Actually, not quite.... The whole innovative thing with the ROG Zephyrus was the idea the laptop would be slimmer, like a typical laptop, when you carry it around with the lid closed But when you open its lid, the bottom cover also lifts up in back, creating a bunch of extra airflow in and out of the case.
It's kind of a smart concept, IMO. A lot of people were buying various laptop stands to tilt their laptops forward at an angle while using them anyway... This just does the same thing without needing any extra equipment, and makes it functional at the same time.
(It's also smart enough so if you want to run it with the lid closed, using only an external monitor? It auto throttles the GPU so it won't overheat in that scenario.)
Only real issue I have with it is the poor quality and odd-shaped battery they used. It's nearly impossible to locate replacements for it and who knows if the current versions are less likely to blow up?
I agree that this isn't exactly "cutting edge stuff" from Apple, here. But it's not too bad either. Seems like a nice, logical extension after offering Apple Pay and the Apple Pay Cash functionality to make all your typical financial transactions happen right from your phone.
I do like the way the cash back bonus is just automatic and paid back within 24 hours of a purchase. Most others make you jump through some hoops to collect them - which surely helps them avoid paying them out to a certain percentage of their customers who forget to do those extra steps.
And issuing a physical card to go with it that has no identifying card info printed on it? That's smart too.
Oh, and BTW: To the people who keep ridiculing Americans and their need to have multiple credit cards? The FICO scores get calculated, in part, based on how much credit you have available to you vs. how much you actually use. So having more cards, even if they sit there unused, benefits you by improving that ratio -- since no one card company is likely to extend you a line of credit as big as you'd have in sum total, spanning 4 or 5 cards.
I forked over all the money about a year ago for an ASUS ROG Zephyrus gaming laptop, mainly because it was the first to market using the new nVidia standards that let a 1080 series video card run in a slimmer laptop while still getting adequate cooling.
Well -- I woke up one morning to find my keyboard bulging upwards around the S, D and F keys.
The battery in it blew up like a balloon, to the point it's deforming the keyboard on top of it. A quick search on the net reveals a bunch of complaints about the exact same issue, mostly on the ASUS forums. Not a single word from ASUS support acknowledging the problem. Several people got their batteries replaced under the 1 year factory warranty, but that required sending the whole machine in to be serviced (at your own expense for the postage) and long delays to get it back. Outside the warranty, they quoted people over $400!
I was rather shocked at their unwillingness to try to proactively address what could really become a fire hazard.... but now, seeing this mis-use of their update service too? I'm convinced ASUS just wants to maximize profit margins while doing things the cheapest way possible. I think far less of the brand than I used to.
I never saw how it was supposed to be possible to really prevent someone from ripping digital content that can be played back on a computer?
It seems like iTunes itself handles the content decryption process so you can view what you purchased. And once that can take place, you could write software that captures each frame out of the video buffer along with the audio that's playing back to the speakers and saves them to a new file?
I'm sure there are challenges in keeping the video and the audio synchronized as you're saving that much data in real-time as it plays... but modern computers should have the CPU power to do it.
One example I ran across recently was the keyboard cover Apple sold for the 9.7" iPad Pro (original model). Mine started having issues where I'd open the cover to use the iPad and randomly get dialog boxes popping up saying "Accessory not supported". At first, I blamed my Apple Pencil, thinking it was having connectivity issues. But I eventually realized it was something with the keyboard not maintaining a solid connection with the iPad via its magnetic connector.
I brought it by Apple, just to see what they'd say. (I knew it was past the 1 year warranty period and they've gone to 10.1" iPad Pros now with all new accessories. But hoped at least they'd have some "old stock" of the keyboard cover I needed.) Turns out one of their techs was immediately aware of my issue and said that was part of a "silent recall" inside Apple. He went and got me a brand new keyboard cover and swapped it with my defective one, and sent me on my way!
If you visit Apple's web page listing all the recalls... the iPad Pro cover is not mentioned anywhere.
I mean, in all the years I've used Apple products, that's always a complaint about them from detractors; They don't give you enough flexibility or choice!
Well, here's a system from Apple that you can configure in all sorts of insane, over the top ways, IF you actually want to -- and people are complaining because it's too much?
I actually own one of these iMac Pros, but I purchased it in the standard "base" configuration. I was also able to buy it for $1,000 off the regular price on a sale that Micro Center stores ran on it, shortly after it was released. They ran various sales on it for months after that, varying between about $500 off and that $1000 discount -- but there were definitely some opportunities to get one for less than Apple's advertised pricing.
It's been a great computer and I have no regrets purchasing it.... The 5K display in it is excellent and partially justifies the base cost of the computer when you see how much equivalent monitors sell for separately. I certainly don't see the need to buy the upgraded configurations for many thousands more? But I'm glad those were available, in case people needed them. I can see someone running a lot of virtual machines in test environments, as a developer, possibly needing a lot more RAM. Maybe not 256GB but 128GB? Yeah.... could happen.
