mpantone

There's one advantage that American Express might have. I'm not sure how much influence the corporate parent has in other countries but there might be a possibility that Apple Card could be made available to cardholders in other countries.

Right now Apple Card is still a US-only card. Apple has never found a suitable issuing bank elsewhere to partner with. For sure the local regulations might make it prohibitive in some countries and Apple's list of demands might be too onerous for some market's lenders.

Of course, Americans overrepresent in terms of number of credit card transactions and total volume but there's still a very large percentage of prosperous countries who don't have Apple Card. I'd guesstimate that 10 countries on this planet account for 98% of the world's credit card transactions (in total sales and number of transactions).

That might be why American Express is still in the running. For sure, Apple would know how much is coming from Costco transactions and would have to weigh the loss of that specific revenue stream versus the possibility of expanding abroad.

It's important to reiterate that there are other cards that provide 2% or 3% cash back (the VISA issued by my brokerage offers 2% back for all merchants).

For sure AMEX acceptance at merchants has grown over the years especially in the past ten years. While it is easy to pick out a specific exception of a large retailer like Costco, I've noticed that I can use an AMEX with very few exceptions especially with smaller merchants. Ten years ago -- especially when travelling abroad -- this was not the case.

AMEX acceptance has also accelerated in post-pandemic international travel. Anyone who owns an AMEX card has other plastic as well so it's not like it's much of a barrier these days. If Apple and American Express negotiate to some sort of agreement I don't expect that to much impact on most purchases for most people.

I already have a VISA card that gives me back 2% everywhere and another one that gives me back 3% at a merchant category of my choice (I picked restaurants). So if Apple switched from MC to AMEX as payment processors, it really won't affect me. I have been an AMEX cardholder since the Nineties anyhow.

This is a very bizarre rumor, one that I find rather implausible.

As mentioned in the article, these three iPhones and the iPad mini 5th generation share the same A12 Bionic SoC. However the iPad mini 5th generation has only 3 GB RAM whereas the iPhone XS has 4 GB. (The iPhone XR also has 3 GB RAM.)

It makes no sense how an iPad with 25% less RAM will run iOS 19 adequately and the better appointed phone cannot.

It is unrealistic to think that Apple intended Time Machine to be the perfect backup solution for every single Mac on this planet.

Clearly it was designed to be a simple tool for consumer use. If it were too complicated Joe Consumer wouldn't use it and a Time Machine backup is better than no backups at all.

In the same way Apple Mail is good for personal/SOHO use, could handle something like a group list to the parents of your kid's softball team. But it's not the right tool to compose and e-mail your 20,000 subscriber list (there are longtime tools like MailChimp that take care of that).

Breaking news alert: the Photos app isn't Photoshop either.

One thing that is certain is Time Machine is a way better (free, included with the OS) backup solution than anything Windows has ever put out and I've used Windows since the 95/98/NT era side-by-side with Macs going back to late System 6 (early Nineties). And we know what a Linux pundit would say: "Just open a shell and fire up dd. It's way better than Time Machine." LOL

If you are doing professional work on your computer, prepare to pay extra for professional grade disk tools.

I've used Time Machine to do a complete OS restore. I've also seen Time Machine fail to do it as well. I have used it successfully to recover specific files/directories.

Remember that is something is worth backing up, it's worth backing up twice. That's an old system administrator's adage.

There are other disk management utilities out there if Time Machine isn't cutting it for you. Since Time Machine's feature set has been stagnant for 10+ years, you should know by now whether or not Time Machine is adequate for you/your organization's current needs.

One thing I will bet a buffalo nickel on: Apple will not be putting any effort into making Time Machine a more robust backup solution. Remember that it is part of the free basic macOS. Software engineering isn't free so Apple needs to be selective about how they allocate engineering talent to the various features of macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, whatever. Expecting them to develop Time Machine into a full fledged professional-grade backup system is naïve at best.

For sure Apple will stick more engineers on the Photos app or iMessage than Time Machine.

macOS Sonoma 14.7.5 is available for those on the older operating system as well as the newest Sequoia 15.4. I was offered both (Sequoia and Sonoma) on my Mac mini M2 Pro that was running 14.7.4.

There was also a Pro Video formats update as well as a standalone update.

As always Apple typically staggers the availability of software updates to lessen the load on their servers. If you don't see the update available right now, try again tomorrow or the day after. 

There is nothing new about this, it has been like this for years and years (long before the pandemic).