shamino

AppleInsider said:

...Fitbit Pay, an Apple Pay competitor which is still expanding U.S. bank support but should work anywhere NFC payments are accepted. Apple Pay often requires specific support by merchants.

Let's correct this bit of misinformation.  Apple Pay uses the exact same technology used by contactless cards.  Which is why so many merchants make you sign the PIN pad even though ApplePay is authenticating the user via his fingerprint.

There are some merchants that accept contactless cards but reject Apple Pay.  These merchants (or their banks) have installed explicit software designed to look for and disable Apple Pay.  Usually for political/ideological reasons (don't want to support Apple, wants to promote a competing mobile wallet tech, etc.)  Convincing a merchant to remove their Apple Pay-disabling firmware is not "requiring specific support", no matter how many press releases to the contrary the merchant may make.

ihatescreennames said:

Are there places that accept NFC payments that do not accept Apple Pay?

There are.  And every time I've looked closely, I've found that the merchant (or bank) in question is an investor in some competing mobile payment technology and is deliberately looking for, and disabling, Apple Pay thinking it will somehow boost popularity of the tech they are promoting.

WalMart is one of the worst examples.  To be fair, they are blocking all contactless/NFC transactions, not just Apple Pay, but they definitely fall into this category.  They and 14 other companies explicitly decided to block mobile payments in order to promote "CurrentC", their own mobile payment system (which requires granting the service direct access to you bank account) that after 4 years of vaporware was shutdown and abandoned.  Today, WalMart still won't support NFC, but is instead trying to convince customers to make their in-store purchases through the WalMart app, which doesn't work anywhere else.

Why not just accept NFC payments?  Because WaMart's CEO has some personal vendetta against Visa and MasterCard and is looking for some excuse to get rid of them, so they are using passive-aggressive BS to try and make customers pay with other mechanisms (like direct debits from checking accounts) instead.

tundraboy said:

Headline is inaccurate. The headphones did not explode. The batteries did.

That's a critical piece of information that this article failed to mention.  Since you mentioned it, I did a Google search and found that I believe to be the original article from when the incident actually happened: http://www.atsb.gov.au/newsroom/news-items/2017/battery-explosion-mid-flight/

They clearly state that the batteries are what exploded.  In which case, I agree - Apple has nothing to do with this.  And it has nothing to do with "approved" brands.  Most batteries - even no-name ones - don't explode.  The fact that these did means that they were manufactured very poorly.

They are the ones who need to be sued, but (as another reader pointed out) it may be impossible if they are a fly-by-night operation in a foreign country.

wwchris said:

Man, I just wish Apple would add mouse support for iOS. At that point, I might actually use my iPad for content creation.

If you require a keyboard and mouse, what is the advantage of an iPad over a similar-sized laptop (MacBook or MacBook Air)?  Are there specialized iOS apps you need that don't have Mac equivalents?

This trend is interesting.  Especially that they are reviving an otherwise discontinued series (6) with a memory configuration never before shipped.

If they were just interested in a low-cost model for these markets, it seems to me that they would be better off selling the SE (maybe a special build with 32G storage) instead of reviving the 6.  Especially when you consider that a 32G SE could be made with the same assembly lines and tools as the other SE models, while a 6 would require re-introducing the (presumably dismantled) tooling for the 6 in the factories.

On the other hand, if these are being built in new factories (like in India), then maybe it makes more sense - they can equip the factories with the tooling for the 6 that would otherwise end up getting recycled.  Whereas they would need to produce more tools to make SE's in those new factories.

SpamSandwich said:

shamino said:

ultimately cost-cutting is more important than freedom, no matter how many corporate press releases claim otherwise.

https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/

I believe that would be one of those self-serving press releases.

And nothing there says they won't cave to pressure from the Chinese government when told that they must avoid advertising in newspapers that are critical of the Chinese government.

Just like how they pull apps from the App Store when the Chinese government tells them to.