| To: Art Bechhoefer who wrote (210933) | 10/5/2021 1:11:32 PM | | From: oldbeachlvr | | | | | AT&T is actually shutting down the 3G network in Jacksonville, Florida (my area) on February 22. But they are attempting to get as many people off the network as soon as possible. My iphone 4 detects 4G, but guess it mostly works on 3G so they want it gone (it was originally supplied by AT&T). They were about to send me an iphone7/8/SE to replace it before I ordered the iphone 13. |
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| To: Doren who wrote (210927) | 10/5/2021 3:11:20 PM | | From: Zen Dollar Round | | | | User testing would have taken ONE DAY... Don't get me wrong, I agree with you completely about testing and there should be far more of it. It just isn't the world we live in. It isn't reality.
User testing might have taken only one day in your example, but reworking the software to accommodate the changes would likely have taken months. Then you have to test again and make even more changes.
All that takes substantial time and large cash outlays to pay for it.
These days, even Apple releases stuff first, then figures out what they need to change based on user feedback –– if they change anything at all.
They finally got the Apple TV remote mostly right after four attempts. Only the most recent one has a mute button on it.
Apparently Apple did solicit feedback from professionals for the current Mac Pro, and look how long that took to come to market. Years. Apple didn't care because the Pro market is a very niche and those users aren't as price conscious. Apple has plenty of R&D money to throw at the problem. I think it has mostly been a successful product, regardless of what the press might have you believe.
if you get too used to a lot of 3rd party customization you lose the skills to operate the same OS on a different computer. I don't, but I guess I could see how that might be a problem for some. Thing is, people who do a lot of customization wtih 3rd party tools are already adept at using their computers.
Also, how often are people switching the computers they use? Even as a computer consultant, when I have to work on someone else's computer that doesn't have the customizations I've made to my own, I only find it mildly frustrating. It's still my choice.
Most people use their computers alone, they aren't hopping around using those of others.
Lastly, "gunking up the OS" is my choice. I know what I'm doing enough to deal with the consequences. You like to run a spartan system with only a few 3rd party options, that is your choice. Don't take away mine. |
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| From: Zen Dollar Round | 10/5/2021 4:32:23 PM | | | | | | It's Going to Be a While Till We Find ‘The Next Steve Jobs’
Technologists like Elizabeth Holmes and Travis Kalanick may have been eager to claim the mantle, but the sense of magic that tech leaders once inspired has been replaced by suspicion and fear.
In 1933, Thupten Gyatso, the 13th Dalai Lama, died at the age of 57. According to Tibetan Buddhist doctrine, the spirit of a departed Dalai Lama chooses the next body into which he will be reincarnated. So when a group of elders noticed that Gyatso’s head had pivoted from facing south to facing northeast during the embalming process, they took it as an omen. A search party left Lhasa for the northeastern province of Amdo, where they found a 2-year-old boy named Lhamo Thondup. After he successfully identified Gyatso’s possessions, the search party proclaimed him the 14th Dalai Lama, more than four years after Gyatso’s death.
Our quest to find the next Steve Jobs has not been nearly so inspired.
Jobs’ passing in 2011, like the life that preceded it, was infused with spiritual fervor. When he died at 56, mourners around the world built makeshift shrines outside Apple stores—an outpouring more suited to a pope than to a captain of industry. They were a fitting tribute to a man who always conceived of his mission in quasireligious terms. In Jobs’ view, he wasn’t just building a business, but putting “a dent in the universe.” As a student of Zen Buddhism, he presented the first Apple motherboard as proof of his own enlightenment. “He knew the equations that most people didn’t know,” his daughter Lisa told Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson. “Things led to their opposites.”
If you roll your eyes at such mumbo jumbo it may be because, in the years since his death, Jobs’ lofty legacy has come back down to earth. His toxic personality was well-established before his death, but the details that emerged have come to define his life as much as his creations. That’s probably partly why Elon Musk, another perennial entrant in the Next Steve Jobs power rankings, rejects the title, telling Rolling Stone, “If I was dying and I had a turtleneck on, with my last dying breath, I would take the turtleneck off and try to throw it as far away from my body as possible.”In the time since his death, the tech industry and press has hunted for his next incarnation. At different points, journalists declared Jack Dorsey, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Marissa Mayer, Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin, Chinese entrepreneur Joe Chen, and personal-finance-app creator Angel Rich to be the Next Steve Jobs. Tim Cook, Jobs’ successor as Apple CEO, cast a shadow on the entire exercise, calling Jobs “irreplaceable” in a 2012 interview. It was a necessary act of expectation-setting from the new corporate leader, but it was also true. Jobs’ successors may mimic his skills as an entrepreneur or designer or marketer. But how many of them could credibly claim that their career was driven by an LSD-inspired urge to put “things back into the stream of human history and human consciousness as much as I could?” How many carry themselves with the natural authority of someone attuned to the mysteries of the universe? How many are likely to pass from this earth with an utterance as humble and profound as Jobs’ “Oh wow”?
