Is a class action lawsuit available in such cases? While I can understand that they need to make money, siphoning full browser histories is sketchy. Failing to properly anonymize the data is criminal negligence that can put people at risk of all sorts of things, the least of which being spam and identify theft.
Yes they can, and they have already done so in the past. That one company in China that was using compromised versions of XCode had every app they made taken down from the app store, IIRC.
1) Local backups of your devices, since iCloud only provides 5GB without paying. While I have never had a problem doing an iOS update, I'm not about to take chances. 2) Syncing music and other media on your computer, because why should I have to pay $10/month to listen to the music I already own? 3) Syncing contacts, calendars, etc, if you're not using iCloud or some other central server
Two reasons I can think of off the top of my head: 1. It's hard to maintain smug superiority if there's no "villain" to point a finger at. 2. This is a great distraction, who while being busy beating their chests over how evil China is, they don't notice the stuff happening locally.
I did a trial of some Lenovo laptops with Windows 10 enterprise at work. When the Anniversary update came out, they all got hosed. One was completely unrecoverable so I trashed the whole thing and put Windows 7 on it. The rest managed to back out, but still lost a day of productivity in the process.
Microsoft has demonstrated quite clearly that they do not have the ability to successfully update their own OS without causing all hell to break loose.
And to make matters worse, Home and Pro users cannot opt out of updates and telemetry. Microsoft even disabled the group policy elements for it.
And meanwhile, Apple *could* be raking in marketshare from Microsoft's screwups, but unfortunately they appear to have their own collectives heads shoved up their asses as well.
So now Linux is starting to gain popularity. Between Chromebooks and machines being pre-loaded with Ubuntu, I really hope Linux tightens the screws on all these old guard companies that have lost their way.
Right off the Apple website: Sandisk SDcard reader: $70 Gigabit ethernet: $40 USB-C to VGA: $50 USB-C Multiport AV adapter: $90 (Because they don't offer a straight-up HDMI adapter) USB-C to USB adapter: $25
So far we're at $275 (CAN). They don't offer USB hubs, but I saw one on the web for another $90 USD. Nor do they offer a USB-C to DVI, which I haven't bothered looking up.
So yeah, you can *easily* work your way up to $500. If I wanted to buy shitty discount parts to save money, I wouldn't have bought Apple in the first place.
The very first time you connect your iDevice to itunes, you need do it through USB, and then enable wifi syncing. After that, you don't need to do it anymore.
There's only one problem. Even Apple *themselves* are still selling products designed to work with the older USB standards. Apple doesn't include USB-C cables in anything. So if you want to, say, use your brand new iPhone 7 with your brand new MBP, you have to buy an adapter
There's nothing wrong trying to push the future forward. But Apple's timing as well as they way they are going about it, are fiercely lacking.
Just because they release a cable, doesn't in any way mean people should be happy about it.
Apple is *forcing* people to buy a cable so that you can connect an iDevice with your laptop. Apple does not include a USB-C cable with *any* of the iDevices. That means they are knowingly and intentionally selling you devices that are fundamentally incompatible unless you fork over *additional money* for the privilege.
If they had started including the relevant cables in their iDevices, then that would be fine. But they don't. This is a blatantly consumer-hostile move.
Yes, it IS that big of a fucking deal, "dude". Why should I have to spend another 500 dollars to buy attachments for a laptop that ALREADY COST THREE FUCKING THOUSAND DOLLARS just for the base model!
Apple has externalized almost every core feature a professional laptop is supposed to have. Hell, I'm amazed they were nice enough to leave in the keyboard and screen!
I mean, you can't even plug your iphone 7 into your laptop anymore! You now need to buy an adapter to connect an apple device to another apple device. You need to connect via USB at least once before you can enable wifi syncing with iTunes, and now you are *forced* to buy an adapter just so you can do that. How much Kool-aid did you have to drink to possibly think that this is reasonable?
If you wanted a Macbook Air with a dead octopus attached to it's side, that's your business. But I buy Pro laptops because I have real work to do, and don't have time to screw around with a billion overpriced adapters to do *anything*. If I wanted to deal with a large basket full of attachments, I'd buy a vacuum, not a laptop.
And my opinion isn't even remotely unique. I have a large number of friends and coworkers who are all very heavy Apple users, and NONE of them consider this laptop to be even remotely acceptable. Not. One. Single. Person. The sense of betrayal is palpable.
