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USA, no tax:

Galaxy S7 $669.99

http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/phones/galaxy-s/samsung-galaxy-s7--32gb---unlocked---black-onyx-sm-g930uzkaxaa/

Galaxy S7 Edge $769.99

http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/phones/galaxy-s/samsung-galaxy-s7-edge--32gb---unlocked---silver-titanium-sm-g935uzsaxaa/

iPhone 6s $549.00

http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone6s/4.7-inch-display-32gb-silver#00,20,30,40,60

iPhone 6s Plus $649.00

http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone6s/5.5-inch-display-32gb-silver#01,20,30,40,60

thousands upon thousands of iPhone 6 Pluses are completely losing their functionality under normal use...

I wonder what exactly they consider normal use? I have an iPhone 6 plus, and use it quite extensively. I like to play a few games (Marvel Puzzle Quest for example) that require quite a bit of tapping on the screen. I've played that for almost 2 years, and not noticed any degradation in touchscreen responsiveness. I wonder how many of these users are putting their phone in their back pocket & sitting on it?

He must not listen to music for great lengths of time if he's not worried about charging while playing.

I don't know hat you consider "great lengths"; but If you're just listening to music with an iPhone 7, the battery life is like 40 hours continuous for the 7, and 60 (!!!) hours continuous for the 7 Plus; so get a grip.

Why would use a USB DAC which has crappy latency???

You do realize that the MacBook Pro has an S/PDIF Digital Optical Audio on the 3.5mm jack, right?

Monoprice even sells a S/PDIF Digital Optical Audio Cable, Toslink to Mini Toslink starting at $2.13.

Mod parent -1 over-rated.

Have you tried any of the apps I mentioned? Because the pair thing Apple is going to just blame on the car manufacturer, but attempting to start Pandora flat-out crashes CarPlay entirely so that no other third-party apps work until the phone is rebooted. Spotify "works," up until the point where you try and play a song, and then enters a weird state where the media controls display, but nothing else does. NPR One just never really worked with CarPlay anyway (it never makes it past "loading") so whatever. Apps that used to work with CarPlay suddenly failing to work is Apple's fault, no matter how much they're just going to blame the head unit manufacturers.

Is that iOS 10's fault, or the App Vendor's fault for not rolling-out an iOS 10 compatible App? I'm betting the latter. And they've only had since July to test and fix their Apps.

Also, Pandora apparently works if you uninstall and reinstall the App. Even though they apparently haven't released an iOS 10 compatible version yet.

Spotify seems to be having a war with Apple, because they violated Apple's ToS, so now Apple and Spotify are caught in a deadly embrace, where Spotify won't comply, and Apple won't approve their Updated App. By the way, people report issues with iOS 9.3.5 and Spotify, too.

NPR just flat-out doesn't know how to get good coders. Their stuff has always sucked. But I don't see anything on Google about NPR One and iOS 10 (other than a link to this Slashot Article... ;-) ).

Hate to be a killjoy, but I think they implemented for their *paying* customers. The young man, genius that he was, found a backdoor.

In front of a judge, finding a backdoor looks really novel, perhaps fun, and yes, criminally illegal. I wish that T-Mobile and a prosecutor could just laugh it all off, but in this nutzo world, they won't, and the result is likely to be draconian, sad as that may be.

Are you saying that in today's uptight world we would never have had something like this nor this would ever have existed because Jobs and Woz would end up in jail?

"Apple has charged their Li-Ion and Li-Po batteries to around 85% for like, forever"? You mean, when my iPhone6 says it's 100% charged, it's really only 85% charged? So I actually don't need to worry about overcharging it? I would love to believe this!

I believe that is precisely the case. However, this Apple page explains it a little more clearly. So it appears that they have found that you can charge to 100% without damage, if you drastically change the charge-rate at around 80%.

P.S., that GPS setting is about battery life. Your phone knows your location from cell tower and wi-fi data anyway. Regardless, that's a setting for apps, not the OS itself.

The GPS setting is not about battery life. If it is disabled for an app, the all can't access your location.

Settings -> privacy -> location services -> system services

Here you can disable location services individually for each system service that uses location services.

https://support.apple.com/en-u...

Yeah. Apple software NEVER had bugs when Steve Jobs was alive. iOS never had point releases before Tim took over.

Oh wait, no, there were bugs all the time. It's been conventional wisdom to NOT upgrade ANY device of ANY kind from ANY manufacturer with software from ANY vendor on day 1 for over a decade now, if that device's ability to function is critical to you.

Even a 1 in a million bug will affect a thousand people when you're talking about a billion devices.

