seanismorris

ajl said:

Another stupid choice from the think different verb preachers.

One should pay thousands for a machine that is supposed to last a lot years without any possibility of later upgrades?

Better get used to it.  SSD’s are getting soldered in laptops, even none Apple ones.  Apple is doing it for security.  SSD’s these days last the life of the machine, so there’s less incentive to make them removable.

Apple actually did customers a solid allowing for future processor and memory upgrades.

If you need more storage, buy it up front or plan on expanding with an external solution.  The speed of external drives (because of interface improvements) is right up there with internal drives.

This is whining to whine.   If this configuration is not right for you, get a Mac Pro.

Apple products have always been ultra premium priced.  But, they learned volume and ecosystem is king with the iPhone and iPad.  About 2-3 years ago Apple started getting a lot more aggressive in pricing laptops, especially targeting the college bound market.

This move by Apple is a continuation of what they learned.  They want young people to grow up with an Apple product in their hands.  They want them locked into the Apple ecosystem.  They want them trained in programming Apple apps.

Apple’s vision has really come together.  Providing iPads at a discount is a shore term charge for a long term profit.

President Trump had little understanding about what was important in the negotiations of trade agreements with China.  Rather than focus on what was important, mainly protecting IP, and opening markets, he went off the rails and demanded China purchase more food from USA.

His bumbling negotiations made everything worse (as usual) and here we are, attempting to “look strong” on China to improve his election chances.  He’s targeting TikTok specifically because young people (Americans) on TikTok hate his guts, and successfully interfered with a rally. 

Beats said:

The retail POS terminal industry has been wide open for Apple since the invention of iPad. Not sure why Apple has been dragging their feet.

Small businesses choose to use iPads(with 3rd party software) but they aren't supported natively. Imagine if they were?

Apple figured if they’re going to be investigated for antitrust, might as well go whole hog.

Apple’s policy probably added a bit of fire behind Kindle Unlimited, a subscription model for reading books.  I also purchase ebooks from Amazon.

I’ve never read (or bought) a book from iBooks, and never will.  I own both an iPad and iPhone, but 10 years from now I could be reading on another platform.  iBooks lack of cross platform compatibility makes it dead to me.

I did make the mistake of buying 10 songs from Apple.  But, everything else is from Amazon... including movies.

I use Apple’s products because they’re better, but I’ve avoided any kind of platform lock-in... it’s just not worth the future potential headache.

The only “spend” on services within Apple would have to be with a subscription model, anything else would be a poor value when taking future uncertainty into account.