Conversely, the technologists most eager to claim Jobs’ mantle are the least inspiring. Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes dressed in Jobsian black turtlenecks and cloaked her company’s efforts in Jobsian secrecy, until her efforts to re-create a Jobsian “reality distortion field” were exposed to be simple fraud. When ousted Uber founder and CEO Travis Kalanick claimed he was “Steve Jobs-ing it,” he wasn’t referring to a Joseph Campbell–style episode of exile that results in humility and self-knowledge, but merely biding his time before he could force his way back into the company. Jobs may have had access to equations few people knew, but these purported acolytes follow a much more familiar formula, one that starts with unchecked ego and will to power and ends in disgrace.
The larger tech industry suffers some of the same affliction. What was once seen as an almost mystical endeavor to advance the species has threatened to devolve into a series of naked power grabs. The sense of magic that technologists once evoked has been suffused with suspicion and fear, as their creations gobble up a greater share of our economy, attention, and lives. Some of this backlash follows the predictable path of the hype cycle. But some of it comes from a vacuum left when Jobs died, the feeling that someone with special knowledge was giving us something we didn’t know we needed, granting us powers we didn’t know we had. That kind of person doesn’t come along on a schedule; we can’t declare a new one just because the previous one died.
It’s been more than four years since Jobs died, but we’re still here, searching for a leader to show us the way forward.
Link: wired.com |
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| From: Zen Dollar Round | 10/5/2021 4:35:37 PM | | | | | | Here's proof the iPhone 13 is even more powerful than Apple admitted
The iPhone 13 benchmarks and speed test comparisons just delivered the same conclusions. The A15 Bionic SoC powering the new iPhones has no rival. Apple said as much during the iPhone 13 launch event a few weeks ago, teasing that even two-year-old A-series chips outperform the processors that power Android phones. Some observed that Apple didn’t get too specific with CPU and GPU gains during the show. But an in-depth A15 Bionic review from AnandTech says that iPhone 13 chip is even faster than Apple’s claims.
The iPhone 13 benchmarks and real-life speed test comparisons show the iPhone 13 has no rival. But A15 Bionic reviews like AnandTech’s further demonstrate new iPhones have no rival in terms of performance.
A15 Bionic review
As with every iPhone generation, AnandTech inspected the new A-series SoC thoroughly now that a new iPhone has been released. The blog found that Apple’s performance comparisons to Android were conservative. As a result, the iPhone 13 is even faster than Apple said it would be.
The iPhone 13 has faster, more efficient cores and features massive improvements when it comes to cache. The review found that improved efficiency likely plays a role in the iPhone 13’s impressive battery life.
The GPU is another highlight. As a result, the iPhone 13 is a better gaming device than rival flagship phones. The one area that needs improvement, according to AnandTech, is heat dissipation. In what follows, we’ll highlight some of AnandTech’s quotes that address the various A15 Bionic improvements.
Much more at: bgr.com |
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| To: greg s who wrote (210940) | 10/5/2021 4:46:31 PM | | From: Zen Dollar Round | | | | Exactly. Jobs didn't invent much himself, if anything really, he was just a charismatic salesman and marketer.
He was visionary in that he could see future trends well and had a knack for knowing what customers wanted and how to sell expensive electronics to them.
Apple has lost that razor focus on making easy-to-use consumer products, but that problem started under Jobs' tenure anyway.
Apple became too big with too many products for one man to handle it all. |
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| From: Zen Dollar Round | 10/5/2021 7:05:59 PM | | | | | | Visa Could Take a Bite Out of Apple Pay Fees
Banks are pushing Visa to alter the way it processes some Apple Pay transactions, a change that would reduce the fees Apple receives from those institutions.
