Marvin

mayfly said:

Why on earth would anyone see getting a larger share of a collapsing market as good news?

That's what happened to the companies making buggy whips a hundred years ago. As more and more companies went bankrupt, the ones remaining got a larger and larger share of the remaining market. You can draw your own conclusions about how much money they make today versus when they had a smaller share of a larger market!

It doesn't mean collapsing in the sense that they are being replaced with something else. PCs will be around for a long time. The collapse here is the frequency of new purchases. Upgrade cycles are getting longer.

Apple is in the best position because PC manufacturers have drilled margins down to unsustainable levels (some as low as 2%) and the market is saturated. They have nowhere to go but down and out like so many before them that followed the same strategy.

Apple has a 5-10% global share of the PC market and they sell at premium price points with healthy, sustainable margins. They can outlast all of them. Even when upgrade frequency drops for them too, they have the ability to grow the customer base. They will ride high in the PC market for at least another decade and over that time, their other platforms will have evolved considerably.

chasm said:

It’s fascinating to me that the “unknown” OS almost *precisely* mirrors the change in Windows’ popularity. Kind of silly that StatCounter can’t figure out what this suddenly-insurgent OS is …

They track website visits and they can only know what an OS is based on how the computer visiting the site identifies itself, usually via user-agent string.

https://gs.statcounter.com/detect

If a web user is using a privacy tool like a VPN, proxy or encrypted network, it won't always identify itself correctly so it's not an unknown OS, it's just that statcounter doesn't know which OS is being used, it could be any of them.

The spike can happen due to governments blocking access to sites. Utah started requiring verification for adult sites in May, which led to a surge in VPN usage but it would be more likely caused by countries listed on the following page:

https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/internet-censorship-map/

AppleInsider said:

Regulations approved by the European Council now mandate that companies, including Apple, must ensure that batteries in the iPhone and other products are replaceable by users.

The new regulation applies to all batteries, encompassing waste portable batteries, electric vehicle batteries, industrial batteries, and batteries used for light transport, such as electric bikes, e-mopeds, and e-scooters. It's designed to address the environmental impact of batteries at every stage of their life cycle.

These regulations are anticipated to affect companies like Apple, which market battery-powered products within the EU. However, it is expected that Apple, along with other companies, will resist the implementation of these regulations.

The document says that as long as batteries meet certain durability requirements, they wouldn't have to be user-replaceable:

https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/PE-2-2023-INIT/en/pdf

"For batteries that are incorporated in mobile phones and tablets it is appropriate to set performance and durability requirements regarding those batteries through a future eco-design regulation addressing phones and tablets and to update Commission Regulation (EU) No 617/20131 on computers and computer servers. For other portable batteries that are incorporated in other appliances, such as gardening tools or cordless power tools, the possibility of setting minimum performance and durability requirements should be addressed in relevant product legal acts"

"SLI batteries and electric vehicle batteries that are incorporated in motor vehicles should be removable and replaceable by independent professionals."

It would be nice if they designed them this way though such as putting the battery in a case. I've had a couple of iPhones where the battery expanded and buckled the screen. People are attaching magnetic batteries to the back. Instead you'd just pick the case with the size of battery needed and it can power the phone wirelessly. When the battery is removed/swapped, it would go into standby mode.

BiCC said:

How do you steal a Blockchain wallet remotely - you need the eleven random passwords made randomly and the passcode you create - as for a physical wallet like Ledger it only has 250 bites so no possible physical room for malware.  Plus the random words and so on... Blockchain is unhackable.  I once read the odds are one trillion to the exponent one million.  

They steal credentials like private keys. There are a number of things they can do:

https://www.uptycs.com/blog/what-is-meduza-stealer-and-how-does-it-work
https://cointelegraph.com/news/hodlers-beware-new-malware-targets-metamask-and-40-other-crypto-wallets
https://www.techradar.com/news/google-removes-crypto-stealing-chrome-extensions-from-its-web-store

They can replace or modify a crypto browser extension to look like the official one and get you to enter the seed phrase.
They can also try to extract data from the extension, people don't need to input the seed phrase every time they use a browser crypto wallet so some extensions are storing authentication details and that can be stolen to access the wallet.
They can intercept wallet communication so the next time a transaction is made, it can send a different amount to a different destination.
They can compromise emails that are used to access online crypto exchanges, maybe some emails have QR codes.
They can put keyloggers in place to track any time a seed phrase is pasted somewhere.

charlesatlas said:

Can anybody suggest an alternative for Adobe Fireworks for graphics editing? I've been using it for well over a decade, but I'm finally making the jump from Mojave to Catalina, so I have to give up 32-bit apps. I just like the way it's fairly easy to use, unlike the very complicated Photoshop. Also, I like how I can work with both raster and vector graphics in a single project, which I'm fairly sure neither Photoshop nor Illustrator can do. Sometimes I make signs for friends, and it's great to be able to manipulate font widths and spacing.

Worst case, I can run a Mojave virtual machine for Fireworks, but that's a little RAM-intensive. Or I suppose I can just buy an older MacBook Air just to run Mojave and 32-bit apps.

Fireworks is an app that's hard to replace but it's probably best trying to migrate to a modern workflow. The most popular tools include Figma and XD, both from Adobe:

https://www.creativebloq.com/how-to/20-best-ui-design-tools
https://ralev.com/the-next-generation-ui-software-and-how-we-migrated-from-sketch-to-figma/

Sketch for Mac is another option:

https://www.sketch.com/design/

But you will likely need a way to access old design files. Layered PNG format used by Fireworks is proprietary to Adobe and they don't use it elsewhere so those would need exported into a compatible format or maintain an old version.

Eventually the VM route won't work so well with Mac systems because the old x86 systems won't work on Apple Silicon. However, the Windows version of Fireworks might. The Apple Silicon machines run VMs very well:



UTM can run older x86 systems but it's best to get a system that doesn't need emulation so it runs faster.