Not really..... I mean, yes, it's good to appeal to a broader customer base. But I think so far, Tesla has gotten where they are mostly through loyal fans. (You know... same way Apple built the company off of the historical 8% or so of the personal computer buying market who just loved everything they put out?)
If they alienate the existing owners now, that means a lot of people who bought a car from them back in 2012-2015 or so.... That's enough time so a lot of folks are ready to do a trade-in for something new.
It doesn't matter if you're into music creation, video editing, photo editing, or just working on spreadsheets. The software applications market has trended towards consolidation. mergers and the little guys becoming niches or irrelevant.
I'm not an artist, but I work for a company full of creative people who do use software like Adobe Creative Cloud. I really don't believe they NEED it to get their work done, but it's much more an issue of what they learned to use back in school, or with previous employers. We still battle constantly with people demanding we buy full versions of even the Adobe Acrobat software, when plenty of shareware PDF editing solutions already exist that cost FAR less. Since Adobe invented the PDF document, it stands to reason they're the most comprehensive editing solution for the file format. But there's no way we really have dozens of people employed here who fully utilize the esoteric features you only get with the "real" Adobe branded software!
I've been able to do pretty much everything I needed to do with a PDF file using the Preview app that comes with OS X on my Mac. It lets me selectively remove pages from a document, annotate it, add a saved signature to it, re-order pages or insert pages.... all the common stuff.
But yeah.... the times when I wanted to do some graphics work for a web site or what-not? I always found great solutions with little freeware or shareware tools out there. You don't get everything in one application, under one set of menu choices though. Maybe for a lot of professionals, that's the deal-breaker? But I think I'd rather shuffle my drawing or photo in and out of 6 or 7 different tools, as needed, vs. paying month after month to keep my Adobe applications properly licensed and running. Clearly though, there are plenty of people making enough money with their creative works so they'll pay Adobe's prices.
I remember when Toyota was pretty much the king of the foreign sports car scene. I mean, sure, you always had the Italian exotics that were priced double what a large home cost, and the crowd who liked German engineering. But Toyota pretty much mastered the art of the Japanese sports car, and the sporty-looking "little brother" models, while keeping all of the reliability the brand was known for. People absolutely loved their Celicas and Celica GT's, and then there were the Supras. But you also had cars like the little MR2 in the mix.
All of a sudden though, around 1998, Toyota did this complete shift to "Green, eco-conscious" car building. They dropped all the sports cars and banked it all on cars like the Prius, plus the stable of boring "generi-cars" like the Camry and Avalon (a stretched Camry, essentially). I think they lost a LOT of brand loyalty after that, and people who only cared about reliable, long-lasting vehicles started moving over to Honda.
The Prius obviously did well for Toyota and appeals to a certain kind of buyer. But to this day, I feel like the company gave up a lot to chase "Green" and wound up perfecting a compromise in the Prius line. I mean, a hybrid vehicle has twice the complexity.... All the parts that are involved when you have a gasoline powered engine of some sort in there, plus pretty much all the stuff you need for any kind of electric car. And yet, they made all of that stuff work remarkably reliably, so owners don't feel the pain of the doubled complexity under the hood. I'm still not sure anyone paying full, new prices for a Prius ever saves enough money in gas with it to justify its cost? I mean, at least not vs. some of the downsides of selecting a car that size and so forth. It probably winds up a better economic value for the used buyer.
Now, they're way behind on doing anything with a pure EV. (They dabbled with an EV RAV 4 at one time, but that borrowed Tesla's battery and technology -- and never really sold more than a relative few units as another "compliance vehicle".)
All the news sites seem to be in agreement that because this is a Crossover type SUV, which is the big seller in the market right now, that this is going to do great.
The problem I see from the perspective of almost every Tesla owner I've spoken to about is.... none of them are impressed by the styling or anything else about it.
That tells me that yes, this really is a Tesla aimed at the "average consumer" who may have never considered one before, or didn't pay a lot of attention to them until now. That's fine, IF enough of those people turn out to want to try an EV version of a CUV at a $40-60K price-point. This is NOT really a vehicle that existing Tesla owners or fans will probably buy in any great numbers.
I mean, they already just sold a lot of Model 3 sedans to the Tesla-faithful, and this Model Y is so similar to one of those, you'd almost mistake one for the other at first glance. It's a slight bit taller, but exact same headlights, front grille design, and overall shape. Not even so much as new paint colors. I think the people who could afford them and were earlier adopters largely forked out the money for a Model X if they wanted an SUV, and they're rewarded for that cost with a bigger, roomier vehicle that has a far superior dashboard design. (And sure, you get the cool gull-wing rear doors too.)
Oddly too, depending on configuration -- there are people who paid about $5K more for their Model 3 than the same configuration claims it will cost on a Model Y. Maybe that will help some of them resell their slightly used 3 to move to a new Y if they want something like those extra seats for 7 passengers? But again, I bet this is really only a small sub-set of owners.