According to media accounts on Tuesday (Oct. 5), Visa plans to institute the change next year, although sources told The Wall Street Journal that executives at Apple oppose the change and are in discussions with Visa. If those discussions are fruitful, it’s possible the change won’t happen.
Currently, banks pay a fee to Apple when their cardholders use Apple Pay. If Visa implements the change, those fees wouldn’t apply to recurring payments for things like Netflix subscriptions.
The dispute is part of a larger tension between Big Tech and big banks. Companies such as Apple have been adding consumer payments to their services, with banks readily getting on board with them out of fear of being left behind. But sometimes those deals hit roadblocks, as seen last week when Google scrapped its plans to offer bank accounts to its users.
A company spokesperson said at the time that Google was moving its focus to “delivering digital enablement for banks and other financial services providers rather than us serving as the provider of these services.”
Sources told the WSJ that the tech giant decided to abandon the project due to missed deadlines, as well as the departure in April of a Google Pay exec who had been one of the plan’s biggest boosters.
Apple issued a statement saying that its “banking partners are an important part of Apple Pay’s growth,” and that those partners “continue to see the benefits of providing Apple Pay and invest in new ways to implement and promote Apple Pay to their customers for secure and private in-store and online purchases.”
This news comes just days after a report that researchers had uncovered a loophole in iPhones, which lets hackers make unauthorized contactless mobile payments by exploiting an Apple Pay feature that’s supposed to help users make quick payments using Visa cards.
Link: pymnts.com |
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| To: Zen Dollar Round who wrote (210932) | 10/5/2021 7:11:39 PM | | From: Zen Dollar Round | | | | Apple iPhone ownership among teens holds near record high: Piper Sandler
A near record share of U.S. teenagers are toting iPhones in their pockets and Apple Watches on their wrists, according to one top Wall Street firm.
Apple ( AAPL) maintained its position as a leading technology brand for U.S. teenagers this fall, with iPhone ownership holding near an all-time high and the Apple Watch leapfrogging to take the top spot among adolescents for the first time ever, based on data from Piper Sandler's fall 2021 "Taking Stock with Teens" survey.
During the Aug. 17 through Sept. 16 survey period, iPhone ownership stood at 87% among U.S. teens, according to Piper Sandler. This rose by one percentage point compared to last year, and came in little changed from spring 2021's record high share of 88%. Meanwhile, 88% of teenagers said their next phone would be an iPhone, also coming in close to a record high of 90% from spring this year.
Piper Sandler's report was based on responses taken from 10,000 teens across 44 U.S. states averaging 15.8 years old.
Apple's device dominance extended beyond smartphones. The Apple Watch became the No. 1 watch brand in Piper Sandler's semi-annual survey for the first time, overtaking Rolex as the preferred brand among upper-income teens.
Thirty percent of teens said they owned an Apple Watch during the survey period, up from 25% a year ago. And the overall share of teens with a smartwatch of any kind also increased to 35% this fall from 30% last year.
Photo by: STRF/STAR MAX/IPx 10/3/21 All iPhone 13 Pro models face up to one month delay in shipments in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Here the iPhone 13 models are seen on display at the Apple store at Grand Central in Manhattan.
The results serve as an upbeat assessment of the technology giant's popularity among young U.S. consumers, especially as the company begins the sales cycle of the latest versions of its iPhone and watches that were unveiled in mid-September.
"We view the elevated penetration and intention [as] important for a maturing premium smartphone market," Piper Sandler managing director Harsh Kumar said in the report. "In addition, these trends are encouraging as the company continues to introduce 5G iPhones, which could provide a significant product cycle refresh."
"We think these positive trends can also be a catalyst for further services growth as well, as the install base for Apple hardware continues to grow," Kumar added.
In the services space, Apple has already carved out a solid teen user base in payments. Apple Pay was the second most-used payments method among U.S. teenagers this fall, according to Piper Sandler, with 35% of teens using the platform compared to 32% in the spring. Overall, cash remained the No. 1 payment method among teenagers at 85%.
"While we are somewhat surprised by the cash penetration among teens, we believe it is a function of 35% of teens surveyed not having a traditional bank account," according to the Piper Sandler report. "We expect as teenagers get older, they will graduate to electronic payments methods such as Apple Pay, PayPal, and others."
Link: finance.yahoo.com |
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