zoetmb

StrangeDays said:

If there isn’t stolen copied code, it’s just an idea and not implementation. Patents aren’t suited to vague software ideas. Implemented software ideas are code, and code is protected by copyright. Thus, software patents are bunk. 

Not all software patents are bunk, but these ridiculously general ones like "look up data in a database" and "present a prioritized search result" are.

I was recently involved in a lawsuit where another patent troll was suing a whole bunch of companies who had products that had a list of indexes one could search.   I was involved because I accomplished that back in 1996, so what I did was prior art, but there were certainly others who did it before me.    

The patent offices have really screwed up in this regard.   Apple had to pay Amazon to use "one click ordering".   That never should have been necessary as it's just an idea, and an obvious idea at that.   

Besides, if this company really wants to claim that the Siri implementation is based on their patents, someone should sue them for incompetence. 

anton zuykov said:

fastasleep said:

toddzrx said:

fastasleep said:

rcfa said:

It’s amazing that those decrying socialism the loudest are the same people enthusiastically dishing out handouts to corporations.

So much this.

Not so much this.  The statement makes no sense.  Think about it.

Compelling argument.

anton zuykov said:

fastasleep said:

rcfa said:

It’s amazing that those decrying socialism the loudest are the same people enthusiastically dishing out handouts to corporations.

So much this.

What is really amazing is that some NPSc do not understand that a tax cut is not a handout. 

Let me clarify it: 

HANDOUT - is when you do not own the money, that someone else generated, yet you ended up getting the money (for some obscure reason), despite having NO connection to the chain of a producer <----> a consumer .

TAX CUT - is when you actually made those money as a person/company by generating value, and then the gov-t allows you to KEEP MORE of your earned money, by taxing your income to a lesser extent.

Do you understand the difference?

It's not just tax cuts, but billions in subsidies aren't handouts? Okay, great, thanks for the etymology lesson — but what's your fucking point?

The people decrying socialism are mad about what they perceive to be handouts, whether it's tax breaks or other subsidies. This isn't any different, except it's being applied to a fucking profitable international mega-corporation that absolutely 100% does not need these subsidies, whereas we have people in our country working full time and struggling to stay above water. Foxconn should pay every cent for what they need to set up shop in that state. It's bullshit.

My point is that incentives =/= handouts. Your mistake (as a socialist) is to think that you or someone else is entitled to the fruits of another person’s/company labor. You are not, and as such, you misconstrued tax incentives for “hand outs”.
That is what my (i quote) “fucking point” is.
Another mistake economically illiterate, like you, often make is thinking that by taxing a corporation, you are taxing that corporation. In reality, that tax ALWAYS gets passed along to the consumer. Corporations themselves always shift the tax burden to the end of the chain - a consumer and they rarely care what the real tax burden is, as long as everyone else has to pay it. So, of course the irony here, is that you scream that companies need to be taxed more, while in reality what you are advocating is that you and other fools will be the ones picking up the tab for that “fair corporate tax”.
IQ curve is a bitch when your are in the middle of the curve, or to the left of the median/mode, I suppose...

IMO, your views are as jumbled as the people you're responding to and certainly, much nastier.   

It's an over-simplification to believe that taxes always result in higher prices because there are competitive factors at work.  And taxes are a small portion of most companies' cost structures and that's when they actually pay the taxes - many Fortune 500 companies like Amazon don't.   So there is not a direct relationship between taxing companies and higher priced products.   You act is if every penny in taxes is indirectly paid for by consumers.   Furthermore, since most companies are into maximizing profits, there is no evidence whatsoever that removing their tax burden would result in lower prices - they would just use it to increase profitability as the recent corporate tax breaks largely proved.   Hiring went up only modestly and salaries didn't really increase at all. 