At this point, I don't think ANY of the news sites are that trustworthy, reliable or honest. Print journalism is dying a slow, painful death because nobody is really interested in paying for newspaper or magazine subscriptions anymore. Everyone has gotten used to trying to obtain the news online for free. (What's that? A paywall is in the way? Well, time to find one of those browser extensions that helps you bypass it! Can't do that? Ask someone else to copy/paste the content to a social media site so you can read it for free!)
Sure - they can make a little money in the online world, via pop-up ads or getting businesses to sponsor them in some manner. But then, you're back to the news likely having a bias towards whoever is funding it.
The TV news? It went from being a loss-leader to a profit center long ago, but did so by only concerning itself with maximizing eyeballs watching it. That meant getting rid of the costly "investigative reporting" that would span a whole week's worth of newscasts. Ditch the editorials where "equal time would be provided for those with opposing viewpoints". Make everything a neatly packaged 30 second spot and mix in "feel good, fluff" with anything hard-hitting, so ensure viewers don't come away unhappy enough so they blame their feelings on your channel. Cover all the sports and weather things, no matter what else is happening. Don't expect to become real well informed from any of that newstainment!
I mean, I just posted yesterday how disgusted I've been some of the recent BBC reporting -- and they've always been regarded as one of the last few trusted news sources. (Slashdot even featured one of their bone-headed articles trying to argue why we need to be concerned about the trend towards listening to streaming and digital music instead of buying it to play on physical media. Lame attempt at equating it with accelerating climate change! That's the stuff I might expect from an environmental extremist blogger, but not the BBC.)
I think if people are honest, they have to admit Hollywood has a recent history of trying really hard to "preach" a certain agenda. When the star in Capt. Marvel was quoted making comments about the movie not being for white males and so on, it definitely turned me off to having interest in buying a ticket for it.
I've heard nothing but praise for some of the throwback 90's nostalgia in it though, which I think is positive. (The throwback to 70's - 80's nostalgia found all over "Stranger Things" is part of what made that series such a success too.)
Maybe you're just finally noticing how MOST of the news sites out there do a lot of crap reporting? As the Left seems to go ever further to the left, they become extremists that few mainstream publications want to be known as a part of. So they "pull back" from that and try to head more to the middle ground.
As an Independent libertarian type, I find it VERY rare that I can read something from Slate or Vox that I can agree with, because it's too far Left for me to stomach.
But frankly, the BBC has come out of some of the most crappy excuses for reporting I've seen in a long time. That surprised me a bit, as I thought they were above that. For example, they recently had a piece that claimed police supported Smollett's claims of getting assaulted in Chicago, while pretty much EVERY other news site correctly reported that the opposite had happened! They also put out a piece that tried to seriously claim that all the people listening to streaming and digital music instead of buying physical media are increasing our "climate change" risks!
I'm lost on your explanation about the "Progressive Left", as well? Maybe you don't realize it, but the Democratic establishment is made of/built upon "Progressives". The Democratic Socialists like Sanders and Cortez are NOT what that establishment supports at all. (EG. I have Progressive liberal buddies who I debate regularly on all sorts of issues. Even though we don't often agree, I respect them for such things as being gun owners who still want our 2A Constitutional rights upheld. They also tend to "opt out/ignore" all of this uproar over such things as gender fluidity and extreme feminism. A couple of them I know are gay and probably latched on to the Democratic party long ago because they felt it wasn't as distasteful when it came to gay/lesbian rights. Yet when push comes to shove on even THAT topic? They're pretty much forced to admit that the only reason Republicans seemed like a problem was their attempt to buddy-up with the "religious right". (And let's face it... 99% of that was just an attempt to gain extra votes. Republicans generally do zilch to actually legislate anything that pleases those hard-right religious groups. They just saw them as "up for grabs" votes sitting on the table because Democrats wouldn't go there.)
Minimum wage is a TERRIBLE form of welfare, because that has pretty much nothing to do with what a wage is about! The very definition of work or "a job" is a voluntary contract with an employer, where you agree to do the labor they're needing to get done at the wage they agree to pay you as you do it. Welfare, by definition, is financial assistance given to someone who LACKS a job - so they won't lose everything while trying to find another suitable form of employment.
This whole UBI thing? It literally comes out of science fiction, and like most sci-fi, isn't something that's viable today.
The fiction part stems from the idea that people would love to have no more worries about laboring to have all of their basic needs met. There's really no way such a thing can happen right now, without OTHER people laboring in your place to ensure you have those things. That's why it's inequitable and unsustainable. The ONLY way a UBI becomes fair for everybody is if all of the labor required to ensure basic needs are met comes from automation/robots/AI. Heck, in the Star Trek universe, they had to go so far as to invent fantastic machines like replicators that just make things appear out of nothing, on demand, and transporters that eliminate the "time penalty" involved in getting from point A to B. (Time is money, after all.)
Buying and shopping local is great, in the sense you more directly help your peers keep food on their tables and put their kids through school, etc.
I'm not sure that it helps solve the problem of too many big corporate mergers and too many products made by the same few companies, though?
