jdw

Unless Apple is planning to drop the price into the $500 range, there's not much meaning to drop the price while gutting key features.  Sure, they want more people to use the thing, but the entire product centers on the unbelievable experience it currently offers, which is superior to other VR and AR products out there.  Gut the features, and then you are competing with Meta and the like.  Make zero sense to do that.  With that said, it is desirable if the price can come down a bit, but without harming the user experience at all.

Now if they only eliminated the front screen (which shows simulated eyes), maybe some people would go for that, at a lower cost, assuming all other features were retained.  But Apple made a big deal about that, and such differentiates VISION PRO from competitor's products, so dropping that feature would seem odd.  But it wouldn't ruin the user's experience at all though.

I guess the biggest issue that no one can argue against is when somebody keeps a device long after Apple calls it obsolete.  

When no official Apple parts are available, you would normally go to 3rd party parts.  At that point, the device is old enough to where it really doesn't matter if those parts "aren't up to Apple standards."  You want your vintage/obsolete device to keep working, just like we in the vintage Mac community want to keep our SE/30s running strong now in 2023.  But if your modern Apple device won't pair with a 3rd party battery -- the one component that WILL need to be swapped out every 3-5 years -- then the device becomes junk that must be discarded.  That contributes to unnecessary waste while at the same time pisses off the vintage device community.

So I would say for that reason alone we need a way to at least allow vintage/obsolete devices to pair with any parts, not just Apple official parts, which at that point would not be sold anymore.

And for those nuts badmouthing iFixit, they really do advocate for us in the community who want or need to repair something.  It's not merely about self-interest.

I like Apple and as such am very pro-Apple in most matters.  But when they need to be called out on something, which is the case here, I don't shy away from the discussion.

You really need to reformat the T9 as APFS and retest.  That's because I've been watching a lot of videos of late on Thunderbolt 4 SSDs to see which is the most consistently fast, and many reviewers are getting speeds much slower than rated speeds only because they used ExFAT so as to test on both a Mac and Windows.  Those who reformatted APFS and retested get closer to the expected speeds.  So I strongly suggest you retest the T9 using the APFS format on your Mac.

It's sad but unsurprising to see people squabble about how legalized theft (i.e., taxation) is distributed.  When somebody lifts your wallet and steals something from it, it's considered theft that is prohibited by law.  But when the government says it will do the same for the greater good, somehow that's A-OK.  Pro-tax people will come out of the woodwork citing roads, bridges, schools and all manner of glorious things legalized theft has funded and is continuing to fund.  But all those things, however good, still are paid for with stolen money.  "Stolen" in that it was taken without giving the tax payer a choice not to pay it.

Regardless of the arguable need for taxation, it's still legalized theft.  No matter how much good it does, theft is theft.  As such, everybody in the business of redistributing the stolen loot is "a little shady." That remains true even when you consider that some theft via taxation is deemed necessary for our current lawless and loveless society to survive.  Despite the need, taxation is still "theft."  I repeat this refrain only because most people refuse to call it what it actually is.

So let's get off the high horses and admit taxation is theft so that "shady" and "criminal" and "embezzle" terms can be thrown in the garbage where they belong.  

Money doesn't typically solve problems.  It more often creates them.  That's yet another thing most people still haven't figured out.  

Real change begins in the human heart, doing things for the good of one's fellow man without being compelled by force.  Only then will you see meaningful change in society.  For now, society fights fire with fire, calls one type of theft bad and another type of theft good.  It's a highly imperfect system we have, but most people brush it off by saying, "no society is perfect."  Of course, that's just a cover to maintain the status quo.  And so the infighting over stolen loot continues.

Deep breath.

Now we move on to the next news story.

Well, it's back to FREEDOM FRIES, I guess.