With the design decisions Apple has been making lately, I can only guess that their Reality Distortion Field has experienced some kind of polarity shift and it's now affecting management instead of users.
Why is everyone treating this as an either/or scenario? Their USB-C ports are great and cool and whatever. But the fact remains that most professional users frequently need Ethernet. They need SD. They need USB 2/3. They need HDMI.
If you don't need those ports, then great! Buy an Air. That's what they were designed for. But for those of us with more sophisticated workloads that need a computer more powerful than a food processor, we *need* those ports to function!
There is ZERO reason Apple couldn't have added those USB-C ports while also leaving in all the other ports. But they didn't, and THAT's what people are bitching about. A laptop that starts at THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS, and you can't even connect it to a TV without a $50 dongle!
How anybody can think that that is reasonable, is beyond me.
And this is why I haven't bought a MBP since 2011. And the way things are going, it may well be my last Apple product. I use ethernet *constantly*. Sometimes I need to set up ad-hoc ethernet connections in order to test networking equipment.
Hell, in high population urban centers, Wifi almost isn't even an option because the frequencies are so heavily saturated.
Omitting things like ethernet, USB pre-C ports, and the SD card slots is not even the slightest bit justifiable. It's flat out stingy. Hell, if they're so dead set on making the laptop as thin as possible, then maybe you have to lose the ethernet cause it is admittedly big. But there's *still* no justification for omitting USB and SD ports.
If you want a super-lightweight laptop, then get an Air. That's the point of an Air. You sacrifice options for portability. The point of the Pro was to be... well... a PRO laptop, for people who do complex, high-end work. Apparently they don't care about our demographic anymore.
The last Mac I bought was my 2011 MBP. The last Mac I bought for our company was a 2014 mac mini. I have no plans for purchasing any more Apple hardware because their entire lineup has become a sick joke. Their entire desktop lineup is decrepit and laughable, and they seem focused on adding gimmicks to their laptops designed to increase sales of accessories instead of useful features.
This is what happens when a company that was led by engineers becomes led by penny pushing MBAs. Jobs has been dead only a couple years and Apple has already jumped the shark.
Well, if Microsoft wanted to boost computer sales, this is a fantastic way to do it. People are now going to be scrambling to grab computers that still have Windows 7 before they're all gone.
I doubt this is the first time, seeing as how computer science is now a 70 year old field.
But that's not even the correction question. The real question is, "Did they do the right thing?" IMO, yes, yes they did. A website has zero legitimate reason to track battery status, and as we've already discovered, the API is nothing more than another avenue for abuse.
The whole bluetooth web API nonsense falls into the same category. The level and likelihood of abuse is countless orders of magnitude more likely than any legitimate use case the budding Einstein inventor can come up with.
I can't tell if you're being a troll, or are really just that stupid. Since you posted as AC, it can go either way.
Is a USB port a video port? No, it isn't. You need an adapter to connect to the monitor. Want to charge your phone? Oh look at that! You *can't*, because no phones ship with USB-C adapters. USB-C is a remarkable port, but that doesn't mean anything when 99.9% of available peripherals don't support it.
Do you have a printer? A Scanner? A joystick? A mouse? External keyboard? A tablet? Or one of a myriad other devices? Guess you'll just have to buy more cables, adapters and/or hubs, etc.
Since you clearly missed the point of my post, let me spell it out for you. The fact that it has these wonderful USB-C/thunderbolt ports isn't the issue. That Apple has intentionally left out a myriad number of ports that are still going to be actively and heavily used for the next decade IS the issue. HDMI is still being actively improved. USB 3 devices are still very much in active circulation and will be for a long time. There's a big difference between what apple is doing now, and what they did with, say the floppy drive on the original iMac. Back then, the writing was already on the wall with the floppy drive. It was annoying, but you could grudgingly admit that yes, floppies were on their way out and it was going to happen soon-ish. USB-2/3 and HDMI sure as hell isn't. And pre-C USB devices will be around for at least a decade yet. Meanwhile, the number of USB-C devices available is vanishingly small compared to pre-C and HDMI devices.
