franklinjackcon

urahara said:

We as (French) individuals would have to pay those taxes. Especially for products/services provided by such companies like Apple or Amazon, who focus on providing value to a private person. Why should those companies pay more than French companies?
This is such a BS.

One of the original problems that prompted this was Google, selling a digital service like advertising. They would sell advertising to French companies to advertise to French viewers on French websites but because they sold the service from another country (I think it was Ireland), the French companies paid VAT to Google but it went to that other country. They also recognised no revenue in France as a result and paid no tax on the profit. A French company performing the same service as Google would be contributing to the local economy that they are benefitting from by paying both VAT and tax on their earnings. You are fortunate that France has a large domestic economy and many local corporations. In smaller countries with many more foreign companies, it's even harder for the government to collect tax.  

I guess it depends on the size of the place where you live, what you do/listen to in each room, and how you like to move about your house. I don't always carry my phone with me, I don't like to wear a watch at home so I'm happy to have the option to buy smaller, cheaper speakers for rooms where I don't listen to music and better, larger speakers for rooms where I do. Amazon now gives you that choice.

AppleInsider said:

Further, Apple has been assailed for decades over policies including its non-replaceable batteries. Yet from the first iPods to modern devices, Apple has effectively erased the use of millions of replaceable or disposable batteries that would commonly end up as toxic garbage, while at the same time advancing the state of the art in battery chemistry to achieve all-day use without the need to carry a series of battery packs. Samsung and other makers initially promoted disposable batteries but were eventually forced to follow Apple's lead-- only because it became cost-efficient, not because of any real values held by its executives.

In some areas, environmental concerns are simply efficient business decisions. The massive cloud services operated by Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple require vast amounts of energy to operate and cool, so it simply makes sense to position these next to cheap sources solar, geothermal, or hydroelectric power. Many of these companies tout their "environmental" credibility in these areas, but Apple is unique in driving all of its corporate and even retail operations from renewable energy, when doing so isn't just the cheapest way to do business.

I get that Apple has values and all and I praise them for it but some of the examples are stretching reality. Is there any evidence that Apple used non-user replaceable batteries for environmental reasons or that they made a positive difference? The argument has always been that sealing the unit and making them custom results in a better product and prevents third-party batteries causing malfunctions.

How does it follow that when Apple does something, it's because of the company's values but when Alphabet does it, it's just for business reasons. Google became carbon neutral 12 years ago. There's once again an Apple lens put on every competitor even though they have completely different businesses. The one most important thing Alphabet could do is improve the efficiency and source or electricity feeding its data centres and its focused on that. Apple sells handsets, they obviously focus on reducing the impact of those.

These article would have been much better if you focused the positives that Apple is doing rather than ranting about competitors. Who knows, maybe you could have even suggested some ways Apple could improve so it can continue getting better.

MacPro said:

seanismorris said:

cornchip said:

The number of people who keep claiming Apple isn’t working on a self-driving car are starting to dwindle. You guys still around..?

Apple Car = nope
Apple software in car = yep

What we have here is self-driving cars are a ridiculously long project, and most of the startups with that goal will go belly up.  Apple’s getting assets/people they want on the cheap.

I don’t think self-driving cars are a good idea, but driver assists are valuable.  So is data on driving habits, data, and up sell opportunities.

Google paved the way with Google Maps... it’s free, but is it really?  

I used Google maps instead of Apple Maps the other day to check out some information in the Plaka in Athens.  I've been inundated with emails selling everything under the sun related to Greece and Athens ever since ... so no it's not free.

I've never heard of this. Did you give out your address to anyone? And which mail provider are you with? I use Google Maps and Gmail and occasionally get two "emails" labelled as ads in my promotions folder but I've never seen actual spam that Google would have prompted. Anything spammy goes into my spam folder so it would be self defeating. Perhaps it's because I'm in Europe or I'm not as interesting as a target.

Folio said:

I'm surprised no one has mentioned latest CNBC piece on Google, collecting details from your purchase receipts sent via gmail. (While I assumed they still culled meta data, I thought they vowed to stop reading the internals.) If true, this may be the straw to make me cut gmail to minimum. Most of family still uses as primary link. Maybe tmrow AI and gator will address.

There's nothing to that CNBC article. Google has reiterated that they aren't "reading" your emails or using the data for advertising. They scan every email to identify if it's spam or not. If it's not spam, it then gets put into folders/tagged based on the contents using an algorithm. The tags you can already see, if your gmail looks like mine, is Social and Promotions. Another of those tags is purchases. Until recently, Inbox was the better version of Gmail and showed you your purchases and allowed you to track delivery straight from your inbox. That is gone since Inbox was abandoned but my guess is that it'll be integrated into Gmail soon like snoozing etc was. No one is reading your email, none of the contents are being sent to a third party. It's barely any different to being able to sort your email based on who the sender was.