Also: I'd be willing to bet that most of Apple's executive team DOES run beta software on their phones -- at least late betas. But you're talking about a couple dozen people -- not a really significant sample size, you know? -- and they probably all have pretty new phones. No one on this page is still using a 4S just for shits and giggles. And you know what? They shouldn't. They're busy running a company. They're not QA specialists. They have teams for that. Just because a team isn't perfect, that doesn't mean they're worthless.

Feel free to provide a counter-example of any perfect software or hardware from any company, ever. Bonus points if it was a point-oh release.

Apple's FY2015 revenue was $234B.

If taxed at 100%, it would only make up half of the FY2015 budget deficit, to say nothing of reducing the amount of taxes needing to be collected from everyone that paid taxes in 2015.

TL;DR: the IRS would still be shaking you down for cash, and in no way should your comment be moderated as "informative".

If your current iPhone is still relatively new, it will be at least a year or so longer before Apple cripples it with an iOS update designed with that in mind.

[Citation Needed] And when has Apple done that?

iOS 10 Compatibility List
The oldest iPhone: iPhone 5 (September 21, 2012)
The oldest iPad: iPad 4th gen (November 2, 2012)
The only thing you could say is the iPod Touch has to be new.

If anything newer versions of iOS work well with older iOS devices. You can't say that about Android devices.

I watched the presentation and that was not said. Phil Schiller said they have logic to decide when to use the high-power cores vs low-power but that doesn't imply orthogonality.

Here's the link. Jump to 94:35 for the discussion of the A10.

http://www.apple.com/apple-eve...

http://www.apple.com/opensourc...

That wasn't hard to Google - it's a list of projects they use and contribute back to.

I take it you refer to Crazy Taxi? (Segas take on temple run). It seems to be doing rather well. However its probably the miriad of Sonic games thats the real kicker. They also have a successfull Football manager app which i am told has some quite popular ingame purchases. All in all i would say Sega is doing pretty good on the app front: https://itunes.apple.com/us/de...

...according to the App Store listing.

What makes you think it's Bluetooth? Sure, the iPhone 7's have Bluetooth, but there's no mention of Bluetooth anywhere to do with AirPods. REF: http://www.apple.com/airpods/ Given its multiple-device connectivity dollars to donuts the W1 chip will be using a proprietary protocol to carry the audio, accelerometer and light sensor data as well. I am looking forward to the funny with everyone double-tapping their ears to activate Siri, though, when the stupid looking things fall out.

Still, I don't know what all the fuss is about... the iPhone 7's still come with wired headphones in the box, now they're just called EarPods and go through the Lightning connector. Oh, and they give you a Lightning dongle for your existing 3.5mm headphones as well. REF: http://www.apple.com/iphone-7/...

What makes you think it's Bluetooth? Sure, the iPhone 7's have Bluetooth, but there's no mention of Bluetooth anywhere to do with AirPods. REF: http://www.apple.com/airpods/ Given its multiple-device connectivity dollars to donuts the W1 chip will be using a proprietary protocol to carry the audio, accelerometer and light sensor data as well. I am looking forward to the funny with everyone double-tapping their ears to activate Siri, though, when the stupid looking things fall out.

Still, I don't know what all the fuss is about... the iPhone 7's still come with wired headphones in the box, now they're just called EarPods and go through the Lightning connector. Oh, and they give you a Lightning dongle for your existing 3.5mm headphones as well. REF: http://www.apple.com/iphone-7/...

The new ceramic Watch is listed as "edition", but the gold and rose gold edition watches haven't made the Series 2 cut, at least per Apple's website. Presumably they didn't sell well enough to be worth upgrading, since the new ceramic model is, despite being "edition", only costing a couple hundred more than the priciest stainless watches.

As for upgrade plans Apple offers, if you're buying the solid gold Watches, either 1. you can afford to take the hit or 2. you're a wealthy and significant-enough tastemaker that Apple will directly deal with you. They made a solid gold Watch band for Beyonce, after all.

You're an idiot. The lightning connector is quite strong, strong enough to cantilever the entire phone at an angle in the dock. http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MNN62/iphone-lightning-dock-black

And even more shocking, they are retailing for $9.

What the hell - nice going Chrome, not actually copying when I hit the keyboard shortcut.

Actual link I meant to post: http://www.apple.com/shop/prod...

If the goal is a laptop without Windows OS, how is it "a pain in the ass" to find the nearest Apple authorized reseller and buy a MacBook?

Extra note: iOS devices already support AAC over Bluetooth as of iOS 7, and some higher-end BT headphones do too. So improved wireless quality is already available for iOS users that want it.

> But it's not Mac OS X anymore, it's MacOS.

Close, but not quite -- Mac is now in lower case:

i.e.
macOS Sierra

Haha nope: US$79 vs US$15.

