auxio

mayfly said:

Your best defense against a shark attack: Stay outta the damn water!
Your best defense against hacking: same!

Short of turning off all the antennas on your phone (rendering it useless), it's not an option to stay out of the water. Your phone is always connected to the internet and prone to attacks. This particular one requires close proximity due to use of Bluetooth, but not all do.

Best defence is to keep your phone updated and not give out personal information unless you're sure about who's asking for it (common sense).

blastdoor said:

narwhal said:

This tech seems important enough for the Mac that Apple should pay them to port existing DirectX 12 games for Apple Arcade.

I love that idea. There is the "Apple Game Porting Toolkit", though, which isn't as ambitious as your suggestion but is something. 

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/06/06/apple-says-emulation-in-macos-can-show-devs-how-windows-games-could-run

Apple's toolkit appears to be based on Crossover, so it's the exact same technology. In fact, there are clues in that original article hinting to DirectX 12 support coming to Crossover (likely because of Apple's help).

coolfactor said:

darkvader said:

Dead_Pool said:

Many have no idea how close Apple was to going under when the iMac was released. There was virtually no chance it would survive in the face of the onslaught by industry-standard Windows, which had finally been able to copy the Mac’s ease of use after more than a decade of trying. Today, Apple is arguably the most powerful company to ever exist. Truly unbelievable, and all thanks to one man: Steve Jobs. 

All of that is complete bunk.

Apple was in no danger of going under.  Apple was consistently profitable, had a huge chunk of cash in the bank, and was making far better computers than everybody else.

Where Apple was struggling was with the development of the next generation operating system.  The NeXT purchase made sense for picking up a good UNIX-based OS, but sadly came with Steve Jobs, the man who was very justifiably fired from Apple in the early '80s.  Had Amelio been slightly more competent the first thing he'd have done after buying NeXT would have been to fire Jobs again, or at least contain him to the marketing department, with no influence on computer design.

Oh, and Microsoft didn't approach Macintosh ease of use for another decade and a half.  The ONLY release they've ever had that came close was Windows 7, what they had in the '90s was absolute garbage.  I know there were people at the time saying things like "Windows 95 = Macintosh 87" but the reality was very different, Win95 was still ultimately a shell on top of DOS.

Sounds like you've got a bone to pick with Jobs! He was and always will be the secret sauce of Apple. Tim continues to carry his torch proudly, and rightfully so. The next CEO will see dramatic changes to Apple's force in the market place. We'll lose the focus on simplicity.

I fail to see why you're so anti-Jobs. It was his leadership and vision that brought Apple to where it is today. There were some painful missteps during the past 20 years, but in the end, Apple came out better for it. We, as users, are better for it.

I was about to say the same thing after reading the OP.

And I'd argue that Jobs had a ton more integrity than today's technical leaders. Really pushing the vision of technology being used to enhance our abilities (the original vision of people like Vannevar Bush and Doug Engelbart) rather than simply creating it to fool and addict people for profit . Fool them in the sense of obscuring your true business model (they are the product), and addicting people to using technology as a replacement for social needs and feeling connected with each other. I was part of the movement in the 1990s where we were inventing/refining existing technology to connect with each other online (IRC, MUDs, MOOs, etc), and I can say for certain that this wasn't the future we had in mind.

That's the vision that people who are fixated on technical details like how expandable a machine is don't see. Technology is more than the sum of the parts, and has applications far beyond those of the engineers behind it. Computational machines are yet another tool in the evolution of tools which have changed the course of human history. So what direction do we want them to take us? I'm firmly in the camp of using them to enhance our abilities and facilitating real connections, even if that's not the easiest or most profitable route.

rob53 said:

Four WiFi patents out of many are worth that much? Did these patents become part of standards? I also have an issue with schools that receive government money are able to get patents. Were any of the many students who worked on WiFi paid any money? I’m sure Caltech will be getting the majority of it, using student (unpaid) labor.  

I always find the US higher education system interesting. Given the high cost of tuition, it's obvious the government doesn't put as much money in as other countries do. Then there's the whole mix of academia being sponsored/funded by corporations and private donors. Which can be done for tax incentives and/or to get other benefits like access to a supply of employees, patents, etc.

