davgreg

When a Doctor tells you that you have Pancreatic Cancer you do not waste time in prayer- not mentioned here, but widely reported, fad diets or fasting. It is amazing that smart people can be so stupid and gullible regarding faith and regarding unproven “alternative” Medicine.

I have worked in Medical Radiology for over 30 years and a significant part of that involved in the diagnosis, treatment, and tracking of Cancer. The specific kind of Pancreatic Cancer he suffered from was one that- if caught early enough - can be treated with the surgical procedure mentioned. It is not a simple procedure and has profound downstream consequences, but can give a patient a high probability of surviving Pancreatic Cancer. Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsberg was successfully treated for a similar form of Pancreatic Cancer and is still alive and kicking, primarily because she did not fritter away precious time with nonsense like prayer, fasting, fad diets and alternative medicine.

Steve Jobs, for all his money and connections, could not get back that precious time he foolishly wasted. That should be an object lesson for everyone. I cannot give you medical advice, but would admonish all to not play around with any Cancer diagnosis. With Cancer, time is the one thing you cannot spare.

I have seen so many people valiantly struggle with Cancer- some surviving and others not. My own Mother died in 2016 of Multiple Myeloma and watching her struggle with it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to witness. To think he had an early diagnosis and wasted it still makes me mad- most people do not get that gift.

lkrupp said:

The Mini has never sold very well because its market is limited to a tiny minority of Mac users.

Since Apple is not in the habit of releasing sales figures on individual Macs, do you have inside info or did you pull that out of your backside?

I happen to know a lot of people who use Mac minis and they have held off upgrading after Apple castrated the line with vampire video, soldered in chipsets and closed the memory expansion slot. That and killed off the Quad Core CPU. They also hurt it’s use as a HTPC when they dropped Front Row hoping to sell everyone an Apple TV.

Then there is the eternal issue of Apple not spending a red cent on advertising or marketing the Mac line.

I hate all in ones as much as you apparently hate the mini and have no interest in buying an iMac at any price. Since they came out with the trashcan (not Pro) Apple says you can have any up to date Mac you want as long as it is a laptop or an iMac. Well laptops suck as desktops since Jony likes them so thin.

Apple needs at least one Mac that users can configure with standard cards and memory that is not an iMac and is not a styling exercise that ruins performance for the sake of fashion. To be honest, I do not care how thin the bezel is on my iPhone or iPad or how skinny my a MacBook Pro happens to be. I would rather ports than a skinny edge and cooling over unnecessary thinness. I see Macs as the tools they are- not as a styling exercise or fashion statement.

In the terms once used by Steve Jobs- a Truck. Not a Mazda Miata or Hyundai Veloster - an off road capable truck with rubber floor mats and drain plugs so you can hose it down when done.

The HomePod is a dud.

Repairing the thing out of warranty costs almost as much as buying a new one, which means it is another throwaway item from supposedly “green minded” Apple.
It is tied to the low quality rebranded Beats streaming service and Apple’s inferior Siri technology. The device still looks like a roll of toilet paper in fishnet panty hose.

Add to all that the simple fact that it sounds like a cheap boom box. I listened to it in 2 different Apple Stores and it sounded like a cheap Wal-Mart Boom Box from the 1980s.

You can buy an Amazon Echo Dot and connect it to your existing equipment and get far better functionality and better sound for less money.

Dud.

Life was sucked out of Rock and Roll by people like Lee Abrams who launched the Superstars format in the 1970s that concentrated on a rather smallish list of established artists and their most popular songs rather than let the audience discover and decide what they wanted. Prior to his consultancy, stations used program directors that listened to the Club DJs, talked to the concert promoters, tabulated local call in requests and their own judgement to determine playlists and rotations. This resulted in a Rock station in New York sounding different from one in Philadelphia and one in Memphis sounding different from one in Atlanta. It also helped keep rock vibrant and similar things happened with country and Soul.

After Superstars delivered large audiences content to hearing mostly the same stuff over and over, the same thing was applied to other formats.

In streaming land, the tech geeks think they can predict what you will like from a relatively short playlist. That may work for some, but not for everyone- especially those with broad and eclectic tastes. We would all be better off returning to a more regionalized playlist where local artists and favorites can gain traction before breaking out nationally.

The one thing that bothers me the most about streaming from whomever is that the artists are not adequately compensated for their work. Peter Frampton recently tweeted this: "For 55 million streams of, ‘Baby I Love Your Way’, I got $1,700".

Apple should pay artists more or get out of streaming.