Together with weight and engine size, they decide your car taxes, insurance and even taxable income as work-home traffic is discounted, hence why they're putting cameras up to track people and correlate with what they're reporting on their tax returns.
That's needlessly complicated. Bigger and more powerful cars draw more fuel. Physics ensures that. Just tax the fuel and charge an appropriate rate and you are done. No need to incur the huge expense of tracking everyone's mileage.
How do you tax electricity without increasing the cost of electricity used for normal household purposes: lighting, computers, A/C, appliances, etc.?
Several answer to that. First off it doesn't matter if we increase the cost of electricity for other purposes - the cost of gasoline is priced into everything we do currently so it doesn't really change anything in that regard. 1) Most people are going to charge their cars at their homes. If they don't have an EV then they won't get billed for charging one. 2) You cross reference the EV car registration with the electric bill and charge accordingly. Require every EV to have a home meter responsible for the taxes. 3) You tax all third party rapid charge stations including those at places of employment. 4) You charge an excise tax on electrical generation based on electrical vehicle registrations if you need to make up any revenue shortfalls.
I own an EV and my electric bill rose as a result. It would make sense for some portion of my electric bill to go towards road maintenance just like my gasoline purchases do.
How do you tax electricity for those whose net usage is zero due to solar panels?
You can require a meter on the panels regardless of whether they pull from the grid and tax accordingly. If the person doesn't own an EV then they can get a waiver to avoid the taxes. Require the person who registers an EV to tie it to a home meter of some kind (grid tied or not) and bill that meter. Right now this is kind of a non-issue since so few people have solar but now would be the time to but the policies in place to be ready for an EV laden future.
I think they're trying to be pro-active, and tax on mileage, for when electric cars become predominant, and don't generate gasoline tax revenues.
Taxing mileage is idiotic and needlessly complicated. You can accomplish raising the necessary revenue by taxing electricity in pretty much the same manner you tax gasoline today. Cross reference the registration with the electric bill if you need to know exactly whose car it is to bill properly. The increase in electric use will correspond nicely with the increased use of electric vehicles and you can adjust the rate to the amount needed to maintain the roads properly.
Hell, they're trying to do this already due to the better economy that cars/trucks are getting, that it has caused a decrease in tax revenues already.
Only because we have idiots in elected office who refuse to raise tax rates even when its a good idea. (and yes sometimes raising taxes is the correct policy) You are aware you can change the tax rates right? They aren't set in stone and we can adjust them based on fuel economy if needed. As EVs become more common you can adjust the electric rates as well.
Presumably but I don't seem much reason to buy one for that since it doesn't benefit me in the slightest. My phone doing it is bad enough already.
Some countries are considering it to assess road taxes.
Which would be idiotic. Tax fuel (gasoline, diesel, and/or electricity) at appropriate levels and you accomplish the sensible goal of taxing in close accordance with utilization. The bigger the vehicle and the more someone drives the more fuel they will use. Trying to track mileage via a plate is idiotic.
The other reason is to enrich government and its cronies.
Some of the benefits of using digital licenses versus old metal ones are the ability to display Amber alerts or stolen vehicle messages when needed
Not to seem callous but why would I pay (a lot) extra for the ability to display Amber alerts? And there already are pretty good and more affordable solutions for stolen cars.
Currently, they cost $499 for a basic version, and $799 for a premium version that features a GPS navigation add-on.
WTF could these things do that would possibly justify such a price point? I already have GPS in my car and my phone so that's a non-starter, especially given that it wouldn't probably be integrated into the car's infotainment system. If my car gets stolen that's what insurance is for and shockingly my insurance appears cheaper than these things. I'm all for doing things a better way but I don't see any meaningful benefit here.
I can't think of any single (realistic) feature that will make a phone be worth that price. This phone better be something out of Science Fiction.
I'm struggling as well. I think you are right that the technology just isn't there yet for the things needed to seriously blow our minds. Would love to be wrong of course. I think it's just going to be an overpriced me-too device made to keep the Motorola brand quasi-relevant rather than a serious attempt at a serious device.
It worked. It is being talked about here and many other forums/news sites. Marketing-wise it is already a success.
It only worked if the name results in actual sales because of the name. Just generating buzz is not successful marketing. Personally I think they are hugely overestimating the appeal of the RAZR brand in today's market. Furthermore you aren't asking whether we are talking about it because of the RAZR brand or because of the fact that it's foldable or because of the price or something else.
Brand confusion is a real thing too. Think about how Microsoft has had problems when they've used the Windows brand on devices that aren't what we expect. Windows RT is a prime example.
The New Yorker: Your explanation of why 'Oumuamua might be an interstellar probe may be hard for laypeople to understand.
That's because it's bullshit.
We see the solar system and we can calculate at what rate it ejected rocks during its history. And if we assume all planetary systems around other stars are doing the same thing, we can figure out what the population of interstellar objects should be. That calculation results in a lot of possibilities, but the range is much less than needed to explain the discovery of 'Oumuamua.