For example, despite all the prodding and begging for people to patronize our local restaurants, it's being revealed that many of them are really just preparing food that they get trucked in from a big supplier, ready to thaw, heat and serve. So their "specialties" are really just ones created by another big corporation and resold for these places to pretend their own chefs created for you.
I don't think you can avoid buying products made by the "big guys", in most cases. You can sometimes choose to let a small, family owned business make profit off the top of reselling them to you though.
I listened to a recent interview with a CEO who said his company is pretty good at making educated guesses about actual costs of production and profit margins on vehicles. And his belief was, Tesla typically makes between a 25% and upwards of 40% profit margin on each vehicle it sells. The higher margins are all on the fully loaded S's or X's. The new base Model 3 probably comes close to being sold at a break-even point, as long as it's built in America. But he calculates a 25% profit margin on it if it's made in China instead (which looks like is Tesla's plan).
I always felt like the X was purposely overpriced to give Tesla a "flagship" model. They know SUVs are very popular and made the most sense as the platform to command a premium price while still selling a decent number of them. Since it's built on the same frame as an S, with the same dash and electronics, it was really just a matter of redesigning the body panels and then (probably too much) money spent on those gull-wing doors to give it more "cool factor".
I agree with what you're saying.... that businesses may purposely "make mistakes" that help them get an agenda through.
That really doesn't sound like the same thing as asking every ISP in America to report its customer count, and having just about all of them do so properly except for ONE small provider? (It looks like they misinterpreted the instructions and marked off the population of their entire coverage area, vs. listing how many customers they actually had in those geographic areas they could potentially service.)
You could ALSO say that any Tesla owners who paid the $8000 for that before 2017 are much MORE financially damaged by the Model 3's release and subsequent huge depreciation on used Model S's!
Musk likes to be an optimist, for sure.... But he hasn't really sold anyone anything that was a lie either. These promised future upgrades were all clearly marketed as a "Pay now to lock in your place to get them whenever they may be ready." arrangement.
Like I told one guy... I never even pre-order new video games titles that are "coming soon". If you pay for anything that's not delivered immediately upon the payment, you're essentially just agreeing to loan them some of your money.
Tesla might as well have just offered the self-driving upgrades as a Kickstarter campaign really.
I think many people forget or don't know that Tesla's first "auto pilot" (AP1) was just Intel's MobilEye system that they paid for the rights to use. So it wasn't until a few years reselling it that Tesla began trying to replicate its functionality with their own system. MobilEye features like ability to OCR read speed limit signs is something Tesla is STILL unable to do. (The current system relies on GPS info to know the road speed limits.)
"Gender equality" should be something encouraged by ensuring both genders have the same OPPORTUNITIES to better themselves. If you're trying to give one gender additional opportunities not given to the other one? That's about artificial (and discriminatory) manipulation of the outcome.
No different, really, than situations like McDonalds recently announcing they're donating a large sum of money to help give black kids scholarships to colleges and universities. As a private business, McD can spend its money any way it wishes. But let's call it what it really is; discriminatory favoritism purposely given to a group that's perceived as needing more financial help to pay for higher education. If this was REALLY about promoting equality, the scholarships they fund wouldn't have one's skin color as a prerequisite. What about the poor white kid who lives in an inner city, who could excel in college if he/she was only given the opportunity? Clearly, McDonalds thinks it's more beneficial to ignore that kid because he/she is "too white" to make them look good.
I saw this kid speaking on the news last night, and it's great that he's made up his own mind about what he wants to do with his body. And yes, it's also true that it's rather sad to hear that his mom chose to use Facebook as her SOLE source of information gathering to come to HER conclusions about the merits/disadvantages of vaccinations.
But this whole debate seems to me like it involves a lot of polarization that's uncalled for.
The vast majority of people I talk to are "tentatively for" government mandated vaccinations. That means, they're not just against vaccinations on the whole. They got their own kids immunized for all of the usual childhood diseases. BUT, they also get that it sets a dangerous precedent to let one's government dictate that you MUST put a substance in your body, any time they say so. And really, there's no reason to blindly assume that any NEW vaccines that come along will be as safe or effective to receive as the tried and true ones we've been collectively receiving for decades.
I grasp the argument that failure to get vaccinated against a terrible thing like polio or rubella starts risking the safety and health of others, due to herd immunity -- and that's why it's not JUST about what you want to do with your own body. But that doesn't necessarily stand when the vaccines are for things like genital warts or even common strains of the flu. What happens if a dozen new vaccines are developed for other diseases, but we discover the human body can't create immunity for all of those things and maintain it at one time? If government DEMANDS you get all those vaccines, but the last one you get overloads your system so a couple of other vaccines you got become ineffective -- THAT could cause you to contract measles or polio or what-not!
I'm much more of follower of computer-related things than game consoles.... but I remember checking out the Vita when it was new, because one of our kids wanted a portable system. (They wound up with one of Nintendo's offerings, which I suspect most kids did?) The Vita seemed like it was priced pretty high, and didn't have the compelling game selection to justify buying it, back then.
