sevenfeet

toddzrx said:

godofbiscuitssf said:

emoeller said:

That’s President Al Gore you’re speaking of and he deserved to be on the BoD.

Please enlighten us as to his contribution?

"An Inconvenient Truth" is considered a seminal work on climate change and bringing attention to it the general public.  Apple changed the industry to consider "performance/watt" instead of just raw performance.  Apple has been pushing green initiatives and recycling in a higher profile way than any other large tech company and probably any other corporation period.  It pervades their entire image.  

An Inconvenient Truth is a pile of pseudoscience. It was debunked the moment it was released.  Please, get your information from reliable sources. Al Gore isn’t one.

toddzrx said:

godofbiscuitssf said:

emoeller said:

That’s President Al Gore you’re speaking of and he deserved to be on the BoD.

Please enlighten us as to his contribution?

"An Inconvenient Truth" is considered a seminal work on climate change and bringing attention to it the general public.  Apple changed the industry to consider "performance/watt" instead of just raw performance.  Apple has been pushing green initiatives and recycling in a higher profile way than any other large tech company and probably any other corporation period.  It pervades their entire image.  

An Inconvenient Truth is a pile of pseudoscience. It was debunked the moment it was released.  Please, get your information from reliable sources. Al Gore isn’t one.

My wife has a PhD in what you call "pseudoscience". Thousands of researchers around the world who do this kind of work in the field, labs and classrooms would like a word with you. Science doesn't conform to politics....it just is. Ignore it at your...and all of our peril.

Stabitha_Christie said:

sevenfeet said:

Stabitha_Christie said:

entropys said:

I miss the days when people weren’t so tribal.  

Seriously. 

Indeed.  I know everyone likes their partisan camps these days and thinks anyone not in their camp isn't worth the time of day, but let's look back at 2003 when Al Gore joined Apple's board and what the company was like back then.

Gore was a few years out of the vice-presidency after the close loss of the 2000 presidential election. Previously he had been a two term senator from the state of Tennessee, a seat his father Al Gore Sr. had originally held.  Former presidents and vice presidents usually have a world of opportunity in front of them, being corporate boards, foundations or other pet projects close to them. And he took advantage of a few of them but one stuck out: Apple Computer.

In 2003, Apple had recently been on the brink of bankruptcy in 1997, having lost $1.05 billion and according to history reports, was about 90 days away from filing bankruptcy. During that time the board of directors literally put all their chips on the table and spent $400 million very precious remaining dollars to buy NeXTStep to finally get a modern OS in house and to maybe bring founder Steve Jobs back into the fold. That move (and an investment from Microsoft spearheaded by Jobs) energized long suffering Apple fans with 1998 having less revenue ($5.94B vs 7B) but turned a profit at $309M. By the time Gore joined them, the iMac would be introduced (1998), Mac OS X would debit (2001) and an odd little personal devices called the iPod would hit the market in time for Christmas 2001. And Apple had made a huge gamble by opening their own retail stores. So in 2003, Apple was doing a little better with $6.21B in sales with $69M in earnings, slightly up from the previous year.

Two decades of board decisions later, Apple reported at the end of Q4 2023.....checks notes, $89.5 billion in revenue JUST FOR THE QUARTER. Total revenue for the year was $383 billion with revenue of $97B. Shareholders received $25 billion of that in dividend payments.  Market cap is about $3 TRILLION. Easily the most stunning turnaround in the history of business. And Steve Jobs and Tim Cook get much of that credit.

But there are a number of people who contributed to the current state of Apple. And one of them is Al Gore and the Apple Board of Directors for the last 20+ years. Think of all of the board level decisions that had to be made on what major projects were going to be funded (iPod, iPhone, Macs, Watch, wearables and of course, Apple Silicon). But why else is Al Gore there? Former US and world leaders create instant gravitas in a room wherever they go and whomever they speak to. Gore knew the working of government and the law intimately and could help in any decision that involved not only the US government, but especially foreign powers since Apple had already made the decision to move production from Fremont, CA to China. Gore has been all over the world and every world leader knows him, even from his time as a Senator. Having a seasoned and respected political leader in the room can sometimes make the difference as to where you build a factory, open new markets, deal with antitrust issues and any number of decisions.

Regardless of whether your politics dictate if you would have ever voted for him, you have to tip your cap to the success of him being on this board for so long and through so many things, many we saw in the press and a lot more than weren't.

Not sure why that was in response to me. I have stated early in the comments that the knee jerk response to hearing Al Gore's name was ridiculous. I was agreeing with Entropys because said knee jerk reaction seemed to be based on partisanship rather than some rational look of the person's life. 

It was a part of the continuing conversation. It wasn't meant as a rebuttle.

Stabitha_Christie said:

entropys said:

I miss the days when people weren’t so tribal.  

Seriously. 

Indeed.  I know everyone likes their partisan camps these days and thinks anyone not in their camp isn't worth the time of day, but let's look back at 2003 when Al Gore joined Apple's board and what the company was like back then.

Gore was a few years out of the vice-presidency after the close loss of the 2000 presidential election. Previously he had been a two term senator from the state of Tennessee, a seat his father Al Gore Sr. had originally held.  Former presidents and vice presidents usually have a world of opportunity in front of them, being corporate boards, foundations or other pet projects close to them. And he took advantage of a few of them but one stuck out: Apple Computer.