It's a single event. The error bars around any single event are enormous if you are going to use it to infer a population. Additionally these sorts of objects are rather hard to see so it's hardly shocking that we haven't seen a LOT of them. Furthermore there is a lot of stuff in our solar system we know we cannot yet see and we're discovering new stuff all the time.
When you look at all the stars in the vicinity of the sun, they move relative to the sun, the sun moves relative to them, but only one in five hundred stars in that frame is moving as slow as 'Oumuamua. You would expect that most rocks would move roughly at the speed of the star they came from.
Self defeating argument. Even if we take his 1/500 number at face value (we shouldn't) there are literally billions of stars in the Milky Way.
And one of these facts is that it deviated from an orbit shaped by gravity while not showing any of the telltale signs of cometary outgassing activity.
Bullshit it deviated from an orbit shaped by gravity. There is no evidence of this. And outgassing requires it be made of a material that would outgas. Rocks generally don't do much of that, nor do hunks of metal. It doesn't behave like a comet because it is not a comet. Duh...
Apple is in a unique position with lock-in though - if you don't like the absence of the 3.5mm jack your options are: don't upgrade your phone, or switch to Android or one of the other niche OSes, and lose all the apps you've invested in, and the nice integration with iTunes on your PC.
Umm, "nice integration with iTunes on your PC"? I don't know anyone who actually bothers with iTunes on a PC anymore. Everyone backs up to iCloud. The only reason I have fired up iTunes on my PC in the last several years was to rip a handful of CDs. Otherwise it's utterly useless to me. And frankly iTunes on the PC is a rather terrible piece of software.
If the 3.5mm jack is genuinely a deal breaker for you then you have some VERY peculiar requirements in a phone. Apple sells tens of millions of these things so clearly most people don't really give a shit that it is missing. The number of people who would actually switch over this "missing" feature is almost literally a rounding error. People value what they are willing to actually pay for and clearly the 3.5mm jack isn't a big issue for most.
3.5mm jacks have been the standard for 70 years
How long something was a standard is not a compelling argument to keep using it once there are more compelling options available. Technology has moved on with or without you. Multi-purpose modular connectors are where things are going (probably USB-C) and that's a net gain at the end of the day. On a device with a tight space and power budget, something as bulky (yes bulky) as a 3.5mm jack that only does one thing is a terrible design choice given that it's one job is rendered functionally redundant with both bluetooth and USB.
EVERYTHING works immediately and flawlessly with 3.5mm jacks
First off that is simply not true. I manufacture wire harnesses for a living and some of our products have used these jacks. I understand them better than most. They are not perfect, they are not flawless, they are comparatively bulky, and they are a one trick pony that doesn't even do it's one trick especially well. The only reason anyone gave a shit about them is because they were common. Think of it this way. Imagine that it didn't exist already. Do you think anyone would design it for a modern device? Of course not - people would crucify the company that tried to push such a limited single use connector and rightly so.
Bluetooth at least brings wireless functionality to the table - USB-C audio offers *nothing* for the typical consumer
USB-C offers innumerable functions OTHER than audio including power transmission, perfectly adequate sound plus other data transmission, a standard connector identical reducing the number of types of cables to carry, simplifies devices, and frees up space budget for other features. I'm baffled why you think plugging in headphones is the only feature that matters here. The 3.5mm jack does ONE job that is rendered redundant by at least two other technologies already on the device, takes up a lot of space to do it, and frankly is just a good technology whose time has passed. Let it go.
If it's priced that high then it isn't intended to be sold to "most" people. If the device is compelling enough there are plenty of people who would consider forking over that kind of money for it. (probably self included) But it had better be AMAZING and well beyond anything else available to justify that kind of price point. I would love a well designed phone that morphed into a small tablet - the idea is pretty compelling if the execution is right. But getting it right is going to be tricky and none of the designs for folding phones I've seen so far are even close to hitting the mark.
Since no information is available we'll have to wait to see if it has a removable battery, sd slot, or headphone jack...
Is that REALLY what you judge a phone on? Seriously? You understand that most people demonstrably do not care about any of those features. Hundreds of millions of smartphones continue to sell without any of those features. It is HIGHLY unlikely to have at least two of those and the headphone jack is at best a 50/50 proposition for it being included. People care about what they are willing to fork over money for and it is abundantly clear that none of those features are deal breakers for most people in the market for smartphones. You might feel differently and that's totally fine but it puts you in a tiny minority of the overall market.
I make it a policy to never judge before seeing a device. Maybe it will be brilliant but I have my doubts based on what I've seen so far. If it's like Samsung Galaxy F or Royole Flexpai then they shouldn't bother. That form factor is impractical and doesn't appear to be very robust. (it looks terribly easy to break if you put it in a pocket) I think the basic idea of a device that can morph from a phone size to small tablet size is a solid concept but it will all be about the execution. I don't think the bendy screens will be the best way to get there but I'm willing to be proven wrong.
And $1500? It better be an AMAZING device to justify that price point.
