Flytrap

mike1 said:

Wasn't the enclosure glass with an aluminum frame, on an iPhone11? Are there enough metal internal parts for a magnet to work???

AppleInsider said:

"Doesn't mean it's guaranteed that it's over in Arizona, but hot diggity damn. Seeing how the corru... I mean.. lobbying works this close and this brazenly is something else. But Apple can't buy all the legislators in all the states. Refuse to believe that," Heinemeier Hansson said in a separate tweet.

As much as I am a huge Apple fan... sadly Hansson is correct. But it does not matter because Apple and Google don't have to buy all the legislators in all the states... they just need to buy one or two more legislators than Epic, Spotify, Match, et al can afford to buy.

We should not kid ourselves here... there are no honourable players... everyone is playing dirty. Everyone is paying lobbyists loads of money behind the scenes to buy educate legislators to their point of view. The Arizona bill is too similar to the North Dakota bill that failed to gain senate approval there too. Both bills were authored by Epic lobbyist Lacee Bjork Anderson, and the money was paid through Coalition for App Fairness.

By the time this has gone through all the states... a lot of legislators will have been tainted with Apple, Epic, Google, Spotify, and CAF money... and no state will pass any anti-app store monopoly bill because Apple and Google will always find the few wavering legislators who are undecided and will always be able to outbid, outspend, and outlobby Epic, Spotify and CAF to get them to see things their way.

dblanch369 said:

Apple shoulda told Russia to go eff itself.  I am vehemently opposed to any government putting their will onto technology.

I don't think that will  go very well for Apple... or any other company that takes the same stance, for that matter. There is a good chance that Apple will end up as a regional technology company operating in only those countries that are too weak to enforce their local laws on multi-national technology companies like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google.

Apple has to adhere to US, Chinese, EU, Russian/EAEU, Australian, Japanese, Indian, South Korea, and soon post-Brexit UK local laws and regulations - basically each of the top 10 economies and economic blocks. Other smaller but fast growing economies that are yet to exert their influence on the global technology sphere that Apple, facebook, Google, etc. still go out of their way to appease and play nice with include Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Indonesia, Turkey, and Nigeria. The costs of simply saying "eff you" to all these countries and their idiosyncratic local laws would be catastrophic to any global company, even car manufactures, pharmaceutical companies, etc.

Google took a moral stance on China and refused to subject itself to Chinese laws... in so doing, Google lost the fastest growing technology market in the world and what will arguably be the largest source of revenue for technology companies in future. You can read all about it in this MIT Technology Review: How Google took on China—and lost. No other technology company CEO who has to answer to shareholders who see China as a major source of growth is going make the same mistake.

Here are some things that technology companies like Apple do to comply with local government regulations around the world:

• Apple devices have used GNSS chips that use both the American GPS as well as Russian GLONASS satellites since the iPhone 4S - and we have all benefitted from the increased satellite coverage, including faster satellite acquisition.
• Apple uses different radio component settings in their devices to support the different frequencies that different governments have allocated for common technologies such as LTE, 5G, etc. To sell their devices in those countries Apple has to submit their devices for approval by their respective standards organisations (FCC equivalent) - which is why we tend to get foreknowledge of new iPhone model numbers through the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) in Russia because, approval submissions to the EEC are not confidential.
• Since iPhone 11, Apple sells a different iPhone design in China that is able to run two nano SIM cards. This is supposedly out of consideration for China's resistance against eSIMs (even though China Telcom recently launched an eSIM support). The rest of the world gets iPhones with only one nano SIM slot, but you can use an eSIM if your country has a carrier that supports the technology.
  
• All iPhones sold in the UAE do not have FaceTime in them. Not only do they not have FaceTime on them out of the box, but it is not possible to install FaceTime on them - even after a clean restore (unless you jailbreak it). This is because VoIP applications that have not been issued by your local carrier are illegal in the UAE and all mobile phone OEMs adhere to that regulation.
  
