OutdoorAppDeveloper

This year, at least one cell phone maker managed cover up the hole punch with visible pixels. It would be great if Apple lead the market on display technology rather than following it by two or three years.

I love VR/AR headsets but they won't be replacing hand held devices for a long, long time if ever. If they got small and light enough, they could replace your computer screen and iPad but the iPhone is in a different category. I keep mine in my back pocket when I am doing yard work which includes swinging a pickaxe. No headset will replace it as I require some degree of eye protection and wont risk damaging either my eyes or an expensive gadget. This is just one personal example but there are many others. Can you use an AR headset while driving? I am guessing not or at least not until your car drives itself. Let's take a look at the technological roadblocks preventing constant use of an AR headset:
Currently VR headsets are so big and heavy that they become uncomfortable to wear after an hour or two.
Even if an AR headset were smaller, it would still need to be powered by batteries. Where do they go? In your pocket with a cord dangling down your neck?
You can shrink the vision system but what about the rest of the electronics? It all generates heat so how to you dissipate it if the electronics are built into a pair of glasses?
AR is great but for the best virtual experiences, you need full VR. Will the AR glasses have a full VR mode or will we need another headset for that?
Many people are very sensitive to differences between motion they see with their eyes and what they feel with their sense of balance. How do you do VR without making people sick?
Finally the cameras. You can't have AR without some cameras to help with the tracking and scene analysis. People threw a hissy fit over the original Google Glass AR glasses because they had cameras. There was at least one fight over them. Is everyone ready to accept a camera on everyone's face constantly recording and sending the video back to the Apple's servers? What happens when Apple starts scanning those videos for anything illegal to protect kids or something?

radarthekat said:

georgie01 said:

Or Apple could have looked at the bigger picture rather than their own growth. Helping the Chinese Communist Party is not in the world’s interest.

It always amazes me how complacent people in the US have become. We’ve had such tremendous success that we believe it’ll just keep being this good, and that we’ll always know who the bad people are because they have orange skin. That we can ignore the founders’ vision and ideals because we know so much better than they did even though we’ve had relatively zero hardships (in terms of tyrants and oppressive governments).

At least more people are waking up to the reality of the threat from China (not the Chinese people necessarily, but the CCP).

Would it be better to fold up shop and cede the smartphone market to the inferior Android universe, diminishing one of the most advanced US corporations?  Not sure that would help
the US.  But it would be a brave, if foolish and horribly expensive, stand on principal.   

And be able to look themselves in the mirror? Yes.
Not every decision a company makes has to be about what would make it the most money in the near term.

Since Apple is likely removing the option to add RAM to their systems, how about throwing us a bone and giving us access to a M2 SSD slot or two? SSDs are in rapid development right now. The last one I bought (for my PS5 which does have a M2 slot) was slightly more than 6 GB per second read bandwidth. It would give the Mac a longer use life if it could be upgraded with faster and larger SSDs in the future as they become available and more affordable. M2 SSDs are about as small as a stick of RAM and even easier to install. Most users could do it with a screw driver.

This is a giant bribe to the corrupt Chinese government officials. Apple values human rights a lot less than virtue signaling about the environment and global warming. By paying off Xi and his crew, Apple thinks that it can guarantee that it will be left alone to manufacture and sell as many iPhones as it can in China without any more government or court interference. This was kept a secret for a reason. I don't think the Chinese people will be happy to learn that their leaders just pocketed over a quarter of a trillion dollars. Never forget: China is currently engaged in genocide.