davidw

avon b7 said:

chutzpah said:

avon b7 said:

headfull0wine said:

freeassociate2 said:

person said:

Do credit card companies make it so you can use the nfc chips in their cards work with other companies?
I think not

Yes, they do. Do some research, please. 

I worked in a Canadian bank for 17 years. There’s no way they’d let the NFC chip on their Visa card put a transaction through for another Bank’s Visa. 

Apple does allow this. But it’s only under  their terms, with their privacy and security model. And yes, they take a commission for it and don’t pass personal information about the transaction back to the bank. Good! That’s how I, the customer, want it.  And that’s why I chose to set up my card in Apple Pay. And my bank is still making a ton of money from it. I am the customer to the merchant, the bank, and Apple. I WANT it this way. 

It's fine that you WANT it that way but it isn't fine that that gets applied to everyone.

My wife doesn't want it that way. She wants to use her bank card through her bank's wallet system just like I do on my Android phone. 

She can't because Apple doesn't allow it. 

IMO, Apple should make its NFC setup available to banking institutions, inform users of what the options are and let consumers decide. 

I can't for the life on me imagine why this is something that a person would want to do.  Why do you want to use other wallet apps?  What difference does it make?

Apple wedges itself in as a middleman, prevents competition and takes a cut out of every transaction. 

My wife detests that aspect and refuses to use Apple Pay as a result. 

That, among other things that she has had to deal with over the years, is seriously wearing down her leanings towards iPhone. 

So in the end, that bank CC that your wife won't use in Apple Pay because she detest that that bank must pay Apple a small fee for each transaction, might end up paying Apple a fee  regardless. Either for the use of Apple NFC infrastructure or being in Apple pay. So she might as well switch to Android now. 

cropr said:

AppleInsider said:

Finally, Google calls RCS an industry standard. Which it isn't, not even close. Google hasn't even adopted RCS across all of its disparate messaging platforms.

To set a few things straight:  SMS is a telecommunication standard, defined in 1986 as part of the GSM standards, and since 1999 managed by 3GPP, which is a standardization body  that manages all the mobile telecommunication standards from 2G up to 5G.  Because SMS is a telecommunication standard (and not a data communication standard), it has some telecom characteristics: it is device agnostic (it is sufficient to swap the sim card to a new device), it can be legally intercepted (like all telecom services) and the telecom operator can charge for SMS messages.   It took a while before SMS messages could be sent between phones of different telecom operators in different countries, but eventually the SMS standard was universal 

Every vendor of a mobile phone (smart or dumb) must implement the SMS standard, as SMS is a compulsory part of the 3GPP defined standards.  If SMS were not implemented, the telecom regulator in a country might refuse a mobile phone to become active.  (No mobile vendor ever tried it, but this option exists)

All current messaging applications like iMessage and Whatsapp, use their own data communication protocol on the data channel in a mobile phone. For me this a sad thing as as Whatsapp message cannot be sent to a iMessage receiver or vice versa.

As part of 5G standards, the 3GPP has defined a successor of SMS and this new standard is called RCS.  RCS is again a telecom standard, which means that again it is device agnostic (it could be implemented on dumb phones) , legal intercept must be possible and the telecom operator can charge for the use of RCS.   So Apple Insider is wrong when it claims that RCS is not an industry standard, but that is about all there is to say.  RCS is not so popular as the telecom operators and Google want it to be, and only popular standards make sense. 

Currently RCS is not a compulsory protocol of 5G networks.  If it were the case, no iPhone would be allowed on the any 5G network.

SMS is no longer the most used message standard for person to person communication, but it still very useful for system to person communication like for the 2nd factor of 2 factor authentication.  The fact that a telecom protocol is used as the 2nd factor (and not a data communication protocol) enhances considerably the security, even when we realize that SMS is not that secure at all.    Migrating this kind of application to RCS makes a lot of sense.  This is perhaps the main reason Apple should support RCS in the future.

That's not technically correct.  Dumb phones can receive  RCS messages because RCS defaults to SMS, if the phone can not process the RCS message. But one can not send messages in RCS with a dumb phone because  RCS requires either data or Wifi to access the internet. While SMS only requires the carrier own cellular network. 

JP234 said:

patdiddy said:

Steve Jobs was a true genius. The only problem with the iMac’s early debut was that nobody had really dealt with Ethernet or WiFi at the time, in fact, the internet was just really starting to become a thing. 

Had it debuted with the iPod, Steve Jobs might have had the best way to get digital music, and saved apple completely.

