decoderring

mikethemartian said:

I’m sure if Apple made a reasonably sized contribution of Apple stock to Trump’s personal retirement fund he might seem favorable to lifting the tariffs on their products.

mpantone said:

decoderring said:

Wow, I think this is the first time I’ve ever not wanted to install an update.

I’ll do it because there are likely some security updates, but I wish it were possible to not have all the AI stuff that, for me, just creates bloat.

The storage change between iOS 18.3.2 and 18.4 is very minor.

On an iPhone 16 that was factory reset, there was 232.74 GB free space available on iOS 18.3.2 (Apple Intelligence off, iCloud off).

I installed iOS 18.4, ensured that both Apple Intelligence was off (the iOS 18.4 upgrade did *NOT* enable Apple Intelligence) and iCloud remained unconfigured, and shut down the phone. I rebooted and the iPhone 16 had 232.18 GB free space left.

So we're really talking about a 560 MB delta between 18.3.2 and 18.4. If you already have iOS 18.3.x on your phone, you might as well upgrade to 18.4 regardless of whether or not you use Apple Intelligence features.

mike1 said:

The only people who push for side loading are criminals. Thieves and scammers are chomping at the bit as unaware consumers begin clicking on ads that will look like legit apps but downloading malware and other malicious software. Who would even want an app from a developer who is too lazy or cheap to go through the app store process?!

SuntanIronMan said:

Xed said:

SuntanIronMan said:

I shouldn’t be surprised (and I’m not) but: +$200 to go from 16GB to 24GB. Sigh… lol

16GB is probably fine, but I wish the memory upgrades were a little more reasonable. $200 is 20% of the base model price.

But you do just three free months of Apple TV+ with the purchase of the MacBook Air, so that’s good.

Although I just redeemed three free months of Apple TV+ the other day with no purchase necessary, lol.

Incidentally, I never really gave Apple TV+ a good try before. But when I found out that Ronald D. Moore had a show on it (For All Mankind), I activated the trial and started watching. It’s an amazing show!

Apple TV+ has this great show created my absolute favorite sci-if TV writer… and it’s been on since 2019… and I had no idea.

But anyway… $200 for 8 extra GB and a free Apple TV+ trial with a purchase, lol. 

Or you can go from 24 GiB to 16 GiB to save $200.

You need to look at the product category as a whole. Apple is offering the base model at less of a profit specifically to entice new and more buyers. There's a reason why Apple only sells the base model RAM configurations at stores instead of only having the maxed out RAM options available.

The bottom line is whether it works for your needs. I can find a much cheaper Windows notebook but that doesn't work for my personal needs regardless the amount of RAM installed.

Oh, I get it. I understand what you are saying. I’m just commenting about the memory pricing. No matter what though, +$200 for 8 extra GB is tough for me to justify knowing what memory prices actually are. It makes me feel like a stupid-idiot for even thinking about maybe considering the possibility of buying the Air with 24GB, lol.

Just to be clear, I’m not calling anyone else a stupid-idiot. Just me personally. I’m the stupid-idiot. That’s how I feel when I hover over the +$200 configuration box, lol.

(Actually +30,000 yen. I’m in Japan, but I’m typing the prices in USD since not too many in the comments section are from Japan.)

I’m honestly thinking about a Framework laptop. Something that I can literally replace any and every component in it. I do like what Framework (the company) is trying to do. That Framework 12 that the company introduced a week or so ago looks really interesting. “12” for 12 inches. I do prefer small laptops. Man I miss that MacBook Air 11”. What an amazing laptop that was (for its time).

I don’t think a price has been announced yet for the Framework 12, but I’ll be keeping my eyes out for it for its expected April preorder date. It’s annoying that Framework still doesn’t ship to Japan yet, but I can order one and pick it up that next time I’m Stateside.