sconosciuto

I moved from the US to Europe this year.

I discovered very quickly that EVERYONE here does contactless. Not once have I seen anybody swipe a card.

In the US, I used my Apple Card sparingly. A lot of that had to do with the poor diffusion of contactless payments. Too often whatever card I was trying to use simply didn't work with a supposedly contactless terminal, so I almost always paid by swiping a card and I never carried my physical Apple Card on me. Apple Pay was also hit-and-miss; it did not take long for me to quit bothering to ask the cashier if they took it, chances were the answer was no. Just a waste of my time, when I check out I want to just pay and go.

Here in Europe, I quickly got accustomed to contactless but I was using my bank card for it. It did not take long for me to start using my iPhone and it is so easy, much easier than pulling out the wallet and fumbling with the card.

2% daily cash back on all purchases plus no foreign transaction fees and ease of use, it is a total no-brainer to use Apple Card via Wallet. The only consideration that might make me not use my Apple Card for whatever transaction is if the exchange rate were to go up significantly (I pay my Apple Card with USD), then I would want to spend the euros bought more cheaply in my local bank first.

I think that once the US catches up with contactless payment ubiquity, Apple Card transactions will really take off.

in case anybody is interested, i moved from the US to Europe this year.

Here in Yurp, it's damn near 100% contactless. I took it a step further, I am one of the seeming few who pays with their phone. But it works fine, I have yet to find the store that cannot take Apple Card transactions. Can't say that in the US, contactless payment is very much hit-or-miss as far as acceptance by merchants.

Where I live now, many people still take out their bank card and wave it at the terminal, but NOBODY swipes a card here.

larryjw said:

"Lucrative" means financial processes and institutions rather than building stuff makes the money. It also means they're making money off of people who can't afford the products you're selling. 

A few years ago, Macy's reported that 40% of their revenue came from their financing side. Again, people who couldn't afford Macy's products were jacking up Macy's. 

It used to be that 10% of the US economy was the financing sector. Today, it's 50%. It's just money exchanges without building anything.

No wonder BitCoin exists. 

https://gizmodo.com/dogecoin-creator-says-crypto-is-a-scam-1847292956

williamlondon said:

sconosciuto said:

williamlondon said:

AppleZulu said:

So Apple releases expensive hardware with obvious capacity for future expansion of operating system capabilities, and the complaint is that the OS doesn’t max out the hardware out of the gate. Got it.

Of course, if iPadOS already took full advantage of the capabilities of the M1 model, there would be much louder complaints about how last year’s pre-M1 hardware has been rendered obsolete so quickly by OS features the pre-M1 devices can’t handle. 

THIS! As usual, perfectly stated, perfectly logical, and sadly ignored or simply incomprehensible to people seeking and demanding a reason to complain about their first world problems.

Perhaps so, but it is still a very valid question that AI is asking. Software limited by hardware is quite a different thing than hardware limited by software, in this case an OS where a far more powerful sibling already exists. I hope that a lot of people hold off on buying iPP until Apple either gives in and unlocks its potential with an iPOS update or at least communicates their intention to do so.

Thanks for proving my point.

it's cute that you thought that I did, but you do you boo.

buttesilver said:

SxyGayjust said:

docbburk said:

It’s called Public Health!!  It’s not political.  Your company endangered thousands with your reckless promotion of illegal parties during a pandemic!  Be happy that you didn’t have more significant consequences.  You clearly demonstrated your disregard for public health.  Nice try with the Monopoly BS.  Enjoy life stuck on Android and find some ethics

If you believe that, then Apple should have banned Tinder, Bumble, etc. because far more people were "disregarding public health" by hooking up through those apps than anything Vybe Together would have hoped for in their wildest dreams...

100%
More of the rambling brainwashed that think we should have destroyed 10's of 1000's of businesses and lives for a "virus" that supposedly kills 0.03%?
Thankfully folks are waking up to this nonsense...

You put the word virus in quotes. A reasonable person is left to assume that you were implying the coronavirus was not actually a virus.

Furthermore you modified the word °kills° with °supposedly°. So a reasonable person is left to assume that you are demonstrating doubt that the actual death rate is in the neighborhood of 0.03%.

Actually I think I have an idea what you were trying to express, just doing so poorly. A number of measures were enacted by governments around the world to limit the spread of this highly communicable virus that confounded medical professionals whose job it was to treat the infected. This was NOT "just the flu".

People can and will debate all day long about whether this measure or that one was necessary; on the whole, the actual fact that the 2020-21 flu season led to far less flu illness and far fewer flu deaths than in previous years definitively proves that a good number of these measures - especially masking, social distancing, and work from home - were justified. So people complaining that the death rate wasn't high enough to require drastic action are being willfully ignorant.

You should not be surprised if no reasonable person takes seriously any "thoughts" you might have on the matter of the pandemic.