darkvader
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Apple, Amazon hit with antitrust investigation in Spain over hardware sales deal
jungmark said:
Because it’s their products. Lots of companies do it.eriamjh said:I’m confused. Why should Apple be allowed to restrict sellers or resellers of its products?Since this is about refurbs, no, it's not their products any more. Apple sold the products once, someone else owns them now, and Apple doesn't have a right to interfere with that owner's sale of that owner's products. That's restraint of trade and contractual interference, and depending on where you are it can be a tort, a crime, or both.By pulling this stunt at Amazon, Apple has once again done something illegal to increase their profits. Hopefully Spain smacks them down hard.
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Microsoft Windows 11 revealed with dramatic increase in system requirements
tmonline said:TPM chip requirement! Well, that may be a bummer for bootcamp/dual boot mac owners who like to have windows for work or other reasons.
Not sure if VMs can get around that, anyone?There's a workaround.
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The best new features in macOS Monterey that you'll actually use
New feature I would actually use: Put back the scroll arrows.New 'features' I won't use: Most of this list.Full screen is useful for ONE thing: Playing videos. And I don't want the menu bar when I'm playing a video. I want my green dot back to its original sane behavior - zooming windows to max size and back. Sure, it still works when you hold the option key, and I've trained myself to NEVER click it without the option key down, but no app but a video player should even have a full screen option.I don't really care about Safari. The purpose of Safari is to download Firefox.I also don't really use FaceTime. I'll sometimes answer my phone on the computer, but that's really about it. Accidental FaceTime is why my camera has tape over it, I don't even really like the idea of video calls.The new AirPlay feature won't be useful to me for many years. Sure, it might be useful in a decade or so when Macs that are new-ish now get used to replace my TV Macs. But that's really all AirPlay is good for, sending video to something hooked up to a big screen. And that's a great application for older Macs, my current TV Macs are a 2008 Mac Pro and some 2009 Mac minis (yes, hacked to run somewhat more current versions of Mac OS than Apple says they can, they handle it just fine.). But Apple in their infinite stupidity only makes the feature available on Macs that aren't going to be relegated to TV duty for many years to come. I'd probably use Airsquirrels' Reflector to AirPlay to those TVs occasionally if old Apple TVs weren't free, but they are and all I have to do is hit the input button on the remote.I absolutely LOATHE hot corners, I'll be looking for a way to make that quick note thing never happen. I don't really use notes much, maybe it won't do it if the notes app isn't open. If it does, hopefully somebody will write a patch to disable it.
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New York State Senate passes right to repair legislation
Mike Wuerthele said:Like you said, repair parts that are swapped out in the field are sent to the depot for refurbishment and return to the repair part supply stream, sometimes to assist the refurbished device stream that I am about to discuss.
Entire-device swaps at the store-level are also sent to a depot for repair and assessment. Whole-devices repaired at the depot in this fashion are sent to the service swap stock, or the refurb store.
This depot refurbishment is done at the component level, by humans with equal or better skill than Rossmann's. Some will be slightly less talented, and some will be slightly more.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Rossmann and others like him exist. But to say that Apple doesn't have anybody in the service stream that has his level of skill is false.I don't buy it.Component level troubleshooting is expensive. If you're Apple, boards are cheap. I'd be amazed if anywhere in the depot repair stream Apple has anybody with Rossmann's skill, because they'd have to pay significantly more for that skill than I suspect they'd be willing to do at the volume they're dealing with.There are a few expensive chips on any given logic board. I'd suspect the depot process is to strip those components, drop them in almost-complete boards that come from China, send those out as the repair parts, then shred the rest of the board. You can do it with a robot. They might hit a few test pins first, maybe swap a fuse if it's something that easy, but I just don't buy that they're really doing much component level repair at all.We know they don't reuse any exterior parts, repair parts from Apple are just too clean, there's never a dent or scratch anywhere, and any Mac that's been used is going to show at least tiny signs of wear no matter how careful the user is. And machined aluminum parts aren't exactly cheap.Is Rossmann the best ever? Nah, there are independent repair shops in China that are certainly better. But he's likely better than anybody in Apple's repair workflow, and he's virtually guaranteed to be better than any of the Apple techs that are ever actually going to touch a complete customer machine. He's going to be better because those techs aren't allowed to do what he does, so they aren't going to have any experience doing it. -
Apple execs say iPadOS 15 helps users to multitask with UI changes
retrogusto said:When I saw the multitasking demo, it seemed complicated and not at all intuitive. I would not be able to repeat what I saw without a lot of experimentation. I think much of the success of Apple products has come from their ability to make things that work the way you’d expect them to, and knowing when less is more in terms of functionality. Simple elegance. I recognize the desire to add functionality to make the products more powerful/useful, and I know it gets progressively more difficult to add functionality without sacrificing ease of use, but that’s the genius that has so often distinguished Apple from their competitors (until they all copied it, and eventually we all accepted the solution to the problem as obvious).Apple abandoned intuitive a long time ago.In the real world, lots of people still don't understand when they should click and when they should double click. They don't know they can hit return instead of mousing to the ok button in a password dialog. And those people aren't all drooling morons, they're successful business owners, they're lawyers, they're doctors, they're college professors.No, Apple has now decided that the water buffalo lodge secret handshake is somehow a good UI. Most users will never even attempt it.
