chasm

randominternetperson said:

I'm glad you focused on this part.  I was going to ask specifically about the sentence you quoted:  "

The vast majority of the U.S., especially those outside of major metropolitan areas, have one broadband provider -- or have to rely on one wireless carrier for service."  Is this from the proposal or, I expect, from AI?  I believe is inaccurate or grossly misleading.  Does "the vast majority" refer to individuals (as "those" would suggest) or raw geographic square miles?  Given that a substantial portion of the population live in urban and suburban areas, I doubt a "vast majority" of Americans have no options,

The stat is not from AI: it’s from the FCC itself. Link: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-344499A1.pdf The tl;dr of that is that Mike is correct: nearly 60% of US households are served by only one ISP offering 25mbps or better broadband download speeds — or have no broadband access at all. Only 13% have more than two broadband options. Maybe do your own research next time before flapping your lip.

Just for some clarity (that was left out of the article): Walmart is not "switching to Macs." It is allowing some of its executives to choose to be supplied with Apple products (iPhones, iPads mostly, but yes Macs) if they prefer to use them. This is great news for Apple and great news for Walmart, which will indeed see lower support costs for those individuals who choose Apple products, BUT it is not a company-wide switchover or anything even remotely resembling that.

larrystar said:

 It’s really sad to think that because of tax loopholes in the law the US didn’t get those billions in taxes. Shame on you Apple! 

I think you grossly misunderstand the situation. The taxes collected on sales in Europe would only ever go to Europe. The US has absolutely zero claim on sales of Apple products outside the US. Perhaps you are referring to the poorly-named "repatriation" of *profits* Apple makes from overseas sales? That's nothing to do with "tax loopholes" either.

Two tips: 1. Leave the old apps around for a few days unless you know for sure they won't be deleted. Radium, a radio app I love for iOS was updated today to be 64-bit ... after more than THREE YEARS of absolutely no updates, communication, web page updates, etc. Put the obsolete apps in a folder so you don't accidentally launch them. 2. Contact the developers and ask (nicely) if they could at least be arsed to make a statement "NO, we won't be updating them" or "YES, sorry we're late, update coming soon."

For the "oh no Koh" crowd: there are a limited number of judges at the federal level for that part of California, and even fewer with ANY tech understanding at all. You can argue about Judge Koh's opinions and methods all you like, but IIRC she's one of only four judges that even COULD have gotten this case at this level. And for the record, she didn't come off as a particular "friend of Samsung" to me (a reporter covering those cases for years) during the Apple-Samsung trials. Now Judge Cote in the e-book trial, on the other hand ... Anyway, the fact that the FTC thinks Qualcomm is guilty of the described behaviour, and Qualcomm *has admitted it is,* lends tremendous credence to Apple's case against Qualcomm as well (I was keeping an open mind on the whole thing, but Qualcomm is seriously attempting "the Trump defense" of simply claiming that the law doesn't apply to them/it's not illegal if they do it), and I'll be very surprised if Qualcomm wins this case at any level.