freeassociate2

danox said:

Companies (Slippery Eels) do not pay taxes we like to believe they do. They are just clearing houses. The customers pay the tax and the cost is passed down to the citizens (lowest level). Example Uber, and Airbnb, pay nothing but their drivers and customers certainly do.

Mizrahi Developments, Walmart, Trump enterprises, the Guess company are other examples in a more evil sense. Don’t ever be a subcontractor/worker involved with these companies you will pay them.

The Hudson Bay Company never paid taxes in their existence but the minions underneath certainly did.

How does Ireland compare to continental Luxembourg, Switzerland, or Monaco, These countries are aristocratic tax havens, Ireland is an upstart blue collar country how dare they go above their station?

Hopefully the money will actually be used to benefit the actual citizens of Ireland, but the way government works across the world I wouldn’t hold my breath, 1 billion or so Euros in the escrow account have already been lost in bad investments so far.

“How does Ireland compare to continental Luxembourg, Switzerland, or Monaco, These countries are aristocratic tax havens, Ireland is an upstart blue collar country how dare they go above their station?”

And there you have the gist of it. Ireland, which deserves a fucking break plus autonomy, gets shafted by the same countries that have always called the shots and farked it over. So much for equality in the EU. It’s the same game, by the same dominant countries.

No worries. The EU will continue to screw itself. Taxing its way out of stalled growth and the strain of maintaining the Euro on partner countries will make it implode. Bet they’ll have fun with Putin when their actions help get the Orange Turd elected again.

phillyfanatic09 said:

I’m always amazed at the criticism around these events. I’m not sure what the critics actually want. A phone that wipes for you?

 Samsung is infamous for throwing out new features that are half-baked but make a splash only to have them disappear in a generation or two. Sometimes they get refined to be generally useful as well. That’s not Apple.

The Dynamic Island, Action Button and now the Capture Button are all useful, if not earthshaking innovations. Crash Detection, Satellite SOS and now messaging are invaluable if you need them. Hardware Ray Tracing. Even USB C on the Pro Phones is far more capable than just charging and simple data transfer. 

Phones are a mature technology. advances will mainly be iterative especially in hardware. The iPhone 16 is a significant upgrade on the iPhone 15 and the 16 Pro is a modest upgrade on the 15 Pro. Given that people keep their phones for two or three years or longer, that’s fine.

Agreed. I’ve the feeling that if some of these trolls were napping, it’s because this cycle’s update’s aren’t aimed at them — and per usual, their opinions don’t amount to much more than weird carping.

Both I (iPhone 16 Pro Max) and my partner K (iPhone 14 Pro Max) see the advantages for what we do, which are photo and video heavy, as well as development and gaming. Other partner J has recently switched to the iPhone Pro, for similar reasons. Plus, there’s finally a reason for us to update the network at home with WiFi7 in the near future (we luckily live in a confluence of 5G UW points, as well).

If you’re in any kind of upgrade program, this is simply a no-brainer.

22july2013 said:

A lot of pressure could be taken off Apple's back if Apple allowed users to choose to install either Android or iOS on their phones. This way, users can get third party app stores from Android OS that Apple officially supports (but probably pays Google to do the legwork.) But Apple could keep iOS fully controlled, and I suspect that the vast majority of users would install iOS. If the EU asked Apple for third party app stores, for example, Apple could say, "Sure, we let users install Android on iPhones, and we fully support that. Just not on iOS." This would put the EU in a quandary. 

Yeah … no.

why? Oh so many, many reasons. #1 of which is the the relevant regulatory bodies in the EU would never, ever go for that type of bargain.

Djacobs said:

From my experience Matter is super finicky. I have a good number of Matter devices, and recently they all went offline. Not a single one is accessible in Apple Home. I did update one of my Apple TVs (the most recent 4K) with the Latest Public Beta of TVos 18. I do not know if that caused the issue, but I have since unplugged it, as there is still no way to not have it be selected as my home hub. It didn't help. The complications of Thread on top of the Matter protocol, and it just feels like it is all unfinished. Things used to work fairly consistently with Apple Home, but the introduction of Thread and Matter have changed that, and not in a good way.

The 18 and 18.1 betas (and 17 before it) have been particularly rough in the interconnectivity department. It’s consistently messed with systems in my house that were previously rock-solid. Bluetooth has less hiccups in the 18.x betas than the 16/17 ones did, but there still there. Especially with headphone connections. WiFi is also tweaky. It sometimes sees networks, sometimes doesn’t (that are perfectly visible to devices running 17.x or earlier).

I was really hoping that Matter and Thread would start to make things better, but they’ve genuinely made them worse, at least in the short-term. It really just kinda sucks.