I think dusting off the RAZR nameplate is idiotic. The device shares no heritage or design with the original and anyone who is nostalgic for the original RAZR never really had to live with one. It was fine for the day but was more flash than performance. Aside from the eye catching design it was an entirely unremarkable phone in a market full of equally unremarkable phones. Relying on the hope for nostalgia from a 20 year old dumb phone to market a (supposedly) cutting edge modern smartphone should result in some marketing idiot losing their job.
How can a display in the front and the back be useful?
Follow the link and check it out. It's actually a pretty cool idea. They can be different sizes so you can have functions (like a physical keyboard or camera) on one side with a smaller screen and a screen the full size of the device on the other when those aren't needed. More immediately you can just have a camera on one side of the device instead of the clumsy front and back setup two camera setup we have now with smartphones. This allows things like me pointing my camera at my wife/daughter during a Facetime call and both them and both the person in front of and behind the smartphone being able to see the person we are talking to.
You can't see both of them at once.
Wow, genius! Nobody thought of that before you said it. Glad you pointed that out to everyone.
I might suggest there may be some use cases you overlooked in your knee-jerk reaction...
That's the stupidest idea I've ever seen. What a bunch of dumbasses.
Really? THAT is the dumbest idea you've ever seen? Then you have led a blessed life my friend.
Terms like "tan" have no official definition definer.
Not true. The word tan does have a medical definition. The word tan is used for other purposes as well but in this context when doctors are talking about there being no safe amount of tanning they are talking about the skin's reaction to UV light and the color changes that result. You can give superficially similar results by literally painting (staining) the skin with chemicals but that is a VERY different thing and if you looked at the skin up close the difference is obvious. Calling spray tans a "tan" is slightly misleading because it's really just a fancy form of makeup intended to simulate a suntan. Nothing wrong with that but it's not the same thing.
If the population calls it a "tan", it's a tan.
You could call it a "rose" or a "hippo" but it wouldn't change what we are talking about. Suntans and spray on tans aren't the same thing. One is a physiological reaction to UV light and the other is a form of makeup. Call them whatever you like but they are unambiguously not the same thing.
I've done no official surveys on this word regarding this matter, but neither have you.
My wife is a dermatopathologist so I have had more discussions with board certified experts on this very topic than you could possibly imagine.
Oh so we should listen instead to people (like yourself I'm guessing) who aren't involved in AI at all? You could substitute AI researcher with Physics researcher and your argument would be basically unchanged and equally bogus.
As for the argument that "humans will always be needed, because our economy is built around humans", wake up and look at the rest of the universe. Stuff happens without humans. Once machines don't need you, they don't need you.
You see a lot of machines out there in the universe doing stuff? You are making an argument from ignorance. Just because you can imagine some dystopian future doesn't mean it's actually possible for it to happen. I can imagine warp drives and teleportation and photon torpedos and other things that haven't been conclusively determined to be impossible. Doesn't mean they actually do or can exist in the real universe we live in. People like to imagine all sorts of fanciful ideas about how the machines are going to conquer us and for the most part they are pure nonsensical fantasy.
I saw the foldable screen device they were showing recently. My thought was neat proof of concept but there isn't a way in hell I would buy the thing. Thoroughly impractical form factor even if the device happened to work great otherwise. Too big while folded (large air gap) and too fragile to put in a pocket folded which seems to defeat the entire purpose of a phone. It's not really clear to me who would buy the thing or why other than as a toy to play with.
That said I think a device with a cleverly available second display on the back or a rigid display that can rotate into view on the front side has the potential to be really useful if the design is well done. The ZTE Nubia seems to be a promising idea for how to go about it.
You mean except for GDP and total wealth? Yes the US has more money as of 2019 than any other single country and has for quite some time. China will probably overtake the US in a few years but that is then and this is now.
In other news: American Football is not the most watched sport in the world and the US did not single-handedly beat the Nazi's in WWII.
Got any other fake and irrelevant strawmen you'd like to eviscerate?
What about the spray-on tan that you-know-who uses?
Spray on "tan" isn't a tan. It's paint. Spray "tans" are tans in the same sense that soy milk is really juice. They only call it a tan because it superficially resembles one to someone who isn't looking very carefully.
Expecting students to hand over their personal information and cell phone number to a third party is also unrealistic.
Remind gets basically no personal information and cell phone numbers aren't private. Furthermore using it is 100% voluntary. The school can't make them use it if they don't want to. Some of the parents and kids I deal with don't have phones so they can't use it even if they want to.
You really haven't dealt with the reality of just how you've sold your students privacy down the river.
Ha! Are we talking about the same people who spend their entire lives on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat? Spare me your indignation. Remind is hardly going to make a dent in their loss of privacy which they don't value anyway.
You have no control over how "Remind" uses this data, or how the data will be sold over and over long after your high school team has moved on.
If Remind can find a way to monetize my team's announcements 5 years from now then $diety bless them.
When students sell their privacy to organizations like Facebook, it's their choice to do so or not.
