When Samsung went from user replaceable batteries, to glued shut cases, the thickness of the phone decreased by less than 1mm. I don't think that makes the older phone "thick" But my phone is now on it's 2nd battery, and probably about to be on it's 3rd. That repairability is more than worth less than a single mm of extra thickness.
Nobody tried putting out similar phones with the only real difference being replaceable batteries.
If the choice is that you get 90% of the features you want, and the 10% remaining is the replaceable battery, vs getting 20% of the features you want, but including the replaceable battery, the fact that you chose the 90% doesn't mean that you wanted the battery to be non replaceable.
And that's the problem with the current market, there may be a dozen manufacturers, but they're really all making the same product with very little differentiation. As a result, "choice" is somewhat of an illusion.
Except that there was already a far superior version. The Robertson screw. They're square, so they're actually better than torx for not camming out, and there are relatively few, very specified, sizes which makes using the wrong size a rare occasion unlike torx where there are too many sizes.
Robertsons are standard in Canada, I've never figured out why Americans haven't heard of them.
If you think the original "retina" display lived up to it's claims, you either have sub-standard vision, hold your phone farther than a foot away from your face, or simply have a very poor memory. In any of those cases you would likely have been equally impressed with most of the screens of the day.
As for "usable" fingerprint reader. I never had any problems at all with the motorola one, worked great. You did have to train it first though, but that's no different to the iPhone one.
You can't claim it was "first" after someone points out prior art that reaches back 5 years before it.
I love change. Assuming the change actually improves something. I hate change if it's just for the sake of change, or if it removes functionality that I use frequently.
There is nothing inherently good about change, nor inherently bad, the good or bad come from the result.
Far too often people claim that if I don't like the result it's just because I don't like change. Those people are idiots and think that all change must by definition be good, no matter what it breaks.
Yeah CBC, they know how to do a website.... - HTTPS uses an invalid certificate - the same device (my phone) picks up either the mobile or desktop version of the site on alternating page loads, you can never guess which. - the one page has about 5 or 6 links to the same story with different headlines in different places on the page. Meaning that you have to scroll through a page that's about 4 times longer than it needs to be for the amount of content they have. - forgets my city selection about 20% of the time, and of those times, half of them the UI element to set it again is missing or non functional.
Don't get me wrong, they're one of my go to sites as well, but it sure isn't because they know how to do a web page!
Unfortunately the vast majority of "responsive" sites are exactly like that. My boss asked me recently to make a site more responsive by hardcoding pixel widths in to all the elements. I had to explain to him that not only was that the opposite of responsive, the particular pixel widths he asked for made it too wide for the company issued cell phones, but only fill half the with of the screen on company issued laptops. Making it basically unusable on both.
Ah yes, the "retina" display, the first display to use so much marketing hype as to be an outright lie. The first phone display with a resolution so high you couldn't see the individual pixels, at the viewing distance Jobs claimed, wouldn't exist for another year or two after the iPhone4, and it wouldn't come from Apple. In fact, the iPhone would lag in display technology basically forever more. They also weren't first on the fingerprint reader, as you point out. And the Motorola one (2 years before Apple) wasn't first either. Toshiba had one on a phone in 2007, 5 years before Apple. HTC, Acer, and LG all beat Apple to market on that one too.
I'm genuinely curious if Apple has ever been "first" with any technology or feature? I've never seen it personally. They tend to always lag several years behind the competition (though I'll admit that the original iPhone was only a few months (rather than their normal few years) behind other devices in the new form factor that has now come to dominate smartphones)
"continue to dominate"? Have you seen their market share? they don't in any way dominate, they have a small fraction of the smartphone market, and I don't think there has been a single time in the entire 10 year run where the iPhone has been "ahead" of the competition in terms of any functionality.
Apple has had only one solitary success, they are geniuses at marketing. They can make people think their products are better than they are, make people pay a premium for an inferior product, and inspire a cult-like brand loyalty that any other company would envy. That marketing success though does not in any way indicate a better product. Nor has it had the desired effect of convincing a majority of smartphone users to choose that inferior product.
You are right that free speech concerns aren't the point. Jurisdiction is the point.
