macgui

Waterfield kit is a little pricey but it's not surprising given it's made right here is San Francisco and not oversees.

I've had a few Waterfield bags over the years and they are first rate, very well made. I don't recall having a leather option for anything I've owned. That bag looks great.

$179 for a high quality leather bag to protect a minimum $3500 item does seem all that bad. The smallish design is a big plus to me, and removing the headband as arduous as it may be for some, seems easy enough for me. This is considering that it's a travel case as the article says and not a daily use storage case.

chasm said:

With all respect to the people behind Shazam, I don’t like this idea (I assume it can be turned off or not made the default behaviour).

Open mics continuously picking up sound could be innocuous, or it could give Shazam’s clients and advertising partners a leg up. I’d want to closely examine their new T&C before implementing that feature.

I'm good with opening it every time I need it. Saying "Siri name that tune" works fine. Shazam doesn't need to lurk in the background.

Apple should work on improving it. Shazam can identify popular music pretty well, but it's given me problems with jazz and classical. IIRC it used to claim you could hum, sing, or whistle a tune and it would identify it. Obviously there are some variables that would dictate how successful that exercise would be, but I've never seen or heard it work.

Anyway I imagine Apple would allow the Always Lurking feature to be turned off. But Apple being Apple, I wouldn't be surprised if it was an all or nothing feature to be modified when the backlash crescendos. 

Alex and Siri have both started responding to overheard conversation without their respective triggers or anything that sounded similar, as best as I recall. So I'll just say NO to Shazam lurking.

Regarding Marvel's What if... series, I've never liked it. It strikes me as just another way for Marvel to wring every last cent out of their flagging franchises with minimal effort and investment in creating new great content.

And even so, if they make some bespoke APV video I'm headed to the nearest Apple Store ASAP. Being able to have an IMAX-like experience in your living room without a 100' OLED screen would be a thing of beauty.

sflagel said:

Kuminga said:

sflagel said:

I do not have a VisionPro, but maybe someone who does, can comment: these "immersive experiences" are just gimmicks, no? Impressive gimmicks, but no more.

Black Berry users in 2008 said IPhone was a gimmick…

some people and companies are visionaries, some are not…. No offense 

A better analogy than the Blackberry are the apps on early iPhones that faked drinking beer out of a glass: they were gimmicks. 

Your analogy sucks. Those two are nothing alike. Until you actually experience one of these and can report how unimpressed they and you are, you've got no credibility. Demoing what the AVP can do is important to customers and developers and short immersive video "gimmicks" seem to be a logical way to do this, immersive being the operative word.

Any video device can display video, it's in the name. Not every displayed video is immersive. This is why I go to the movies and don't sit 75' back from the screen. Immersion for many is the difference between watching something on TV or being involved in a thrilling or joyful experience.

I suppose Apple could wait for some studio to make an actual movie, plot and/or character driven, and immersive to show off what the AVP can do. Or they can make some immersive shorts in the meantime. 

Given the price, short content won't be a big sales driver, but it will help dispel some internet chatter about "another Apple toy". Nothing gimmicky about that.

I put repairing a Pencil in the same category as repairing AirPods — disposable. This applies to every other manufacturers small bits and bobs. It just doesn't make economic sense to build this little stuff to be repairable. Yes it's probably possible. The products would probably be larger and certainly more costly to purchase.

These little bits should be recycled but repairable/repaired? I don't think so, Tim.