Naiyas

jpellino said:

Recently had biz email moved to MS.  I definitely understand why their 2FA is under-used.  

Couldn’t agree more with this. It is far easier for small businesses (I’m talking less than 25 people!) to impose 2FA on MS. Any larger and it becomes a mess for support and massively resource intensive. One of the companies I work for imposed it on 6,000 employees “overnight” and they lost over a month of productivity.

And then there is the single biggest issue with authentication apps where the “backup/sync” option is optional. Most users are not smart enough to turn it on and so they lose access to all of their 2FA codes when they change phones.

It seems the builders of many MFA implementations failed to grasp the basics of UX. Any kind of friction for the end user in getting done what they want to get done will result in the user giving up or finding an easier, usually less secure, way of doing what they want.

Not against this at all really. Can imagine the backlash against Apple if one of their phones blows up in someone’s face while charging and the reason was due to a defective cable that “lied” about its abilities to carry current?

I had a fairly general charger that when used with an iPhone with Touch ID it would disable the Touch ID sensor. Little did I know at the time but the charger was providing power across pins that it was not supposed to be doing for an iPhone and the Touch ID sensor was being “shorted” to save the phone.

I’ve been MFi ever since and have had no issues at all.

I never got the chance to play Myst back in the day as I moved straight to The Settlers which has been one of my favourite games for a long long time. I’d be extremely happy to pay for Myst on iPad/iPhone at the price mentioned - or even a bit more - as I’m more of a pay once game player. What I can’t stand is the continuous obsession with in-app purchases to progress games. I just don’t play them and so it’s a revenue loss to the studios that promote these type of games.

Give me a good game I can pay once for and I’m in most times… old fashioned, perhaps, but it makes far more sense to me and Myst looks to be one that I will splash out for… finally.

I have this problem and it is a big issue so far as I’m concerned. I’ve reported it every single time a new update is pushed out and it’s been going on for years now.

timmillea said:   

What naive tosh! It is true that Apple sets prices in $US in the US. Overseas prices are based on the US prices plus local sales taxes plus a hefty margin for exchange rate variability, plus an extra profit margin, then rounded up to the next price point. 

The  example quoted by JP234 of the Mac Mini going from $699 to $599 in the US. That same Mac Mini M2 is £649 in the UK. At the current exchange rate of $1.2395/£ that is $804.43. 

Apple has always charged much higher prices outside of the US. For a high-end Mac, the difference in price will pay for a holiday to the US to buy it. 

Perhaps we should demonstrate the example drawn out above correctly as the comparative being drawn seems to imply that there is over $200 of additional profit on the UK price when it’s no where near that.

Base cost of mini: $599

This price includes no sales tax in the US. When the product comes to the UK pricing includes sales tax, but it also includes import duties. So what are these?

Import duty: ~10% adds ~$59.90