I believe it had pretty decent specs and graphics capabilities.... but that's where I think they run into some issues with these portable consoles? Only the younger audience really sees the value in the hand-held consoles. (Correct me here if I'm way off-base, but this has been my observation.) It seems like they're most attractive to kids/pre-teens who don't drive yet and are liable to send a lot of time "captive" on road trips with their parents or what-not. Once you're a little older, you can just set up a superior system on your own LCD TV (like in a college dorm or apartment) and you're going to take your smartphone with you on the go... not some pocket sized console. So.... price is a key factor here. Younger buyers can't get one unless it's priced low enough so it's a reasonable "ask" as a gift.
When Tesla started calling their system "auto-pilot", it was years before others copy-catted or tried to "one up" it with "driver assist" features. The idiots who fall asleep at the wheel and crash are just that; idiots. You can't even get a Tesla to automatically stay in a lane without slightly tugging the steering wheel every 15 seconds or so, or else it beeps and disables that mode. It's frustrating how badly it's crippled in the name of "making things safer for idiots".
Musk likes to over-promise, but it seems to me like most of it comes from being so excited about what they're working on. Anyone following the brand for a while learns how that works and tempers the Twitter comments with a dose of reality. Basically, you can go test-drive a Tesla right now and learn what it REALLY does/doesn't do. You can optionally pay another $5,000 or so to get "first dibs" on future stuff Elon promises but may not materialize for years.
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Actually, not quite .... The whole innovative thing with the ROG Zephyrus was the idea the laptop would be slimmer, like a typical laptop, when you carry it around with the lid closed But when you open its lid, the bottom cover also lifts up in back, creating a bunch of extra airflow in and out of the case.
It's kind of a smart concept, IMO. A lot of people were buying various laptop stands to tilt their laptops forward at an angle while using them anyway... This just does the same thing without needing any extra equipment, and makes it functional at the same time.
(It's also smart enough so if you want to run it with the lid closed, using only an external monitor? It auto throttles the GPU so it won't overheat in that scenario.)
Only real issue I have with it is the poor quality and odd-shaped battery they used. It's nearly impossible to locate replacements for it and who knows if the current versions are less likely to blow up?
I agree that this isn't exactly "cutting edge stuff" from Apple, here. But it's not too bad either. Seems like a nice, logical extension after offering Apple Pay and the Apple Pay Cash functionality to make all your typical financial transactions happen right from your phone.
I do like the way the cash back bonus is just automatic and paid back within 24 hours of a purchase. Most others make you jump through some hoops to collect them - which surely helps them avoid paying them out to a certain percentage of their customers who forget to do those extra steps.
And issuing a physical card to go with it that has no identifying card info printed on it? That's smart too.
Oh, and BTW: To the people who keep ridiculing Americans and their need to have multiple credit cards? The FICO scores get calculated, in part, based on how much credit you have available to you vs. how much you actually use. So having more cards, even if they sit there unused, benefits you by improving that ratio -- since no one card company is likely to extend you a line of credit as big as you'd have in sum total, spanning 4 or 5 cards.
I forked over all the money about a year ago for an ASUS ROG Zephyrus gaming laptop, mainly because it was the first to market using the new nVidia standards that let a 1080 series video card run in a slimmer laptop while still getting adequate cooling.
Well -- I woke up one morning to find my keyboard bulging upwards around the S, D and F keys.
The battery in it blew up like a balloon, to the point it's deforming the keyboard on top of it. A quick search on the net reveals a bunch of complaints about the exact same issue, mostly on the ASUS forums. Not a single word from ASUS support acknowledging the problem. Several people got their batteries replaced under the 1 year factory warranty, but that required sending the whole machine in to be serviced (at your own expense for the postage) and long delays to get it back. Outside the warranty, they quoted people over $400!
I was rather shocked at their unwillingness to try to proactively address what could really become a fire hazard.... but now, seeing this mis-use of their update service too? I'm convinced ASUS just wants to maximize profit margins while doing things the cheapest way possible. I think far less of the brand than I used to.
I remember when Ozzy Osbourne music was the root of all of this evil for teens.
I never saw how it was supposed to be possible to really prevent someone from ripping digital content that can be played back on a computer?
It seems like iTunes itself handles the content decryption process so you can view what you purchased. And once that can take place, you could write software that captures each frame out of the video buffer along with the audio that's playing back to the speakers and saves them to a new file?
I'm sure there are challenges in keeping the video and the audio synchronized as you're saving that much data in real-time as it plays ... but modern computers should have the CPU power to do it.
One example I ran across recently was the keyboard cover Apple sold for the 9.7" iPad Pro (original model). Mine started having issues where I'd open the cover to use the iPad and randomly get dialog boxes popping up saying "Accessory not supported". At first, I blamed my Apple Pencil, thinking it was having connectivity issues. But I eventually realized it was something with the keyboard not maintaining a solid connection with the iPad via its magnetic connector.