If a court in Iran decrees that all content that disagrees with the Koran shall be removed from the internet worldwide (not just in Iran) you'd be fine with it? after all, that content breaks the law in Iran so we should remove that illegal content worldwide. What if a court in China states that we should remove all references to Taiwan as a country, after all, that breaks the law in China, so as illegal sites they should be shut down worldwide. Now how about a website that doesn't have french as it's most predominant language? that would break Quebec law, so we should shut all those sites down worldwide as well.
It's not about which law the website breaks. It's about the jurisdiction of the court to enforce said laws.
Sure, you personally agree with them this time, but you can't claim that this decision is ok, if you disagree with any of the other hypothetical decisions that I just listed above (or any other ones from any court anywhere in the world).
Sure it would make great revenge, but it wouldn't solve the problem of this particular order. The court has ordered that it be worldwide, not just from Canadian IPs
As another Canadian, I agree fully. I find that this is an odd overreach from the court. I'd expect this sort of thing from a lower court, but from the supreme court? This isn't the US, our supreme court is usually very reasonable.
That would have been the smart decision. But it wasn't what the court ordered. They specifically stated that wasn't good enough, the content had to be deleted worldwide, not just in Canada.
So in other words you think jurisdictional overreach is just fine, as long as it's on an issue you personally agree with. Unfortunately legal precedents don't work that way, the next judge won't check with you before using this precedent to see if you happen to agree with the case they're trying at the time.
The precedent here is that any court, anywhere in the world, can censor anything worldwide.
It doesn't matter what it is, this won't be limited to trademark disputes. In fact, the order specifically talks about the issue as being one of a website violating a court order, not specifically about it being a trademark dispute (though that is what the court order was for). This will include any website that violates any law anywhere in the world.
That could be blasphemy laws in Iran, or maybe Quebec's language law, or China's official stance on Taiwan, or Russia's on the Ukraine. If you applied every worldwide law to every website on the planet, you'd quickly have none left.
Problem there being that politicians also come from property, so they usually side with property. If you want them to side with people you have to.... ummmmm.... yeah... there's the problem.
So you think it would be reasonable for every single country to have veto power over your personal searches anywhere in the world? Meaning you can't access anything that any of the following (and more) regimes deem "offensive": - North Korea - China - Iran - Saudi Arabia - Russia
That would prevent you from accessing anything religious, anything talking about rights for women, or LGBTQ people. You wouldn't be able to see news about Taiwan, or about the Ukraine, nothing where you might happen to see a woman who isn't in a full burka. And that's just the start. I suspect by the time you were done with the entire world you'd find that there is basically no content left that isn't censored by someone. We know there are many regimes around the world that are opposed to science, news, medicine, human rights, freedom of the press, and the list goes on. It's bad enough to have to deal with the censorship of your own government, but to have to deal with the censorship of every single country in the world? no thanks!
Enforcement is somewhat easy as long as Google has some physical presence in Canada. Any asset within Canada can be seized, and any employee within Canada can be charged.
The rest of your post is dead on though, this order creates a precedent that every single country google has a presence in has a veto over every single thing google does anywhere in the world. It would be impossible to run a business like that. It won't be long before you run in to conflicting orders from different courts where it's impossible to follow one order without breaking the other, and if you manage to avoid that, it would only be by effectively killing your own service by censoring almost everything to the point that your search engine is useless.
If you actually read the summary, Google had no problem complying with the order within the country, the problem was the "worldwide" part of the order.
So does google try to enforce every decision by every court from every country on the whole world? if so, they are likely to very quickly run in to contradictory orders, and even if they avoid that, they'll run in to a situation where some dictatorship wants to shut down large swaths of the internet worldwide, should google do that?
This is a decision that was made without the jurisdiction to do so.
I think you missed the "worldwide" part of the decision. Google wasn't objecting to blocking in Canada, they just didn't think Canada should order a worldwide block.
When Samsung went from user replaceable batteries, to glued shut cases, the thickness of the phone decreased by less than 1mm. I don't think that makes the older phone "thick" But my phone is now on it's 2nd battery, and probably about to be on it's 3rd. That repairability is more than worth less than a single mm of extra thickness.
