daven

I can see how having dedicated silicon for matrix operations will benefit photography and video production. Multiple cameras give you different samples of points in space. If two cameras read the same point differently you have to have to choose which sample is correct, average the two data values, or have some algorithm determining some intermediate value for that point. For three cameras, if two of the cameras agree, the true value is likely the value the two cameras agreed on. However, when you have multiple cameras you also have different view points and have to calculate how the points correlate. When you do that you use matrices with sine and cosine values and almost all the time you don't have a direct correlation. A point in one camera is almost always corresponds to a point between other pixel points in the second camera so you have to sample the surrounding points and calculate what the value of the corresponding point in the second image would be if it were sampled. It can get computationally expensive to do that and having dedicated silicon may make it practical. Having three cameras adds to the complexity but also adds to the amount of data you have to make sure you have the value of the pixel correct.

It really is amazing how far digital photography has come in twenty years.

All-Purpose Guru said:

The problem with building a plant in Texas is that pretty much ALL the infrastructure needed to SUPPLY that plant is in China, and that infrastructure would cost billions and billions of dollars to bring here, and isn't even part of Apple.  Even the trashcan Mac Pro currently built in Texas is built of subassemblies and parts made overseas.

There was a story a while back about how even the precision SCREWS needed to assemble the iPhone can't be made in the US any more and would have to be sourced from China or elsewhere.

Trump is a real estate mogul.  He has NO idea how manufacturing actually works.

As I recall, it was screws for the 'trash can' Mac Pro. The found one company in California that made the screws (special order I think) and a guy from the assembly plant drove his station wagon to pick up the first load of them. We do need to bring manufacturing back to the USA but in an intelligent way. I was watching a PBS show a year or so ago about manufacturing in the USA over the decades. We actually make more stuff here than we did in the 1980s but lost jobs in the process. Most of the job loss was because of automation though. A good case study is to look at the automobile industry. We make a lot more cars with a lot fewer people.

For all those moaning about 2% and saying they get a lot more with other cards, that usually applies to limited time offers and purchases at specific locations. So fine, as others have posted, use those cards for those specialty purchases and use Apple's 2% card everywhere else. My Discover card offers 5% on promotional items and 1% everywhere else so I'll use Discover for promotional purchases and an Apple card everywhere else, and cash at gas stations offering cash discounts.

I can see Apple's point of view. A customer takes apart their computer and wrecks it in the process. Other than the obvious breakage, you don't know what else is broken or compromised. If you fix the obvious and something else is broken or compromised and the problem doesn't show up until after it has been back in service for a while, the customer will blame Apple for not fixing it completely.

Will Alibaba provide the jailbreaks to Apple and why is Google releasing tools that assist in hacking iOS devices?