Bart Y

Very distressing for the entire Taiwan island and people.  The death toll and destruction is sure to go up in areas where buildings collapsed and landslides occurred.  Praying and hoping the numbers are limited and there is hopeful rescues and recoveries.

absolutely mind bending there are over 100 aftershocks so far with most being over 4.0 in magnitude, the highest I saw was 6.2 which itself is a major quake.  Being on the Ring of Fire seismic activity region is no joke.

Title says price target cut to $170, but the article says cut from $185 to $175.  

sflocal said:

Xed said:

That's not entirely true. Huawei and Samsung can do it... after they get ahold of Apple's designs and tech specs.

If there's one certainty in life is that iKnockoff companies like Samsung, Xiaomi, and Huawei bought the VisionPro and reverse-engineering it.  Without Apple's top-quality software to go with it, they will fail.

Samsung already took their iteration of a VR/XR headset and sent it back to the lab for more tweaks when Vision Pro was announced at WWDC 2023.  Like original Android, once they saw what Apple had designed, Samsung knew theirs was inferior.  Given 18 months and a late 2024 intro, Samsung gets a 2nd generation Qualcomm VR chip, more time to make better displays, and Google has more time to build a better XR-OS, if they can.

Now that Samsung can get their hands on a few Vision Pro’s and send them back to Korea for study and reverse engineering, Samsung will wonder how to do it better, and cheaper while being profitable. It can get to any two of the three choices.  And the early projections are Samsung only plans a limited run of 50K units for the whole year, probably to gauge the Android VR market for a likely $2K to $2.5K or more device.  Otherwise, it won’t ever be profitable unless they want to subsidize it and somehow make it up on content like consoles do.

Curiouserandcurious said:

Apple's problem is that everyone who wants an Apple Watch already has one. And their incremental changes aren't going to drive upgrade cycles. The Ultra was new and different, but the buy-in was a big deterrent for the mass market. Things like Micro-LED screens won't do it. A total rethink is what it will take. I can't think of anything the Apple Watch 9 I’m way too old for this, and I can’t believe I’m admitting it, as I’m one of these guys that wear AW for fitness functionality and could care less about appearance or watch face or even access or functionality. Just give me some basic information that I want on the watch face and let me run Map my Fitness or Map my run on it and stay out of my way. I can’t even remember how to use Apple Pay on the thing and use my phone instead. But the new Snoopy watch face has sucked me in somehow, and I’m totally hooked. I look at my watch throughout the day, just to see the snoopy watch face. I’ve given up all watch face information and functionality that I ever cared about.  If Apple had managed to instead make this snoopy watch face a fashion statement and connected to an upgrade dependency, there could’ve been something impactful here in terms of sales.  Rest of us would’ve grumbled sure. But this once again makes me wonder, is Apple Watch really a product line for Apple, or does this just enrich the iPhone apple ecosystem and customer loyalty? They don’t seem to be all that concerned about upgrade cycles or sales volume.  Personally, that makes me like AW and also apple better. 

Glad you love the new Snoopy watch face and that helps you to consider an upgrade.   As you’ve surmised, Apple is providing new models for everyone who wants one.  They aren’t forcing anyone to upgrade and those who feel there isn’t enough change to upgrade, they’re fine with folks continuing to happily use their Apple Watch, whatever the model and series.  These folks will know the Apple Watch has great longevity, strength, and functionality for years.

As for using Apple Pay on Apple Watch, it’s very simple once you’ve set up your credit card into Apple Wallet, and you’re synced with your iPhone, your card is loaded onto Wallet App on Apple Watch.  Check you iPhone’s Watch App to confirm and settings for other card info and notifications.

If all that is good, then simply double press the Watch side button and your Apple Pay credit card appears.  Then simply place your watch face over the card reader terminal’s Tap sign ))> and wait for the confirmation beep and or haptic.  The terminal should say “transaction complete” or “transaction approved”, and you’re done!  No muss, no fuss, no touching the terminal, no need to pull your iPhone out, no need for your iPhone or even wallet to be on your person if you forgot it/them at home or in your car.  Watch can do Apple Pay without anything so long as you’ve properly unlocked it.

it really is that simple and that convenient for the merchants who will take Apple Pay.  Notably WalMart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, and a few others won’t take NFC payments like Apple Pay and Google Pay, preferring for you to use their proprietary pay services so they can gather your info, tie in to your bank debit or credit card info, and track your purchases and buying behaviors so they can sell that info, share it, or target ads to you.  Apple does none of that except give you a summary of your transactions for your own records or analysis, plus makes the transactions tokenized so the merchant and CC system NEVER sees your CV numbers.

Just another way Apple protects your privacy and provides another “just works brilliantly” service to your Apple devices ecosystem.

Google needs Apple and Apple user search access much more than Apple needs Google.  Sure, Google’s payments mean a lot to Apple’s Service revenues top and bottom lines, but $15-19B a year is nothing compared to how much ad revenue and data gathering Google would lose from not being default on iOS.  Even a 50% switch away to DDG, Bing, or other search engines would impact Google’s ad revenues severely.