Slashdot Mirror

The jury is out on "most people still get sick" as there are no real comprehensive studies yet... Also, not everybody gets sick for the same reasons as there are many of factors that can contribute to VR sickness.

Motion to photon is the time it takes to move in the real world and have it show up on the screen. If it's too large you generally get sick.... The wise John Carmack has stated he believes 20ms is the critical threshold for motion to photon latency. Stay under 20ms and avoid artificial locomotion and the majority of users won't get sick in VR. Gen1 PCVR runs at 90fps so that means at best you're motion to photon should be 11ms but with clever algorithms you can actually do way better than that. VR sickness from large motion to photon latency is considered to be a solved problem.

Currently the more prominent reason for people getting sick in VR is artificial locomotion. For me if I limit joystick movement to translations (no rotations) I generally won't get sick. Even this isn't a universal solution for me as each game affects me differently. Some games I can zip around at high speed without issue where others just moving at a crawl causes issues. It isn't quite understood why but it is believed how you accelerate (not just top speed) the camera has an significant impact.

There is also a concept of developing "VR legs" where over time you become less susceptible to VR sickness. I believe there is some validity to this as when I first stared using VR any artificial locomotion made me ill in under 5 minutes where now I can play many games for hours on end without issue. I can also do some rotation movement where a little bit of yaw and pitch is fine although if you roll the camera I still feel it almost instantly.

There are studies that show giving the user an artificial nose, cockpit, or any foreground object that is stationary relative to the movement, reduces motion sickness. Google has used a technique in Google Earth VR where they artificially reduce the users field of view anytime the camera moves and it has also been shown to reduce motion sickness in many users, myself included.

There are some great examples of games use very unique locomotion techniques that should make most users sick but don't.... People still get sick in VR, even I do from time to time, but we are getting much better at preventing it from happening.

The thing about Stamos is, he is wrong in one respect. Tim Cook is trying to influence opinions on privacy vs. security by speaking his mind.

I think you missed the point. Mr. Cook spouts off about user privacy, but happily hands over all Chinese user data to the Chinese govt. So privacy is good for US users, but not good for Chinese users. Too bad for them.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

And the hypocrisy re: Google is that for the most part Google doesn't do business in China, and recently shut down a project that was aimed at providing a China-approved service.
https://www.wired.com/story/co...

Don't get me wrong, I think both companies should do business in China. It's better for them to be there in business with caveats than to be locked out completely. That opens the door for them to be a force for change at some later date. But Mr. Cook should be a little more careful about what he says on his marketing parades.

https://www.theverge.com/tldr/...

Another source for information on his cell phones and usage:

https://www.quora.com/What-typ...

I thought they already addressed Graykey in iOS 11.4.1

I want to know why Google and everybody else can make a wireless charger that doesn't overheat except Apple.

When Apple employees mod down critical comments it makes me think Scientology Apple. And detest Apple more. What a corrupt gang of extremists.

I want to know why Google and everybody else can make a wireless charger that doesn't overheat except Apple.

Mod parent up!! However, that comment may, in some ways, be too kind.

Microsoft is poorly managed? Plenty of evidence.

Microsoft was badly managed 10 years ago.

Microsoft managers lack social ability. They have done ENORMOUS DAMAGE to the Microsoft brand name. That is my best understanding and opinion.

Some of the many, many reports of Microsoft managers thinking they can manipulate and control everyone, as though the managers are government dictators:

Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." (Aug. 4, 2015)

Microsoft's Intolerable Windows 10 Aggression (May 27, 2016)

Microsoft is infesting Windows 10 with annoying ads (March 17, 2017)

Microsoft, stop sabotaging Windows 10. (March 21, 2017)

A huge problem: A high percentage of people who work with Windows computers make more money if there are more problems with Microsoft and Windows. There is a conflict of interest.