You argue that we're not entitled to the fruits of someone else's labor, but infrastructure that supports the ability of companies to earn profits is built with tax dollars as are the schools, roads and health systems (be it what they may) that enable the labor supply.   So companies shouldn't be entitled to the fruits of my labors either, if I don't work for them, but they are, because it benefit society as a whole.   How well would companies do if there was no interstate highway system or airports everywhere?    

Having said that, sometimes, practicality has to play a role.  So even though I'm a leftist and emotionally, I didn't like the idea of the government giving any corporation a tax break, sometimes it's the smart thing to do.  

Emotionally, I was opposed to New York State giving Amazon tax breaks - a company that is highly profitable and somehow doesn't manage to pay any Federal income taxes, but I think the people of NYC were wrong for keeping Amazon from building a headquarters in Long Island City.  Amazon was promising 25,000 $150K jobs.   That would have been $3.75 billion in annual compensation, which generates about $21 billion in total economic activity.   I think it was well worth the trade-off.  I understand the fears of people who lived there - that the area would have become gentrified and housing costs could have skyrocketed, but much of LIC is already gentrified and unlike other regions, assuming Amazon mostly hired from the local area, people would have commuted to work just like they do today, so it wouldn't have necessarily increased the demand for housing in LIC.    And even if 20% of those workers came from outside the area and moved here, another 5000 people in NYC is not really noticeable.   5000 more people in a place like Seattle (population 730,000) has huge impact.

ireland said:

I’ve recently suspected Apple never revealed TV because they had no real video content play. Seems like that will change in the future. Besides being full integrated, I wonder how Apple differentiates this TV product, when announced. Obviously gonna be OLED. And what does Apple charge for their video service, and how do they justify its expense? For magazines, Apple says you get access to over 300 magazines for 10 bucks a month. For songs, 60 million. For video? 24+ TV shows and possibly seven movies a year, for perhaps 10 bucks a month? Really? Surely must be more to this story. Disney+ comes out for 7 bucks a month. It will go up in price in the coming years, but to launch at 7, Apple must have an offering that makes sense. Eventually I’ll get off Netflix. I’m liking their service less and less. So Apple need to show us something worthwhile to give those who want an opportunity to go all in, an opportunity to do so. Won’t Apple have to acquire a small studio? Will they licence content from others? And when a TV service worthwhile is in place, for them—if ever—then maybe within a year we see this TV?

Apple never revealed the TV because the margins on TV's are quite small, most TV's today are nothing but minimalist glass so Apple's design probably wouldn't be much different and I bet Apple could not differentiate the set enough from the competition to have commanded the (probably absurd) price that Apple would have wanted.   One other factor is that TV prices start dropping very rapidly after release.   Apple usually only starts discounting when models are replaced.

The 2019 Sony XBR A9G OLED, which just won the Value Electronics shootout held during TV Week in NYC (although by a very narrow margin) has already dropped from $4500 to $3800 in the 65".  The XBR A8G has already dropped from $3500 to $3000.   The previous year's A8F has dropped from $3800 to $2900.  The 2017 A1E has dropped  from $6500 to $3200.   And Sony is relatively pricey compared to Samsung and others.    Big box stores sell 65" UHD TV's for well under $2000, including currently a Samsung for $1080 including delivery.   That's a rough market for Apple to be competing in, especially considering that it's unlikely that the picture quality would be any better in an Apple TV, since they'd be buying someone else's panels anyway.

I think Apple is going to have a tough time creating a compelling streaming service because the studios who are developing their own streaming services are going to hold back content from everyone else.   So Disney is going to hold back Fox/Disney/Lucasfilm/Pixar content, Comcast is going to hold back Universal content and AT&T is going to hold back Warner Bros. content.    That's why Netflix and Apple, among others, are spending so much on new original content, but I don't think that's going to be enough.  Now in the long run, the studio-based services might fail because of that limitation and they'll have to let others distribute their content again.   But that's years away.  Although I think Disney overpaid for Fox, Apple probably should have bought it and sold off the pieces they didn't want.   Or they should have outbid AT&T for Warner.  

