twolf2919
About
- Username
- twolf2919
- Joined
- Visits
- 18
- Last Active
- Roles
- member
- Points
- 685
- Badges
- 1
- Posts
- 111
Reactions
-
Apple Savings APY increases from 4.15% to 4.25%
Definitely it's not the best deal, but to call it 'uncompetitive' is a bit ridiculous given that the majority of banks' savings rates fall below 4.25% - or even below the previous 4.15%. And none of those have Apple Savings' convenience of being managed in the Apple Wallet.
As with many things, it's a good idea to diversify: put your money into savings and CD accounts from multiple banks. While bank FDIC insurance is pretty high and, thus, safeguard most savers, it's always safer to stash away your dough in multiple places.
-
Should the Apple Store be forced to sell lemons?
I don't know about IBM, but in the case of AT&T those regulations were in place because AT&T (aka "Ma Bell" before it was broken up) actually was a monopoly and had taken advantage of it. Unlike Apple.mikethemartian said:Have you ever researched all the regulation that AT&T and IBM had to endure?
I have yet to see a cogent explanation of what sort of monopoly(yes) Apple enjoys. The most frequent target is the App Store. But just because it's the sole means by which Apple allows apps to be bought and distributed to iPhones doesn't make it monopoly. It's simply how Apple chose to design app distribution. for iPhones - and that's clearly a private company's prerogative. This design worked well for both developers (they had a much cheaper way of distributing software than the traditional store model) and customers (they had a convenient AND trusted source from which to buy applications) - so iPhone sales soared. But now, developers of the most successful applications balk at the 15-30% fee they have to pay to Apple - and claim that without the government's help in breaking Apple's "monopoly", customers are paying too much for apps. Never mind that customers never complained. The only ones who really have a beef with Apple's model are the corporate/successful app developer and wanna-be-Apple customers who are really jealous of the integrated Apple ecosystem but are philosophically or financially opposed to Apple's closed garden.But Apple doesn't have an App Store "monopoly". Those two groups complaining can simply join the 80% of worldwide audience that are on Android - they can open their own app stores or even host their apps on their own web sites and let customers side-load them. But, of course, they won't - they want a free ride on the infrastructure and audience built by Apple. If they host their own app or create their own app store, nobody would find it and, even if they did, those folks aren't as lucrative a customer as iPhone owners. In other words, they want free access to those billion happy Apple customers.
Even if the App Store were a monopoly, monopolies aren't even illegal! They only become illegal if the owner of it abuses that monopoly. AT&T had that issue: it had a natural monopoly on the wires going into people's houses (google how towns looked likewhen every company tried to string their own wires). It artificially kept phone service high because it didn't have competition. So it was eventually broken up by the government. Back to the App Store: sure, developers who want to sell to Apple iPhone customers need to go through its App Store. But there's no proof Apple has ever abused its 'monopoly' - fees have never gone up, only down, over the years. And, of course, unlike with telephone wires, there are literally dozens of choices consumers can make, if they don't like the cost of Apple apps. Most don't take advantage of this choice because they think apps aren't more expensive on the Apple App Store and, even if they were, it would be worth it because they enjoy higher levels of security and convenience in the overall Apple ecosystem.
-
Apple and Android users deserve better universal chat than Beeper mini
Most folks - even technically adept ones like me - would prefer to do all their messaging in one place. I do have WhatsApp and WeChat installed for the rare message from my European and Chinese relatives and FB Messenger for my occasional sales on FB, but otherwise stay within iMessage. I have no idea - or care - how grainy photos I include in a message looks on their phone. I'm sure the content is still recognizable.MacHeadroom said:This has been a solved problem. Instead of Android users being obsessed with being Green bubbles SIGNAL and WHATSAPP are both existing, multi-platform End-to-End encrypted chat apps with high quality full features, video, audio etc.
All of this has existed for *years* yet I see no mention of either app in your article.
Not to mention Google has had 12 years to develop a dominate chat app but has developed and killed a dozen or so along the way because they can't monetize the chats if they are encrypted.
The solution exists, it's called WhatsApp and Signal. Soon RCS with the help of Apple adding End to End encryption to it will be available and all those android users with the dream of being blue bubble living rent free in their head will have their day I guess.
I'll be turning RCS off.
When you say you'll be turning off RCS, how do you know you'll be able to? I thought RCS will basically take the place of SMS/MMS as the fallback when communicating with Androids. I don't see a way to turn off SMS on my iPhone.
I'm also pretty sure Apple will continue using green or a third color for RCS-based communications. So psychologically speaking, Android users won't see any relief from the green bubble pursuit.
-
What's Apple's Vision Pro killer app?
A remarkably wordy article that ultimately doesn't answer the question its title poses. What is the point, really, in stating that the killer app will use features X, Y, or Z in Vision Pro? Isn't it obvious that this is the reason Apple put those features into the Vision Pro?
The article does mention use cases such as the possibility of immersive attendance to live events. But isn't the point of attending a live event that you're there 'live' with thousands of fellow attendees? It's a social thing! How many people would give up this social aspects of attending an event - and pay $3,500 for the 'privilege'? It's a pretty dystopian scenario, if you ask me. The same goes for the argument that the Vision Pro replaces a large-screen TV - it conveniently forgets that watching TV is, for many, a social activity. No, we don't have watch parties every day, but most couples or families watch the news, TV shows or movies together. A single $3.5k Vision Pro can't provide the same experience as a $1k large screen TV in that regard. And I don't think anyone would buy multiple VPs to have everyone in the family sitting isolated on the couch. Seems even lonelier than today's reality, where people are in the same room, but everyone's absorbed by the content of their smartphones. But at least with smartphones, it's a simple movement of the head to begin interaction with another human.
Don't get me wrong - I'm a strident believer in the future of AR. But AR will only become a mass market success when it no longer interferes with human interactions. Goggles on your head definitely don't do the trick. I think Apple jumped the shark with this AR "wannabe" VR headset. I'm not sure why developers - especially small ones - would write software, i.e. potential killer apps, for it when Apple has given no timeline for a device (the vaunted AR glasses) that will have mass market appeal and thus provide a return on their investment.
-
Apple insists 8GB unified memory equals 16GB regular RAM
Interesting article, but the author writes "...However, there are several professional workflows that we highlighted in our Apple Silicon Mac Pro review" - I read the linked article and could not see any references to workflows the M1 Mac Pro could not handle - all the workflows that were benchmarked showed the Mac Pro working stupendously fast compared to the competition.
I'm not saying that 192GB is sufficient for every application, but the author certainly didn't didn't do a good job of pointing to any that need more. He referenced nebulous "large AI models" - but I doubt even those require 192GB of RAM - more disk storage than that....maybe.
