inkling

I like that Apple, unlike Google, did insert a gap to show that there's no bridge over that creek. That may be because their mapping vehicles drive more places. Apple Maps includes my alley. Google does not. That said, the gap isn't that obvious to someone viewing the map on a small iPhone screen. It'd be good if interrupts in a road were made much clearer, perhaps by a large red X. And routing shouldn't steer people on such routes.

People with RVs, moving vans and myself with tall ham antennas would be delighted if these apps added a set-vehicle-height feature that would warn them when they approach low bridges and overpasses. This video shows the results of being unaware. Moving van rental and trucking companies might be willing to fund some of the costs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USu8vT_tfdw

Here's a description of the U.S. military's drop testing.

https://www.howtogeek.com/769688/what-is-mil-spec-drop-protection/

There's a good illustration of the difference between ionizing radiation (as with x-rays) and radio waves (as with an iPhone). 

—Ionizing radiation has enough concentrated energy to break tiny things, such as the DNA in a cell. That can jumpstart a cancer. In physics the distinction between particles and waves is murky, but ionizing radiation behaves more like a particle and thus like a bullet fired from a gun. Just keep in mind that like a bullet the harm done done depends on where a particle hits. Most of the time getting an x-ray is not going to give you cancer. It doesn't hit where it damages a cell's DNA. And even then the risk is selective. For I time I cared for children getting early bone-marrow transplants. The dose they received was lethal, but it was lethal because it primarily killed their blood cells, which in their case had cancer. The bone marrow from a matched donor was then transfused in, allowing them to recover. So even massive doses of radiation only kill in certain ways.

—The energy in a radio transmission is more spread out and thus concentrates less energy at any specific point. It can warm food in a microwave oven but in can't break down DNA.  And the warmth you get from a watt or so of energy from an iPhone is quite slight, less than you'd get standing bareheaded in the sun. For cell phones, the waves are a few inches in length. That spreads out their energy, making it for all we know harmless. The limits for cell phones are arbitrary. People regularly work around radio power levels that are far higher without harm. I have worked around military radars ranging from four megawatts (S band) to ten megawatts (C band). That was years ago and I've yet to grow a second head.

A good illustration of that harmless of radio energy are the Chain Home radars the British used during WWII. To give the radars enough range, they used about the most energy that could be generated at the time, some 200,000 watts. The antennas did little to focus that energy other than send it toward the skies over France. That meant those working nearby on the radars received a incredible amount of radio energy. Friends suggested they might not be able to had kids. Someone I read who'd worked at a Chain Home station said that wasn't so, that after the war she and her fellow workers had lots of normal children.

This regulatory hysteria makes me glad I'm not living in France or Belgium. If my iPhone 12 Pro Max radiates a bit more power, then good. I'll get more range.

There's an interesting legal angle to these false reports. I was working at a private event when the building's fire alarm went off. By the time the fire department arrived, the staff had discovered the cause. Someone had been cleaning the dust from ventilation ducts and mistook a duct for the smoke detector for one. His spray had tripped the alarm. The fire department found the building's owner responsible for that false alarm and charged them several hundred dollars. 

That raises an interesting question. Could Apple be held at fault when an Apple watch makes a false report of a fall or accident?

In the US, terms of the Apple-Amazon agreement mean that resellers must either be authorized by Apple, or buy at least $2.5 million in refurbished inventory every 90 days. The latter must come directly from Apple or through a third party with over $5 billion in annual sales, typically meaning carriers and national retailers. It's not clear if the terms in Spain are the same.

So to be part of the Apple market via Amazon in the U.S. a retailer must buy almost a million dollars in refurb Apple gear a month or work through a third party with $5 billion in annual sales. That would exclude a lot of mid-sized companies, much less smaller businesses. If that's not colluding with Amazon to keep down competition, then what is? And of course for Spain those numbers would be adjusted down for the market size.

There's no need to feel sympathy for Apple. The company is reaping what it sowed when it and a number of other Silicon Valley tech companies use thed Double Irish scheme to evade European taxes. Collectively as the EU and individually as countries, the Europeans are going to get that money back or at the very least make Apple's life hell. And it is very easy to suspect that whatever attitude the average European has toward EU regulations, they're delighted by these moves. The taxes that Apple, Adobe, Google and others did not pay are taxes they as Europeans had to pay. And don't forget that with most of Apple's well-paying jobs located in either Cupertino or Austin, Apple isn't putting much money back into Europe.

If you've wondered what the Double Irish is, here's a good explanation.

https://techcrunch.com/2013/10/28/the-double-irish-could-be-endangered-preventing-companies-like-google-and-twitter-from-shedding-tax-liabilities/?guccounter=1