ApplePoor

I have had a Platinum level Amex card since 1968. (Before it became Amex it was Patterson Travel Service) The number of places that accept the card has dwindled every year. It is our travel card for airline tickets and hotels and is the card to have in an emergency. The long term relationship is a plus in our credit rating.

We also have CostCo City Bank and Apple Pay that I carry daily. We usually get more than $1k back annually for each of these accounts.

We have Wells Fargo accounts at a local branch used for cash access with our debit cards and handling the "Old Folks" accounts.

Amex worked okay for CostCo for us and was still accepted in the UK CostCo last time we were over there.

So having the three top Financial flavors in hand is okay with us. Really have no preference which way Apple goes as it will be transparent to us, the users.

So the latest release of 18.4 disables my ability to use the trigger mechanism of the App Store to check for updates on my iDevices. There has been no obvious updates to my apps and there are always updates available every morning.

Just my observation: in all of my Apple devices memory is being used in the amounts mentioned on both iOS, iPadOS and MacOS with AI supposedly turned off. If something is off, it is not using power or memory so AI is not really off. And Siri never stops listening. 

Thus for really private and or now days political conversations, all the devices need to be placed in a different room with background noise in the room, like a sweeper, so the microphones are truly unable to hear the conversations.

We think the phone is off because of a slide switch that is an electronic image. A mechanical switch can actually be off. With the surveillance state on offer, one needs to be truly aware where discreet conversations are being held.

Any recent television has both a camera and a microphone, so the ability to observe and hear the activity in the same room is very doable since the TV is connected to the internet all of the time with a discreet address.

Anything with a modem can transmit at any time. The Macs can be disabled by unplugging them. Also disconnect the connection of the cable company from their modem is proof the rest of the connected devices lack a connection, but could still be listening, so unplugging them is wise.

The amount of memory showing as being used is not that significant but the fact it stays on is significant.

Folks, this is an Apple device and one pays dearly to play in the Apple world. 

Back in the early 1990s, Apple's IIfx was king of the Apple computer mountain. Fully loaded with 32Mb of third party memory, a very heavy 21" Radius color CRT monitor with Radius video card and a 80 MB hard drive, the cost was close to $12,000 in 1990 dollars. I checked and that amount in today's dollars is over $29,000 so the current loaded Mac M3 Ultra Mac Studio at just over $14,000 is a relative bargain.

Photoshop v1.3 was on several 3.5" discs. 

One buys the tool for the job. If one is not doing the "AI" thing, then the M4 Max Mac Studio is probably sufficient or even the M4 Pro mini which is close to the power of the M1 Ultra Studio with nearly double the single core speed of the M1 Ultra.

A nervous nellie probably should not read AppleInsider and Mac Rumors. 

Just lower your expectations to ZERO and you will not be disappointed.

The new stuff that was actually operational came out on the next generation device. The peanut gallery was left in the dark until launch day. Thus there was no disappointment that the latest frabitz was not working as designed.

Geez. There are actually some real life and death issues in the news daily now to worry about.......