It's no different with Remind. Using it is voluntary. The school can ask but they cannot force anyone to use it.
Except that Remind actually IS NOT spamming. I'm not sure how often this is used to communicate directly with students in upper grades or college.
My school district uses it and it's hugely helpful. The team I coach uses it to great effect. We send out a few messages a week with information parents and students need to know. It results in a few messages a week mostly. Nothing unreasonable and it's entirely voluntary. But the utility means most parents sign up since they tend to like to know what's going on and I'm not about to call them one by one to explain everything.
Sorry, I don't need a bunch of BS being sent to my cell phone. If I'm in school, tell me in person. If it's after hours, leave me the hell alone.
You obviously don't have children. It's not "a bunch of BS" and a lot of information needs to reach parents and students outside of school hours. I coach a sports team at a high school. We need to be able to reach parents and students and services like Remind (which we use) help a LOT with this. I am not a teacher and I have a real job. We send out information that everyone on the team needs to know in a timely and cost effective manner. Expecting schools to waste money chasing you down in person only during school hours and only when you happen to be on campus (rare for parents) is absurd.
I don't understand why Remind wants to use SMS so badly? Install an app and communicate through that. This isn't a problem.
Because you can reach more people with SMS than any app. Not everyone has the latest smartphones. I have quite a few parents on teams I coach that still use flip phones. And even those who do don't really want to be checking unnecessary apps. Text messaging is close to universal so why not use it? Also not everyone has access to data connections at all times and SMS can reach more places more of the time.
Remind sends emails to every teacher they can to try to get them to use their "free" service.
Not really true and even if it were there is nothing unethical about trying to reach a target audience.
Once enough teachers in a district start using it, Remind contacts the school district to inform them that they are breaking the law and the paid version that archives the communications can be bought for tens of thousands of $$ a year.
"Remind" could easily spin up it's own "Reminders" app, get students/parents to install it on their phones, and have it periodically check for notifications like any other messaging app on the planet over the phone's data connection
They already have an app and it's pretty good. We use it for the high school team I coach and it works well. But expecting everyone to install an app and to check it religiously is unrealistic. Furthermore a surprising number of people don't have smartphones either by choice or by fiscal necessity. I have several parents who either have older flip phones (by choice) or who cannot afford smartphones. If you think "just install the app" is a good solution you haven't dealt with parents and you REALLY haven't dealt with students. Text messaging is FAR more universal and makes it easier to reach everyone. It also works with technology that you cannot install the app on. At schools you have to meet people where they are, not where you think they should be.
Basically Verizon is being lazy in their attempts to deal with text spammers. They are making simple and overly broad policies rather that doing the hard work of actually working to figure out who is a problem and who isn't.
If your other goods or services (e.g. broadband) went up by 13-18%, I'm sure you'd complain too.
Happens all the time and about things I care about a LOT more than TV. Health insurance routinely increases by similar percentage amounts and the actual dollar amounts are FAR higher.
"It's only $2" is the refuge of a person with $2 to spare and expecting everyone else to ALWAYS have $2 to spare, on top of whatever they are paying for everything else. That's $2 a month, which is worse. You're now inching towards cable/satellite bills.
This is the US, i.e. the richest country in the world. Most of us really do have $2 to spare, even most of the less fortunate among us. If the $2 is a problem then perhaps you should reconsider paying $11 (or $13) a month to an objectively frivolous TV streaming service.
Seriously, if it's a problem for a lot of their customers Netflix will have to deal with the loss. If their customers mostly don't care (as I suspect most won't) then it isn't really a problem. Expecting Netflix to just keep their prices static and let inflation eat away their profits endlessly is naive.
I refuse to pay more than a token, throwaway payment for something that is just visual entertainment.
That's reasonable. Many others are willing to pay more. Neither of you is wrong for doing so.
Well, we can't really say that. iPhone sales have been coming in under Apple expectations lately, which is part of the reason their stock has taken such a beating. Maybe the effect wasn't immediate, but it might be a lot bigger than we think.
The reason iPhone sales are slowing is because A) They charged too much money and B) They barely changed anything from the last year's phone. I have an iPhone X and I would have considered upgrading but the new version is barely any different. Why would I spend $1000 for a phone barely different from the one in my pocket? They just didn't add enough value to make it worth it. Now that said they still are selling huge numbers of phones - the sales were under expectations but still huge by any objective standard.
It has NOTHING to do with the 3.5mm jack. Despite the loud protests of a few, most people genuinely don't give a shit and the evidence is the fact that Apple continues to sell tens of millions of phones. Their sales WENT UP after they removed the jack a few generations ago. Apple has never tried to be all things to all people and while some small few probably did switch to Android over the jack, most people shrugged and went about their lives. It's just not that big a deal to most of us.
Slashdot Mirror
Taxing mileage is done all over Europe though.
That doesn't make it a good idea.
Together with weight and engine size, they decide your car taxes, insurance and even taxable income as work-home traffic is discounted, hence why they're putting cameras up to track people and correlate with what they're reporting on their tax returns.
