Pema

clexman said:

Spoiler alert. I guess if he’s in a second season, he’s not guilty in the first. 

Totally pointless. And if you have read the book by Scott Turow and watched the movie with Harrison Ford and Greta Scatchi you would know...
What in the hell are they going to come up with to create a new season? Let's hope that it is not based on Scott Turow's later books. They have been plainly awful. Churning the same characters through the same county on an utterly forgettable plots. 

I can't imagine Rusty Sabich is going to have another affair in which he is implicated killing the lover. Oh wait, his wife has an affair with the barman from the tele series - which btw was not in the original book or movie - she gets pregnant. We already know that Rusty has a violent temper. He finds out about the affair and that his wife is pregnant with the baby from the barman, goes into a vengeful killing spree and wipes out the barman and the wife. Because the latter two are black and Rusty is white he is accused of murder with the added component that it a racially-motivated killing. It spurs the Chicago South Side to at first peacefully demonstrate then to launch violent rampages throughout Chicago, burning, looting - you know like Watts. 

But wait Rusty, while guilty as hell, hires a dream team - like OJ - and get away with killing the wife and the barman. 

Don't call it Presumed Innocent instead call it Innocent? Yeah Right! 

 

charlesn said:

Pema said:

If you purchase a Bentley Bentayga, you get the Mulliner Tourbillon Clock as an $30,000 option. But, hey, what's $30,000 between friends when the Bentayga will lighten your wallet by $550,000? 

By the same measure, when you purchase the Apple Car, you get the Apple Ring thrown in for free. 

Let's face it, Cook has kept Apple afloat quite nicely. But the reality is that since Job's passing the only innovative product that Apple has released to date is the Vision Pro. All the others have been upgrades upon upgrades upon upgrades. Forget the watch it's not innovative.

And truth be told, Apple has botched what could have been a multi-billion product had they released it in a smaller form factor without all the bells and whistles at $1500-$2000. Pitching it at $3500 USD is the same mistake when they sold the Gold Apple Watch for some outrageous price. However, they did offer the Apple Watch at a more affordable price range which made it a hit. 

The Vision Pro US market has dried up. So now they are offering the Vision Pro around the world. They will sell a few. But not enough to offset the R&D effort and not near enough to move the needle by much when Apple releases their Dec. 2024 numbers. 

The moral in this: start small, grab market share, get an audience then slowly increase the features and price to achieve a $3500 price point. 
If you already own an Apple Vision Pro 1.0 then you have trade-in value. Right now the only thing you have to trade-in is the shirt on your back. And Apple does not want that!

Wow. This is all so utterly baseless and mindless, it's hard to know where to start so I just quoted it all. 

Vision Pro. So, according to your brilliant business mind, "smaller, simpler, cheaper" is the path to success! Well, my friend, both Meta and Microsoft--you've heard of them, right?--have been in the "smaller, simpler, cheaper" headset game for years. So where's the killer product that owns the market? OH... that's right. It doesn't exist.

I am not going to address the other points you raised about the Apple Watch and Air Pods. That was not the focus of my post. I was only reiterating what many highly-placed folks at Apple felt and said, 'that the product is not ready for release'. Which is what I have been thinking all along. This product has the potential to become a great money-maker for Apple. It's just that it is not fully baked. But Cook wanted a headline grabbing product and this was sitting on the lab bench being worked on and he shoved it out the door. 

It made headlines alright, but the wrong kind. As did the infamous Apple Car. 

My point on growing a product is that is the way to go. Rather than releasing the top-end. 

I am not even going to address the points you made about Microsoft and Meta. The former has an abysmal record with hardware - remember the Windows phone, which Microsoft bought from Nokia and then on-sold for $1.5 Billion (classic buy high, sell low) and so far as Meta goes I am astonished that this company is still around with all the bad press they are getting. 

Finally, to round it off. You have forgotten to mention the Google Graveyard. It has grown so large that future products won't be buried for the lack of space, they will just be cremated and placed in an urn. 

If you purchase a Bentley Bentayga, you get the Mulliner Tourbillon Clock as an $30,000 option. But, hey, what's $30,000 between friends when the Bentayga will lighten your wallet by $550,000? 

By the same measure, when you purchase the Apple Car, you get the Apple Ring thrown in for free. 

Let's face it, Cook has kept Apple afloat quite nicely. But the reality is that since Job's passing the only innovative product that Apple has released to date is the Vision Pro. All the others have been upgrades upon upgrades upon upgrades. Forget the watch it's not innovative.

And truth be told, Apple has botched what could have been a multi-billion product had they released it in a smaller form factor without all the bells and whistles at $1500-$2000. Pitching it at $3500 USD is the same mistake when they sold the Gold Apple Watch for some outrageous price. However, they did offer the Apple Watch at a more affordable price range which made it a hit. 

The Vision Pro US market has dried up. So now they are offering the Vision Pro around the world. They will sell a few. But not enough to offset the R&D effort and not near enough to move the needle by much when Apple releases their Dec. 2024 numbers. 

The moral in this: start small, grab market share, get an audience then slowly increase the features and price to achieve a $3500 price point. 
If you already own an Apple Vision Pro 1.0 then you have trade-in value. Right now the only thing you have to trade-in is the shirt on your back. And Apple does not want that!

Apple has just notified its Aussie customers that the Vision Pro will become available July 12th. Great. The issue is that the cost of the unit + essential accessories will come to $7000 AUD. 
And here's the kicker, you only get 14-day money back guarantee. 
I need more than 14 days to trial a product that will set me back $7000 AUD. 
So I navigated over Meta and purchased the Quest 3, plus accessories which set me back $1100 AUD. And I get a full 30-day money back guarantee. I get the product, I trial it comfortably for 30 days, I like it, I keep it. I don't, I have got a whole month in which to decide. 

$1100 AUD doesn't blow a black hole in my budget, $7000 AUD does. 

Apple needs to come up with a better strategy to sell a $7000 AUD accessory. We are not talking about a couple of hundred dollars. No wonder sales are sluggish. I would say sales are dying in the US so now Apple has moved to sell it worldwide. 

adept1 said:

Apple CarPlay 100% supports Google Maps natively. Waze too if you're into that.

I don't expect it will ever allow casting or playing of videos, even if the vehicle is stopped/parked. Too much liability.

Pema said:

All these improvements to Apple Car Play is utter and total nonsense. The app does nothing more than mimicking a few minor functions that are of little value to the motorist. 

I use Google Maps and Google Search. If I am planning a destination I simply go to Google Search, find the location, then click on directions which then get cast to the head screen and I get there quickly, efficiently and safely. 
I will never, ever use Apple Car Play not since the fiasco with Apple Maps when motorists where directed off the road to an embankment then to an airport in front of airplanes. Apple Maps is like Microsoft Bing never, ever to be used or trusted. 

The only thing that will ever improve my experience and make me consider even looking at Apple Car Play is if they introduce casting. That means that if I am watching the news or any other program while I am driving I can occasionally glance at the screen when it safe to do so and then continue driving. 

When I had an Android Pixel Phone I could do that. The reason that I replaced it with an iPhone is because of security. Android is bug ridden everyone knows that. 

That said there is no reason why Apple cannot add a feature to Apple Car Play to distinguish it from Google Car Play in order to let the motorist cast the phone screen to the head screen. Not minor, silly functionality. 

Incidentally Google Car Play does not do that of itself. You have to root the phone. 

Yes adept1 Google pays Apple multiple mullahs $$$$ to keep Google Search at the forefront. We all know that. Unless you live in a remote region of the Appalachia you would have read about the cozy relationship between the two.