These are supposed to be *professional* laptops. Professional laptops are supposed to be high powered devices with options for connectivity. There is plenty of physical space to put in a couple of USB ports and an HDMI port. But they didn't. They couldn't even be bothered to include a mini-displayport style thunderbolt port. So now you're forced to have an octopus of adapters just to use what you already have.
And don't get me started about that stupid touch-bar and the loss of the Esc key. That one key is pivotal to countless workflows. Hell, that key has saved my bacon several times when an application has frozen up so bad that it hosed the whole GUI and I couldn't access the apple menu. Just because I *can* ssh into my Mac and kill a process doesn't mean I should be required to do that.
So yeah, you can spew your "You're just a luddite!" idiocy all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that Apple's revenues have already reached a tipping point, and they're going to continue to nosedive until they pull their metaphorical thumb out and start making products that have more functionality and less stupid gimicks.
It basically boils down to neither Microsoft nor Apple providing a decent value proposition anymore.
Microsoft is doing everything they can to make people despise Windows 10, and while I like OSX just fine, it's as if Apple has completely lost it WRT hardware.
So you have a choice between using Microsoft Mediocre Crap or Apple Expensive Crap. Having been an Apple user for well over a decade, I'm thinking that my next machine will have to be a Dell XPS/w Ubuntu.
I just had the same discussion with a friend. Between Microsoft's shittastic Windows 10, and the joke that Apple insists on becoming, we're at a loss as to what to do. The entire playing field has gone to crap.
I have a 2011 MBP that I upgraded the memory on and HDD on, and it's pretty much 'good enough'. I would like to upgrade, but the options available seem to be getting worse each year.
Dell's Ubuntu XPS machine looks interesting, but there's just no equivalent to Parallels for linux. VirtualBox works, but it's vastly slower and less capable, and VMWare Workstation is frustratingly expensive compared to Fusion on Mac.
Congratulations, you've successfully flogged a horse that's been dead for about a decade now. But by all means, ignore all the genuine problems with the new MBP and fixate on terminology.
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The Agile method is God's gift to Time and Materials contracts.
Is a class action lawsuit available in such cases? While I can understand that they need to make money, siphoning full browser histories is sketchy. Failing to properly anonymize the data is criminal negligence that can put people at risk of all sorts of things, the least of which being spam and identify theft.
Yes they can, and they have already done so in the past. That one company in China that was using compromised versions of XCode had every app they made taken down from the app store, IIRC.
1) Local backups of your devices, since iCloud only provides 5GB without paying. While I have never had a problem doing an iOS update, I'm not about to take chances.
2) Syncing music and other media on your computer, because why should I have to pay $10/month to listen to the music I already own?
3) Syncing contacts, calendars, etc, if you're not using iCloud or some other central server
Two reasons I can think of off the top of my head:
1. It's hard to maintain smug superiority if there's no "villain" to point a finger at.
2. This is a great distraction, who while being busy beating their chests over how evil China is, they don't notice the stuff happening locally.
I did a trial of some Lenovo laptops with Windows 10 enterprise at work. When the Anniversary update came out, they all got hosed. One was completely unrecoverable so I trashed the whole thing and put Windows 7 on it. The rest managed to back out, but still lost a day of productivity in the process.
Microsoft has demonstrated quite clearly that they do not have the ability to successfully update their own OS without causing all hell to break loose.
And to make matters worse, Home and Pro users cannot opt out of updates and telemetry. Microsoft even disabled the group policy elements for it.
And meanwhile, Apple *could* be raking in marketshare from Microsoft's screwups, but unfortunately they appear to have their own collectives heads shoved up their asses as well.
So now Linux is starting to gain popularity. Between Chromebooks and machines being pre-loaded with Ubuntu, I really hope Linux tightens the screws on all these old guard companies that have lost their way.
Right off the Apple website:
Sandisk SDcard reader: $70
Gigabit ethernet: $40
USB-C to VGA: $50
USB-C Multiport AV adapter: $90 (Because they don't offer a straight-up HDMI adapter)
USB-C to USB adapter: $25
So far we're at $275 (CAN). They don't offer USB hubs, but I saw one on the web for another $90 USD. Nor do they offer a USB-C to DVI, which I haven't bothered looking up.
So yeah, you can *easily* work your way up to $500. If I wanted to buy shitty discount parts to save money, I wouldn't have bought Apple in the first place.
The very first time you connect your iDevice to itunes, you need do it through USB, and then enable wifi syncing. After that, you don't need to do it anymore.