Apparently Microsoft managers decided they would try to be like Google's Android. They apparently decided to try to gather information about everything, and try to sell that information. Most people with cell phones don't have the technical knowledge necessary to know if they are being abused.

Can a company be sued for supplying computers with Windows 10? If a company supplies Windows 10 computers to businesses and doesn't get a signed agreement from all business customers that the customers know Windows 10 allows Microsoft to gather data from their computers, the supplier could be the target of court cases, and possibly even go to prison. No business customers want Microsoft employees to have access to their company information. My opinion, shared by many others.

People working with desktop computers don't want to be distracted by ads. They don't want to try to learn new, complicated user interfaces.

"microsoft's system of 'ship first-fix later-never test' (SF/FL/NT)"

Microsoft is poorly managed. There is plenty of evidence for that:

Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." (Aug. 4, 2015)

Microsoft's Intolerable Windows 10 Aggression (May 27, 2016)

Microsoft is infesting Windows 10 with annoying ads (March 17, 2017)

Microsoft, stop sabotaging Windows 10. (March 21, 2017)

Every Verizon customer in Bay and Gulf counties will be automatically credited for 3 months of mobile service for each line. This free service is for both consumer and business accounts.â

Not so bad. Go get a cheapo AT&T go phone an use that until the verizon service comes back after suffering extensive damage from a Cat4-only-missed-becoming-Cat5-by-2mph-winds-hurricane that hit just last week!

https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/16/17986510/hurricane-michael-fcc-ajit-pai-verizon-att-tmobile-sprint-recovery

Yeah, if only there had been Obama-era regulations in place to prevent the hurricane from even hitting the Florida panhandle, this never would have happened in the first place. Thanks Drumpf!

Break 'em up,specially google and facebook!

Under what context? Just because you don't like them? Because they're too big and successful? They're not really monopolies - and yes, they do abuse their power with anti-competitive behaviours at time, but the courts slap them when they do. I don't see any legal justification to break them up.

"I don't like them" isn't a good reason.

By what definition?

Google seems to have greater than 90% of the internet search market, AND 80-90% of the cell phone market.

Seems like Google's a monopoly to me.

Facebook is a bit fuzzier, but I'd bet a strong case could be made.

Ok fine, so the FCC says it has no legal standing to enforce net neutrality, then it ought to step aside and let the states do it.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

> yeah right. they are spending billions over many years on something that isn't selling.

Yeah Microsoft would never spend 18 years
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... and lose $30 billion
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... on a platform that wasn't selling well. It's guaranteed to be a success https://www.theverge.com/2016/... if Microsoft spends billions on it.

Did you type that in a Lumia?

Actually I'm waiting for Asimiov's foundation from apple https://www.theverge.com/2018/... it might be the reason i finally buy an Apple TV

Or the more likely outcome: The majority of people who don't use Apple devices will just pirate the "exclusive content"

Actually I'm waiting for Asimiov's foundation from apple https://www.theverge.com/2018/... it might be the reason i finally buy an Apple TV

Now, is the Pixel Slate *REALLY* worth nearly $500 extra?

It's definitely not, but you have to consider the big drawback to using a Surface tablet: you have to use Windows and endure/risk the continual forced installation of untested updates.

Say what you will about the great panopticon, Google, they don't minimize the wiping of tens of thousands of users' data as insignificant. (700m Win10 devices/100/100 = 70,000.)

Or just use your TV's remote: Chromecast TV Remote Support and What is CEC

Sure it did. 99% were bots or people forced into signing up, though.