I'm not saying there's a right or wrong way to do things, but it's definitely not as clear cut as colleges being purely funded by government (and thus by proxy, government is evil if colleges try to make money). Everything seems to be run like a corporation down there. Which then, when you compare it to patents filed by corporations, is pretty much the same thing. Employees don't own or get a cut from the patents filed in their name unless the company offers it. But I agree, Caltech should offer some sort of compensation for patents (as many companies do).

gatorguy said:

auxio said:

gatorguy said:

auxio said:

gatorguy said:

auxio said:

gatorguy said:

 Isn't support for SMS falling by the wayside, and deprecation set to accelerate? 

• Microsoft no longer supports SMS for some sign-in types, including new devices and multi-factor authentication
• Facebook/Meta Messenger will no longer support SMS as of September 28, 2023
• Signal is removing SMS and MMS support to improve user safety and data protection

Apple can cling to the insecure SMS as a backup and cross-platform messaging standard as long as they want, and for solely competitive reasons, but they're not doing Apple users any favor by doing so.

My guess is that, for purely profit reasons, Apple will refuse to make any iMessage protocol changes until law or regulators mandate it. But change they will, and probably sooner rather than later. Any takers on a friendly wager of within 12-16 months (probably less but I'm being generous)?

I love when people try to bring in the profit argument. We live in a capitalist world, every company needs profit or they go out of business. So let's analyze Google's profit model.

I 100% agree with you, but I think you miss or ignore the point: Apple stubbornly clinging to SMS, and refusing to make iMessage cross-platform, has little to nothing to do with the reasons Apple states, essentially "we're doing it for our customers". It's for profit reasons, just as what drives most companies to do what they do.

And Google being a proponent of open source and standards trying to look like the good guy to the open source community (and customers) is exactly the same thing. At least Apple creates jobs and wealth by funding R&D with their stance. Compare that with Google's approach of avoiding licensing fees and paying for R&D (at least, for things other than customer data harvesting and analysis technology).

You;re being a bit harsh on the unwillingness of Google to spend research dollars.

They involve themselves in far more than ad development, but yes it's ads that allow Google to significantly outspend Apple when it comes to research and development; Google R&D spend in 2022 was $31.56 billion (exceeding the total revenue of 128 Fortune 500 firms) compared to Apple's $21.91 billion.

Apple could spend more if they wanted, and on things that would benefit the greater community at large more. But their interests in advancing technology are not as diverse as Google's, nor does it need to be for Apple to be the most profitable company on the planet. They do pretty good by concentrating on those things they can directly profit from.

Google has its fingers in a lot of things, including those where there's no clear profit motive. 

The bigger picture in terms of R&D spend, other than raw numbers, would be: how much R&D has Google eliminated (or helped eliminate) from companies whose business model was creating and licensing technology which Google cloned and owned? Like Java/Sun Microsystems (who yes, was already struggling for other reasons). Or font foundries due to metric compatible clone fonts created by Google. Or purchasing a video codec of questionable origin rather than paying for an MPEG-LA license (VP8). I'm sure I could find plenty more if I really dug into it.

I ahve no idea.

But regarding the "questionable video codec" hasn't Apple joined in with Google to promote what it's developed into? Why yes, I believe they have. https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/4/16850402/apple-joins-open-media-alliance-streaming-online-video-compression-codec

Why? At least in part because MPEG has a fractured licensing scheme, with way too many groups staking claim in the royalties. they're killing themselves by making costs and licensing simply too difficult and unclear, even for Apple. Thank goodness Google developed an alternative, and a widely accepted one that Apple is embracing.  

I agree that the MPEG-LA licensing system was convoluted. But the fact remains that, at the time, VP8 (which was developed by On2, not Google) was of questionable origin and Google made a choice to go ahead with it anyway (same as they did with the Java clone) rather than pay for a license or develop their own video codec. These choices to do an end run and avoid licensing or paying for R&D at every step are certainly not things to be lauded, nor are good for the technology industry, no matter how you try to spin it with "well look at how things are now". Yes, everyone has given up on trying to license software (it's a dead industry) because they've found there's no way to defend it from others who simply want to copy it without paying.