• Apple ships every iPhone with a different charger (at least prior to iPhone 12 series) that is designed to work with the electrical outlets of each country in which it is sold. Most countries do not legally allow the use of power adapters, so Apple cannot simply ship the same charger as used in the US with a different adapter for each country... it has to be a different charger that has been tested and certified by the standards authorities in that country. In Brazil, every iPhone 12 ships with a charger in the box because the local laws in that country require it to do so.
• Games in the Apple App Store are often classified differently in different parts of the world because the content rating systems differ in different countries. Apple submits every game to a local content review board for classification and approval in every country where such content needs to have a local classification and/or approval prior to it appearing in that countries version of the App Store - that is why there are differences in the contents of the app store depending on which country your are in.
• Apple is going out of its way to set up iPhone factories in India in order to comply with local regulations that impose punitive tariffs on products that do not have sufficient locally manufactured content in their final assembly. The Indian smartphone market is still small for Apple, but Apple is looking ahead to when more of the Indian middle class will be able to afford an iPhone and wants to be already legally compliant with local laws governing the sale of mobile phones in India.
• There are many other examples where Apple and other technology companies have to adhere to local laws or run the risk of being restricted from openly doing business in that country.

You also may not realise it but Apple pays taxes in many of the countries that it does business in... they also respond to court orders, have to design their products so that they do not fall foul of local laws on data privacy, have to respect local copyright laws, have their products or services tested and certified locally, and in some countries they even have to keep their servers in a local data centre.

Just my 2 cents worth.

MacPro said:

So, coming from a company focused on musicians, not audiophiles,  I assume they have close to zero latency?  

As a side note, focusing on 'thunderously loud' might not be a wise marketing strategy with the damaged hearing lawsuits that are inevitable.

I don't think that you can fix bluetooth latency at the earbud level alone... That is why choosing AirPods is an unbeatable no brainer if latency really matters to you on iPhone, Apple TV, Mac, iPad, etc. Bluetooth 5.0 is typically 200-300 ms latency and there is nothing that any earbud manufacture can do about that by fiddling with the bluetooth track on the earbud alone.

Where it gets interesting is with Qualcomm's aptX audio coding and Apple's H1 chip, which are both supposed to bring latency down towards 100 ms. The reality is that in real world conditions both tend to under deliver, Qualcomm's aptX a bit more than Apple's H1.

Wired:

• Bose QC35 II (wired) = 0 - 40ms
• Bose OE2 (wired) = 0 - 40ms

PC (aptX):

• Bose QC35 II (Bluetooth) = 220 - 240ms
• Sony WH-CH700N (Bluetooth) = 250 ms
• Sony WI-1000X (Bluetooth) = 206 ms
• AUKEY Latitude (Bluetooth) = 162 ms

• BeatsX (Bluetooth) = 40 - 80ms
• AirPods Pro (Bluetooth) = 144 ms

alanh said:

What is a fiat currency?

Fiat means "by arbitrary order or decree," which is derived from the original Latin meaning "let it be done."

Fiat Money or currency, therefore, is money that has been created by arbitrary government order or decree, but has no intrinsic value in and of itself - i.e. it is not pegged to or backed any thing of real value such as silver, gold, camels, cows or even land. This is what allows governments to simply print as much money as they want or need, because they do not need to back it with something real, like silver or gold.

We, as citizens, accept the value of Fiat Money we are told by the government for as long as we have confidence that it will remain exchangeable with other citizens for something of close to that value over a given period of time. Once that confidence starts to waver for enough citizens in the population, citizens being asked to accept and hold Fiat Money for a period of time in exchange for something of real value at the present time (such as a car, milk, land, etc.), start to hedge their bets, by asking for a little bit more to cover their perceived risk of loss of value at some point in the future (i.e. they start devaluing the value of the Fiat Money). The opposite happens when enough citizens start to worry that there may be a future shortage or limited ability to access more Fiat Money or that it may get harder in future to convince people of the value of the items they are selling (e.g. car, horse, etc.) than it is today.