Spencer314

nubus said:

Will the lack of parts pairing cause more devices to be stolen? Apple should have the right to block parts from stolen devices to protect us.

I would have thought this would be one of the points, but the article didn't mention it. If you can't salvage one phone for valuable parts for another, then the third party repair industry won't end up as as a laundry service for stolen phones. Also, parts like fingerprint readers would be more difficult to replace with unsecure backdoors if their security chips have to be matched up. 

It does sometimes feel like a lot of the pushbacks on Apple are almost harkening back to an earlier era when our devices weren't the center of our financial lives and so weren't critical to our personal and financial security. 

Perhaps we will eventually at least be able to pay extra for locked-down phones that we can provide to relatives (who will then replace their login passcodes with "1111" thus undoing our of our efforts to keep them comparatively safe). 

What's less surprising than the fact that fake apps can make it through Apple's overwhelmed review process is the fact that Apple does such a poor job of taking them down when they are reported. You would think that fake apps would be taken down within days of being reported by a legitimate source, rather than remaining in the app store for months or years. 

There is a case to be made for a non Apple app store that does a better job than Apple of providing properly curated apps. But, users are going to have to figure out which ones are trustworthy by themselves, creating an annoying meta problem. 

Honestly, given the history here, Apple deserves to lose this one. I did get myself an Ultra 2 prior to the ban, and quite like it. But seriously, from all the reports, Masimo initially negotiated with them in good faith for a potential deal, then Apple raided their employees and immediately filed patents covering technology that Masimo had in development or had already patented. Maybe Masimo's price for licensing was unreasonable and Apple didn't see another choice, but intellectual property law is what it is and Apple f'd over the wrong company. 

Gawd I hope this isn't the direction Apple is going. I don't mind a 120mm lens, though I'm seriously not going to use it that often. But, killing off the 72mm lens to get that 120mm is insane. If the max simply had a better lens and camera for the 72mm, I might have bought the 15 Pro Max (the 15 Pro's 72mm camera quality is a bit underwhelming, particularly when compared with the excellent main camera even at a 50% crop), but there is no way that I would want to sacrifice having a 12MP camera nowhere between 48mm and 120mm. The 70mm to 90mm range is just way more useful. Heck, 120mm isn't even telephoto enough to be that interesting, as a telephoto, so it really is nothing more than bragging rights. I have talked a few people out of getting the 15 Pro Max for this very reason, and all have realized I was absolutely right. 

Consider me highly dubious that any VR based on a headset, even one built into sunglasses will be more than a niche product anytime remotely soon. 

Maybe Apple will crack the form factor that at least makes it into a mildly successful niche, but this just isn't going to be a runaway success, because you can't get a runaway success in a market that most people won't actually buy into. Maybe it will be more successful than 3D TVs (I do wish I had a 3D TV to watch A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas, but I can't think of much else I would watch on one).

Maybe it will (finally!) get Apple seriously into supporting their platforms for top-notch gaming, but if so, the Apple TV and Macs will probably benefit more from that than the market for VR headsets.