freeper

Goodness you folks are disappointing. Let me say a few things. First, the guy who claimed that "only real engineers use Macs ... Windows and Linux users are pretenders and wannabe's" ... I have worked in engineering and computer programming for decades. What he says is absolute lunacy. Only a fraction of Apple's lineup has the hardware and graphics requirements to do truly high end technical work. For goodness sakes, Apple's lineup can't even support the Oculus Rift and a lot of high end video games! And engineers NEED the adaptability offered by Windows and Linux hardware and software in order to - I don't know - solve unique and perform specialized tasks that can't be met by CONSUMER HARDWARE. For goodness sakes, Mac OS X has like a 10% market share, and most of that is taken up by decidedly non-technical people who are into things like graphic design, music/video and (non-cutting edge) animation. So is your position REALLY is that the only "real engineers" are the tiny sliver that use Mac OS X? It is far more likely that the "real engineers" are the ones who have high performance applications that Intel's off-the-shelf chip configurations can't handle, or who need hardened devices to work in environments that have a lot of heat, radiation, EM interference etc. I've been in workplaces that have those sorts of specialized requirements for their hardware. Have you? Well keep thinking that you are a "real engineer" while you work in your comfortable, climate-controlled cubicle while the guys who have to solve difficult problems hands on in areas like manufacturing and engineering are wannabe's, frauds and tinkerers. Second, remember my initial comment on this issue? Months ago? I predicted it EXACTLY. That it was a bug in Safari, or in some area in the OS where Safari and the OS intertwine. What did I base my guess on? My years as a programmer and product tester. As well as my knowledge that despite the clear fact that Apple makes great products, SAFARI IS NOT ONE OF THEM. You can bash Chrome all you want, but remember two things. 1) Unlike Safari and IE, Chrome is a platform capable of running a bunch of software and services, not merely a browser. So yes, it uses more memory than other browsers because IT DOES A LOT MORE. 2) Where Google created their own browser from the Chromium open source project - which is also essentially theirs - both Apple and Microsoft essentially cribbed theirs from Netscape and Firefox. (Particularly since the people who created Netscape left to form Firefox after Microsoft bought it.) When Microsoft deviated from the Netscape base in order to try to keep up with Firefox and Chrome they made a mess of things. Apple didn't even try to keep up in the browser wars so they just left it limited, without even trying to compete with Chrome and Firefox on functionality. That is why the very instant I read about the test that Consumer Reports was running, I instantly knew "bug in Safari, or something in the OS that interacts with Safari." And sure enough, even though Apple did their best to obfuscate by (less than truthfully) claiming that the test results were due to "hidden settings that never get used by consumers" they are indeed issuing a bug to fix the problem. And when I say obfuscate ... wow. Every single browser has that disable cache setting. Every. Single. One. And it is not hidden; it is right there in the browser settings. LOTS of people turn it off for various reasons. And you know what? Such as ... when you do "private browsing." That is right. Whenever you do "private browsing" IT ENABLES THAT SETTING. Let me repeat: PRIVATE BROWSING ENABLES THIS SETTING. That is why for Apple to claim that this is "a hidden feature that consumers will never use" ... wrong. Consumers use it all the time! And even when private browsing isn't turned on, people do in fact disable caching for one reason or another. I used to do it all the time in the early Internet browser days for performance and disk space reasons (back when browsers were far less reliable than now). As for the claims that Consumer Reports performed a bad test to make Apple look bad and favor Windows or sell ads (which Consumer Reports does not accept) or generate clicks (not their business model) ... wrong. Consumer Reports uses this same test on multiple browsers on all machines. They have used these same tests on Apple hardware before and given Apple rave reviews. It is just that this one time Apple got a bad score because of YET ANOTHER PROBLEM WITH SAFARI. Apple's claim that Consumer Reports' test was flawed and they are going to fix the test ... yeah right. Why should their test disallow a very popular feature such as PRIVATE BROWSING? Consumer Reports isn't going to respond to Apple's claim of "flawed tests" because it isn't in their interests to get into a public back and forth with Apple. Apple will fix the bug - as I said they would - Consumer Reports will revisit the review and everyone will forget about this. The tinfoil hat crowd will continue to believe that Consumer Reports and everyone else is out to get Apple. The rest of us will just wait for the next Safari bug to be discovered and squashed. The same is true for the claim: "Consumer Reports should have contacted Apple first before giving out the bad review." Excuse me? Private browsing again? A core feature in every web browser for going on 20 years? The product that shipped "as is" had a flaw in one of its CORE APPLICATIONS. (Some people claim that the main browser should be considered part of the OS itself; I do not go that far. I will say that the main browser uses shared libraries that are part of the OS and leave it at that.) A flaw that could be easily encountered by using a very popular feature in that core application (again, if not specifically disabling the caching, entering private browsing mode ... which the browser itself tells you to do when you delete the browsing history!). There is being a fan, being an enthusiast and being a fanatic. The former two are fine, the last one requires rejecting objective reality and is never healthy.

Context: Apple had 44% of activations for the Christmas period in 2016, but 49% of activations for the same period in 2015. A 5% drop, while not huge, is not insubstantial. 