Offtopic but I can answer the question for you:

The Windows tax is around $80 USD. Or $0 if the tablet screen is under 9 inches https://www.theverge.com/2014/... but there's other much more important charges laptop manufacturers make versus System76. On a Windows laptop you pay the Windows fee and the manufacturers for all the parts just gives you the binary blob drivers for Windows as part of the motherboard/chip costs (or in other words, for free). On a System76 laptop, those drivers are not actually given, made, or even supported, barring someone else already making the driver for a part because either System76 or someone already did it for the same part. So System76 does the good deed of making the drivers themselves, open sources it and hands it upstream to the Linux kernel; the cost for development isn't that much but there's 1 final cost barrier however: NDA locked specifications. Broadcom bluetooth/wifi, Intel/AMD for motherboard and soundchip drivers, the screen/keyboard, and the battery all need drivers; the specifications and driver instructions aren't free, and costs thousands of dollars per device, and under NDA only the driver is specifically the exception they pay for to be able to upstream the driver support so you can install whatever Linux you want; not even the price is allowed to be talked about.

In short, System76 pays for the information required to make the drivers that they code themselves for the laptops/parts running Linux they are shipping for a lump sum under NDA amount, and some other manufacturers like Dell make money on warranty insurance and repairs, not the devices themselves.

Which in fact, why even have a camera? They shall be even bolder to not even have a camera and pictures are subsumed from the ethos that surrounds.

This. No camera, FTW.

What would that take? Courage.

Is this better, ya wanker?

Verge Article

A billion dollars a quarter worth of Surfaces are selling. That's about 40% of Macbook sales. So - it's small, but it IS selling.

You might want to read this article. If companies do not comply with China's laws then they will not be allowed into the country. That means turning-down 1300 million users.

- Jack Poulson says "I was compelled to resign my position on August 31, 2018, in the wake of a pattern of unethical and unaccountable decision making from company leadership."

Note he used the word Pattern, so google is making mistake after mistake. SOURCE:
  https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

Android already has it's own built in equivalent. I've used it a couple of times, and it seems to work as well as Shazam

drivers of actual real licensed taxi cabs aren't likely to stream their fares over the internet, either.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

and they are less likely to try to kidnap you.

https://www.wctv.tv/content/ne...

or rape you

https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/...
https://www.nbcwashington.com/...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

because most jurisdictions have actual regulations regarding taxi cabs, their drivers, their cars, and the fares they charge... and the cab companies follow those regulations, because they lose their ability to operate if they don't.

The chapter release system might help, but the schedule of the chapter releases was significant part of what was killing the studio--here's a very good article about what was going on there for a long time, and from some of the various articles about Telltale shutting down, I suspect that the shutdown is ultimately the result of the issues the article brings up. They did try to fix things, but...clearly, the damage was already fatal.

The academic fonts are Computer Modern.

Rubbish. In my field we use Comic Sans for our most important discoveries...but that is because we are more interested in the information than the font it is written in.

other companies have already engineered their cars, built battery plants

A list of car companies with their battery plants would be nice if you're making such claims.

Like this Or this Or this Or this

And keep in mind those articles are a couple of years old. The other car companies just don't blab and have publicists that inflate their CEO's and company's reputation like Musk does.

Tesla fanboys live in a bubble and know nothing of the auto-industry or its trends. They believe all the hype and Musk's bullshit.

other companies have already engineered their cars, built battery plants

A list of car companies with their battery plants would be nice if you're making such claims.

Now can the tech world stop being hypocrites and come down on Google next for the shit they're pulling with Chrome?

Drive-by trojan installs inside of unrelated software. Endless nagging to change the default browser, leveraging their market share of online services (search, email, etc) to do so. Proprietary web markup resulting in "This page requires Google Chrome" crap that Microsoft got their ass reamed out about during the original browser wars.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

People have short attention spans. Google is pulling all the same shit Microsoft got held to the fire over but for some reason everyone is willing to give Google a free pass. What the fuck? Browser monoculture is NOT ok... all the same reasons apply even when it's Chrome and not IE.

Chrome is a fucking arrogant RAM and resource hog and you're better off using Firefox anyway. Is Firefox perfect? Of course not, they have lots of room for improvement. But compared to the clusterfuck that Chrome has become, it's the lesser of 3 evils by a mile.

