AppleZulu

If they update the Magic Mouse, I hope they make it compatible with the iPhone's Magsafe charger and don't acquiesce to the asinine demands that the lightning connector be moved from the bottom of the mouse. It's a wireless mouse. It takes very little time to charge it up. It doesn't need to plug in and act like a wired mouse. That defeats the point of it being a wireless mouse. Apple put the connector on the bottom on purpose specifically to keep people from leaving it plugged in as if it was a wired mouse.

mike1 said:

rob53 said:

It would be better for the tenants if the apartment building installed a fiber gig service without an ISP, that would save them money and headaches dealing with crazy ISPs. It would be even better if each city created their own fiber service, just like my city has. 

Oh great. Another taxpayer funded, poorly run government "service" that is better handled by private enterprise. Because governments at every level have shown that they are able to keep up with technological advances and consumer hardware.

We have now been through an entire generation's worth of the reflexive propaganda trope of "gubmint bad, bidness good."

ISPs, telcom and cable companies are all giant corporations with lumbering bureaucracies. Pick any one of them, combine its name with the words "customer service" in a search box, and you will find endless laments and horror stories that are as bad or worse than any comparable complaints about government bureaucracies. Whether the MBA dogmatists like it or not, broadband internet service necessarily functions as a basic infrastructure utility. 

Government rightfully operates or heavily regulates utility infrastructure because the national economic interest lies with assuring that everyone has equal access to these resources. It is incredibly ironic that the libertarian impulses of folk living in red-state flyover country works hard against their own interests and flies in the face of the fact that, based on purely private-market considerations, they are in an even weaker bargaining position than poor urban folk in deep blue territory. From an ISP's perspective, if there's enough population density, providing cheap service to poor city dwellers is vastly more lucrative than stringing fiber for miles and miles just to hook up a handful of suburban sprawl dwellers or more rural customers, even if those folks are more affluent and can afford to pay a premium over standard full-price. It's the same as the loonies who want to privatize the post office, claiming FedEx is much more efficient, and not considering that sending a birthday card to grandma costs between 40 to 80 times more with FedEx than it does with USPS, depending on where grandma lives.

Likewise, it's ironic that any libertarian-minded person would object to requiring increased competition of ISPs in apartment buildings. The density argument noted above means that apartment buildings naturally lend themselves to greater ISP competition. It's worth stringing the relatively short lines to compete for relatively large numbers of customers. The only reason that doesn't happen is because the apartment building owners prefer to block that competition in order to scrape money from the ISPs by granting 'exclusive access' to those relatively large numbers of customers. ISPs benefit because, rather then competing through price and service for only a percentage of a building's customers, paying a single, hefty tribute to the landlord gives them all the building's customers, with no need to offer competitive pricing to any of them. Landlords win, ISPs win, and screw the tenants. 

Tell us again how is it private enterprise always handles things better?

shanghaichica said:

Not sure why he’d give an apple  watch to a
 three year old as a toy. 

Because children are very curious about interactive devices adults are using. Not realizing the watch can make such a call, one might otherwise assume that the kid wouldn't even get through the passcode and would just use his imagination to play with it. It's surplussed, so it's not an issue if he somehow breaks it, which isn't even likely because the things are designed to be hard for great big adults to damage. You'd probably be surprised how many hours of fun a kid can have tapping away at the keyboard of an old, unplugged computer.

mjtomlin said:

Eskoshska said:

Bringing Xbox into the argument shows the supreme lack of intelligence on the topic. For the ones who have trouble doing basic logic, gaming consoles are specialized devices that are not designed for personal computing. Oh it has a web browser? Yeah well so does refrigerators nowadays. 

Might as well pull in Sony and Nintendo also, and make the comparisons even more nonsensical. 

Phones are personal computers. We can use our PCS and Macs without paying any sort of tax on software. So how is it acceptable for our phones that we already paid for the hardware, devs are still paying a 30% premium for software? 

Yes Apple deserves to get paid for their work. And they have been handsomely. Nobody asked them to make iOS, that was their own choosing. Building out a app store pulling in health and gaming etc that's all their choice. So to cry blood for Apple and near sad situation that they need to charge 30% to developers is bongos thinking. You have to pay into Apple just to make software anyway and then you're paying out for every sale on top of it every single time. Yes there are certain scenarios in there where is not flat 30% but come on.

So for the love of all thats holy please stop bringing up the utterly ridiculous Xbox comparison...its very foolish and child-like.

Love mac hardware, apple otherwise are control freak narcissists that deserve the scrutiny.

A device being “specialized” should not factor into what it can and can’t do… iOS devices are completely proprietary devices and just as any other proprietary device, the maker of that device should be able to control it and develop it as they desire.

Comparing them to game consoles and set top boxes is completely valid in this regard. In all cases, there are restrictions on what a developer can and cannot create. This is called a closed development platform; developers are granted access by the proprietor and must and can only use API’s provided by the maker of that device.

Additionally, the iPhone is, practically speaking, the first internet-connected computing device designed from the ground up. The secure, locked down operating and file systems, followed in later iterations with the secure, closed development platform, were all designed in response to the security disaster of standalone personal computing platforms appended with afterthought networking portals. If the Mac were originally developed with the internet in mind, MacOS would be every bit as closed as is iOS. As an always-on, always-connected computing device, the iPhone's App Store is a closed development system for good reason, and that closed system is a significant factor why iPhone is chosen by many customers as a reliable, secure device. Maintaining that level of reliability and security isn't free, and app developers who think it should be are the ones who are having trouble doing basic logic. These folks are doing little more than swinging an axe at the goose that laid the golden egg.

brian.on.android said:

I think people would lay off Apple if they would just allow third party payment systems fully.

Developers already spend $99+ a year for distribution of their apps in the app store. 3rd party payments require $0 for Apple to maintain because they use zero of Apple's infrastructure outside of the phone you already paid for.

Apple doesn't need to take a cut in your entire business.

That's hilarious. Third party payments require $0 for Apple to maintain, other than the entire hardware and software platform that created (and still maintains) the mobile app market that's under discussion. For all practical purposes, none of the mobile app market existed before Apple created the iPhone and app store. Also, none of the lucrative iPhone user customer base would exist if Apple didn't maintain a stable, secure platform that has very little downside risks for users who want to try out new iPhone apps. 

This whole argument is still analogous to a company expecting, say, Costco to -for a $99 developer fee- stock a product that customers can come in and pick up, but bypass Costco's point-of-sale and instead purchase directly from the product manufacturer. The $99 covers the floor space, right? It costs Costco nothing to maintain the building, retail brand and business and to entice costumers with money who already paid for a Costco membership to come through the doors.