poisednoise

anantksundaram said:

elijahg said:

Nope. But why does Netflix think they have a right to know what screen users are watching on, and how does that give them an advantage over broadcast?

Because it’s their product/service, and they fully well have a right to know who’s consuming it, how, where? You know, like just about every company does?

And those who don’t like it can go elesewhere, or not do business with them. This is not complicated. 

I’m struggling with this. If I buy a CD or a book, neither the publisher nor band/author know who I am or where/when I’m “consuming” the product. If I buy a box of cereal, again the supermarket/Kelloggs doesn’t have a “right to know” when or where I pour myself a bowl. I can absolutely see why this information is useful, and a lot of companies do their best to try to acquire this information (if I buy the CD from amazon, or get my cereal home delivered...) but it’s absolutely not a “right”.

An excellent explanation of the potential problems with this design here: https://youtu.be/8h5hniSM7LQ.

poisednoise said:

I'm currently booked on a return flight on a 737-8 in July, and I really hope by that point the decision's been made that they all need to be scrapped and start again.

You hope that a plane is "scrapped" rather than "fixed"?

Obviously I’d prefer it to be fixed, however I dont want to fly on a plane that is inherently unstable by design, as this one is, and requires software to ensure it remains in the air. Given the fundamental issues with the design, short of putting new smaller engines on the plane (basically turning it into one of the earliers generations of 737) I’m not sure what can be done, and even that fix might not be feasible.

MCAS is a system that’s common on fighter aircraft where unstable designs can lead to greater manoeuvrability: I believe however that it doesn’t have any place on a passenger aircraft, where safety should surely come before any other consideration. If you’re needing to design software just to keep your plane in the air, then hiding its existence from the pilots (it wasn’t mentioned in the original manual apparently) and additonally changing its specs radically after FAA approval, without telling the FAA (they approved a system which could move the tail fin by 0.6 degres maximum, whereas the system as installed can move it by 2.5 degrees) something is seriously wrong. 

wood1208 said:

Don't believe what you read. Pilots are trained in many ways including flight simulators,cockpit practical flying,etc. Than, they fly for thousands of hours call on job perfecting skills.

I don't think the suggestion is that just anyone off the street was put in the 737-8 cockpit after a few hours on an iPad, that's obviously ridiculous.

AppleInsider said:

It was determined that, at least in the case of the Max, pilots with prior 737 experience [my emphasis] learned about the new plane using an iPad for two hours, as well as a 13-page handbook of differences between the Max and earlier models.

That's just about plausible, but still criminal - quite possibly literally.

Apart from the mention of iPads, I'm unclear why this has appeared here, but I'm utterly astonished if this is the case (it seems to exist as news currently only also on flightaware and a few other non-mainstream news sites).

It seems the more we learn about this fiasco the more it would appear that there should be prosecutions brought against people who made these decisions at Boeing, quite possibly charges of manslaughter. I'm currently booked on a return flight on a 737-8 in July, and I really hope by that point the decision's been made that they all need to be scrapped and start again.

mcdave said:

poisednoise said:

To all those asking about the 3.5mm jack:
Anything aimed at the education market needs to retain the audio jack, as the alternatives are far too costly for a school.

• Lightning headphones: still so much more expensive than their 3.5mm counterparts, and students are unlikely to have their own, whereas they will have their own 3.5mm headphones. 
• Lightning adaptors: not cheap, breakable, and prone to disappear into student’s pockets. 
• Wireless headphones: again, expensive, and more prone to breaking than 3.5mm alternatives. 

I’m a classroom music teacher in the UK, and have been doing the job for 26 years. The iPad is something many schools in the UK are beginning to provide to students: if the headphone jack disappears, so will that market for Apple. 

Seems a brutal synopsis for exceptional occurrences. Lightning headphones are supplied with the product as are adapters and with 3 generations of iPhones providing ‘spare’ headphones, is it that big a deal?

Well to an extent any usage is “exceptional” - I would imagine the education sector is quite a large one still for Apple (after all, it’s why they named the computer “Macintosh”). There’s no way you could use the supplied headphones with the iPad - they’re too small and too easily stolen. Educational headphones tend to be over-ear and bulky, the type you’d normally expect to have a ¼ inch jack, although companies produce them with 3.5mm jacks specifically for this sort of purpose. The small size of the lightning-3.5mm adaptor is also the reason why that’s not an appropriate solution. Obviously this isn’t a good enough reason on its own for Apple to retain the jack socket, I’m just saying if they do get rid of it they’ve lost the education sector.