theothergeoff

well, if you know about it and manage it, it's a great thing... (the 'lost airpod' problem goes away).

but this now becomes another privacy issue in that every headphone, watch,  key fob, car linkage system can be crowd-tracked... the sort of thing the Batman Dark Knight cell phone sonar thing could do.    All it would take is a popular app to be code compromised to turn on monitoring for things close, and another to enable 'always on mode' in the remote configuration of items connecting via bluetooth to that device.   Or just hacking into Tile's central device tracking, and forwarding tracking on everything to a stealth party.  

It's one thing that my phone is trackable (I can mylar bag it.)  but think of 'enemy of the state' being able to just use your phone to enable tracking all the devices it pairs too,  all the state has to do is place devices to 'ping' BT devices and forward their info upstream.

I'd like to see how this is secured.

maciekskontakt said:

Will discover how irritated I am by the fact how they hurt my ears? No thank you. I also prefer no devices that monitor... anything on me. Sell those to retirement houses maybe.

There's a difference between monitoring, 'storing,' and 'transmitting.'  My guess is you want monitoring, but no retention of what is being monitored.

The watch use cases for 'storage' and  'transmission'  exist beyond retirement houses, and for many help drive lifestyle modification.   

And... you can choose not to buy them... 

radarthekat said:

I’m guessing this is a metric Apple could care less about.  Any comparison of Apple’s online sales to these huge low margin distributors of other peoples’ stuff is in no way a measure of Apple’s success or failure.  

Agreed.  and for me, Apple's online experience, while pleasant, means little when buying 'personal hardware'.   Online sales are 'the easy ones' for Apple.

When it comes to selling,  Apple's physical store experience is what they are most focussed on, as the immersion into the Apple culture begins with the eyes and fingers....  you have to 'feel' apple product to truly be sold.   And because of that, they tend to focus on the '$/sqft' comparison, and even that, I think, is more for the big investment houses to justify maintaining their long positions 

tbornot said:

Walmart is all in using Windows as their internal systems.  It’s only a matter of time until their systems are hacked and they slide down the Target slippery slope into fourth place...

well... TGT stock is up 98% from Oct 2008 (they were hacked 11/08). WMT stock is up only 75%.   Such slippery slopes I wish my stock portfolio had.

and 'it's only a matter of time....' is a a wonderful basis for 'winning' an argument... 

 'yeah, the Dutch East India Company is the largest corporation in the world, but it 'was only a matter of time' [150 years] before cheap brazilian sugar and greedy investors wanting huge dividends knocked it out of the global #1 corpo-nation status.'

'yeah, gorillas ruled the Serengeti 200,000 years ago, but was only a matter of time [190,000 years] before homo sapiens used their advanced communication and problem-solving skills to evolve beyond tribal units and into socio economic alliances, and eventually take over the world....'

polymnia said:

Alternative idea: Perhaps the plan for iPhone is to phase out a wired connector entirely. It seems to me that once wireless charging gets a big enough foothold, and Bluetooth matures for short range data transmission, there is not compelling reason to continue punching a big hole in the bottom of our iPhones. I'd prefer a completely wireless iPhone that was more waterproof & had more room for battery & functional components.

There is always the bootstrap/SW-reset condition.   the 'I'm not certain my code is correct/confused' iOS state  currently requires connecting to iTunes via cable.  Having promiscuous WiFi mode for resets (button jamming to get it to come up and 'connect to any WiFI to hard reload corrupt SW') seems frought with hacking vectors.

Wireless for data/in-out and power in are pretty simple and have limited and user-controlled' security risks.  Full reset code updating... not so much.