Notsofast

lukei said:

No Spotify will not be dead. Please stop spouting your baseless nonsense. 

He may be wrong, but it's certainly not baseless with billions in debt and increasing losses, over $200 million last year.  More importantly, it may have a broken business model that will never make money. in a market with huge competitors that don't need to make money on streaming, e.g., Apple, Google, Microsoft and host of smaller competitors.  Moreover, streaming has become largely a commoditized product where it's hard to differentiate on anything other than price, that favors companies like Apple and Amazon that not only afford to lose money on it, but can offer it as an add on.  Read this article to get an objective view.

http://fortune.com/2016/05/24/spotify-financials/

gatorguy said:

MplsP said:

One of the reasons I tend to stay away from Google is because of privacy/data collection concerns; If Apple can improve Siri while maintaining privacy it would be great

Not that it likely matters. but Google has been using differential privacy in Chrome for some time (not exclusively tho). It's also meant to be used with Google's AI efforts from what I've read.

Apple does have stronger user-facing privacy protections compared to Google, no question. Still neither one is bad when viewed alongside other data aggregators, and both companies are aggressively protective of any user data they've been entrusted with. 

You're being a little disingenuous.  Google is amassing a dossier on everyone that law enforcement can access with subpoena, corrupt goats's, criminal and casual hackers and foreign and domestic intel can obtain and that is frightening in its scale.  Every email, sent and received is scanned and retained, every trip you take, every search you make, every thing you post, every document you upload, etc.,every photograph you take or receive, etc., etc., is given a central identifier to link so Google can track you wherever you go and whatever you do, all in the name of marketing you and your family to companies.  You give them a worldwide license for them and "their partners" to use all that data forever.  Once their ad model falls, they can sell that data to another company and that company will give you a new privacy policy.  What will be the future uses of the dossier they have built on you?  Read your terms of service.  Google knows you won't.

There's a reason Google changed their company motto from "Do no Evil."  

randominternetperson said:

Notsofast said:

randominternetperson said:

I'm a huge fan of federalism and giving states the ability to control their own laws, but this seems like a classic "interstate commerce" challenge.  The feds should step in and preempt these types of laws--either by creating a nation "right to repair" law or prohibiting such a thing.  I don't really care which, but forcing every company to deal with dozens of different state regime would be very burdensome.

Well, you can't have it both ways.  Either you believe in federalism or not.  I think these are silly proposed laws as clearly the vast majority of people have no desire to try and repair complicated devices, nor can most of these devices be repaired at home; thus, they will only needlessly drive up costs for everyone else.  That said, the Tenth Amendment clearly prohibits the national government from preempting the states from enacting these silly laws.  

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Respectfully, to suggest that whether I can buy a battery to repair my phone in Kansas has anything to do with the intent of the Interstate Commerce Clause is to deprive the ICC of any meaning, as they tried to do with the ACA.  Yes, it has been a modern trend to try and subvert the 10th Amendment by making tortuously reasoned connections to Interstate Commerce, but hopefully, both a limited Constitutional Convention and a less partisan and more originalist Supreme Court will reinvigorate the liberty promised by the 10th Amendment.  Meanwhile,  I am crossing my fingers for an insanely great Next Gen Siri Home Device that I have no chance (or need!) whatsoever of repairing.

I would argue that this is a classic Commerce Clause issue.  Apple is a California corporation and the only reason Minnesota is legislating about your right to report an iPhone is because that iPhone arrived in California via interstate commerce.  Think of it this way, if the 50 states were fifty sovereign nations, what right would MN have to regulate Apple at all?  The answer is only through it's control over imports into the state, i.e., interstate commerce.  There's a reason that the Commerce Clause was specifically written into the constitution and it's specifically to avoid states crippling commerce by each state attempting to regulate the operations of firms in other states.  So if the feds step in and address this particular issue, I would have zero concerns about SCOTUS slapping their hand away (no matter how the Scalia seat and upcoming openings are filled). 

You've got a major misunderstanding about the origins of the ICC.  It had nothing to do with the operations of firms in a state, that is actually the opposite of why it was written into the Constitution, and generally speaking INTRAstate commerce is solely the province of the states. If Apple wants to set up shop in Minnesotat, they are going to have to follow Minnesota laws.  Minnesota has the inherent right to regulate the sale of goods within its state's borders.  Thus, Minnesota can generally pass as many silly ,or sensible, depending on your perspective, regarding the sale of products that it wants, including putting age limits on who can buy it, where you can buy something, who can sell it, special taxes, energy efficiency ratings, etc., and the feds can't preempt those laws. 

