mikethemartian

mpantone said:

Pandora was really the first mainstream streaming service, it beat out Spotify by a few months. My memory is hazy but Spotify had very large holes in its music catalog for the first few years compared to Pandora. So I ended up using Pandora and waited a couple of years for Spotify to catch up filling out their catalog.

It's also worth pointing out that MySpace let you stream a few songs from musicians' profile pages. This was great for new artist discovery before the streaming music services like Pandora and Spotify existed. It was one of the first social networks and eventually went out of fashion because they didn't monetize it enough to drive growth.

Apple was able to push spatial audio as a category because they made their own audio devices. Once again, Alan Kay's "people who are serious about software make their own hardware" mantra comes into place. By controlling the whole stack iPhone-iTunes/Apple Music-AirPods Apple was able to take spatial audio beyond the gimmicky beginnings to something else.

Once again this shows that Apple really does consider itself a software company at heart. A company whose software and services run best on their proprietary hardware.

9secondkox2 said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

9secondkox2 said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

9secondkox2 said:

Interesting article. 

As we’ve seen in this admin, things are always in motion and never stuck in the mud. 

So we will see how these deals turn out for the long term benefit of America. 

But one thing is for certain: something msjor had to be done. Constantly losing ground to other nations was not sustainable. Sure, you might get a cheaper iPhone today, but you may not even be able to get an iPhone tomorrow. 

I’ll take long term over short term any day. 

Except, there's no long-term gain to be had, and just more wealth shifting up away from the middle class to the upper on this path.

If he really wanted to restore manufacturing to the US, he'd fund education to the maximum extent possible. We do not have the manufacturing manpower base or educated populace needed to do this!

He and his party are doing the opposite.

"Things are always in motion" is not a good thing for international trade relations or US businesses that don't know what to expect, or budget for, on a day-to-day basis.

It’s been 5 months. And the tarriffs less than that. And deals still in motion. Can hardly conclude what you’re saying from that. 

Is it possible it doesn’t work as hoped? Sure. We live in an uncertain and imperfect world full of people acting in bad faith, etc. but is it worth a shot? 100%. The alternative is to continue to decline. One way it’s much closer to certainty of success is if one group of people stop attacking the guy every time he breathes, and gets behind what’s obviously a noble goal, things would go much smoother and have a better outcome. 

Manpower is fully available. Have you looked at the unemployment rates? Education is a matter of training. Unfortunately, much of what passes for education today has little to do with reading, writing, and arithmetic. That’s thanks to a partisan led federal education department. The states do a better job. Almost anyone can learn how to do repetitive things, no matter how detailed. The key is starting. Sure it takes time. But it never happens unless you start. A lot of unemployed people today would love to have these jobs. 

Things being in motion refers to the agility of the current admin and their near unprecedented ability to pivot in an instant, constantly evaluating and executing. Not just rolling with something bevause they already were heading in that direction. If it’s not advancing favorably, the smart thing to do is pivot. And keeping things in motion also helps guard against letting bad faith heads of state pin them down to bad deals. 

China is tough. Bevause of the usa pressing the “easy button” decades ago, we have built up an enemy into being a major force on the world stage. It will not be easy to wean off of the “cheap” Chinese manufacturing, but it will be the wise thing to get started on. If not, the ISA will just keep declining until it’s no longer the superpower it has been. If the answer is not what the President is doing, it’s certainly not also the status quo - or worse, pouring even more money into our adversaries - or even other economies in general. 

Bold and italics mine. This is a ridiculous assessment of what this administration does. Fire, Ready, Fire, with no "aim" step and a "ready, fire" sequence out of order is no way to run a global trade program, much less a lemonade stand. There's no plan. There's just a hope that this will work, and design to shift money up and out of the middle class.

I'm with you on "China is tough." But, that's about all in this few paragraphs that I agree with. High tech US manufacturing that the CHIPS act started is not going well, and that's been years. The US has been cutting funding to education in a bipartisan effort for half a century. No education effort. No "Almost anyone can learn how to do repetitive things, no matter how detailed" effort.

Look up "No child left behind" and where we are now, and which administration started the requirement to educate for tests, not for learning, and tell me it's a partisan-led federal education department. The states do not do a better job, and there's no realistic way you can say that.

Penalizing US businesses and therefore US consumers to do this isn't the way to do it. Not funding education and further cutting for the umpteenth time with the big beautiful bill is not the way to do it.

Could it work? Maybe. Is it likely to? No.

It's more likely to crush small businesses in favor of the big ones, and drive the middle class deeper into debt.

While I tend to agree on msny of your other topics, It’s obvious we disagree fundamentally on most of not all things related to the current administration. 

I’ll agree to disagree. As far as who turns out to be right? We shall see. 

sflagel said:

it is ludicrous for a car manufacturer to give Apple access to all its car systems, which will invariably lead to Apple becoming the gatekeeper to the entire tech stack of a car. This in addition to the branding impact. CarPlay is not the end of evolution, for example, the music app is well on CarPlay. Audi music controls are much better.