Ciprol

Cook is above the political level and refuses to take side in meaningless geopolitical tussle. His job is to do the best for the global company, not as a weapon of the present US government as for Google.

Frivolous court case again! In the end, it unnecessarily increases the cost of living for all and similarly applies to many medical/pharmaceutical cases. Pathetic society!

Supporting violence for personal political gain, not much better or worse than Trump! Tim is just being responsible and not meddling in foreign domestic politics, per US Congress and public opinion.

hammeroftruth said:

That’s the whole rub with making things in China. It makes them affordable compared to making them here. No minimum wage, no age limits on hiring, no enforcement of preventing overworking factory workers, giving them prison like quarters to live when they aren’t working...

It's impressive how Trump has created a distortion field that's more pervasive on the American society than what Jobs did back then. If one looked outside the field, one would find that China has employment laws with minimum wage, age, working conditions amongst many others we take for granted. The world is changing rapidly and societies and countries are also evolving rapidly. Of course, keep a large population hostile and in the dark is of benefit for political aims.

#Sad

Earlier I mentioned that I chose a Merc 3 years ago partly and significantly on account of Merc's inclusion of CarPlay as its default functionality while BMW wanted to charge. With this latest news and at the recent Merc service, they even freely added a new MercedesMe feature through a complimentary OBD2 adaptor, allowing the car to communicate with a new iPhone app. Whilst I understand there's marketing data for Merc, it's still pleasant to know that new features are added to a 3 years old vehicle for free. This BMW tooth and nail pricing strategy will definitely keep me away for more time to come.

From another angle, I understand that BMW is proud of their own info display system. Back then, the BMW sales people tried to say that their system is far superior than CarPlay hence no need for CarPlay. It was very good and they obviously invested significantly into that feature. Is the present arrangement a way to force users to use and continue to justify the existence of their proprietary system? I'd say that they probably made a strategic error and is now burying their head in sand. Smartphone integration is an unavoidable development and is here to stay. Charging away is a very poor solution.