In 2003, Apple had recently been on the brink of bankruptcy in 1997, having lost $1.05 billion and according to history reports, was about 90 days away from filing bankruptcy. During that time the board of directors literally put all their chips on the table and spent $400 million very precious remaining dollars to buy NeXTStep to finally get a modern OS in house and to maybe bring founder Steve Jobs back into the fold. That move (and an investment from Microsoft spearheaded by Jobs) energized long suffering Apple fans with 1998 having less revenue ($5.94B vs 7B) but turned a profit at $309M. By the time Gore joined them, the iMac would be introduced (1998), Mac OS X would debit (2001) and an odd little personal devices called the iPod would hit the market in time for Christmas 2001. And Apple had made a huge gamble by opening their own retail stores. So in 2003, Apple was doing a little better with $6.21B in sales with $69M in earnings, slightly up from the previous year.

Two decades of board decisions later, Apple reported at the end of Q4 2023.....checks notes, $89.5 billion in revenue JUST FOR THE QUARTER. Total revenue for the year was $383 billion with revenue of $97B. Shareholders received $25 billion of that in dividend payments.  Market cap is about $3 TRILLION. Easily the most stunning turnaround in the history of business. And Steve Jobs and Tim Cook get much of that credit.

But there are a number of people who contributed to the current state of Apple. And one of them is Al Gore and the Apple Board of Directors for the last 20+ years. Think of all of the board level decisions that had to be made on what major projects were going to be funded (iPod, iPhone, Macs, Watch, wearables and of course, Apple Silicon). But why else is Al Gore there? Former US and world leaders create instant gravitas in a room wherever they go and whomever they speak to. Gore knew the working of government and the law intimately and could help in any decision that involved not only the US government, but especially foreign powers since Apple had already made the decision to move production from Fremont, CA to China. Gore has been all over the world and every world leader knows him, even from his time as a Senator. Having a seasoned and respected political leader in the room can sometimes make the difference as to where you build a factory, open new markets, deal with antitrust issues and any number of decisions.

Regardless of whether your politics dictate if you would have ever voted for him, you have to tip your cap to the success of him being on this board for so long and through so many things, many we saw in the press and a lot more than weren't.

dewme said:

If Apple follows a timeline similar to the one they followed for the PPC to Intel switchover, shouldn’t we expect to see Apple shipping an Apple Silicon only macOS around the 3-year mark, dropping support for Rosetta 2 around the 5-year mark, and obsoleting the last Intel Macs around the 7-year mark?

Following precedent is always a defensible strategy, no matter how badly you feel about the expensive machine you bought three years ago. Power PC Mac owners got over it and so will Intel Mac owners.

Depending on whether they use the date when the Apple Silicon transition kits were made available or the date when the first M1 products were available, or split the difference, I think this would hint that whatever macOS Apple ships in the Fall of 2024 would be a fully defensible target for dropping native Intel support in macOS. Likewise, we should anticipate Rosetta 2 getting the boot from macOS in Fall 2026. 

Finally, it’s important to recognize that the useful service life of your Mac does not end when your Mac no longer supports the latest version of macOS. Sure, you have to pay attention to security related concerns, but the Mac you bought five years ago is still superb at doing everything you bought it to do at the time and for at least a few years beyond that point. I’m still very happy using my Late 2012 iMac. It’s still my primary platform for running VMs for Intel Windows and Linux operating systems. Still performs as well as it ever did, which is good enough for me.

Past is not always prologue but it's a good start. The last G5 Mac, the iMac G5 was launched in October 2005. Steve Jobs then shocked the industry with the beginning of the Intel transition in January 2006, much earlier than predicted and making the iMac G5 an instant lame duck machine after only 90 days.. That iMac ran 10.4 Tiger and ended with 10.5 Leopard. But unlike now where macOS updates are yearly, Tiger began in April 2005 lasting until October 2007 and Leopard went from October 2007 to August 2009.

These days the typical life for a Mac in terms of getting macOS updates is about 5-6 years and the Pro towers lasting 8 years from original GA release. The last Intel Macs were the 2019 Mac Pro, the 2020 Macbook Air (April 2020), the 2020 Macbook Pro (May 2020) and the 2020 iMac (August 2020). So all of these machines began on a version of 10.15 Catalina with Big Sur not launching until November 2020 with the first M1 Macbook Air.

So I could see all of those Intel Macs getting between 1-3 more releases past the most recent Sonoma, which would mean that we'd see a transition away from Intel as early as 2025. I don't think that the current 2019 Mac Pro will get 8 years of updates this time. I also do not think that 2024 is in the cards since I think Apple will tell developers (and customers) a year out when Intel support for new releases will be sunset and despite this note on Vision Pro support, Apple did not indicate a transition schedule during WWDC 2023. I do think Rosetta will stick around longer, perhaps up to 3 additional years to accommodate some older professional apps and plugins.

sflocal said:

I'm a professional underwater photographer.  There's been quite a few underwater housing options for smartphones for a while.  I do like this version as it appears to be quite a more robust offering.

That being said, I would never use my primary phone in one of these housings, simply because if I'm on some tropical vacation out in the middle of nowhere, my phone is my lifeline to the outside world and a flooded housing at-depth could result in a ruined camera.  This is a great option if one has a secondary smartphone to use.  I'd be curious if there are options to use strobes via optical cord.  Oceanic is really making a name for itself in the Apple ecosystem.

iPhones can already withstand being thrown into a swimming pool and have been known to survive some depths falling off of dive boats. I guess the issue is that if you had a catastrophic failure at 100 ft, is pressure is going to also kill the phone or if the case can still protect it enough to get to the surface.

Also as others have said, it probably also shouldn't be your primary dive computer, but the fact that it embeds your dive metadata with pictures and videos is pretty sweet.  Who needs a dive book?