Weird, slashdot summary has no link to the actual Verge story....

https://www.theverge.com/circu...

Secret program gives NSA, FBI backdoor access to Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft data

The US National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation have been harvesting data such as audio, video, photographs, emails, and documents from the internal servers of nine major technology companies, according to a leaked 41-slide security presentation obtained by The Washington Post and The Guardian.

The program, codenamed PRISM, is considered highly classified and has never been made public before. The list of companies involved are the who's who of Silicon Valley: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. Dropbox, though not yet an official part of the program, is said to be joining it soon. These companies have all willingly participated in the program, says the Post.

That article came out five years ago - and was about a five year old program. Google has been in bed with these guys for a loooong time.

It's like you copy-pasted a couple paragraphs from an official KGB "news release".

Your fascist butthurt in response to facts is noted.

I mean, I assume you're equally diligent about reporting fires in gasoline cars, right? I totally remember your coverage of, say, the million BMWs that were recalled in 2017 due to over 40 parked cars - not cars involved in accidents, but parked cars - spontaneously bursting into flames, right? That's just up to 2017. And they keep getting more fires and keep issuing more recalls this year. The BMW fires have been particularly prolific in South Korea, where 11 burst into flames in July alone.

Want something more recent? Just seven days ago, Ford recalled two million trucks due to fire risks. GM's last major fire-related recall was a couple years, their *third attempt* to fix a problem that was causing cars - often ones that were parked - to burst into flames. Also seven days ago a million Priuses were recalled due to a fire risk in the wiring harness. Need I keep going? Remember here that we're not talking about fires in these cars from crashes - we're talking only the subset of fires that occur during normal use. Fires in gasoline cars during crashes are effectively a problem flagged "WONTFIX" by the NHTSA.

During our brief time with the Apple Watch Series 4, I can’t say I noticed it being all that much faster than before

Unfortunately corporations and patent holders make more money off short term use and rights limitation. We are long down the path of profit trumps everything, licensing, clean air, even now web link clicking (see the EU recent vote : https://www.theverge.com/2018/... ). Since corporations and the donor class fund our representatives and their election efforts, none of this will change without campaign finance reform.

Microsoft managers lack social ability. They have done ENORMOUS DAMAGE to the Microsoft brand name.

Some of the many, many reports of Microsoft managers thinking they can manipulate and control everyone, as though the managers are government dictators:

Microsoft is infesting Windows 10 with annoying ads (March 17, 2017)

Microsoft, stop sabotaging Windows 10. (March 21, 2017)

Microsoft's Intolerable Windows 10 Aggression (May 27, 2016)

Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." (Aug. 4, 2015)

A huge problem: A high percentage of people who work with Windows computers make more money if there are more problems with Microsoft and Windows. There is a conflict of interest.

Apparently, because desktop computer sales are slowing, Microsoft managers decided they would try to make Windows 10 like Google's Android. They apparently decided to try to gather information about everything, and try to sell that information. Most people with cell phones don't have the technical knowledge necessary to know if they are being abused.

Court cases? If a company supplies Windows 10 computers to businesses and doesn't get a signed agreement from all business customers that the customers know Windows 10 allows Microsoft to gather data from their computers, the supplier could be the target of court cases, and possibly even go to prison. No business customers want Microsoft employees to have access to their company information. My opinion, shared by many others.

People working with desktop computers don't want to be distracted by ads. They don't want to try to learn an new, complicated user interfaces.

This comment is my best understanding and opinion.

Dumbed down anti-user interface. Arrogant background processes that spawn countless instances and take over your computer. Drive-by unwanted trojan installs as Google greases the palms of every freeware dev to sneak a Chrome install into their app installer. But worst of all now are the "Only works in Chrome" websites:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

Microsoft got raked over the coals for doing all the same shit that Google is now getting a pass for. What the fuck?

All you so-called geeks who champion Chrome are either just out of highschool or you are hypocrites with very short memories.