I brought it by Apple, just to see what they'd say. (I knew it was past the 1 year warranty period and they've gone to 10.1" iPad Pros now with all new accessories. But hoped at least they'd have some "old stock" of the keyboard cover I needed.) Turns out one of their techs was immediately aware of my issue and said that was part of a "silent recall" inside Apple. He went and got me a brand new keyboard cover and swapped it with my defective one, and sent me on my way!
If you visit Apple's web page listing all the recalls ... the iPad Pro cover is not mentioned anywhere.
I mean, in all the years I've used Apple products, that's always a complaint about them from detractors; They don't give you enough flexibility or choice!
Well, here's a system from Apple that you can configure in all sorts of insane, over the top ways, IF you actually want to -- and people are complaining because it's too much?
I actually own one of these iMac Pros, but I purchased it in the standard "base" configuration. I was also able to buy it for $1,000 off the regular price on a sale that Micro Center stores ran on it, shortly after it was released. They ran various sales on it for months after that, varying between about $500 off and that $1000 discount -- but there were definitely some opportunities to get one for less than Apple's advertised pricing.
It's been a great computer and I have no regrets purchasing it.... The 5K display in it is excellent and partially justifies the base cost of the computer when you see how much equivalent monitors sell for separately. I certainly don't see the need to buy the upgraded configurations for many thousands more? But I'm glad those were available, in case people needed them. I can see someone running a lot of virtual machines in test environments, as a developer, possibly needing a lot more RAM. Maybe not 256GB but 128GB? Yeah .... could happen.
Not really..... I mean, yes, it's good to appeal to a broader customer base. But I think so far, Tesla has gotten where they are mostly through loyal fans. (You know ... same way Apple built the company off of the historical 8% or so of the personal computer buying market who just loved everything they put out?)
If they alienate the existing owners now, that means a lot of people who bought a car from them back in 2012-2015 or so .... That's enough time so a lot of folks are ready to do a trade-in for something new.
It doesn't matter if you're into music creation, video editing, photo editing, or just working on spreadsheets. The software applications market has trended towards consolidation. mergers and the little guys becoming niches or irrelevant.
I'm not an artist, but I work for a company full of creative people who do use software like Adobe Creative Cloud. I really don't believe they NEED it to get their work done, but it's much more an issue of what they learned to use back in school, or with previous employers. We still battle constantly with people demanding we buy full versions of even the Adobe Acrobat software, when plenty of shareware PDF editing solutions already exist that cost FAR less. Since Adobe invented the PDF document, it stands to reason they're the most comprehensive editing solution for the file format. But there's no way we really have dozens of people employed here who fully utilize the esoteric features you only get with the "real" Adobe branded software!
I've been able to do pretty much everything I needed to do with a PDF file using the Preview app that comes with OS X on my Mac. It lets me selectively remove pages from a document, annotate it, add a saved signature to it, re-order pages or insert pages .... all the common stuff.
But yeah.... the times when I wanted to do some graphics work for a web site or what-not? I always found great solutions with little freeware or shareware tools out there. You don't get everything in one application, under one set of menu choices though. Maybe for a lot of professionals, that's the deal-breaker? But I think I'd rather shuffle my drawing or photo in and out of 6 or 7 different tools, as needed, vs. paying month after month to keep my Adobe applications properly licensed and running. Clearly though, there are plenty of people making enough money with their creative works so they'll pay Adobe's prices.
I remember when Toyota was pretty much the king of the foreign sports car scene. I mean, sure, you always had the Italian exotics that were priced double what a large home cost, and the crowd who liked German engineering. But Toyota pretty much mastered the art of the Japanese sports car, and the sporty-looking "little brother" models, while keeping all of the reliability the brand was known for. People absolutely loved their Celicas and Celica GT's, and then there were the Supras. But you also had cars like the little MR2 in the mix.
All of a sudden though, around 1998, Toyota did this complete shift to "Green, eco-conscious" car building. They dropped all the sports cars and banked it all on cars like the Prius, plus the stable of boring "generi-cars" like the Camry and Avalon (a stretched Camry, essentially). I think they lost a LOT of brand loyalty after that, and people who only cared about reliable, long-lasting vehicles started moving over to Honda.
The Prius obviously did well for Toyota and appeals to a certain kind of buyer. But to this day, I feel like the company gave up a lot to chase "Green" and wound up perfecting a compromise in the Prius line. I mean, a hybrid vehicle has twice the complexity .... All the parts that are involved when you have a gasoline powered engine of some sort in there, plus pretty much all the stuff you need for any kind of electric car. And yet, they made all of that stuff work remarkably reliably, so owners don't feel the pain of the doubled complexity under the hood. I'm still not sure anyone paying full, new prices for a Prius ever saves enough money in gas with it to justify its cost? I mean, at least not vs. some of the downsides of selecting a car that size and so forth. It probably winds up a better economic value for the used buyer.
