NYC362

As a retired history teacher, inaccuracies in movies often drive me nuts.  When a big film came out, I would go through a list of what it got wrong with my students.  (Braveheart, for instance was one of the worst for accuracy.).  Even good films like Hidden Figures play all sorts of games with the timelines and inventing characters that didn't exist.  Steven Spielberg did that in Schindler's List- combining two or three real people into one fictitious character. The reasons for this is usually just time. Without playing games like that, movies would be two or three times as long.  

Of course, it can get ridiculous.  I haven't yet seen Napoleon, so I can't comment on that film just yet.  The real problem is people will see a film about some historical event and not look up anything about the real version of things.  I can't watch For All Mankind because it's truly alternate view of history (of course it doesn't pretend to be factual at all) in some people's eyes will thing that's what happened.... UGH! 

The iPad line up is a bit of a mess.  Here's what is should be

iPad at 10.9" with an A Series Processor 

iPad Air 10.9" with an M1 Processor
iPad Air 12.9" with an M1

iPad Pro 11" with M3
iPad Pro 12.9 with M3

iPad mini 8.3" (8.5" with thinner bezels) with an M1. (Basically, a Air Mini) 

That gives people enough of a difference between models and two larger size models to pick from.   The idea of a 14.1" iPad is just dumb. 

Having worked for Apple's post order service team, I took more than a few phone calls where the shipping box had been tampered with.  The worst was a customer who ordered at 16" MacBook Pro and with the FedEx delivery guy present, opened the shipping box to find nothing but cut up FedEx boxes inside.  His computer was gone.   Of course, all of these shipments are insured by the delivery carrier and the customer had a replacement order created and got his desired computer- he just had to wait another two or three weeks for it.

My guess, in this case, is the same.  The DPD shipping box was not tampered with... well, what people would have access to such boxes to repack something?   I'm more than confident Apple sent out a real 15 Pro Max, but sometime after that box left Apple, someone opened it, stuck in that fake phone, and sealed it up in a new packing box.   

One final note- these instances are incredibly rare.  Consider that I would take dozens of calls a day and most were about credit card issues, order changes, order delays, etc.  Stolen merchandise during shipping happened literally just a couple times in my year doing that work.  (Porch pirates stealing delivered goods was another story.)  Now, think of all the people who place and order and have no issue and never need to call order support.   In short, when you order something from Apple directly, the chances that you will not get the item you wanted is astronomically slim. 

Someone has been watching a bit too much Star Trek.

Seriously, from a purely tech standpoint, some relatively impressive stuff, but ridiculously expensive and truly not ready for prime time. 

eightzero said:

We likely agree on much, and your points are fair and accurate. However, when I said the mac is not for you, I wasn't clear. I did not intend to suggest the PC as an a
What I was trying to write, and didn't, was for a desktop experience, maybe we are at a stage where a MacBook (yes thats a mac and my bad for being particularly bad about implying otherwise) can feed a nice desktop sized display...or maybe a iPad or even iPhone will do that. I'm reminded of my very first Mac, the PowerBook Duo 230 with a docking station. But still...the macOS (and iOS and PadOS) need help being much simpler. I think that was what I was trying to express, but didn't.

My last iMac was a mid 2009 27" version. I would still be using it, but it has developed thermal problems requiring manual control of the internal fans, making it noisy. 

Yes...this makes a lot more sense than how I saw your original post.  I'm an Expert in a store and many customers do not want both a desktop and laptop...and your idea- laptop and external monitor is a common suggestion.  In fact, when the Air, iMac, and Mini were all M1, I would tell customers, they are for the most part, the same computer in a different form factor.

Beyond that, the Air is more than enough computer for a large majority of users.