I read somewhere along these lines: Nokia sued Apple over Apple using technology that Nokia developed in the pre-iPhone era to create the iPhone. They were one of several companies to do this. Nokia and Apple came to a voluntary license agreement and Nokia pulled their lawsuit. Again, this happened with several mobile tech companies. The licensing agreement expired. Nokia wants a new agreement similar to the old. Apple wants to either let the licensing agreement lapse entirely, or for the new agreement to result in their having to pay substantially less. Again, something that Apple has done before. In one such case, Apple originally agreed to FRAND terms as part of the license agreement, but for the new agreement, Apple argued that they should pay a substantially reduced per unit fee. The other company, I think Qualcomm, stated that they charged everyone who used their tech the same FRAND rate. Apple's position: well we sell a lot more smartphones and tablets than (for example) Sony and LG. So instead of charging us the same per device that you charge Sony and LG, you charge us a fraction of it, so in the end you will get the same amount of money from us as you get from Sony and LG. In other words, your tech is no more important to us than it is to LG, so it is unfair to make us pay more money for the same tech as LG does. In essence, Apple was attempting to make the claim that it wasn't REALLY the tech used to make the product that had value but rather the final end product itself. It was Apple's design etc. that made the iPhone a much better product than the LG G5, why far more iPhones sell than the LG G5, so basically it was Apple's design that really mattered, not Qualcomm's tech. Which ... of course .. is not how patent law is supposed to work. You see, some companies - lots actually - never actually make finished products. Their whole business is components, internals etc. and their patents are just important to their business as any other. But ultimately, it was just Apple doing their level best to create a landscape in their favor. Apple does very little basic research but excels at taking the breakthroughs of others and putting them together to create great products. It is in their interests to have a patent system where things like aesthetic design, trade dress, UI/UX etc. are emphasized but the value of the products that Apple takes to use to make their tech is devalued. Result: Apple would pay far less licensing costs - of which they would have to pay a lot since they develop very little of their own tech - but it would be financially prohibitive for Microsoft, Google, Samsung etc. to copy their designs, giving Apple very little competition with very low costs. A hole in this plan: if the basic tech companies whose breakthroughs Apple needs to build their products - and in fact who Apple needs to manufacture their products - go out of business (in no small part because Apple and the companies whose precedents Apple follows do not pay FRAND for the tech that these companies invested billions of R&D to develop) then where does the tech that Apple uses to make their products come from? And since a lot of these companies also make the components that Apple uses to make their devices, where do those components come from? Apple is not the only company that would be able to get away with paying practically nothing for the product of everyone else's R&D. Were Apple to win a court case or get a major supplier or licensor to agree, everyone else would use that precedent to pay peanuts too. There will never be a situation where there is one licensing/patent system for Apple and another for everyone else. So this is how this case is going to be resolved: Apple will either agree to FRAND terms with Nokia as they did in the past and Nokia will drop the lawsuit, or Nokia will sue Apple and a court will impose FRAND terms on Apple for the use of tech that Nokia developed and owns and Apple uses in its products. Those are the only two possible outcomes, and that is as it should be.Apple paid FRAND for this same tech in the past - in fact they still are at this second as the agreement that Apple signed in 2011 is still in effect at this time - and should in the future, as the value of these patents have not diminished with time.

Consumer Reports is not into the "clickbait" thing. Also, they have no reason to target the MacBook Pro, which accounts for a very small percentage of PC sales. Note: this same fact is cited by an oped "No, Apple did not switch to USB-C on its new MacBook Pros to profit from dongle & adapter sales" down the page which points out that Apple switching to USB Type C on MacBooks is not some profiteering on accessories scheme with stating "Apple's best quarter ever for the Mac was the September 2015 frame, when the company sold 5.7 million computers." You may find fault with Consumer Reports' testing methodology, but the important thing to remember is that they use the same methodology to test devices from all manufacturers. Suggesting they adopt Apple's methodology for testing Apple devices or have Apple play a role in designing the test for them A) gives Apple an advantage that other manufacturers do not enjoy and would not necessarily be helpful in identifying something that Apple may have missed due to flaws in their own QA program, "tunnel vision" etc. I will state that Consumer Reports' methodology is not that different from the "benchmarking" tests that I see on a lot of sites. Add that to the fact that Consumer Reports is hardly a tech site i.e. AnandTech, so their testing is going to be more "general purpose" geared to the needs and use cases of the average user, just as they are not Motor Trend when it comes to their car reviews. AnandTech, ComputerWorld, Tom's Hardware etc. probably would have followed up the Safari tests with a bunch of different tests on a variety of applications, but that isn't really Consumer Reports' job. And yes, this is likely a software issue as opposed to a hardware issue. Consumer Reports' own review stated as much, and also stated that they are going to revise it later when the software issue is fixed. And as the notorious resource hog and bug magnet "platform-as-a-browser" application Chrome gave better results than Safari, then the problem is almost certainly Safari itself. Do not pretend as if Safari hasn't been a huge headache for years. Apple will release a patch for Safari to resolve this issue - or a patch in the OS that addresses whatever is causing the issue with Safari - Consumer Reports will revise the review and all this will be forgotten. If it takes more than a week, it will only be because everyone is on Christmas vacation. So no conspiracies, no nefarious attempt by Consumer Reports to undermine Apple or make money. (Funny, none of these accusations are made when these same companies give Apple good reviews and good PR ... and when they give bad reviews and PR to Microsoft, Samsung and the other competition.) This is just yet another "Apple PLEASE do something about Safari" in a long line of them. And please improve iTunes while you are at it.