FileMakerFeller

9secondkox2 said:

Strengthening the homeland is only a good thing in the face of increasingly adversarial moves by abusive regimes. 

Sigh. You think it's only the USA taking that stance?

Collaboration beats competition every time.

At US$500 I'm starting to feel like these docks are just PCs dedicated to data throughput. A far cry from the 1980s when I started my computing career.

sdw2001 said:

spheric said:

"He didn't go bankrupt. He just filed for bankruptcy numerous times." is my favourite flex of the thread, so far. 

Well, it's true.  There is a huge difference between personal and business bankruptcy.  There is also a huge difference between Chapter 7 (liquidation) and Chapter 11 (reorganization).   Trump used Chapter 11 numerous times.  This is a tool many, many companies have used successfully to reorganize and emerge from Chapter 11 Bankruptc protections.  To name a few:  

• PG&E
• Texaco
• Chrysler
• General Motors
• Six Flags 
• Marvel Entertainment 
• Sbarro 
• Rite Aid 
• GMAC (Ally Financial) 

It's also worth noting that while Apple never actually declared bankruptcy, it was on the razor's edge of doing so.  Now, to be clear, I'm not comparing The Trump Organization to these companies.  They are all much larger and in different lines of business.  However, it does show that "going bankrupt" isn't so simple for corporations.  It doesn't imply bad management or lack of financial awareness.  As I've said before, one could even argue that Trump avoiding personal bankruptcy despite heavy losses in the nineties shows the kind of thinking and experience we need now.  

I take issue with your characterisation that Chapter 11 does not imply "bad management" but I accept that the term is subjective and reasonable people can disagree. Chapter 11 can only apply when a company is unable to pay its debts as and when they fall due; while there are certain extremely rare circumstances when a truly unforeseeable shock affects a company to this extent, in the most part it's simply a matter of management being too aggressive in its financial risk-taking and not adequately preparing for possible setbacks. In my personal opinion, the vast majority of Chapter 11 filings involve mismanagement.

So for a single person to be involved in Chapter 11 for a business once... well, everybody makes mistakes. Twice? That person probably hasn't learned their lesson, or maybe they're just really unlucky - but it's a warning sign. Half a dozen times? That person is unfit to run a business. Even if it all is just bad luck, the risk is just too great to allow further exposure, and I find it delusional for so many people to believe it hasn't been a deliberate strategy to push all the risk to the creditors.

When an individual keeps their own personal finances secure while setting up creditors to take the fall on multiple occasions... it might not be illegal but it's morally questionable and socially undesirable. The man is provably a cheat and a shyster. That he hasn't suffered serious personal consequences is one of the mysteries of the modern legal system.



Now, I understand that a large portion of the populace of the USA is feeling desperate about the economic situation the country finds itself in. But to consider Trump's behaviour as suitable for the United States of America... the reputational damage is going to last for centuries. The way the USA is treating every other sovereign nation on the planet (and even some uninhabited islands) is provoking a strong antagonistic response even from its supposed allies. I cannot understand the belief that all of these countries will (a) respond in a predictable fashion and (b) accede to the demands of the US.

As you said previously, Trump might (might!) be able to get what he wants out of this approach. But the cost is uncountable. He is so old and financially protected that he probably won't have to suffer any consequences. The vast majority of the world's population does not have that luxury. I fear for my friends in the US and for the result of these actions on the geopolitical stability of the world as it stands now.

Marvin said:

Alex_V said:

Errors, misinformation, hallucinations, dubious results,, ill-advised stuff, you name it. So Apple pressed ‘pause.’ Because 50% reliable is not good enough if you’re Apple. 

50% reliable is fine for companies like ChatGPT, or any one of the dozens of other AI entrants. Never mind that their entire business model rests on plagiarising and circumventing copyright of the original creatives around the world. 

That's what pundits like Gruber are missing. Other products that Apple has made in the past had a deterministic outcome whether it was software or hardware. It doesn't matter how someone uses an iPhone or an OS, it will behave mostly as intended. AI, especially generative AI, is non-deterministic and unpredictable because the amount of inputs and outputs are so many that it can't be fully tested.

People like to rewrite history about Apple delivering timely products. There were promises about the G5 chip for years that never panned out, reaching certain clock speeds and making it into laptops. This was promised for multiple years by Steve Jobs and this was a deterministic product.

Attempting to sugar-coat Apple's history is just an excuse to complain about Apple. Apple's products reach over 1.5 billion people overnight, they have to work much harder to make sure they perform as expected.

As a practical matter, the functioning of personal computers has been non-deterministic for decades. Once the number of software packages grew into the hundreds there was no way a single entity could reliably test each and every possible combination for bugs before an upgrade was released and the whole process had to start again. The community of computer users was forced to accept that nothing was guaranteed, and that in the case of conflicts it was up to the individual user to convince the makers of the software (OS or otherwise) to fix the problem.

So I don't buy the argument that Apple should be given a pass for this situation. They have historically waited until they were confident they could deliver something world-shaking; this time they did not and so they have to eat the crow... unless or until, as with earlier mis-steps, they manage to deliver a new thing that is so good that people forgive/forget the bad stuff.

And Gruber isn't looking at Apple through rose-coloured glasses: he knows the history of the company more than most and has always tried to show the truth of any given matter. Sometimes this means he supports Apple when the media-bashing is in full swing, at other times he supports the criticism. Apple has earned its reputation as a company that, by and large, does the right thing and rarely does anything egregiously wrong. The approach they took with this AI debacle, however, has seriously damaged that reputation and John is kicking himself for ignoring the warning signs. He's not blaming Apple for failing to deliver, or for needing all the stars to align in order to ship on time(-ish) - certain people within the company KNEW they couldn't deliver in the expected timeframe, and they were overruled. Maybe it's just hubris, maybe there was fear about the "Apple is behind in AI" story, ... we'll never know. What we DO know is that Apple over-promised and has spectacularly under-delivered. Nobody's saying the features they promoted would have been easy to implement, but we have trusted the company's judgement in the past because of how many times Apple HAS fulfilled its promises. Now that trust is shaken.



Also, given the challenges AI as a technological approach faces, it's concerning that Apple has chosen to follow the industry rather than continuing to forge its own path. There are so many attack vectors available to a sophisticated actor that it's doubtful user privacy can be guarded once even minimally useful features are implemented. And if you don't have the features everyone else has, you're "behind"... even if those features open you up to having every scrap of data silently exfiltrated from your device and invisible monitoring tools installed to probe for any exploitable weakness in your life.

The current AI push is a massive bubble built on unbelievable hype and gullibility. Apple doesn't need to take the risk and I'm disappointed that they haven't come out more strongly in opposition to the nonsense being peddled by the get-rich-quick crowd.

One of those suspected monitors may in fact be a new iMac model.