Most corporations seem to spend more time and money fighting repairability than they spend improving their product.
Nobody tried putting out similar phones with the only real difference being replaceable batteries.
If the choice is that you get 90% of the features you want, and the 10% remaining is the replaceable battery, vs getting 20% of the features you want, but including the replaceable battery, the fact that you chose the 90% doesn't mean that you wanted the battery to be non replaceable.
And that's the problem with the current market, there may be a dozen manufacturers, but they're really all making the same product with very little differentiation. As a result, "choice" is somewhat of an illusion.
Except that there was already a far superior version. The Robertson screw. They're square, so they're actually better than torx for not camming out, and there are relatively few, very specified, sizes which makes using the wrong size a rare occasion unlike torx where there are too many sizes.
Robertsons are standard in Canada, I've never figured out why Americans haven't heard of them.
If you think the original "retina" display lived up to it's claims, you either have sub-standard vision, hold your phone farther than a foot away from your face, or simply have a very poor memory. In any of those cases you would likely have been equally impressed with most of the screens of the day.
As for "usable" fingerprint reader. I never had any problems at all with the motorola one, worked great. You did have to train it first though, but that's no different to the iPhone one.
You can't claim it was "first" after someone points out prior art that reaches back 5 years before it.
Samsung don't have the cult following that Apple do, not even close.
And dollars spent don't really equate to results obtained.
I love change. Assuming the change actually improves something.
I hate change if it's just for the sake of change, or if it removes functionality that I use frequently.
There is nothing inherently good about change, nor inherently bad, the good or bad come from the result.
Far too often people claim that if I don't like the result it's just because I don't like change. Those people are idiots and think that all change must by definition be good, no matter what it breaks.
Yeah CBC, they know how to do a website....
- HTTPS uses an invalid certificate
- the same device (my phone) picks up either the mobile or desktop version of the site on alternating page loads, you can never guess which.
- the one page has about 5 or 6 links to the same story with different headlines in different places on the page. Meaning that you have to scroll through a page that's about 4 times longer than it needs to be for the amount of content they have.
- forgets my city selection about 20% of the time, and of those times, half of them the UI element to set it again is missing or non functional.
Don't get me wrong, they're one of my go to sites as well, but it sure isn't because they know how to do a web page!
Unfortunately the vast majority of "responsive" sites are exactly like that. My boss asked me recently to make a site more responsive by hardcoding pixel widths in to all the elements. I had to explain to him that not only was that the opposite of responsive, the particular pixel widths he asked for made it too wide for the company issued cell phones, but only fill half the with of the screen on company issued laptops. Making it basically unusable on both.
Ah yes, the "retina" display, the first display to use so much marketing hype as to be an outright lie. The first phone display with a resolution so high you couldn't see the individual pixels, at the viewing distance Jobs claimed, wouldn't exist for another year or two after the iPhone4, and it wouldn't come from Apple. In fact, the iPhone would lag in display technology basically forever more.
They also weren't first on the fingerprint reader, as you point out. And the Motorola one (2 years before Apple) wasn't first either. Toshiba had one on a phone in 2007, 5 years before Apple. HTC, Acer, and LG all beat Apple to market on that one too.
I'm genuinely curious if Apple has ever been "first" with any technology or feature? I've never seen it personally. They tend to always lag several years behind the competition (though I'll admit that the original iPhone was only a few months (rather than their normal few years) behind other devices in the new form factor that has now come to dominate smartphones)
"continue to dominate"?
Have you seen their market share? they don't in any way dominate, they have a small fraction of the smartphone market, and I don't think there has been a single time in the entire 10 year run where the iPhone has been "ahead" of the competition in terms of any functionality.
Apple has had only one solitary success, they are geniuses at marketing. They can make people think their products are better than they are, make people pay a premium for an inferior product, and inspire a cult-like brand loyalty that any other company would envy.
That marketing success though does not in any way indicate a better product. Nor has it had the desired effect of convincing a majority of smartphone users to choose that inferior product.
You are right that free speech concerns aren't the point. Jurisdiction is the point.