OK, so, lemme get this straight.

Microsoft has tried to manipulate people using malware tactics to twist your arm into wiping out Windows 7 for a Windows 10 install they can control, has uninstalled applications without asking during their updates, has had to be forced by the EU to reveal the data they're sucking from your computer, and this was just the stuff I could find with five minutes on Google. If I bothered to spend a half hour on this I'm sure I could come up with dozens more things, all consistent with Microsoft's long history of generally pulling every dirty trick in the book that they could, which only abated as long as the DoJ watched them like a hawk.

And you're going to try to sell us that they're doing this for our own good?

You REALLY believe that?

SERIOUSLY?

Did you, like the FCC, also believe it when the Internet companies PROMISED (cross-their-heart-and-hope-to-die) they wouldn't abuse the lack of net neutrality, because they wanted net neutrality too, or whatever crap they were peddling at the time?

Microsoft and all the other large tech companies have only their own pocketbook and access to power in mind, and your data is how they intend to expand both. Specifically, CONTROLLING your data, whether you like it or not, by slowly converting your computing devices into a dumb terminal under their control. The whole PC platform has slowly but surely moved in this direction for a while now, whether the users like it or not, because they're doing their best to crush or assimilate all choice. Ultimately what Microsoft wants is for you to have a dumb terminal where it is illegal for you to do anything they do not allow on it. If they could get away with it, for "computing safety" they would probably MANDATE that you can't have any kind of computer other than a dumb terminal, because it's "too dangerous" to let the filthy peasantry have access to general purpose computers and unfiltered, uncensored, uncontrolled network access.

Windows 10 is a nice, big part of that, as is slowly dragging their applications (and your work) into their cloud infrastructure, and making sure that you don't own program licenses, you RENT your software from them.

The magical improvements don't need half these changes, and most, if not ALL, of them could easily be made to existing OS's, but their business model is switching to controlling the computing infrastructure, so they can't allow that. As such, they plan to lock you, and your data, into paying them forever, and obeying their dictates as to what you can and can't do with your data, software, and computer. They also get to change around your computer in whatever manner they like for whatever purposes they deem fit. Plus as a bonus the government can use them to enforce whatever crackpot laws they want to. Whether you love or hate Trump, Hillary, or anyone else, this should give you very serious pause.

These approaches are both subtle and gross. A rather gross one is changing your OS because they twisted around a dialog box or asked a naive user, swapped things around overnight, and gave them the "choice," right when they needed their data, whether to keep what they did to things (not even knowing what those things were in most cases), or to spend hours uninstalling their "upgrade" and leave you with the mangled remains of your previously perfectly functional Windows 7 installation (uninstalling an OS is not a nic

... they're fucking *brilliant* at CREATING it!

https://www.theverge.com/2016/...

Don't forget the innate distrust for Chinese makers after news articles about spyware, unknown apps sending info to China, the fact that the US government had security concerns about their devices, and that US carriers will not touch Huawei with a ten foot pole.

Common sense here. A phone maker where people who know what they are talking about should be avoided... coupled with the fact that they are locking down their ROMs, brings about a conclusion that they want to keep stuff hidden.

One aside: The Chinese government requires all ventures on their soil be 51% owned by a domestic (Chinese) partner. All Chinese companies have Chinese government military and intel staffers as part of the company board. It would be like a US company having to have a representative from the Army, the NSA, and the DHS, and they have the final say for any company decisions.

Now, with this in mind, do you trust a Chinese company trying to hide stuff? Where there is smoke, there is fire. There are far better, and more trustworthy brands out there. If a handset maker doesn't trust people with their stuff, then why should I trust them? A typical phone has a -lot- of sensitive data on it, and if a brand starts being hush-hush about what they have, especially a Chinese brand that has been warned against by people who know what they are doing... that ensures I won't be buying it.

they also have an incentive for Android not to be viewed as a less secure mobile operating system

This cannot be taken seriously, considering how few Android phones get updates and security patches. Is their argument that as long as the play store is updating its applications then the device is fine and all is secure? Newsflash, Android IS less secure.

