cgWerks

robin huber said:

What dream world is this analyst living in? Have they been following Apple for more than a year or two. Its share price moves inversely to good news. Apple posts record profits? Stock price drops. Goes back to the old “Apple is doomed” meme. 

No kidding. They always act like there is some kind of rationality undergirding Wall Street.
It’s a casino, and the majority of players aren’t informed. I think it’s that simple. If you’re good at gambling and human psychology, you’ll increase your odds.

Beats said:
… Another thing these people also say is “well... Apple probably does it too!” And that’s another problem. Anything negative they can claim Apple probably also does. 

I agree, but I think my main concern would be whether Apple truly cares more than it is a marketing advantage at this point. What happens in the future with them? I guess some of the stuff is designed such that they couldn’t get/use it if they change their tune, but I don’t think everything is, and it’s hard to switch platforms if anything ever changes. I personally don’t trust that Apple has this strong belief deep in their core that will never, ever change (I’ve seen them ‘hold their finger to the wind’ too many times, or make ‘business decisions’ when push comes to shove).

Loralye2 said:

This is just ONE reason why I hate and never use google and I’m barely using FB as well.

Yeah, the problem is that if you want to compete, business-wise, or in the arena of ideas, etc. you have to be on these platforms. This is why there need to be strong alternatives, and why their censorship activities are so dangerous. One can think of a recent example that cost hundreds of thousands of lives because they controlled the narrative. We can debate all day whether free-speech should apply to a company, but at some point, when a company reaches a certain level of influence, we can’t have them controlling speech, the ‘news’, the ‘facts’ and/or using that control to help crush any competition. I don’t care what term we use to label that, but it is insanely dangerous!

FileMakerFeller said:
… More damning for Facebook is the requirement to surrender your copyright to any materials you upload to the service. That provision (which I last checked several years ago, so apologies if it no longer applies) is abhorrent because there is literally no user benefit for that requirement.

Don’t they have to make something of that sort, so they can distribute it on their platform and potentially others they partner with and not face a lawsuit? Sorry, I don’t know the details there, but are you actually surrendering your ownership, or are you giving them a kind of derivative sub-ownership to then do as they wish with the things you’ve posted there? Yeah, the former would be pretty scary.

ihatescreennames said:
I agree. I can’t tell you how many people have told me they “don’t care” about privacy implications with Facebook, Google, their location data, etc. They would rather save a little money or get something for free. “Well, nobody has privacy anymore so what’s the difference?”

Yeah, this is a problem.
And, i suppose in general, it doesn't matter too much until it does (until you become a victim of it in some way).
We're more aware of the issues, past, present and can think of potential future problems, where someone who isn't thinking about that just hasn't experienced it so far, so who cares? I think they will, but it will be too late by then.

crowley said:
Have you seen what's happened with graphics cards lately?  Do you really want iPhones to become attractive to crypto miners?  I'd quite like to buy an iPhone again in the coming decade.

Well, as noted above, probably not a great idea to run it on phones. But, it I'd love to see more of that kind of thing Metal'ized so it could run properly on Macs with GPUs. (Or, if you don't like crypto, there are things like Folding@home which Macs can't do well either... or a ton of pro 3D software, or games, etc. which all need to be converted to Metal.)

Yeah, I've absolutely seen what has happened with GPUs. It kind of sucks, but I think it will be temporary. On the plus side, my eGPU is worth more than when I bought it (and I've got one of the supposedly overpriced Blackmagic units).

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get it going again under Windows/Bootcamp, so I can't mine with it, or use it for Revit (which is what I bought it for originally). I'm a bit tweaked at Microsoft/Apple at the moment for mucking that aspect of things up.

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

That's great! I am going to go mine some Bitcoin on my iPhone right now. Oh right, I can't. The iPhone App Store is a monopoly and Apple does not allow crypto mining apps on its App Store because they don't think their customers should do that with their iPhones.

Seriously though, imagine the news coverage Apple would get if they helped some crypto-mining developer create a Metal-enabled miner (at least on the Mac, maybe not on phones, heh). Apple would suddenly go from the platform that you can't mine crypto on, to a pretty attractive one. Heck, with the efficiency of Apple Silicon, they could even jump on the greener-alternative bandwagon right while the controversy is hot.

On the other hand, maybe Apple has decided to help Podcasting 2.0's value block? That would be a way to gain some good karma with the podcast community (which they could use right about now).