twolf2919

Honkers said:

mjtomlin said:

do they not understand what carbon neutral means? It means you do something to offset the carbon emissions you produce. You effectively “wipe out” the carbon you put into the atmosphere.

Do you not understand that such "offsets" are very frequently tantamount to meaningless virtue signalling given that they capture very little carbon?  The article talks about it, give it a proper read.

Apple talks a big game about good things that they do, and some of their initiatives genuinely sound great, but if their carbon neutral claims are being majorly bolstered by buying permits to pollute then that's the definition of greenwashing.

Going solely by the article, I don't agree that Apple is guilty of greenwashing or virtue signaling.  Apple is a product company and manufacturing any good has environmental consequences.  If Apple pays for trees to be planted which offset the carbon released by the manufacture and use of its products, that's a good thing and people should be buying its products instead of competitors' if those competitors do not take this positive step.  Whether those carbon offsets are 'high quality' is a separate issue.  If Apple has those trees planted on land it owns and then goes ahead and cuts those trees for pulp production, I'd say Apple is guilty of greenwashing.  But if Apple pays a third party to plant those trees on their land with a promise that those trees will not be cut down - and then the third party does anyway, is that really Apple's fault?  I'd say  no.  Apple bought those credits in good faith.   The story doesn't give enough detail to form an informed opinion.

kelemor said:

Have had zero problems with the card. Only card I use and I pay it off monthly. Allow all my cash to roll over into savings and have a little bit squirrel away. 

All the billing is done electronically so how is hard to send it at the same time. Computers should be doing everything. 

They didn't say that sending billing at the same time is hard - they said having the customer support calls come in all at once is the problem.

mayfly said:

Apple's problem is that everyone who wants an Apple Watch already has one. And their incremental changes aren't going to drive upgrade cycles. The Ultra was new and different, but the buy-in was a big deterrent for the mass market. Things like Micro-LED screens won't do it. A total rethink is what it will take. I can't think of anything the Apple Watch 9 offers that would even make me consider upgrading my 7 series.

I don't think a total rethink is required at all.  All that is required are additional health features/sensors.  A blood pressure sensor would cause millions to upgrade.  If Apple could figure out how to put non-invasive glucose measurements,  millions more would upgrade within the blink of an eye.  It's just that the low-hanging fruits of heart rate monitoring, ECG, blood oxygen have already been plucked - the above sensor require a lot more work to figure out and implement.

I wish Apple added a lower price iPad.  Right now, the cheapest iPad is $329.   I don’t mind spending lots of money on iPhone.  With those at 6.8” in size, iPads are becoming convenience accessories for the couch.  I still have a 5 year old one (9.7”?) laying around, collecting dust.  I’d upgrade it and maybe even use it again if it was lighter and had a bigger screen - but not for $329.

My dad actually uses his - even older - iPad all the time, but is too cheap to consider a new one at $329 (he got the current one from me - a hand-me-down).

From my experience, Google has mostly just  been  a better search engine - and its marketshare reflects that.  Unlike Microsoft, Google didn't have the luxury of using its profits in another market to finance its entry into another and killing the competition there by essentially price dumping (see Netscape's demise after MSFT bundled crappy IE).  Now THAT was monopolist, anti-competitive behavior!   Remember, Google got to its dominance vis-a-vis other search engines - Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc. - before the iPhone even existed.  As with the whole Internet thing, MSFT was late to the search party when it introduced Bing in 2009.   Why, then, if it was serious about catching up to the gorilla in the room, didn't it pay more to become the default search engine in iOS?   Is it really anti-competitive to pay to be the default search engine on iPhone - or is MSFT just crying the blues because it couldn't/wouldn't ante up?

 I'm not a great fan of GOOG - when a company has to make its motto "Don't be evil" to remind itself to be good, there's got to be a problem.  But where's the anti-competitive behavior?  It is not illegal to be a monopoly - it is only illegal to maintain ones monopoly via anti-competitive practices.  Outbidding other competitors - especially deep-pocketed ones like MSFT - to be the default search engine in Apple devices is not anti-competitive.