tundraboy

I don't know why app developers are under the illusion that if they use a different payments processor then they can get away with not paying  Apple or Google a commission.

Also, I don't think the Interstate Commerce Clause of the US Constitution would allow Illinois to enact the proposed law.  But I'm hardly an expert on the matter.

blastdoor said:

StrangeDays said:

Headline is faulty -- Apple is not "late" to AR. AR is a niche's niche with no mass market successes currently.

I agree -- the smartphone market was much more mature when the iPhone was announced than the AR market is today. 

If there's a market where Apple is as 'late' as they were with the iPhone, I'd say it's cars (with Tesla perhaps being an analog to Blackberry or Palm). 

The bigger issue in my mind is introducing an entirely new general purpose computing platform/paradigm without Steve Jobs. I think Apple can do it, but it's not a sure thing by any stretch. Since Jobs death, Apple has made a lot of money, made many great enhancements to their core products, and introduced some killer accessories. But they have not introduced an entirely new general purpose computing platform of the same magnitude as Mac or iPhone. AR has the potential to be that big of a deal. If Apple can pull that off, then it will be evidence that Apple University truly has succeeded in embedding Jobs' DNA in Apple. That would be a huge accomplishment, for Apple and human civilization 

The smartphone market was much more mature but it was heading down the wrong track (Blackberry-style small screen & physical keyboard) until iPhone showed everyone that full touch-screen was the way to go.

I don't know if there's going to be another general computing paradigm in the foreseeable future after the hand-held pocket computer.

Look, before the iPhone a lot of people, and by that I mean techies, pundits, science fiction writers, comic book authors, and even just regular folks, thought along the lines of "wouldn't it be just nice if we can have a device that we can carry around in our pocket that could do a lot of the things that a connected laptop does?"  There was more or less a consensus that a high-powered pocket computer was the next computing age do-it-all device.

Nowadays, there's no such aspirational gadget.  There is no obvious and unanimous predicate to the statement "Wouldn't it be nice if we can have a device that ...?"

Thing is, any such device has to be compatible with human cognitive and physical attributes.  It has to have a visual interface because that's our most highly developed sense, it has to be manipulable (because of the tool users' hands, fingers, and the concentration of nerve-endings therein), it can't be any smaller than a smartphone (in fact smartphones at one point overshot the ideal miniaturization level), and most important of all, it has to be able to take selfies.

The pocket computer with built in screen will probably be it for a long time.  Just like the codex settled in for the long haul after it beat out the scroll as the best large-capacity format for the written word.  (Which doesn't mean you can't have connected peripherals like smart glasses, biosensors, and smart microdrones that constantly hover over you and monitor your personal space.)

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

Apple is actually the first major company to target consumers with AR products. Apple has been dabbling with it for years on the iPhone and iPad. Microsoft has a commercial product but it still considered experimental with a very small number of units in the field. Google glass was more of a heads up display than true AR. The Meta Quest has some very rudimentary AR features starting to appear now but with its low resolution black and white cameras, it can't really do much (still a very fun feature to play with). Apple is late in VR but not AR. Quest is proving that it is XR that holds the most promise. Ghostly AR overlays won't have a long technological shelf life. It's a lot better to look through a pair of very high resolution cameras that can do things like see in the dark, zoom into distant objects, highlight objects of interest or even show something behind you.

If I remember correctly, a lot of these half-baked AR products were rushed to the market only after Tim Cook publicly declared that Apple is looking very seriously at AR.

AniMill said:

I’d be fine with a new iMac Pro at the same 27” like I currently have (2017 first release). But what I want is for Apple to release a simple Mac Mini Pro/Max. Just give me the 2021 MacBook Pro without a screen, but all the guts & glory from inside. That’s it. I should only cost 2/3 of the same spec’ed MacBook, so for a 64GB RAM w/ 4TB SSD it should cost ($4900 * 0.67) $3300. That would be an insane deal. Even at $4000, it would be a solid done deal.

please Apple - make my year.

They can build one but I've always maintained that they never will.  Because it will attract precisely the type of customer that Apple likes least:  The tech tinkerer who will try out all sorts of (off-brand/unsupported) mods and upgrades, use a disproportionate amount of free tech support, and very publicly complain about poor customer service or defective product build/design when his tinkering goes awry.  Apple might tolerate this customer if he buys a lot of big ticket items from Apple, but this customer is also extremely frugal and doesn't buy high margin Apple branded peripherals.

lkrupp said:

Well this will certainly spur the anti-capitalist members of Congress to double their efforts to break the company up. Someone posted elsewhere that $3T is more than the GDP of India.

Comparing a company's market cap against a country's GDP is an apples-to-oranges comparison.  The proper analog to GDP is a company's sales revenues.  Apple's sales for fiscal year 2021 is $366 billion.