wanderso

I am like some others here. Apple Air Pods don’t stay in my ears. 

Soli said:

My only concern about the student IDs via NFC if they will work when the device has no battery power. While that's certainly handy, I don't think it's safe that someone could lose or have an iPhone stolen and then when the power runs out it will still allow access to dorm by pressing the Sleep/Wake button. 

caladanian said:

Please explain what “open loop” technology for London tube is - and it’s (dis)advantage is. 

I think this will answer everything for you:

• https://clearbridgemobile.com/open-vs-closed-loop-mobile-payments/

LukeCage said:

Well most disruptions don't start off with people trying to actually disrupt an industry, they just try to get a niche and the rest is history. However in this case, Apple being as big as it is, if they said that they were trying, they would have regulatory boards in America and Europe all over them. For Apple to disrupt the credit card industry, imo, they would have to go after the banks, but banks now are much bigger and more powerful than they used to be. I'm not saying it's impossible but it's would be a pretty hard task to accomplish. 

I believe Apple choose the best solution and I'm happy to say it's the solution I proffered years before Apple Pay was ever introduced. My only wish is that the extra security for using Apple Pay would result in lower transaction fees for retailers which would help them advertise this option more, and for mom-and-pop shops with discreet card readers that have mostly supported Apple Pay (and all other NFC-based scanners to have the company that supplies the device notify them that they can take these *Pay payments.

If anyone wants to help with increasing the saturation in your area you can order—free of charge—register and door stickers from Apple that you can give to those businesses when you come across them. I don't do it for Apple; I do it for myself, because the sooner I can reach a tipping point where I can more freely not carry my physical cards on me the more convenient my life will be.

• https://www.applepaysupplies.com/home

The newest iPhone supports an option to still work for NFC with a dead battery.  

In respect to a person finding a lost iPhone and using it to gain access to a building, this is also true for any employee and student ID that is lost.  In most cases, there is no need to show your photo ID to access a building; one just taps the badge to the reader.  A thief gets the same access as a student or employee if the card isn’t reported as lost.   Using a phone’s NFC can mean some security loss in that the person’s face is not associated with building access. I suppose that an added safety feature of Apple’s method is that Face ID on the newest phones would be a potential means to verify that the person accessing the building is in fact the phone’s owner and appropriate to gain access. 

On the transit pass comment, Portland, Oregon’s Trimet already supports Apple Pay.  It has since summer 2017.  I have to think that Portland is not the only US city to support Apple Pay for transit. 

It’s funny - I have CarPlay in a Pioneer deck I installed in our car and I actually prefer the phone to be wired, rather than wireless. Why:

*battery being charged while driving, especially important when using navigation (battery hog)
*very reliable connectivity for voice calls; more so than my experience with Bluetooth
*phone is away from my hands so that I’m not tempted to break the law in our state and handle it while driving

There are other reasons, but these top my list. 

sflocal said:

I've been wanting to purchased a Mac mini for some time now for an office, but kept waiting for a refresh.  I hope Apple does something sooner or later, or if anything, put a fire-sale on the current Mac to reflect the real price depreciation of the unit and I'll snap one up.

What a shame.  I think Apple is dropping the ball here.

Our video card died on our beloved iMac a while back. After so many years of buying iMacs, it scared me off on the newest models as I have a beautiful machine that only has used parts as an option on EBay. Newer iMacs are much harder to upgrade. Thus, I bought a used Mac Mini (yep, the less friendly to upgrade new model) and connected it to a nice external monitor we already had.  I swapped out the slow internal hard drive for a nice internal SSD. This made a big difference in usability. I'm holding out for a refresh as mine is exactly the same as a new one and I paid $200 less.  Until then, it works for me, even editing in Final Cut X.   

I have a 2010 IMac and 4 Mac laptops in our home.  The iMac served us very well until a few months ago the screen stopped working due to a failed video card that is hard to find as used on eBay, hard to replace and no guarantee that a used card it is any good.  Until that moment, it was very reliable. Nearly 8 years is good, but it's crazy that I have a perfectly good screen that can't be used.  I decided to get a lightly used Mac Mini, swap out the internal drive with an SSD, and use a good HP LCD monitor that I've had for years.   It's done surprisingly well for Final Cut X editing and other tasks. Before swapping to SSD, it was horrible. The lesson for me is that I will not buy an iMac again for a desktop computer.   I've owned 5 of them over the years and 4 tower or desktop case Macs. 

I built a gaming PC a few months ago with my daughter via purchasing all high quality, separate components and assembling it by hand.   Any one part fails and I can swap it out myself or she can.  Much better than tossing out an entire machine due to a failed video card.  Yes, I should be able to use the defunct iMac as a headless server for our home network but that is tough to do without being able to connect a monitor once in awhile for upgrades and I've been creative in getting past a login screen that I can't see a time or two. Remote Desktop software not installed. 

I'm a "prosumer" customer that still wants an affordable, repairable, upgradeable mac that is a step above the Mac Mini where I can swap the drive, memory, video card, power supply, etc as needed. 1 slot for video and one expansion slot. Good enough.   

I know...my wish will never be granted.