"We're proud of the fact that half of devices received an update in 2016, but that's not sufficient," says Adrian Ludwig, Google's director of Android Security.

That link is old but its not too hard to find more recent articles to shame Android.

Results are widely varied

"The team delved into whether ride-hailing affected crash rates in four cities: Las Vegas, Portland, Ore., Reno, Nev., and San Antonio, Texas — American cities in which Uber, the nation's largest ride-sharing company, launched, ceased, then resumed operations. And the results were mixed. Crashes involving alcohol decreased as Uber resumed services in Portland and San Antonio, but not Reno. And in no case did Uber's resumption of service result in fewer total injury crashes or serious crashes overall."

Subscriptions that are 1 year old or older have a 15% rate:

Google matches Apple by reducing Play Store fee for Android app subscriptions

It might be connected to this.

I think the argument would be, the problem isn't the existence of app stores, but tying the app store to a hardware platform so that other app stores can't compete. I remember reading a while back that Valve was pretty upset with Microsoft when they introduced the "Microsoft Store". Valve makes a lot of its money from Steam on Windows, and Microsoft has pushed developers toward using the Microsoft Store instead, and have threatened to lock Valve out.

Intel accused of age discrimination (May 28, 2018) Subtitle: "US federal investigators are looking into Intel's layoffs of 12,000 employees since 2016."

Judging from personal conversations with Intel employees and comments on web sites, Intel is badly managed:

Quote from thelayoff.com, Nov. 23, 2017:

"As a person who worked there several times as contract employee, which makes up most of the workforce. I have seen this happen many times, where older and higher paid blue badges get shown the door, and sometimes escorted out like criminals. This has created a paranoid environment among those who are left, so everyone starts back stabbing each other because they don't want to be the next one to be booted. And creates animosity to the contract workers who are treated like crap. So any workplace cohesion gets thrown out the window, because everyone is circling their prospective wagons."

Nokia was caught in 2012 doing the same, where background reflections showed they had a full commercial camera + lighting rig shooting the supposed cellphone shot: https://www.theverge.com/2012/...

Distribution is a service.

When economists talk about "distribution", then mean the distribution and allocation of goods and services. Economists don't care what logo is on the truck making shipments. They care about how many trucks are going to what places.

Capitalists see subsidies as Lemon Socialism. Liberals see subsides as a form of capitalism. The capitalists have a better claim: The TARP bank bailout, and the auto industry bailout were both passed by Democrats, and opposed by Republicans.

Partisanship somehow changes the merits of an argument? That's an... interesting... approach to debate. Politics aside, it's worth noting that the auto bailout ended up costing the US government about $14 billion, while TARP as a whole (including the auto bailout) actually ended up turning a $86 billion profit overall. All together, the program seems to have done exactly what it was intended to do: reduce the shock of the financial crisis, stabilizing the economy to protect against further snowball effects.

Your partisan analysis of subsidies also doesn't mesh with a socialist perspective. To a socialist, subsidies are a governmental decision that something risky is of such benefit to society that the risk (financial or otherwise) should be offset. In a totalitarian state like the USSR or DPRK, the state-run company in that area would just go order work on that project... and open the door to corruption because the state will ensure the project's success, no matter how poorly it's managed or how wasteful it may be. With private industry, however, the subsidies have to be financial offsets, either ensuring a minimum income or covering some expenses outright.

What's offensive to a socialist is the use of subsidies and financial incentives to support projects that aren't directly in the public interest. For example, I know of a particular company that promised to upgrade their factory in a small town, but only if they got a nice tax cut for a few decades (similar to a more-publicized event). While that made for nice headlines about "creating jobs", it hurt the town in the long run. Since the company's normal taxes were a significant percentage of the town's budget, local projects actually lost funding in order to keep the town's budget balanced. Sure, some folks got a new shiny office building, but the high school roof started collapsing.