If a court in Iran decrees that all content that disagrees with the Koran shall be removed from the internet worldwide (not just in Iran) you'd be fine with it? after all, that content breaks the law in Iran so we should remove that illegal content worldwide.
What if a court in China states that we should remove all references to Taiwan as a country, after all, that breaks the law in China, so as illegal sites they should be shut down worldwide.
Now how about a website that doesn't have french as it's most predominant language? that would break Quebec law, so we should shut all those sites down worldwide as well.
It's not about which law the website breaks. It's about the jurisdiction of the court to enforce said laws.
Sure, you personally agree with them this time, but you can't claim that this decision is ok, if you disagree with any of the other hypothetical decisions that I just listed above (or any other ones from any court anywhere in the world).
I highly doubt that the constitution specifies that the court has jurisdiction worldwide.
Sure it would make great revenge, but it wouldn't solve the problem of this particular order. The court has ordered that it be worldwide, not just from Canadian IPs
As another Canadian, I agree fully. I find that this is an odd overreach from the court. I'd expect this sort of thing from a lower court, but from the supreme court? This isn't the US, our supreme court is usually very reasonable.
That would have been the smart decision. But it wasn't what the court ordered. They specifically stated that wasn't good enough, the content had to be deleted worldwide, not just in Canada.
No it wouldn't. They offered to stop serving this content in Canada, but the court said that wasn't enough, the court insisted it must be worldwide.
So in other words you think jurisdictional overreach is just fine, as long as it's on an issue you personally agree with.
Unfortunately legal precedents don't work that way, the next judge won't check with you before using this precedent to see if you happen to agree with the case they're trying at the time.
The precedent here is that any court, anywhere in the world, can censor anything worldwide.
It doesn't matter what it is, this won't be limited to trademark disputes. In fact, the order specifically talks about the issue as being one of a website violating a court order, not specifically about it being a trademark dispute (though that is what the court order was for). This will include any website that violates any law anywhere in the world.
That could be blasphemy laws in Iran, or maybe Quebec's language law, or China's official stance on Taiwan, or Russia's on the Ukraine. If you applied every worldwide law to every website on the planet, you'd quickly have none left.
No, why would a court ever think about the consequences of their rulings? That would be CRAZY!
Problem there being that politicians also come from property, so they usually side with property. If you want them to side with people you have to.... ummmmm.... yeah... there's the problem.
So you think it would be reasonable for every single country to have veto power over your personal searches anywhere in the world?
Meaning you can't access anything that any of the following (and more) regimes deem "offensive":
- North Korea
- China
- Iran
- Saudi Arabia
- Russia
That would prevent you from accessing anything religious, anything talking about rights for women, or LGBTQ people. You wouldn't be able to see news about Taiwan, or about the Ukraine, nothing where you might happen to see a woman who isn't in a full burka. And that's just the start. I suspect by the time you were done with the entire world you'd find that there is basically no content left that isn't censored by someone. We know there are many regimes around the world that are opposed to science, news, medicine, human rights, freedom of the press, and the list goes on.
It's bad enough to have to deal with the censorship of your own government, but to have to deal with the censorship of every single country in the world? no thanks!
Enforcement is somewhat easy as long as Google has some physical presence in Canada. Any asset within Canada can be seized, and any employee within Canada can be charged.
The rest of your post is dead on though, this order creates a precedent that every single country google has a presence in has a veto over every single thing google does anywhere in the world. It would be impossible to run a business like that. It won't be long before you run in to conflicting orders from different courts where it's impossible to follow one order without breaking the other, and if you manage to avoid that, it would only be by effectively killing your own service by censoring almost everything to the point that your search engine is useless.
If you actually read the summary, Google had no problem complying with the order within the country, the problem was the "worldwide" part of the order.
So does google try to enforce every decision by every court from every country on the whole world? if so, they are likely to very quickly run in to contradictory orders, and even if they avoid that, they'll run in to a situation where some dictatorship wants to shut down large swaths of the internet worldwide, should google do that?
This is a decision that was made without the jurisdiction to do so.
I think you missed the "worldwide" part of the decision. Google wasn't objecting to blocking in Canada, they just didn't think Canada should order a worldwide block.