spheric

hexclock said:

spice-boy said:

What are you folks so obsessed about how much tax Apple has to pay? You should be concerned that you get almost nothing for the taxes you pay if you live in the US. Apple is in the top 3 richest corporations in the world, they must obey the laws of the countries they operate in. 

I believe Apple has complied with all laws in counties it operates in. It just seems like that when the EU needs more money, they pick some big US Corp and slap a new tax on them. That’s the optics of it, so prove me wrong. 

For one, since you haven't been following along: The issue is NOT that Apple didn't comply with the laws of Ireland. It's that Irish law was in violation of EU law, because it gave Ireland an unfair competitive advantage when vying for corporate investors. 
If Irish regulations were illegal under EU law, they weren't enforceable; ergo: Apple owes back taxes.

Whether it's Apple who owes, or Ireland who ought cover for it, is under dispute — which is why the money Apple has put up remains in escrow until it's been decided.  
 

Second: Just because you personally never, ever hear about ANYTHING the EU does unless it concerns an American corporation, doesn't mean it's not happening. 

Not all of these are directly tax evasion, but many are effectively that, in terms of illegal subsidies (as is Apple in Ireland): 
Energy company Engie. 
Real Madrid - 20.3 Million € (and six other Spanish football teams). 
Deutsche Post — somewhere between 500 Million and 1 billion €. 
Belgian B-Post, as well. 
Nürburgring GmbH (the race track operator) — half a billion. 
Olympic Airlines — about 150 million. 
and plenty, plenty more. This is just a couple of choice examples from the first page of a Google search. 

I think it may be a symptom of your not being able to think of many European companies beyond Daimler and VW, full stop. 

It's sort of like how most Americans seem to think that the EU must hate US corporations and hits them with massive anti-trust punishments (Microsoft, Google), when in fact, there are anti-trust rulings all the time, and the vast majority of them concern illegal pricing cartels between EU corporations. You obviously never hear about that, because it's outside of your sphere of interest.

And in fact, even we here hardly hear about it, because frankly, it's kind of not so interesting to hear that four electronics companies have been fined twenty million Euros for price-fixing the lightbulb market.  

cropr said:

macseeker said:

christopher126 said:

It's coming! You heard it here first, Apple's iOS13 will be dedicated to make every Apple device we own 'anonymous' when connected to the internet. Our devices will just look like an iPhone or MacBook.

Privacy is Apple's next big move!

I could even see an iLife-like suite of Apps devoted to Privacy! 

Bad FaceBook, very bad!

I would even go farther, for iOS 13, facebook and its associated apps won't install and the existing ones can't work.  facebook's balls needs to be smashed.

And what if a significant group of  iPhone customers, who cannot access their facebook app anymore, switch to Android?  Whose balls will be smashed then?

I haven't had the Facebook app installed since they pulled that crap with playing a silent audio file to be able to keep the app alive in the background indefinitely for tracking purposes. 

That alone should have got them kicked from the App Store. Fuckers.

king editor the grate said:

urashid said:

Didn't do a good job with the language but I hear that is on purpose.

Really? That's the thing that is an instant tip-off.

Yes, which is exactly the point: 

Scammers need slightly dim victims. Somebody smart or savvy is bound to smell a rat at some point, and all effort up to then is wasted work. 

Weeding the time-wasters out from the start is good business practice for a scammer. 

WebKit, the rendering engine of Safari, has been open-source for a decade and a half. 

I bought a 15" back in late 2016 for the quad-core, coming from an early 2011 13" dual-core, for Logic and Mainstage work. 

As much as I love the big display and appreciate the lightness and lack of bulk on the 15", the quad-core is well enough for my purposes, and your choice is exactly the machine I would buy if I were in the market today, except with 1 TB internal storage. 

Transferring everything from the old machine to the new is dead-simple: Make new Time Machine backup of the old machine, hook up the new one when prompted, let 'er run. 
Everything will be transferred. 

Most plug-ins will need to be de-/re-authorised. 

Note that the new machines come with macOS Mojave, with NO way to downgrade. So you need to be certain that your plug-ins and drivers are compatible with the new OS. 

I keep a compatibility list of plug-ins and software and drivers that I duplicate for every major system upgrade, with yes/no/unknown and a field for support links and the like to look up for compatibility updates. Make sure you check the iLok software, as well. 

A good starter list ist here: