AppleZulu

I think the "Final Thoughts" in the post are by far the most important. The picture you might get with an iPhone is almost certainly not going to be very good. If you don't have a really good telephoto clip-on lens, this is particularly true. IPhones have a pretty wide angle field of view, which means the moon and sun are going to be a scarce few pixels wide, and thus not particularly impressive in your photos. Other people will use expensive cameras and get the spectacular shots, which you can enjoy later. Your iPhone shot is only going to be a crappy "I was there" document, which will mostly be a lie if you spend most of the few moments of totality trying to get pictures of it. So instead of fumbling around with your iPhone, just look at the thing yourself and be present in the moment.

flabber said:

I'm still a little underwhelmed and surprised that Apple keeps naming things "pro" when they're not upgradeable. People have been complaining about the Mac Pro being very much not a Pro device because of all the extra séparate devices one needs to buy to actually get something done. Literally nothing about the thing is upgradeable (SSD, RAM, CPU, GPU). Then they apparently respond to the critics years later (3+ already) by making an iMac "Pro", making the same mistake all over again. I mean, who's going to pay $4999, regardless of wether it's undercutting a similar-specced PC, if you can't upgrade it's so-called "pro hardware" 3 years down the road?

You seem to equate "Pro" with "upgradeable." I'm not sure everyone else does. Apple really hasn't ever been much in the business of making modular hardware, and the things that they're making now are a natural evolution from past hardware, where any possible upgrades and customization were still generally pretty limited compared to the competition. Besides, the rapid evolution of processor speed and memory or storage capacity isn't happening so much in the shrinking desktop market. That's happening with phones and tablets, and even that's showing some evidence of market maturity. An iMac Pro bought today is not likely to be in any great need for component upgrades in three years, as you suggest. I suspect a significant part of the professional user market for desktop devices instead wants to be able to buy hardware that's going to be good for a while, while the upgrades come through OS updates, rather than open-heart surgery. If you really need to be able to tinker under the hood and swap out bells and whistles as as soon as they're available, you were never going to be happy with Apple hardware, anyway.

SpamSandwich said:

xbit said:

Having a diverse team goes beyond hiring the best person for the job. Apple's initial attempt at health tracking is a perfect example of what happens when your team isn't diverse. It ignored the most important part of health tracking for most women.

If Apple wants a diverse customer base, it needs a diverse team.

That's simply not true. Apple got to where they were under Jobs without this political correctness.

"Apple celebrates diverse experiences and backgrounds. By introducing new and innovative people to the company, we incorporate their different perspectives and skills and achieve our goal of making the best products on the market." - Apple website, 2008, when Steve Jobs was still very much alive and kicking.

Here's a nice article, "Steve Jobs' Passion for Diversity," by Andrew Williams, a Spelman College professor hired by Steve Jobs to help increase diversity in hiring at Apple.

If true, it would be interesting to see what kind of deal is being worked out, or what other changes are afoot. There are fundamental business model barriers that have kept Amazon video off of the ATV. Simply put, Amazon Prime video is a loss-leader for Amazon. Your prime subscription doesn't pay for the content available through Prime. So from Amazon's perspective, if they put their video app on the ATV, they want you to be able to then purchase or rent other non-prime video content from them. 

Apple, on the other hand, requires all in-app purchases of digital content to go through their store, where they take a cut from the purchase or rental price. Amazon isn't interested in doing that, because that cut would be their profit margin or more. You can get around that on an iPhone or iPad, because unlike your ATV, those devices already have browsers, and Apple can't take a piece out of every purchase made through a browser. So it's a slight inconvenience on an iPhone, but Amazon will put up with their customers using a browser to complete a purchase, and then switching back to their video app to watch the content. Using AirPlay to then stream from an iPhone to an ATV is just an extension of that model.

So thus far, because the ATV doesn't have a browser, Amazon has avoided putting a video app on ATV, because they would either have to give away their profits for in-app digital content transactions, or offer an app with no internal store, which would lead too many of their customers to watch their expensive, loss-leader Prime content only to then jump over to Apple's app to purchase and rent video content there. People get all mad at Amazon about this, but neither of those options is tenable for them. Both options involve them spending money on loss-leader Prime content, only to then take the loss while leading their customers right into Apple's bank account. 

From Apple's standpoint, I can't imagine that this impasse is really that big of a problem for them. They have their own video content. If they give Amazon some kind of special break on their cut of in-app digital content purchases, it would set a precedent where other vendors would want the same deal. They have no interest in doing that.

The only thing I can think of that would allow Amazon to put their video app on ATV would be that Apple is planning for other reasons to start including a browser on the ATV. That seems unlikely, however, because you kind of need a keyboard to effectively work a browser.

The days of swapping out carburetors and vacuum tubes are over. If you want the sophistication, compactness, reliability and device security of current electronics (or even cars) you have to give up the notion that the end-user or neighborhood shade-tree mechanic is going to be able to make effective repairs in any way comparable to days gone by. 

Deep inside the New York bill is this little gem: "ANY INDEPENDENT REPAIR PROVIDER THAT PURCHASES OR ACQUIRES EMBEDDED SOFTWARE  OR  SERVICE PARTS  SHALL, PRIOR TO PERFORMING ANY SERVICES ON DIGITAL ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT, NOTIFY THE  OWNER  OF  SUCH  EQUIPMENT  IN
WRITING THAT: ... WARRANTORS CANNOT REQUIRE THAT ONLY BRANDED PARTS BE USED WITH THE PRODUCT IN ORDER TO RETAIN THE WARRANTY".

Now consider Samsung's recent battery disaster. That happened with a component that they actually tested and had control over. The battery being one of the most likely components an independent shop would want to be able to replace, imagine the disastrous implications: Bubba's Discount Fix-It replaces the battery in a phone with some cheap, non-oem component. That battery then erupts and takes down an airbus on its way from New York to Los Angeles. Seems extreme, but that's actually the sort of thing that's at stake.

Yes, those sorts of dubious repairs already happen (and you should be worried about that), but by giving the consumer the option to make that choice while explicitly being told they're not voiding their warranty, the probability goes up that such decisions will be made, and the probability that such choices will lead to extreme and tragic outcomes also goes up.