I actually think this is a good thing.  While many of Ive's designs were brilliant in many respects, he always placed form over function.   So we have the MBP in which the overwhelming design objective was thinness, but in doing so removed the ability to replace/upgrade battery, storage and memory.   What we don't know is whether or not this was imposed upon Ive by marketing as a way to force people to buy new computers more often. 

We have beautiful looking phones (although most competitive phones look just about as good), which look great in advertisements, but are so fragile that you have to place them in a case anyway, so you're never really seeing the phone as intended.   I can't tell you the number of times when I've seen someone handling their phone without a case and thinking, "oh..that's a really nice looking phone" and then realizing that I had the exact same model (but mine was in a case).   And while it's become less of a factor over time due to improvements in battery tech, it's ridiculous that an end-user can't replace the battery in an iPhone.    Would you buy a car in which the car had to be returned to the dealer to replace the tires, headlights or battery?   

I actually hope that Ive doesn't have all that much involvement with Apple once he launches his new firm.   I think it's time for new blood and new ideas.   I hope the people taking over design at Apple have radically different ideas from Ive's.  

lkrupp said:

Of course this report will be attacked as invalid by the usual suspects here but it puts all the “gates” and screams of Apple ignoring QA into perspective. In the real world Apple is tops in quality and reliability. If you believe all the crap that is spewed in tech blog comment sections you would think Apple is at the bottom of the barrel in those metrics. Nothing could be further from the truth. The hater narrative is confined to blogs like this one. Only here and in the tech media is Apple constantly doomed or condemned to failure. In the real world people use Apple products and are happy with them.

You don't have to believe that "Apple is at the bottom of the barrel in those metrics" or claim that "Apple is doomed" to also recognize that the quality level of Apple's products has declined over the years.   My son-in-law does Mac support and while this is anecdotal, he sees Mac component failures on a daily basis - if he didn't, he wouldn't have a lot of work.   Personally, I never had a single problem with a G4 tower (still working fine when I got rid of it in 2008) or my late 2008 Mac Book Pro (which finally did die - probably a power supply failure in 2017).   However, my early 2017 MBP had a massive video failure (fixed under warranty) and the tops of many keys have worn away.   It has never had good battery life - about the best I've gotten while using the machine is four hours.   IMO, a $3000+ machine in today's market should be just about "perfect". 

On the OS side, I think things have gotten so unduly complex, we're seeing issues that I've never seen before.  The first time I try to open Excel files from inside the Office file chooser, I can't do it.  I have to back out and go back in and it always works on the second try.   I have constant problems where Safari won't let me type into a site like this one.  Again, I have to quit Safari and go back in and then it works.    Neither of these things happened before an OS update within the last year.   When I do a backup and I see the number of files I have on the machine, it makes no sense to me whatsoever.   There are seemingly millions of overhead and cache files being created that never seem to get cleaned up, occupying tons of storage space.  

Back in the day, Apple was brilliant at making sure that every bit of text displayed to the user, especially error messages, was clear and intuitive.   I have an old example from the Apple II days where Apple went through eight rounds of revisions on a single question to determine whether or not a user was using a color or monochrome monitor.   They would actually test that with users!    That's not the case today - Apple displays as many useless messages as Microsoft and other companies do.  

And in spite of all the warnings, just wait until the Fall when 32-bit apps no longer work on the new OS.    They'll be riots in the streets (or at least on postings boards).   IMO, Apple is making a huge mistake by not having some kind of compatibility mode.   

It's not that I'm giving up on Apple's products (although I've thought about it), but that's mainly because I don't want to use Windows and Android.   But that doesn't mean I'm as happy with Apple as I once was.    And don't get me started on laptops where end-users can no longer replace/upgrade storage, memory and battery (as I could do in my late 2008 MBP).   For a company that claims to be environmentally conscious, this is complete hypocrisy.