Now, they're way behind on doing anything with a pure EV. (They dabbled with an EV RAV 4 at one time, but that borrowed Tesla's battery and technology -- and never really sold more than a relative few units as another "compliance vehicle".)
All the news sites seem to be in agreement that because this is a Crossover type SUV, which is the big seller in the market right now, that this is going to do great.
The problem I see from the perspective of almost every Tesla owner I've spoken to about is .... none of them are impressed by the styling or anything else about it.
That tells me that yes, this really is a Tesla aimed at the "average consumer" who may have never considered one before, or didn't pay a lot of attention to them until now. That's fine, IF enough of those people turn out to want to try an EV version of a CUV at a $40-60K price-point. This is NOT really a vehicle that existing Tesla owners or fans will probably buy in any great numbers.
I mean, they already just sold a lot of Model 3 sedans to the Tesla-faithful, and this Model Y is so similar to one of those, you'd almost mistake one for the other at first glance. It's a slight bit taller, but exact same headlights, front grille design, and overall shape. Not even so much as new paint colors. I think the people who could afford them and were earlier adopters largely forked out the money for a Model X if they wanted an SUV, and they're rewarded for that cost with a bigger, roomier vehicle that has a far superior dashboard design. (And sure, you get the cool gull-wing rear doors too.)
Oddly too, depending on configuration -- there are people who paid about $5K more for their Model 3 than the same configuration claims it will cost on a Model Y. Maybe that will help some of them resell their slightly used 3 to move to a new Y if they want something like those extra seats for 7 passengers? But again, I bet this is really only a small sub-set of owners.
You better go out and get it yourself!
At this point, I don't think ANY of the news sites are that trustworthy, reliable or honest. Print journalism is dying a slow, painful death because nobody is really interested in paying for newspaper or magazine subscriptions anymore. Everyone has gotten used to trying to obtain the news online for free. (What's that? A paywall is in the way? Well, time to find one of those browser extensions that helps you bypass it! Can't do that? Ask someone else to copy/paste the content to a social media site so you can read it for free!)
Sure - they can make a little money in the online world, via pop-up ads or getting businesses to sponsor them in some manner. But then, you're back to the news likely having a bias towards whoever is funding it.
The TV news? It went from being a loss-leader to a profit center long ago, but did so by only concerning itself with maximizing eyeballs watching it. That meant getting rid of the costly "investigative reporting" that would span a whole week's worth of newscasts. Ditch the editorials where "equal time would be provided for those with opposing viewpoints". Make everything a neatly packaged 30 second spot and mix in "feel good, fluff" with anything hard-hitting, so ensure viewers don't come away unhappy enough so they blame their feelings on your channel. Cover all the sports and weather things, no matter what else is happening. Don't expect to become real well informed from any of that newstainment!
I mean, I just posted yesterday how disgusted I've been some of the recent BBC reporting -- and they've always been regarded as one of the last few trusted news sources. (Slashdot even featured one of their bone-headed articles trying to argue why we need to be concerned about the trend towards listening to streaming and digital music instead of buying it to play on physical media. Lame attempt at equating it with accelerating climate change! That's the stuff I might expect from an environmental extremist blogger, but not the BBC.)
I think if people are honest, they have to admit Hollywood has a recent history of trying really hard to "preach" a certain agenda. When the star in Capt. Marvel was quoted making comments about the movie not being for white males and so on, it definitely turned me off to having interest in buying a ticket for it.
I've heard nothing but praise for some of the throwback 90's nostalgia in it though, which I think is positive. (The throwback to 70's - 80's nostalgia found all over "Stranger Things" is part of what made that series such a success too.)
I might check this one out, after all.
Maybe you're just finally noticing how MOST of the news sites out there do a lot of crap reporting? As the Left seems to go ever further to the left, they become extremists that few mainstream publications want to be known as a part of. So they "pull back" from that and try to head more to the middle ground.
As an Independent libertarian type, I find it VERY rare that I can read something from Slate or Vox that I can agree with, because it's too far Left for me to stomach.
But frankly, the BBC has come out of some of the most crappy excuses for reporting I've seen in a long time. That surprised me a bit, as I thought they were above that. For example, they recently had a piece that claimed police supported Smollett's claims of getting assaulted in Chicago, while pretty much EVERY other news site correctly reported that the opposite had happened! They also put out a piece that tried to seriously claim that all the people listening to streaming and digital music instead of buying physical media are increasing our "climate change" risks!
I'm lost on your explanation about the "Progressive Left", as well? Maybe you don't realize it, but the Democratic establishment is made of/built upon "Progressives". The Democratic Socialists like Sanders and Cortez are NOT what that establishment supports at all. (EG. I have Progressive liberal buddies who I debate regularly on all sorts of issues. Even though we don't often agree, I respect them for such things as being gun owners who still want our 2A Constitutional rights upheld. They also tend to "opt out/ignore" all of this uproar over such things as gender fluidity and extreme feminism. A couple of them I know are gay and probably latched on to the Democratic party long ago because they felt it wasn't as distasteful when it came to gay/lesbian rights. Yet when push comes to shove on even THAT topic? They're pretty much forced to admit that the only reason Republicans seemed like a problem was their attempt to buddy-up with the "religious right". (And let's face it... 99% of that was just an attempt to gain extra votes. Republicans generally do zilch to actually legislate anything that pleases those hard-right religious groups. They just saw them as "up for grabs" votes sitting on the table because Democrats wouldn't go there.)