That's needlessly complicated. Bigger and more powerful cars draw more fuel. Physics ensures that. Just tax the fuel and charge an appropriate rate and you are done. No need to incur the huge expense of tracking everyone's mileage.
How do you tax electricity without increasing the cost of electricity used for normal household purposes: lighting, computers, A/C, appliances, etc.?
Several answer to that. First off it doesn't matter if we increase the cost of electricity for other purposes - the cost of gasoline is priced into everything we do currently so it doesn't really change anything in that regard.
1) Most people are going to charge their cars at their homes. If they don't have an EV then they won't get billed for charging one.
2) You cross reference the EV car registration with the electric bill and charge accordingly. Require every EV to have a home meter responsible for the taxes.
3) You tax all third party rapid charge stations including those at places of employment.
4) You charge an excise tax on electrical generation based on electrical vehicle registrations if you need to make up any revenue shortfalls.
I own an EV and my electric bill rose as a result. It would make sense for some portion of my electric bill to go towards road maintenance just like my gasoline purchases do.
How do you tax electricity for those whose net usage is zero due to solar panels?
You can require a meter on the panels regardless of whether they pull from the grid and tax accordingly. If the person doesn't own an EV then they can get a waiver to avoid the taxes. Require the person who registers an EV to tie it to a home meter of some kind (grid tied or not) and bill that meter. Right now this is kind of a non-issue since so few people have solar but now would be the time to but the policies in place to be ready for an EV laden future.
I think they're trying to be pro-active, and tax on mileage, for when electric cars become predominant, and don't generate gasoline tax revenues.
Taxing mileage is idiotic and needlessly complicated. You can accomplish raising the necessary revenue by taxing electricity in pretty much the same manner you tax gasoline today. Cross reference the registration with the electric bill if you need to know exactly whose car it is to bill properly. The increase in electric use will correspond nicely with the increased use of electric vehicles and you can adjust the rate to the amount needed to maintain the roads properly.
Hell, they're trying to do this already due to the better economy that cars/trucks are getting, that it has caused a decrease in tax revenues already.
Only because we have idiots in elected office who refuse to raise tax rates even when its a good idea. (and yes sometimes raising taxes is the correct policy) You are aware you can change the tax rates right? They aren't set in stone and we can adjust them based on fuel economy if needed. As EVs become more common you can adjust the electric rates as well.
Primary use is for tracking.
Presumably but I don't seem much reason to buy one for that since it doesn't benefit me in the slightest. My phone doing it is bad enough already.
Some countries are considering it to assess road taxes.
Which would be idiotic. Tax fuel (gasoline, diesel, and/or electricity) at appropriate levels and you accomplish the sensible goal of taxing in close accordance with utilization. The bigger the vehicle and the more someone drives the more fuel they will use. Trying to track mileage via a plate is idiotic.
The other reason is to enrich government and its cronies.
Probably closer to the truth.
Some of the benefits of using digital licenses versus old metal ones are the ability to display Amber alerts or stolen vehicle messages when needed
Not to seem callous but why would I pay (a lot) extra for the ability to display Amber alerts? And there already are pretty good and more affordable solutions for stolen cars.
Currently, they cost $499 for a basic version, and $799 for a premium version that features a GPS navigation add-on.
WTF could these things do that would possibly justify such a price point? I already have GPS in my car and my phone so that's a non-starter, especially given that it wouldn't probably be integrated into the car's infotainment system. If my car gets stolen that's what insurance is for and shockingly my insurance appears cheaper than these things. I'm all for doing things a better way but I don't see any meaningful benefit here.
I can't think of any single (realistic) feature that will make a phone be worth that price. This phone better be something out of Science Fiction.
I'm struggling as well. I think you are right that the technology just isn't there yet for the things needed to seriously blow our minds. Would love to be wrong of course. I think it's just going to be an overpriced me-too device made to keep the Motorola brand quasi-relevant rather than a serious attempt at a serious device.
It worked. It is being talked about here and many other forums/news sites. Marketing-wise it is already a success.
It only worked if the name results in actual sales because of the name. Just generating buzz is not successful marketing. Personally I think they are hugely overestimating the appeal of the RAZR brand in today's market. Furthermore you aren't asking whether we are talking about it because of the RAZR brand or because of the fact that it's foldable or because of the price or something else.
Brand confusion is a real thing too. Think about how Microsoft has had problems when they've used the Windows brand on devices that aren't what we expect. Windows RT is a prime example.
The New Yorker: Your explanation of why 'Oumuamua might be an interstellar probe may be hard for laypeople to understand.
That's because it's bullshit.
We see the solar system and we can calculate at what rate it ejected rocks during its history. And if we assume all planetary systems around other stars are doing the same thing, we can figure out what the population of interstellar objects should be. That calculation results in a lot of possibilities, but the range is much less than needed to explain the discovery of 'Oumuamua.
