shamino

About

Username
shamino
Joined
Visits
42
Last Active
Roles
member
Points
75
Badges
0
Posts
412

Reactions

45Like7Informative

  • Apple Card vs Amazon Prime Rewards Visa: which credit card offers the most cash back and b...

    shaminoshamino
    Only, when you go to buy something on Amazon and you're using its card, you will be offered a discount right away. At checkout time, you can choose to reduce the price by using this cashback figure. All credit card experts say no, though, don't do it. Pay the full price and let your cashback accrue through the month.
    Why?  Who are these "all credit card experts"?  Please provide a link to an article from one of these experts because I couldn't find one after 30 minutes of web searching.
    dpbruno said:
    Does the Amazon card give you credit when you buy gas from a warehouse club ? Do you get 1% or 2%...all credit cards that I know of only give 1-to 1.5%...except buying at costco with their credit card.
    The Costco card is one of the best deals these days.  Assuming you are already paying for Costco membership (of course), you get:

    4% back from gasoline purchases (any gas station, not just Costco) for the first $3,000 per year
    3% back from travel and restaurants
    2% back from purchases from Costco (on-line and in-store)
    1% back from everything else

    The only downside to the Costco card is that your rewards are not cash back, but an annually-issued voucher that can only be redeemed on purchases from Costco.  But that's not a problem for me, because my family shops there a lot.

    In my daily life, I use the Costco card for gas, travel, restaurants and Costco purchases.  For everything else (the 1% tier), I use by bank's card, which is 1% back (in the form of points) on everything, because I can redeem those points for gift cards from lots of different stores (including Amazon and Apple).
    GeorgeBMac said:
    I've caught two separate cases of fraud that way that I would not have caught otherwise.  The first was a $25 charge for gas at a BP.  Just reviewing a statement 30 days later I would not have questioned.  But, from the text I knew something was up.  And, when I called the card company they told it had been made 300 miles away.  (It also helps with Apple's "Family Sharing" since I have the Apple Alert turned off.)
    Another good thing is to log on to the card's web site on a regular basis.  I do so every night as a part of managing my household finances (record the day's expenses, check web sites for all credit cards, check/schedule payments from the bank's web site, etc.)  Fraudulent charges don't happen very often, but when they do, I see them that day and have plenty of time to dispute them before the statement arrives.

    I also make a point of retaining all my receipts from credit purchases until the statement arrives.  I reconcile each month's statement against those receipts and question anything I don't recognize.  It take a bit of time, but it's important because mistakes may go ignored otherwise.  Like one time where a restaurant accidentally (I assume accidentally) mis-typed a gratuity, making it $10 higher than it should have been - when I saw the statement didn't match my receipt, I was immediately able to call the restaurant and get them to fix it.

    The only real pain in the neck here is (of course) Amazon, which will often (but not always) merge the charges for separate orders that ship together or create separate charges for a multi-item order where the items ship separately - making the invoices (printed at the time of purchase) not match the credit statement and forcing me to log-on to Amazon to review the final invoices.
    watto_cobra

  • Justice Department warns Oscar group against blocking streaming services like Apple TV+

    shaminoshamino
    Total government overreach.

    Why should the government have any say at all over what kinds awards a private industry organization wants to give to itself?

    Are they now going to tell the local pre-school that they can't give gold stars to kids because kids from other schools can't also get them?
    dkhaley

  • MacBook keyboard failures could end with introduction of glass panel keyboards

    shaminoshamino
    So, in summary, Apple admits that their latest keyboard design is bad.  And in response, they're going to introduce one that's even worse.  That's a great way to make customers want to buy your product.

    The low-travel keyboards Apple introduced in the MacBook Air are minimally acceptable.  The butterfly keyboards of the current laptops are terrible for anyone who touch-types, because the key travel is almost non-existent.  A glass keyboard?  Reducing key travel to zero?  Absolutely not.

    I tried the idea of touch-typing on glass years ago when the iPad was introduced.  It was terrible then, and sticking it in the body of a laptop isn't going to make it any better.

    What's the solution?  Very simple.  Force every Apple employee (designers, developers, marketing, sales and especially executives) to use nothing but Apple equipment for their jobs.  No third-party parts of any kind.  If they hate their keyboards then maybe they'll start to realize how bad the design really is.  If they find that the latest software deletes all the features they rely on to do their jobs, then they'll tell the developers to put them back.
    henrybay

  • A future 13-inch iPad Pro or MacBook Pro could have this newly-developed 8K OLED panel

    shaminoshamino
    Anyone who thinks 1,062ppi (or even 663ppi) in a display is important needs to think again.

    Go and test some laser printers (go to a store that has demonstrator models if you don't have access to any) and print a B&W text test page on a 1200dpi printer, a 600dpi printer and a 300dpi printer.

    While many people may be able to see differences between 300dpi and 600dpi, most will have to hold the paper a few inches from their eyes in order to notice.  I doubt very many (if any) people will be able to see any significant difference between 600dpi and 1200dpi without using a magnifying glass.

    And that's with sharp black-on-white text.  When you're dealing with a computer screen, where there are all kinds of shades of color and anti-aliasing algorithms, those differences are going to become even harder to see.

    Once the pixels are smaller than your eye can discern, additional resolution only adds cost and power consumption - it doesn't make the image look any better.
    rcfa

  • Mac mini 2018 Review: Apple's mightiest mini yet

    shaminoshamino
    sirozha said:
    I believe that the quad-core i3 CPU in this Mac Mini has only four threads instead of eight threads; that is there’s only one thread per core. Please confirm that.

    If this is the case, the multi-threading performance of this i3 CPU should be inferior to the multithreading performance of the 2012 Mac Mini’s quad-core i7, which has eight threads (two threads per core). 
    You are correct.  The i3 and i5 models are not hyperthreaded so their 4 and 6 cores, respectively, translate to 4 and 6 threads.  The i7 model is hyperthreaded, so those 6 cores give you 12 threads.

    But comparing it against previous generation minis is not reasonable, because you're looking at many generations of CPU evolution.  The new mini uses 8th-gen processors.  The previous minis (2014) use 4th-gen processors.  And the 2012 model uses a 3rd-gen processor.  Even with half the number of threads, I would expect that 8th-gen i3 to outperform a 3rd-gen i7.
    MisterKitnetmage