He did save Apple completely. Numbers don't lie. What am I missing here?

radarthekat said:

williamlondon said:

Lest you forget who are the masters and who are the slaves...

I guess I could agree with all of that, if he hadn’t then gone against the key points that employee compensation is excessive, with mean and average salaries being too high.  The dude says all this and then takes for himself more than $18,000 of the savings FROM EACH of the 12,000 laid off employees. 

Look, CEOs get paid 300x the average worker because the decisions and actions they take have an outsized effect on the success or failure of the enterprise.  That’s fair, as long as those decisions and actions are truly in the best long-term interest of the business, which kinda includes the employees who make it go.  

It may well be in the best interest of Google to downsize as he indicated in his letter.  But when this type of action is necessary, or when belt-tightening of any kind is needed and implemented, you expect that the magnifying effect of CEO compensation would show itself in an accommodation to the adverse effects on the business and its employees.  You get the 300x when your decisions benefit all, and you should take a hit along with everyone when you have to reign the company back in after excesses or when exogenous conditions warrant belt-tightening.   We saw Tim Cook take a pay cut, even though Apple didn’t have a big lay off, but Apple and its employees went through a tough time like many companies did in the last three years.  Cook probably didn’t need to take a cut, but he did.  And he certainly didn’t take a huge raise.   

There's too many here that are misinformed about Pichai $226M compensation package mainly because of AI not so accurate headline. Pichai may have gotten his compensation package after Google's mass layoffs in 2023, but his $226M compensation package did not include 2023.  

Pichai $226M compensation was for his 3 years as CEO in 2020, 2021 and 2022. Here are the number of employees for Google during those 3 years.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/number-of-employees

You see any mass layoffs for the years this compensation package was based on? If a team of software engineers were awarded a bonus for doing an outstanding job in finishing a project on time, one should not dock any of that bonus because they happen to be screwing up on their next project. Right? 

And by the way, Cook compensation for 2020, 2021 and 2022 came to about $215M for those three years. (about $16M in 2020, $100M in 2021 and $99M 2022). So far,  Cook took a 40% pay cut for 2023 only. Pichai might also get a pay cut for 2023, though maybe involuntary, (unlike Cook). But we won't find out until 2025, when his compensation package is due for the next 3 years. That's if he's still CEO and under the same contract. 


If one wants to blame Pichai being over compensated (for the past 3 years) because of Google's employment problems, one should be blaming him for maybe hiring too many employees in the past 3 years, not for laying off employees in 2023. 

As a long time AAPL investor, I think Cook is well worth the $215M he has gotten in compensation for the past 3 years and was definitely "under paid" in 2020 (at $15M).  And he will be an absolute bargain in 2023 (at $50M).  Even though there were enough AAPL shareholders that approved of Cooks voluntary pay cut for 2023, to have the board approve it (though the shareholders votes were non binding.) This is not to say that Pishai is well worth the $226M in compensation he got for the past 3 years. For sure GOOG stocks has under performed when compared to AAPL. But GOOG investors still had a some-what decent gain for the past 3 years.  

https://www.netcials.com/stock-comparison-nasdaq/AAPL-GOOG/

I look at my AAPL investment since Cook took over (in 2012) and I can't complain about his compensation over the years. All I had to do to be greatly compensated for my AAPL shares under Cook leadership, was to not sell AAPL. And yet, there are people that would say that I've been over "compensated" and I should be paying more than the 15% / 20% in long term capital gain tax (Fed), for gains I did not "deserve". (Which BTW, CA taxes all my gains as ordinary income.)  


BTW- This is also some-what not accurate. The article stated ......... "Pichai's base salary is $2 million, and he gets $6 million in personal security in 2022. That's being contrasted to Apple CEO Tim Cook, which took a 40% pay cut in 2022." ........  Cook did not take a 40% pay cut in 2022. In 2022, he agreed to take a 40% pay cut for 2023. So Cook 40% pay cut in 2023 should not be compared to any compensation Pichai got for 2022. If anything, Cook 2022 $99M in compensation (and $3M in base salary) should have been used for comparison. 

zoetmb said:

Absolutely ridiculous.  Would a CEO who was offered say $50m not take the job if it was $25m?   How much wealth does any one person need?  No one should make $250m even if it is stock.  No one. 

His claiming he feels terrible about layoffs is about as good as politicians who offer “thoughts and prayers” after mass shootings.  

IMO (and I’ve been a senior exec, although not a CEO) is that if a company has to layoff employees, it’s a failure on the part of management.   Even aside from the issue of poor management leading to revenue declines, one should always be able to find something else for those employees to do, like building a new product or service.