It's a single event. The error bars around any single event are enormous if you are going to use it to infer a population. Additionally these sorts of objects are rather hard to see so it's hardly shocking that we haven't seen a LOT of them. Furthermore there is a lot of stuff in our solar system we know we cannot yet see and we're discovering new stuff all the time.
When you look at all the stars in the vicinity of the sun, they move relative to the sun, the sun moves relative to them, but only one in five hundred stars in that frame is moving as slow as 'Oumuamua. You would expect that most rocks would move roughly at the speed of the star they came from.
Self defeating argument. Even if we take his 1/500 number at face value (we shouldn't) there are literally billions of stars in the Milky Way.
And one of these facts is that it deviated from an orbit shaped by gravity while not showing any of the telltale signs of cometary outgassing activity.
Bullshit it deviated from an orbit shaped by gravity. There is no evidence of this. And outgassing requires it be made of a material that would outgas. Rocks generally don't do much of that, nor do hunks of metal. It doesn't behave like a comet because it is not a comet. Duh...
Apple is in a unique position with lock-in though - if you don't like the absence of the 3.5mm jack your options are: don't upgrade your phone, or switch to Android or one of the other niche OSes, and lose all the apps you've invested in, and the nice integration with iTunes on your PC.
Umm, "nice integration with iTunes on your PC"? I don't know anyone who actually bothers with iTunes on a PC anymore. Everyone backs up to iCloud. The only reason I have fired up iTunes on my PC in the last several years was to rip a handful of CDs. Otherwise it's utterly useless to me. And frankly iTunes on the PC is a rather terrible piece of software.
If the 3.5mm jack is genuinely a deal breaker for you then you have some VERY peculiar requirements in a phone. Apple sells tens of millions of these things so clearly most people don't really give a shit that it is missing. The number of people who would actually switch over this "missing" feature is almost literally a rounding error. People value what they are willing to actually pay for and clearly the 3.5mm jack isn't a big issue for most.
3.5mm jacks have been the standard for 70 years
How long something was a standard is not a compelling argument to keep using it once there are more compelling options available. Technology has moved on with or without you. Multi-purpose modular connectors are where things are going (probably USB-C) and that's a net gain at the end of the day. On a device with a tight space and power budget, something as bulky (yes bulky) as a 3.5mm jack that only does one thing is a terrible design choice given that it's one job is rendered functionally redundant with both bluetooth and USB.
EVERYTHING works immediately and flawlessly with 3.5mm jacks
First off that is simply not true. I manufacture wire harnesses for a living and some of our products have used these jacks. I understand them better than most. They are not perfect, they are not flawless, they are comparatively bulky, and they are a one trick pony that doesn't even do it's one trick especially well. The only reason anyone gave a shit about them is because they were common. Think of it this way. Imagine that it didn't exist already. Do you think anyone would design it for a modern device? Of course not - people would crucify the company that tried to push such a limited single use connector and rightly so.
Bluetooth at least brings wireless functionality to the table - USB-C audio offers *nothing* for the typical consumer
USB-C offers innumerable functions OTHER than audio including power transmission, perfectly adequate sound plus other data transmission, a standard connector identical reducing the number of types of cables to carry, simplifies devices, and frees up space budget for other features. I'm baffled why you think plugging in headphones is the only feature that matters here. The 3.5mm jack does ONE job that is rendered redundant by at least two other technologies already on the device, takes up a lot of space to do it, and frankly is just a good technology whose time has passed. Let it go.
that's way too shiny a toy for most people.
If it's priced that high then it isn't intended to be sold to "most" people. If the device is compelling enough there are plenty of people who would consider forking over that kind of money for it. (probably self included) But it had better be AMAZING and well beyond anything else available to justify that kind of price point. I would love a well designed phone that morphed into a small tablet - the idea is pretty compelling if the execution is right. But getting it right is going to be tricky and none of the designs for folding phones I've seen so far are even close to hitting the mark.
Since no information is available we'll have to wait to see if it has a removable battery, sd slot, or headphone jack...
Is that REALLY what you judge a phone on? Seriously? You understand that most people demonstrably do not care about any of those features. Hundreds of millions of smartphones continue to sell without any of those features. It is HIGHLY unlikely to have at least two of those and the headphone jack is at best a 50/50 proposition for it being included. People care about what they are willing to fork over money for and it is abundantly clear that none of those features are deal breakers for most people in the market for smartphones. You might feel differently and that's totally fine but it puts you in a tiny minority of the overall market.
I make it a policy to never judge before seeing a device. Maybe it will be brilliant but I have my doubts based on what I've seen so far. If it's like Samsung Galaxy F or Royole Flexpai then they shouldn't bother. That form factor is impractical and doesn't appear to be very robust. (it looks terribly easy to break if you put it in a pocket) I think the basic idea of a device that can morph from a phone size to small tablet size is a solid concept but it will all be about the execution. I don't think the bendy screens will be the best way to get there but I'm willing to be proven wrong.
And $1500? It better be an AMAZING device to justify that price point.