Instead, the ICC   had to do with states inhibiting the free flow of goods across state lines, such as setting limits on what type of trains could operate on the tracks in their states, or prohibiting other states from getting goods to a harbor in their state. So, if Minnesota wanted to slap a tariff on every phone that was transported on its highway system, then the federal laws preempting that would be constitutional under the ICC.  

I believe this article is incorrect.  Please double-check, but as I understand the ratings,  IP 68 only means that it exceeds the 1.0 m depth rating of the IP 67 (with the 6 being the dust rating and the highest level).  With IP 8 ratings like Samsung used, it is up to the manufacturer to certify and state the depth it is certified for.  Because Samsung chose 1.5 meters folks are mistakenly believing the standard is 1.5 meter when it can be any depth beyond 1 meter.  That's why the Apple Watch is also IP 68 but it is water resistant to a much greater depth than 1. 5 meters. 

Samsung chose a relatively meaningless extra half meter simply to be able to convince folks into believing the phone was water resistant to a greater degree than a phone with a IP 67 rating when the iPhone 7 may actually have been water resistant to a greater depth, but Apple chose not to certify it beyond 1 meter.  I am guessing that if this rumor is true, Apple decided to counter this BS by applying a IP 68 rating because they know their phone is already water resistant to some depth beyond 1 meter.  

Again, double check, but I think you've misunderstood the difference between IP 7 and IP 8.  Also, I believe the dust rating, i.e., the "6" is already the highest and certifies the product is completely dust proof and thus Apple can't get a higher dust rating as your article and headline implies.

tshapi said:

andrewj5790 said:

malcolmtucker said:

One of the things Apple has always excelled at has been the creation of demand; sometimes false demand by constricting its own supply chain.  

When a product becomes out-of-stock, it creates a situation where the product is "perceived" as more valuable by the consumer.  

When people in the press can't purchase it either, then the press will write about it in a more favorable light once the product is obtained as well.  This is something carefully balanced by Apple and a part of its branding, marketing, and supply chain strategy.  

Look at it this way-
People know when they go to a McDonald's they can get a McDonald's signature BigMac Burger but only Apple would deny its customers the ability to tender a sale.   No one in the press writes about how tasty their last BigMac burger was because they are ready for purchase.

It takes a stroke of genius to deny Dieter Bohn his ability to be the first in the office to buy an Apple. 

Would you mind providing evidence if you conspiracy theory? Also, would you mind explaining why a company would not take customers' money? Your explanation doesn't hold water for many reasons. First, the most influential people in the media get review units and don't have to be denied their initial purchase. Second, the phone launches late in the quarter so they MUST sell as many phones as they can make in order to help their ER. Third, it's insanely stupid to intentionally deny your customers the ability to buy your produce since most normal people will not wait forever to get the new X, they'll just go buy the new Y.

Do you really need to ask for evidence? Apple has been selling iPhones for 10 years. Don't you think by no they would have figured out how many they need onblaunch. Instead they seem to be sold out every single year.  Taking weeks to catch up. That seems like evidence enough 

I know this business stuff  can be complicated Malcolm, but bear with me.  What you are suggesting sounds fine from the perspective of someone sitting around frustrated that the latest iPhone they are craving is not in stock-- This happens all the time, why doesn't Apple just produce all the products everyone wants so they are in stock on day one and none of us have to wait for the products we love???  Is it all a conspiracy as you suggest?   Is Tim Cook telling Foxconn to slow down production so the lines are long and people are crying for the Airpods?   No, LOL, that's not how business works. Apple and other companies would love to have every model in stock so every customer could immediately buy as they know some of those will folks will buy a competitors product or use their money for something else and some of those lost sales will never come back.

IfApple and other companies did what you are suggesting, they would have to spend billions of dollars to build more and larger factories and hire hundreds of thousands of more workers to work in those factories to meet some estimate of PEAK demand.  Once that peak demand was over, they would now have massive unused factories and hundreds of thousands of idle workers to lay off.  The costs would skyrocket with the waste of billions.  Workers would get screwed as they faced massive layoffs.  Costs that we would all end up paying for, just to satisfy some unreasonable fantasy that no one should ever have to wait for a popular product.  The business world doesn't work that way, fortunately.  Instead they have to do careful cost benefit analysis of how much can reasonably be produced to meet estimated demand over a given period of time.  Yes, they will use OT and try to increase capacity, but your fantasy that they will be able to produce enough so that no one ever has to wait starting on day one does not reflect reality for a popular product sold in the hundreds of millions.


Hopefully that clears things up and you understand that it's not all some big conspiracy by major companies to not let you buy their products when you want to.