require more time than the fall of 2020), Huawei (it’s a serous offer regardless of what you might think of them), and Intel (albeit who were falling behind again on schedules ... as seems normal for the company of late ...). Perhaps Apple gave Intel a heads-up on the talks with Qualcomm once it looked like it would happen, but swore them to secrecy until the deal was signed. For Intel (in this scenario), their announcement was a sigh of relief — now they don’t have to meet the deadlines, and Apple doesn’t hate them for failing. Again in this scenario, Apple pulled a fast one on Qualcomm by using these competitor offers to force them into a deal — and Qualcomm just found out about the Intel pullout when we did.

3. Qualcomm used the fact that Intel hasn’t met a deadline it didn’t ignore for the last few years to break Apple’s resolve and force a deal. Qualcomm gets to keep their illegal business model for a while longer (and this assumes the FTC and ITC don’t move against them; I personally think the FTC will prevail) in exchange for a partial repayment by both sides of monies withheld, and a sizable (but probably not 100 percent) share of Apple’s 5G modem business, which is likely to expand into Macs (at last!) if the terms of the deal were acceptable enough.

As you can probably guess, I’m hoping that (2) or some variation thereof is what happened. Intel doesn’t seem to have been “blindsided” by this news (or at least they’ve not made a reference to that, and they clearly have a Plan B in place). I hope this doesn’t damage Apple’s relationship with Intel prematurely: the company is already looking likely to have a lot of their Apple business phased out over the next half-decade. I’d love it if Apple got the upper hand in this deal, but we do need to be prepared for the idea that maybe Qualcomm did — it could certainly be that Apple got their hands on the 5G chips and saw that they were advanced enough to justify swallowing their pride to some degree.

NMI8080 said:

Can you compare the sustained fan noise to previous iMacs? I have a late 2013 and it gets pretty loud.

Any new machine is going to be a lot quieter than a machine that's been working since 2013, even if you've tried (properly) cleaning the exhaust system. The improvements in cooling in the iMacs (and other Apple devices) over the years are really significant -- when I go into a room with a PC in it the **first thing** I notice is how much the fans run even when "nothing" much is going on, and how loud they are by comparison to Apple products.