I think dusting off the RAZR nameplate is idiotic. The device shares no heritage or design with the original and anyone who is nostalgic for the original RAZR never really had to live with one. It was fine for the day but was more flash than performance. Aside from the eye catching design it was an entirely unremarkable phone in a market full of equally unremarkable phones. Relying on the hope for nostalgia from a 20 year old dumb phone to market a (supposedly) cutting edge modern smartphone should result in some marketing idiot losing their job.
How can a display in the front and the back be useful?
Follow the link and check it out. It's actually a pretty cool idea. They can be different sizes so you can have functions (like a physical keyboard or camera) on one side with a smaller screen and a screen the full size of the device on the other when those aren't needed. More immediately you can just have a camera on one side of the device instead of the clumsy front and back setup two camera setup we have now with smartphones. This allows things like me pointing my camera at my wife/daughter during a Facetime call and both them and both the person in front of and behind the smartphone being able to see the person we are talking to.
You can't see both of them at once.
Wow, genius! Nobody thought of that before you said it. Glad you pointed that out to everyone.
I might suggest there may be some use cases you overlooked in your knee-jerk reaction...
That's the stupidest idea I've ever seen. What a bunch of dumbasses.
Really? THAT is the dumbest idea you've ever seen? Then you have led a blessed life my friend.
Terms like "tan" have no official definition definer.
Not true. The word tan does have a medical definition. The word tan is used for other purposes as well but in this context when doctors are talking about there being no safe amount of tanning they are talking about the skin's reaction to UV light and the color changes that result. You can give superficially similar results by literally painting (staining) the skin with chemicals but that is a VERY different thing and if you looked at the skin up close the difference is obvious. Calling spray tans a "tan" is slightly misleading because it's really just a fancy form of makeup intended to simulate a suntan. Nothing wrong with that but it's not the same thing.
If the population calls it a "tan", it's a tan.
You could call it a "rose" or a "hippo" but it wouldn't change what we are talking about. Suntans and spray on tans aren't the same thing. One is a physiological reaction to UV light and the other is a form of makeup. Call them whatever you like but they are unambiguously not the same thing.
I've done no official surveys on this word regarding this matter, but neither have you.
My wife is a dermatopathologist so I have had more discussions with board certified experts on this very topic than you could possibly imagine.
AI researchers are too close to the problem.
Oh so we should listen instead to people (like yourself I'm guessing) who aren't involved in AI at all? You could substitute AI researcher with Physics researcher and your argument would be basically unchanged and equally bogus.
As for the argument that "humans will always be needed, because our economy is built around humans", wake up and look at the rest of the universe. Stuff happens without humans. Once machines don't need you, they don't need you.
You see a lot of machines out there in the universe doing stuff? You are making an argument from ignorance. Just because you can imagine some dystopian future doesn't mean it's actually possible for it to happen. I can imagine warp drives and teleportation and photon torpedos and other things that haven't been conclusively determined to be impossible. Doesn't mean they actually do or can exist in the real universe we live in. People like to imagine all sorts of fanciful ideas about how the machines are going to conquer us and for the most part they are pure nonsensical fantasy.
I saw the foldable screen device they were showing recently. My thought was neat proof of concept but there isn't a way in hell I would buy the thing. Thoroughly impractical form factor even if the device happened to work great otherwise. Too big while folded (large air gap) and too fragile to put in a pocket folded which seems to defeat the entire purpose of a phone. It's not really clear to me who would buy the thing or why other than as a toy to play with.
That said I think a device with a cleverly available second display on the back or a rigid display that can rotate into view on the front side has the potential to be really useful if the design is well done. The ZTE Nubia seems to be a promising idea for how to go about it.
Not according to any relevant metric.
You mean except for GDP and total wealth? Yes the US has more money as of 2019 than any other single country and has for quite some time. China will probably overtake the US in a few years but that is then and this is now.
In other news: American Football is not the most watched sport in the world and the US did not single-handedly beat the Nazi's in WWII.
Got any other fake and irrelevant strawmen you'd like to eviscerate?
What about the spray-on tan that you-know-who uses?
Spray on "tan" isn't a tan. It's paint. Spray "tans" are tans in the same sense that soy milk is really juice. They only call it a tan because it superficially resembles one to someone who isn't looking very carefully.
Expecting students to hand over their personal information and cell phone number to a third party is also unrealistic.
Remind gets basically no personal information and cell phone numbers aren't private. Furthermore using it is 100% voluntary. The school can't make them use it if they don't want to. Some of the parents and kids I deal with don't have phones so they can't use it even if they want to.
You really haven't dealt with the reality of just how you've sold your students privacy down the river.
Ha! Are we talking about the same people who spend their entire lives on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat? Spare me your indignation. Remind is hardly going to make a dent in their loss of privacy which they don't value anyway.
You have no control over how "Remind" uses this data, or how the data will be sold over and over long after your high school team has moved on.
If Remind can find a way to monetize my team's announcements 5 years from now then $diety bless them.