There's only one problem. Even Apple *themselves* are still selling products designed to work with the older USB standards. Apple doesn't include USB-C cables in anything. So if you want to, say, use your brand new iPhone 7 with your brand new MBP, you have to buy an adapter
There's nothing wrong trying to push the future forward. But Apple's timing as well as they way they are going about it, are fiercely lacking.
Just because they release a cable, doesn't in any way mean people should be happy about it.
Apple is *forcing* people to buy a cable so that you can connect an iDevice with your laptop. Apple does not include a USB-C cable with *any* of the iDevices. That means they are knowingly and intentionally selling you devices that are fundamentally incompatible unless you fork over *additional money* for the privilege.
If they had started including the relevant cables in their iDevices, then that would be fine. But they don't. This is a blatantly consumer-hostile move.
Yes, it IS that big of a fucking deal, "dude". Why should I have to spend another 500 dollars to buy attachments for a laptop that ALREADY COST THREE FUCKING THOUSAND DOLLARS just for the base model!
Apple has externalized almost every core feature a professional laptop is supposed to have. Hell, I'm amazed they were nice enough to leave in the keyboard and screen!
I mean, you can't even plug your iphone 7 into your laptop anymore! You now need to buy an adapter to connect an apple device to another apple device. You need to connect via USB at least once before you can enable wifi syncing with iTunes, and now you are *forced* to buy an adapter just so you can do that. How much Kool-aid did you have to drink to possibly think that this is reasonable?
If you wanted a Macbook Air with a dead octopus attached to it's side, that's your business. But I buy Pro laptops because I have real work to do, and don't have time to screw around with a billion overpriced adapters to do *anything*. If I wanted to deal with a large basket full of attachments, I'd buy a vacuum, not a laptop.
And my opinion isn't even remotely unique. I have a large number of friends and coworkers who are all very heavy Apple users, and NONE of them consider this laptop to be even remotely acceptable. Not. One. Single. Person. The sense of betrayal is palpable.
With the design decisions Apple has been making lately, I can only guess that their Reality Distortion Field has experienced some kind of polarity shift and it's now affecting management instead of users.
Why is everyone treating this as an either/or scenario? Their USB-C ports are great and cool and whatever. But the fact remains that most professional users frequently need Ethernet. They need SD. They need USB 2/3. They need HDMI.
If you don't need those ports, then great! Buy an Air. That's what they were designed for. But for those of us with more sophisticated workloads that need a computer more powerful than a food processor, we *need* those ports to function!
There is ZERO reason Apple couldn't have added those USB-C ports while also leaving in all the other ports. But they didn't, and THAT's what people are bitching about. A laptop that starts at THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS, and you can't even connect it to a TV without a $50 dongle!
How anybody can think that that is reasonable, is beyond me.
And this is why I haven't bought a MBP since 2011. And the way things are going, it may well be my last Apple product. I use ethernet *constantly*. Sometimes I need to set up ad-hoc ethernet connections in order to test networking equipment.
Hell, in high population urban centers, Wifi almost isn't even an option because the frequencies are so heavily saturated.
Omitting things like ethernet, USB pre-C ports, and the SD card slots is not even the slightest bit justifiable. It's flat out stingy. Hell, if they're so dead set on making the laptop as thin as possible, then maybe you have to lose the ethernet cause it is admittedly big. But there's *still* no justification for omitting USB and SD ports.
If you want a super-lightweight laptop, then get an Air. That's the point of an Air. You sacrifice options for portability. The point of the Pro was to be... well... a PRO laptop, for people who do complex, high-end work. Apparently they don't care about our demographic anymore.
Okay, I have to ask.... HOW did you manage to do that? I use SD cards all the time, and I have never once managed to do that.
The last Mac I bought was my 2011 MBP. The last Mac I bought for our company was a 2014 mac mini. I have no plans for purchasing any more Apple hardware because their entire lineup has become a sick joke. Their entire desktop lineup is decrepit and laughable, and they seem focused on adding gimmicks to their laptops designed to increase sales of accessories instead of useful features.
This is what happens when a company that was led by engineers becomes led by penny pushing MBAs. Jobs has been dead only a couple years and Apple has already jumped the shark.