Most operating systems I've seen recently test if they can get to the internet themselves and if they are redirected to a captive portal they then automatically open a browser window to where the portal redirected them to (usually a login page). This avoids the issue of trying to MitM attack whatever site the user was trying to get to. You can still make the login page you get redirected to secure with proper certificates. The following are examples of the different things companies use in detecting if they can connect to the internet:

Apple:
http://captive.apple.com/hotsp...

Google:
http://clients3.google.com/gen...

Microsoft:
http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.t...

They all probably contain some piece of legalese in the product license or EULA indicating that it is illegal to use them for purposes of terrorism (famously the iTunes EULA contains an agreement not to use the software to develop nuclear weapons) or in extreme cases the government may even forbid sale to that country if the actors are state-sponsored.

I suppose it's more difficult in the case of Twitter since they're a service instead of a product. Once someone comes into possession of a walkie talkie there isn't some magical switch that can revoke the original sale and dispossess the offending individuals. Even with phones you're limited to what a carrier who's not in your jurisdiction will do for you and it also supposes that you can pin-point a particular device without more information. Once again Twitter fails this to some degree as even though direct messaging is possible, it's typically easy to identify the bad people because of a large volume of public activity that's being broadcast as widely as possible. Not only that, but the service also naturally tracks other accounts that follow or rebroadcast those messages as a core part of the service.

All of that said, I don't personally believe Twitter should be legally responsible for ISIS, even if they don't have some kind of clause to indemnify themselves or if the nature of their product makes it physically possible or relatively easier for them to identify undesirable parties when compared to alternative means of communication. Holding them directly responsible for any act would require proving them to be complicit in facilitating the act and proving that the act could not have occurred without the use of Twitter. That's a tenuous gambit at best and such a legal ruling would establish precedent for all manner of other shaky cases while at the same time fly in the face of other rulings that have gone against cases based on a chain of argument and logic far more sound.

Did Cook actually 'refute' the conclusion, or did he just disagree with it? Those are very, very, different things.

He refutes it specifically.
Apple Response

The letter they posted is signed Tim Cook, and does indeed refuse the EU's claims, however it contains obvious lies of omission and seems to demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of how the EU works.

The Commissionâ(TM)s move is unprecedented and it has serious, wide-reaching implications. It is effectively proposing to replace Irish tax laws with a view of what the Commission thinks the law should have been.

No Tim, the EU member states have all agreed on some basic ground rules for taxation so that they can have a free market without any of them gaining a competitive advantage. It's hardly a shock to anyone that the extremely advantageous tax arrangements in Ireland were incompatible and the EU has been warning Ireland of this for many years. In fact Ireland changed its laws in 2010 to block companies from doing what Apple did, and as I'm sure you are aware even Apple will have to find a new corporate structure by 2020 or start paying that tax anyway.

The letter is pathetic. It makes out that Apple did Ireland a massive favour by opening a factory and bringing jobs, ignoring that it only did so in order to dodge billions of Euros worth of tax that rightfully belonged to the Irish people.

And you never will. Those savings are purely there to maintain their 22% net profit. Source

Oh, you mean the unique Advertising Identifier that's in every iOS device? Yes, that one that you can reset at any time?
https://support.apple.com/en-a...

Apple used Broadcom chips earlier, if they are doing their own - it's already in production (been taped out probably 3-4 months ago) well ahead of the spec release or approval. I would be very surprised if they did 5.0 support for the iPhone 7. Next generation? Sure - but then, everyone else will probably do the same thing as Broadcom, CSR, Qualcomm, Nordic will all have 5.0 chipsets out and in production.

And yes, OSX supports AptX which is why it is so frustrating doing headphones! With Apple, you have two different high-end CODECs to support. But then what do you expect from a company that released a USB-C only laptop and have a spec in-place (and stil there) that prohibits USB-C to Lightning cables - meaning you cannot make a cable that can directly plug your iOS device into their laptop (you must use a USB-C to Micro-USB, then a micro-USB to Lightning cable combination).

No, of course you can't have a USB-C to Lightning Cable. Apple doesn't allow that.

That's the thing: I actually check out other people's outlandish anti-Apple claims.

And your statement regarding an Apple designed-Chip being "taped-out" only 3-4 months ago is laughable. I doubt that even Apple could get evaluation/qualification units in that much time. But the fact that they bought Passif a few years ago strongly hints that they plan on moving away from Broadcom; so who cares what they are doing as far as BT 5 goes?

Here's one for you, you're very welcome.

Starting with IOS 10 you will be able to delete Apple apps.

https://support.apple.com/en-u...

I'd rather shiver in a cave in the woods.

And groove with a pict?

All I can find is the pmset command, available from a terminal. See man page But i could not find something like "active" or "passive"

Yeah, I've never found anything like that, GUI or command line.