When students sell their privacy to organizations like Facebook, it's their choice to do so or not.
It's no different with Remind. Using it is voluntary. The school can ask but they cannot force anyone to use it.
Except that Remind actually IS NOT spamming. I'm not sure how often this is used to communicate directly with students in upper grades or college.
My school district uses it and it's hugely helpful. The team I coach uses it to great effect. We send out a few messages a week with information parents and students need to know. It results in a few messages a week mostly. Nothing unreasonable and it's entirely voluntary. But the utility means most parents sign up since they tend to like to know what's going on and I'm not about to call them one by one to explain everything.
Sorry, I don't need a bunch of BS being sent to my cell phone. If I'm in school, tell me in person. If it's after hours, leave me the hell alone.
You obviously don't have children. It's not "a bunch of BS" and a lot of information needs to reach parents and students outside of school hours. I coach a sports team at a high school. We need to be able to reach parents and students and services like Remind (which we use) help a LOT with this. I am not a teacher and I have a real job. We send out information that everyone on the team needs to know in a timely and cost effective manner. Expecting schools to waste money chasing you down in person only during school hours and only when you happen to be on campus (rare for parents) is absurd.
I don't understand why Remind wants to use SMS so badly? Install an app and communicate through that. This isn't a problem.
Because you can reach more people with SMS than any app. Not everyone has the latest smartphones. I have quite a few parents on teams I coach that still use flip phones. And even those who do don't really want to be checking unnecessary apps. Text messaging is close to universal so why not use it? Also not everyone has access to data connections at all times and SMS can reach more places more of the time.
Remind sends emails to every teacher they can to try to get them to use their "free" service.
Not really true and even if it were there is nothing unethical about trying to reach a target audience.
Once enough teachers in a district start using it, Remind contacts the school district to inform them that they are breaking the law and the paid version that archives the communications can be bought for tens of thousands of $$ a year.
That is not their business model.
This company has a business model based on borderline extortion. Hope they go out of business
This is quite simply a lie. I use their app and so does our school district. They don't extort anyone.
"Remind" could easily spin up it's own "Reminders" app, get students/parents to install it on their phones, and have it periodically check for notifications like any other messaging app on the planet over the phone's data connection
They already have an app and it's pretty good. We use it for the high school team I coach and it works well. But expecting everyone to install an app and to check it religiously is unrealistic. Furthermore a surprising number of people don't have smartphones either by choice or by fiscal necessity. I have several parents who either have older flip phones (by choice) or who cannot afford smartphones. If you think "just install the app" is a good solution you haven't dealt with parents and you REALLY haven't dealt with students. Text messaging is FAR more universal and makes it easier to reach everyone. It also works with technology that you cannot install the app on. At schools you have to meet people where they are, not where you think they should be.
Basically Verizon is being lazy in their attempts to deal with text spammers. They are making simple and overly broad policies rather that doing the hard work of actually working to figure out who is a problem and who isn't.
If your other goods or services (e.g. broadband) went up by 13-18%, I'm sure you'd complain too.
Happens all the time and about things I care about a LOT more than TV. Health insurance routinely increases by similar percentage amounts and the actual dollar amounts are FAR higher.
"It's only $2" is the refuge of a person with $2 to spare and expecting everyone else to ALWAYS have $2 to spare, on top of whatever they are paying for everything else. That's $2 a month, which is worse. You're now inching towards cable/satellite bills.
This is the US, i.e. the richest country in the world. Most of us really do have $2 to spare, even most of the less fortunate among us. If the $2 is a problem then perhaps you should reconsider paying $11 (or $13) a month to an objectively frivolous TV streaming service.
Seriously, if it's a problem for a lot of their customers Netflix will have to deal with the loss. If their customers mostly don't care (as I suspect most won't) then it isn't really a problem. Expecting Netflix to just keep their prices static and let inflation eat away their profits endlessly is naive.
I refuse to pay more than a token, throwaway payment for something that is just visual entertainment.
That's reasonable. Many others are willing to pay more. Neither of you is wrong for doing so.
Well, we can't really say that. iPhone sales have been coming in under Apple expectations lately, which is part of the reason their stock has taken such a beating. Maybe the effect wasn't immediate, but it might be a lot bigger than we think.
The reason iPhone sales are slowing is because A) They charged too much money and B) They barely changed anything from the last year's phone. I have an iPhone X and I would have considered upgrading but the new version is barely any different. Why would I spend $1000 for a phone barely different from the one in my pocket? They just didn't add enough value to make it worth it. Now that said they still are selling huge numbers of phones - the sales were under expectations but still huge by any objective standard.
It has NOTHING to do with the 3.5mm jack. Despite the loud protests of a few, most people genuinely don't give a shit and the evidence is the fact that Apple continues to sell tens of millions of phones. Their sales WENT UP after they removed the jack a few generations ago. Apple has never tried to be all things to all people and while some small few probably did switch to Android over the jack, most people shrugged and went about their lives. It's just not that big a deal to most of us.