Wesley_Hilliard

The US government investigation US companies for monopolizing their markets is complicated. It isn't that anyone is saying a company can't be successful, it's a question of how they got so big without any competition.

Facebook buying out its potential future competitors is a problem. Google saturating the online ad market and stopping anyone else from competing is a problem. Apple creating issues with being compatible with third-party devices could be seen as a problem.

So the courts want to investigate these issues and figure out if the companies need to be compelled to change or divest from certain markets.

It'll be interesting to see how all of these cases work out.

And there was no reason to make this thread about Trump's battle with the legal system. Thanks.

twolf2919 said:

Wesley Hilliard said:

9secondkox2 said:

Difficult to see apple producing snother headset. Maybe if the did a super cheap version. But not just changing a few things. 

Either go all in with glasses for mass market or do the cheap tethered thing, but with great cameras and screens. Otherwise it will just be the same or maybe rvrn worse now that the early adopters are saturated with the expensive version one. 

twolf2919 said:

9secondkox2 said:

Difficult to see apple producing snother headset. Maybe if the did a super cheap version. But not just changing a few things. 

Either go all in with glasses for mass market or do the cheap tethered thing, but with great cameras and screens. Otherwise it will just be the same or maybe rvrn worse now that the early adopters are saturated with the expensive version one. 

Agree - I can't imagine Apple doubling-down on a design they know didn't get enough sales.  They need to face reality: there simply isn't much of a mass market for a device costing multiple thousands of dollars that can only really be used in private, since it's too cumbersome to use on the go - and you look like a  complete tool if you do.

To this day I have no idea why Tim Cook let himself by led into this technological dead end called the Vision Pro.  i remember him clearly stating that Apple's next big thing would be AR glasses.  Somehow he got convinced by someone that these devices must be standalone products rather than an iPhone dependent one like Apple Watch and AirPods.  Unfortunately, that decision meant the future devices needed to cram a lot of CPU power and battery capacity into what needed to be a very light, small device - glasses!  The AVP VR headset became their first stab at it.  But it seems obvious that they will never be able to shrink that down to glasses anyone is willing to wear.

Google produced useful AR glasses TWELVE years ago.  If Apple hadn't gone down the wrong path, I'm sure they could have developed a sleek, much better product given all the miniaturization that's taken place win a decade.

Both of your assumptions are based on the idea that Apple sees Apple Vision Pro as some kind of failure. Only Apple knows what its goals for the device were and if it met them or have been satisfied. Your personal opinions are not part of Apple's calculus here.

Your statement that "Only Apple knows what its goals were" is not really true.  There were plenty of supply-chain based projections made that indicated Apple wanted to initially make 1m units the first year (e.g. read Financial Times article https://www.ft.com/content/b6f06bde-17b0-4886-b465-b561212c96a9?ref=spyglass.org ) and had to cut that back due to both manufacturing and demand issues.  They ended up making just around 400k units.  Apple stating, after the fact, that they were happy with the demand and they never had mass market goals was just to save face.

1 million always seemed like a moonshot given reports that Sony could only produce enough displays for half that number. Again, Financial Times doesn't know what Apple's goals were. Supply chain data gives some hints, if it is accurate, but again, it still doesn't reveal Apple's true internal goals. It has numbers based on how many it made and shipped, the price, and the rollout globally. Only Apple knows if it met those expectations or not, and continued work on the future models and executives willing to even acknowledge the Vision Pro exists are positive signs.

A report from the Financial Times isn't part of Apple's calculus here. Something I've noticed is that people tend to declare something a failure simply because it is a product they aren't going to buy, or have bought and regret.

9secondkox2 said:

Difficult to see apple producing snother headset. Maybe if the did a super cheap version. But not just changing a few things. 

Either go all in with glasses for mass market or do the cheap tethered thing, but with great cameras and screens. Otherwise it will just be the same or maybe rvrn worse now that the early adopters are saturated with the expensive version one. 

twolf2919 said:

9secondkox2 said:

Difficult to see apple producing snother headset. Maybe if the did a super cheap version. But not just changing a few things. 

Either go all in with glasses for mass market or do the cheap tethered thing, but with great cameras and screens. Otherwise it will just be the same or maybe rvrn worse now that the early adopters are saturated with the expensive version one. 

Agree - I can't imagine Apple doubling-down on a design they know didn't get enough sales.  They need to face reality: there simply isn't much of a mass market for a device costing multiple thousands of dollars that can only really be used in private, since it's too cumbersome to use on the go - and you look like a  complete tool if you do.

To this day I have no idea why Tim Cook let himself by led into this technological dead end called the Vision Pro.  i remember him clearly stating that Apple's next big thing would be AR glasses.  Somehow he got convinced by someone that these devices must be standalone products rather than an iPhone dependent one like Apple Watch and AirPods.  Unfortunately, that decision meant the future devices needed to cram a lot of CPU power and battery capacity into what needed to be a very light, small device - glasses!  The AVP VR headset became their first stab at it.  But it seems obvious that they will never be able to shrink that down to glasses anyone is willing to wear.

Google produced useful AR glasses TWELVE years ago.  If Apple hadn't gone down the wrong path, I'm sure they could have developed a sleek, much better product given all the miniaturization that's taken place win a decade.

Both of your assumptions are based on the idea that Apple sees Apple Vision Pro as some kind of failure. Only Apple knows what its goals for the device were and if it met them or have been satisfied. Your personal opinions are not part of Apple's calculus here.

mattinoz said:

Wait so every subsystem used to get CSAM working is controversial now?
even if it is used in a dozen other places in the system that aren’t considered controversial and adds nothing specific to the controversy?

idk if you missed it, but on-device and iCloud CSAM detection using these tools were deemed highly controversial.

mpantone said:

This whole article is based on the premise that Differential Privacy is 100% infallible all time time for every situation forever which is rather difficult to believe.

It's the same with really any analytics sharing whether it be opt-in or opt-out. How much data is really scrubbed? How does Joe Consumer truly know whether or not his personal data has been effectively removed? And if it doesn't what sort of recourse does he have?

As consumers, we don't have a lot of power other than the ability to opt out. Don't believe it is true? Don't like the concept? Opt out. At least Apple gave us that much.

As far as whether or not it is true or infallible, that's a whole different matter. First, Apple can't afford to lie, so I trust that what it says about the technology and the data available to the company is true. Otherwise all it would take is one person proving it isn't true for a huge scandal. Apple has been using these techniques publicly for nearly a decade: I think someone would have proven then inadequate by now.

Based on how the technology is described, I can't imagine a single way to trace data back to a user. How would you even start if all you have is polling data results, random noise, large aggregate data samples, and no identifiers. Even if you had the anonymous identifiers, how would you resolve those into individual users?

It's not just the how that seems mind boggling, but the why. Unless Apple has been hacked, how would the available data be abused in its current form? A single employee trying to resolve the results of a query on Genmoji use somehow identifies Sam Smith in Austin, Texas as the guy that asked for a burrito wearing a sombrero. Ok, now what?

The email portion of this is even more obfuscated. None of the email is included in data sent to Apple, so how would any information be obtained? Say a bad actor got the data, found an identifier attached to a poll result, and returned it to a user. All they've discovered is that someone somewhere has an iPhone with an email containing a fragment of words found in an artificially generated email.

This seems to be a well thought out system without any wiggle room for error. Though I would be interested if anyone actually can figure out any possible attack vectors or vulnerabilities. I'd be happy to be proven wrong in this case.