Well, if Microsoft wanted to boost computer sales, this is a fantastic way to do it. People are now going to be scrambling to grab computers that still have Windows 7 before they're all gone.
I doubt this is the first time, seeing as how computer science is now a 70 year old field.
But that's not even the correction question. The real question is, "Did they do the right thing?" IMO, yes, yes they did. A website has zero legitimate reason to track battery status, and as we've already discovered, the API is nothing more than another avenue for abuse.
The whole bluetooth web API nonsense falls into the same category. The level and likelihood of abuse is countless orders of magnitude more likely than any legitimate use case the budding Einstein inventor can come up with.
I can't tell if you're being a troll, or are really just that stupid. Since you posted as AC, it can go either way.
Is a USB port a video port? No, it isn't. You need an adapter to connect to the monitor. Want to charge your phone? Oh look at that! You *can't*, because no phones ship with USB-C adapters. USB-C is a remarkable port, but that doesn't mean anything when 99.9% of available peripherals don't support it.
Do you have a printer? A Scanner? A joystick? A mouse? External keyboard? A tablet? Or one of a myriad other devices? Guess you'll just have to buy more cables, adapters and/or hubs, etc.
Since you clearly missed the point of my post, let me spell it out for you. The fact that it has these wonderful USB-C/thunderbolt ports isn't the issue. That Apple has intentionally left out a myriad number of ports that are still going to be actively and heavily used for the next decade IS the issue. HDMI is still being actively improved. USB 3 devices are still very much in active circulation and will be for a long time. There's a big difference between what apple is doing now, and what they did with, say the floppy drive on the original iMac. Back then, the writing was already on the wall with the floppy drive. It was annoying, but you could grudgingly admit that yes, floppies were on their way out and it was going to happen soon-ish. USB-2/3 and HDMI sure as hell isn't. And pre-C USB devices will be around for at least a decade yet. Meanwhile, the number of USB-C devices available is vanishingly small compared to pre-C and HDMI devices.
These are supposed to be *professional* laptops. Professional laptops are supposed to be high powered devices with options for connectivity. There is plenty of physical space to put in a couple of USB ports and an HDMI port. But they didn't. They couldn't even be bothered to include a mini-displayport style thunderbolt port. So now you're forced to have an octopus of adapters just to use what you already have.
And don't get me started about that stupid touch-bar and the loss of the Esc key. That one key is pivotal to countless workflows. Hell, that key has saved my bacon several times when an application has frozen up so bad that it hosed the whole GUI and I couldn't access the apple menu. Just because I *can* ssh into my Mac and kill a process doesn't mean I should be required to do that.
So yeah, you can spew your "You're just a luddite!" idiocy all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that Apple's revenues have already reached a tipping point, and they're going to continue to nosedive until they pull their metaphorical thumb out and start making products that have more functionality and less stupid gimicks.
Apparently you missed the part where the summary said "Desktop computer users".
It basically boils down to neither Microsoft nor Apple providing a decent value proposition anymore.
Microsoft is doing everything they can to make people despise Windows 10, and while I like OSX just fine, it's as if Apple has completely lost it WRT hardware.
So you have a choice between using Microsoft Mediocre Crap or Apple Expensive Crap. Having been an Apple user for well over a decade, I'm thinking that my next machine will have to be a Dell XPS /w Ubuntu.
I just had the same discussion with a friend. Between Microsoft's shittastic Windows 10, and the joke that Apple insists on becoming, we're at a loss as to what to do. The entire playing field has gone to crap.
I have a 2011 MBP that I upgraded the memory on and HDD on, and it's pretty much 'good enough'. I would like to upgrade, but the options available seem to be getting worse each year.
Dell's Ubuntu XPS machine looks interesting, but there's just no equivalent to Parallels for linux. VirtualBox works, but it's vastly slower and less capable, and VMWare Workstation is frustratingly expensive compared to Fusion on Mac.
Check again. There are ZERO USB 3 ports. At best, you get 4 USB-C ports.
Congratulations, you've successfully flogged a horse that's been dead for about a decade now. But by all means, ignore all the genuine problems with the new MBP and fixate on terminology.
It's not as trivial as a simple touch bar. It's basically one big long retina touch screen. It's actually pretty cool.
Too bad the rest of the laptop is a steaming pile of wank, at a price that's even more ridiculous. I mean, not even an HDMI port?