rols

macxpress said:

So does this mean prices in France for services will raise 3%? If so, how does this help the customer? 

Pretty sure that's exactly what it's going to mean. This is how most corporations, Apple included, price their products. Within a margin of error the price for an iPhone is the US price converted at something like the current exchange rate plus local taxes and any other tariffs. When Apple works out what's going to get taxed and what generates that revenue, they'll add the 3% on. So France just took more money out of its citizens' pockets. 

To the poster earlier in the thread who complained that ever increasing taxation is a symptom of lazy and greedy government, couldn't agree more. The levels of taxation almost everywhere, and the numerous places along the chain they are charged (income, sale, interest on already taxed income, gains on things bought with already-taxed income and then death duties) have become totally usurious.

 The company in 2017 updated its App Store Guidelines to reflect a change regarding code bases and templates that effectively requires developers to create a new $99-per-year account for each client app.

That stretches the truth somewhat. You can release as many apps on one developer account as you like. If you have 20 clients and write each an app, one account. What Apple clamped down on were template apps where the developer writes an app for Joe's pizza and then sells it to Jane's pizza as well by changing the artwork and the address and then goes on to Bob's pizza, Frank's pizza etc etc putting out the same app re-skinned for dozens of clients. Why did Apple do this? Because they don't want lowest common denominator apps which are really mostly just adverts for businesses clogging up the store, they want imaginative apps that are distinctive. It's also true that most of those apps were free, so one developer for $99 a year was able to put multiple (cr)apps in the store which Apple had to host and for which they would receive nothing. 

They did actually roll back part of those rules and say you can have a template app but the client themselves must submit it so yes in that case, each client needs an account. $99 a year is Apple's charge to host your advertising app .. and Apple also offered free developer accounts for non-profits, churches etc to ensure they had an avenue to have an appstore presence. 

I'm pretty sure this one gets tossed. 

M68000 said:

Why does there “need” to be new phone models every year now?  Not just from Apple but others.  Seems like a bit of a frantic pace.

But when Apple started making phones most other manufacturers were releasing new models every other month. Apple was criticised then for only coming out with one model a year, all the analysts were frothy predicting their failure because nobody would wait a whole year for a new model when <insert name of failed phone manufacturer here> was coming out with something fresh constantly. 

Looks like Apple got the pace about right after all. 

Actually, like their other products, Apple really comes out with a new model every 3 or 4 years, in the interim they just spec tweak and upgrade as the technology becomes available. The last 'new' model was the X, guess we'll see the next 'new' model in 2020 or 2021. 

sdbryan said:

OK, but when?

and when outside the US

wlym said:

"Rather than Adobe trying to hype up the Healing Brush as the reason to pay for an all-new Photoshop"… Except Adobe's now doing something worse, with little recourse for subscribers: pushing out half-baked, buggy software, with new "features" that few are asking for while very often ignoring the bugs each new release adds to the list. Back in the days when I could buy Photoshop (and Illustrator and Indesign), I could wait out a buggy release or ignore one whole "upgrade" entirely. Now, if a colleague or customer automatically updates their version(s) of Adobe CC, I have to as well or I won't be able to open their files (Photoshop is more forgiving than AI or ID in this regard). In general, the "features" are getting less and less useful (Photoshop reversing SHIFT to constrain proportions is one egregious example) as well but I imagine Adobe needs to offer a bullet point list of "new!" every now and then to justify the expensive subscription. I guess they have little to lose as they have a monopoly on industry essential design software for the foreseeable future. So, after years of paying Adobe for a subscription, the moment I decide not to pay anymore, I can no longer open a single file I created in their software. How is this fair? Why are you cheering?

I thought this was a fair synopsis of many of the things wrong with Adobe's subscription model and by inference a lot of other subscription models too. I refused to purchase Adobe CC subscription because it would lock me into paying forever to continue to be able to open files I'd created when I did have said subscription. Adobe used to have to actually improve their software so that people would upgrade at least every now and again, and I didn't mind that. If I didn't want shiny new feature X and hadn't bought a new camera, I could just use stick with the version I had until I did. Now if you want Adobe you have to subscribe (apart from Photoshop Elements which can still be bought) and their incentive for improving the software is diminished.