All I can find is the pmset command, available from a terminal. See man page
But i could not find something like "active" or "passive"

I had to dig a bit to find the actual prices since they side them fairly effectively on their web site, but here they are: https://support.apple.com/en-g...

That's about 2-3x what you would expect to pay for a genuine replacement part alone, maybe 5-6x for a referb or 3rd party one. Plus you have to give them your laptop for days.

They also lie subtly about the expected battery life. They say 80% after 1000 cycles, but what they don't tell you is that their under-powered chargers need the battery to cover periods of high power demand, when the CPU or GPU or both are running flat out. So even if you are plugged in, it can still be counting towards your lifetime cycles.

Speaking of false, let me know how the hell you feel your Mid2012 MBP has any relevance in a discussion about how hard it is to upgrade their current line of hardware.

There are two things you can now upgrade after purchase in Apple laptops; Jack and Shit.

It's relevant because the mid-2012 MBP is the last notebook of theirs that has upgradable memory and SDD and they still sell it to this day.

It may not be from the current generation of hardware, but it's certainly in the current line of hardware.

That's basically the gist of it. If you look at the security bulletins that Apple publishes at here and compare the OS X El Capitan updates to the iOS updates more often than not the same fixes that made it into iOS are also part of the security release for OS X El Capitan.

iOS, WatchOS, and TVOS are all basically OS X under the hood except with a different GUI on top. Under the hood basically the same OS.

The Apple standard end user license that you agree to when using their devices and software holds them not liable for offensive content.

http://images.apple.com/legal/...

Is there a reason you add it to your Contacts list, instead of just blocking the number itself?

I don't have an iPhone, but according to Apple Support, you can go to your call log (called "Recents") and block the number without having to add it. Apparently you click on the "i" icon and scroll to the bottom.

With an Android phone, you can go into your call log, long press the number you want to block and then select the block option.

I just checked that and see you are correct.
I have been using the blocked contact method for over 3 years.
It is possible the direct blocking ability was added in an iOS update at some point.
Thanks for the tip!

Is there a reason you add it to your Contacts list, instead of just blocking the number itself?

I don't have an iPhone, but according to Apple Support, you can go to your call log (called "Recents") and block the number without having to add it. Apparently you click on the "i" icon and scroll to the bottom.

With an Android phone, you can go into your call log, long press the number you want to block and then select the block option.

A quick check of Wikipedia would tell you what most people who follow Apple already know: that Apple has a habit of quietly revving its current computers without much fanfare, upgrading their computers on a regular basis.

The current 13 inch and 15 inch MacBook Pros that Apple sell were last updated early 2015. (This correlates with Apple's own on-line store.)

It's not to suggest their current models aren't a little long in the tooth. And it's not to suggest that Apple may be a little behind in using the latest and greatest processors--though one problem Apple has is that they sell quite a bit of volume, so sometimes being on the bleeding edge may not permit them to get the volume of parts they need. But they most certainly are not selling a 4 year old computer.

No need to wonder, just go to the actual report and they break it down into tech, non-tech, leadership, retail and retail leadership. Tech is by far the worst for gender equality, but at least non-tech and leadership are improving quite a bit. Seems like there are very few people of colour in leadership roles though.

Their claim that they have achieved pay equality is interesting but not backed up by numbers.

they want ALL desktop OSes to be Microsoft OSes

I know of at least one desktop OS they won't co-opt...

Honestly, what did you guys expect? Apple is an image based company and the image they portray is "hip". Currently in the largest population centers its hip to be super liberal.

Yeah, they're taking a bold stance against guns, except when guns make them money.

Pssst..... everyone, it isn't "libtards against guns" - its liability. Sweet Jeebuz in a smartcar, when an emoticon becomes a second amendment flashpoint, perhaps it isn't the "libtards" that have a really big problem.

Honestly, what did you guys expect? Apple is an image based company and the image they portray is "hip". Currently in the largest population centers its hip to be super liberal.

Yeah, they're taking a bold stance against guns, except when guns make them money.

In short, yes.

(yet no one cared until Windows 10 did the same thing then everyone got mad)

Hell yes we cared. That's why we weren't using fucking Apple.

In short, yes.

If you read through their privacy stuff you'll notice they talk mostly about how they encrypt all the data they collect on you and how they try and keep it "secure" - but they still collect a ton of data on you. iOS was known to gather your location, OS X has been sending all the wifi passwords you connect to back to iCloud for several versions (yet no one cared until Windows 10 did the same thing then everyone got mad), iTunes sends back information about what music is on your Mac, and who knows what else since I'm not about to dig through their excessively long privacy policy to find what they gather on you.

In short: yes, OS X collects a shit load of info about what you're doing and then sends it back to Cupertino. But they "encrypt" it so I guess it's OK.