SiTime

22july2013 said:

Given a choice between two identical products (like iPhones, forks, or cashew nuts) where one says "Made in X," where X is a dictatorship, and the other says "Made in Y," where Y is a democracy, I would pay for the one made in Y, even if it's at a much higher price. I realize not many people care about human rights or the environment like I do. I haven't met a single person who shares my values and would buy the higher priced item.

India is a democracy though. It’s not a perfect democracy. There has been a weakening of checks on executive power, crackdowns on the free press, and the like. But similar things could be said about other democratic countries.

The iPhone can be assembled in India (a democratic country) and sold in America. And the iPhone can be assembled in Brazil (a democratic country) and sold in America. So that is not the issue. What is happening here is not a choice between products from a democracy or products from a dictatorship. It’s a choice between products from America or products from literally all other countries.

At this point I’ve almost entirely switched over to Apple Pay. The last major store that I often frequent finally switched over from their non-NFC payment terminals to ones that support NFC. What a pleasant surprise that was! I’m glad to finally use my phone for almost everything (whether it be Apple Pay or another payment method that uses my phone).

BUT — for reasons like this — it’s still good to carry around physical money for when digital payment methods decide to take a sick day. Mine has been jokingly dubbed as “techno-emergency money”, lol.

I miss when tech news wasn’t so political. And that’s not a criticism of the writers and editors of this site. All of this specific political news is also very relevant Apple news. If you are covering Apple news, this is what you need to write about in 2025. 100% understandable.

I just miss when the biggest news of a particular week (a week that wasn’t WWDC, a product announcement or whatnot) might have been leaked CAD files for an Apple Watch or a rumored prototype case mold of an unreleased iPhone, lol. I look forward to the day when that can be true again.

It seems different brands of the same company are valued separately. So if you add Alphabet’s brands (Google and YouTube) together, that also adds up over a trillion USD.

And if you add up Microsoft’s brands (Microsoft, Linkedin, Xbox) that would get to nearly a trillion USD as well.

I don’t see Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard on the list. Maybe each individual gaming franchise of Activation Blizzard is valued separately (and none of them individually made in the top 100). Otherwise it seems like Activision Blizzard should have made the list as well. Or maybe it got included as “Xbox”? Not sure.

Microsoft also kinda/sorta has an ownership-ish stake in OpenAI (ChatGPT — on the list). So I suppose that would get added in as well in some way.

bobolicious said:

... is anyone else uncomfortable with putting all password eggs in one basket...?

Add to that the balance of information that Apple seems increasingly default setting to collect in iCloud servers ...?

That’s the trade off of security vs. convenience. If you want more security, it’ll be less convenient. If you want more convenience, it’ll be less secure.

You could use an actual notebook (an actual paper notebook) for keeping track of all of their unique passwords. Use an actual paper notebook and keep it secure in an actual safe. And I don’t say that jokingly. I know some people who do exactly that. They have been doing it well-before internet password managers even existed and have just continued do it to the present day.

(The safe isn’t specifically for the notebook. But if you already own a safe, you might as well use it.)

For all practical-purposes, that notebook in a safe is the most-secure password manager you can have. It’s inconvenient as hell to use, lol, but it’s super secure.