Unfortunately, that's been a recurring theme with American government policies lately. A notable example is the coal industry, which is subsidized by about $850 million annually, yet only employs about 77,000 people. That's about an $11,000 cost per person per year, ostensibly to keep those 77,000 jobs. The question is, of course, whether we need those jobs as a society. To a socialist, that $11,000 would likely be better spent funding career education and training to support other industries (or even bringing new skills to the coal industry), with the key benefit being that even if the coal industry collapsed, the society would still have a larger wealth of skills to continue progress.

Again, it's a matter of philosophy. The socialists want societal improvement to be the primary goal of government, with industries benefiting indirectly. Who actually owns the company is relatively insignificant at this point.

...you should also remember they were sued, successfully, by the patent troll that claimed to own the protocol...

Which would make them not patent trolls. They defended their patents against the most well-funded legal team in existence, and showed that the protocol used their invention. They most certainly did not claim to own the protocol.

They were/are Patent Trolls. First it was FaceTime, then it was iMessage. I didn't call them Patent Trolls, the entire Tech-Press did:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

https://www.engadget.com/2017/...

https://gizmodo.com/apple-orde...

https://techcrunch.com/2016/02...

http://fortune.com/2016/02/03/...

https://www.cultofmac.com/4302...

https://www.macrumors.com/2018...

Oh, and this Discussion Thread EXACTLY addresses the original question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple...

etc. etc...

VirnetX patented something fairly obvious that they had no intention of ever bringing to market, which, after all, is the entire reason behind the Patent system, and simply lay-in-wait for someone with deep pockets to accidentally trip-into their patent-trap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Significantly helped along by:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I mean, the obvious corruption got so bad that the Supremes had to put a stop to it!

https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

So, don't paint Apple as the bad guy here.

I can't believe that nobody's noted that Elliot in Mr. Robot used a faked Fax to get access to Police data: https://www.theverge.com/2016/...

The iPhone X was such a disaster that they were able to increase their phone margins and overall net income enough to lift their EPS and share price >3%. An unmitigated disaster that brought them closer to being the first trillion-dollar company in history.

Outsold by Huawei now. Nothing could possibly go wrong, right?

Also outsold by Huawai last year. What did go wrong after that? https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/6/16259810/huawei-apple-global-smartphone-sales
Remember back when Samsung first outsold Apple, how you were cheering and predicting Apple's doom? What did go wrong after that?

Apple dropped to third, not second.

Yup. As I already said in response to an earlier correction, it was a brain fart on my part. Hopefully it was clear from the context that I intended to say "third". Thanks for the additional correction.

Samsung did well to hold onto first place in the face of truly aggressive competition.

Agreed. Both Huawei and Xiaomi had incredible quarters and Samsung managed to hang onto first despite them. We'll see if that lasts, but Samsung has had a great run so far at the top.

And don't forget that Samsung makes a bunch of moulah every time Apple sells an iPhone.

Oh, absolutely. Samsung is in no immediate danger of going out of business, nor was I intending to suggest they were. I'll readily admit that I don't like Samsung (because of their ongoing history of illegal business practices, such as the slush funds they've maintained for bribing South Korean politicians, a practice that has resulted in the ousting of their last two CEOs, as well as the impeachment and subsequent removal from office of the President of South Korea, who was a recipient of their bribes), but I don't tie my self-worth to the rise or fall of any given company and am by no means trying to make an argument that they're doomed, nor that everything is great in Apple-land. I'll leave those conclusions for others to jump to.

For my part, I'm simply pointing out the facts painted by the numbers: that, contrary to the implication of the headline, Huawei and Xiaomi didn't gain at Apple's expense, but rather Samsung's and others'. That's it.