OutdoorAppDeveloper

No bezels or no sale. I am in the market for a new iMac but last decade's design is a non-starter.

As a standard, Thunderbolt in all its iterations is an abject failure for two reasons: No affordable devices supported it and the selection was extremely limited. Thunderbolt was only found on external SSD drives that cost about twice as much as the USB 3 versions and often offered little additional performance. USB on the other hand has been a staggering success. When people purchase a new computer, the first thing they often look for is how many USB C 3.2 ports they offer. It works with everything (including Thunderbolt) and is frequently updated with additional speed/features. The only thing you have to watch out for are shady cables on Amazon (pay a bit extra and buy from a reputable brand). If you really want Thunderbolt, buy an add in card for your Mac Pro.

Apple should start thinking of the US and European governments as the Apple app review review. When an app fails Apple's review, it can't be released to the App Store. When Apple fails the government app review review, it will cost Apple billions of dollars and force it to change its app review process. In other words, Apple should be very very careful right now when rejecting apps for silly arbitrary reasons. It should review its own rejections and ask itself if it is really worth risking the wrath of government oversight? As it stands, Apple is proceeding with maximum hubris and it is going to cost them. Apple would really hate to be broken up but it could happen easily. Imagine if iOS was a separate company from iPad OS and Mac OS and Watch OS.

Planning to get one but one thing concerns me: How long will Apple support this device with future MacOS updates? I would like to use it as a Plex server after I am done using it but if Apple drops OS support after a year, that would suck.

What Apple does not want you to do with your iPhone, a concrete example.

The iPhone has a CPU, a big battery, a microphone, GPS location and communication capabilities. Let's use those in a way that absolutely positively would not be allowed by Apple but would create an app that millions of users would find essential. The app would record sounds constantly. 24/7. It would convert all the sounds into text using voice and sound recognition. Not just the words people speak but all sounds that can be recognized. A door slamming. A car engine approaching. A bird cry. Everything. Users can see the text and search it for patterns. Find when and where someone mentioned a subject you are interested in but can't remember exactly what they said. Annotate the speech by using AI to recognize who is speaking. This would become a diary of your life.

At this point the app would be rejected by Apple for a dozen different reasons. Now let's get to the part that Apple truly fears: Connectivity. What if you took all that text and shared it with the world? Imagine the database that would be created. The power it represents is terrifying in its potential. You could figure out where people were at particular times. You could overhear parts of conversations on the street. Secrets would get out. No one could have a private conversation anywhere.

This is why Apple has tight controls over apps in the App Store. It is for your own good. The problem becomes this: What if features like the one I mention above already exist? What if a company has already built it into our phones and has not told anyone about it? Text is so small that it could be hidden in the encrypted diagnostic information the phone sends back to the company servers without anyone finding out about it. The only thing preventing this is trust. We trust Apple not to do this but trust only extends so far.