kiltedgreen

The problem, for the USA, is that Trump is a delusional, economically illiterate idiot surrounded by a bunch of sycophants. His “plans” can change by the hour as can be seen in the tariff madness. He wants all those 75 countries “kissing his ass” so that he looks like the king. 

China does not think like Trump or America. They know what they are doing and are leaps and bounds ahead in their determination and economic trading intelligence. They will be in for the long haul and will no doubt come up with retaliation if required to which Trump will have no response. Trump blinking will be just the start.

Trump will probably say that the EU is illegal and that he’s going to make it the 52nd state after Canada and may need the military to enforce it. That’s about his modus operandi. Then he will change his mind two days later. Then he will change it back. The criminal is crazy.

Back in the day I had a mostly QUAD HiFi with Pink Triangle/Alphason arm and AT cartridge topped with ESL-63s. For regrettable reasons, that has all gone and now I have Apple Music and KEF LSX speakers which I use wirelessly but I also bought a dedicated headphone amp and QUAD ERA-1 headphones to make up for my loss.

When Apple debuted Lossless and HiRes I was thrilled. I could certainly tell the difference between AAC and Lossless but what about Lossless and HiRes? So, for those albums which offered both formats I downloaded both to my iPad Pro, and listened to each format on my headphones across about 6 different albums. I could just about convince myself that there may have been slightly more detail with HiRes, but given file sizes around 6 times bigger I decided to forgo the possible maybe advantages. I’ve stuck with lossless since and until I try again and miraculously notice a difference worth the pain, that is where I’ll stay.

Amazing how Apple / Tim Cook is pilloried over the Apple Car - a product that Apple never even acknowledged. It really is quite an amazing apportioning of criticism. The AI functionality that has been advertised, but not been delivered is very fair game for criticism.

But if the car, then why not blame Apple for their failures over their delayed TV set, the hot mess of the folding iPad, Macs still without a cellular connection, their flawed electric motorcycle, Apple ring, washing machine, solar powered router, 8” iPhone and all those other products Apple have never even announced. We know they were junk and were quietly shelved ….

Even before AI I’ve been surprised at the drip drip of unready features Apple announces at WWDC which then slowly appear over the year. It didn’t used to be like that. It used to be like, say, here is the new iPad “… and it’s available tomorrow”.

When you release hardware, you can’t update it so the features that you announce have to be true once it’s on sale. Software isn’t like that and can always be updated. Treating a new OS as though it’s hardware would make for a much more trustworthy and polished experience - don’t announce OS features this year if they won’t be in the release as soon as it’s out. Succumbing to the siren voiced pull to release it now, just to get something out and the rest later, is a really retrograde step in my view.