Minimum wage is a TERRIBLE form of welfare, because that has pretty much nothing to do with what a wage is about! The very definition of work or "a job" is a voluntary contract with an employer, where you agree to do the labor they're needing to get done at the wage they agree to pay you as you do it. Welfare, by definition, is financial assistance given to someone who LACKS a job - so they won't lose everything while trying to find another suitable form of employment.
This whole UBI thing? It literally comes out of science fiction, and like most sci-fi, isn't something that's viable today.
The fiction part stems from the idea that people would love to have no more worries about laboring to have all of their basic needs met. There's really no way such a thing can happen right now, without OTHER people laboring in your place to ensure you have those things. That's why it's inequitable and unsustainable. The ONLY way a UBI becomes fair for everybody is if all of the labor required to ensure basic needs are met comes from automation/robots/AI. Heck, in the Star Trek universe, they had to go so far as to invent fantastic machines like replicators that just make things appear out of nothing, on demand, and transporters that eliminate the "time penalty" involved in getting from point A to B. (Time is money, after all.)
Buying and shopping local is great, in the sense you more directly help your peers keep food on their tables and put their kids through school, etc.
I'm not sure that it helps solve the problem of too many big corporate mergers and too many products made by the same few companies, though?
For example, despite all the prodding and begging for people to patronize our local restaurants, it's being revealed that many of them are really just preparing food that they get trucked in from a big supplier, ready to thaw, heat and serve. So their "specialties" are really just ones created by another big corporation and resold for these places to pretend their own chefs created for you.
I don't think you can avoid buying products made by the "big guys", in most cases. You can sometimes choose to let a small, family owned business make profit off the top of reselling them to you though.
Yeah....
I listened to a recent interview with a CEO who said his company is pretty good at making educated guesses about actual costs of production and profit margins on vehicles. And his belief was, Tesla typically makes between a 25% and upwards of 40% profit margin on each vehicle it sells. The higher margins are all on the fully loaded S's or X's. The new base Model 3 probably comes close to being sold at a break-even point, as long as it's built in America. But he calculates a 25% profit margin on it if it's made in China instead (which looks like is Tesla's plan).
I always felt like the X was purposely overpriced to give Tesla a "flagship" model. They know SUVs are very popular and made the most sense as the platform to command a premium price while still selling a decent number of them. Since it's built on the same frame as an S, with the same dash and electronics, it was really just a matter of redesigning the body panels and then (probably too much) money spent on those gull-wing doors to give it more "cool factor".
I agree with what you're saying .... that businesses may purposely "make mistakes" that help them get an agenda through.
That really doesn't sound like the same thing as asking every ISP in America to report its customer count, and having just about all of them do so properly except for ONE small provider? (It looks like they misinterpreted the instructions and marked off the population of their entire coverage area, vs. listing how many customers they actually had in those geographic areas they could potentially service.)
Clearly, you speak as someone who is NOT a Comcast customer!
You could ALSO say that any Tesla owners who paid the $8000 for that before 2017 are much MORE financially damaged by the Model 3's release and subsequent huge depreciation on used Model S's!
Musk likes to be an optimist, for sure.... But he hasn't really sold anyone anything that was a lie either. These promised future upgrades were all clearly marketed as a "Pay now to lock in your place to get them whenever they may be ready." arrangement.
Like I told one guy ... I never even pre-order new video games titles that are "coming soon". If you pay for anything that's not delivered immediately upon the payment, you're essentially just agreeing to loan them some of your money.
Tesla might as well have just offered the self-driving upgrades as a Kickstarter campaign really.
I think many people forget or don't know that Tesla's first "auto pilot" (AP1) was just Intel's MobilEye system that they paid for the rights to use. So it wasn't until a few years reselling it that Tesla began trying to replicate its functionality with their own system. MobilEye features like ability to OCR read speed limit signs is something Tesla is STILL unable to do. (The current system relies on GPS info to know the road speed limits.)
"Gender equality" should be something encouraged by ensuring both genders have the same OPPORTUNITIES to better themselves. If you're trying to give one gender additional opportunities not given to the other one? That's about artificial (and discriminatory) manipulation of the outcome.
No different, really, than situations like McDonalds recently announcing they're donating a large sum of money to help give black kids scholarships to colleges and universities. As a private business, McD can spend its money any way it wishes. But let's call it what it really is; discriminatory favoritism purposely given to a group that's perceived as needing more financial help to pay for higher education. If this was REALLY about promoting equality, the scholarships they fund wouldn't have one's skin color as a prerequisite. What about the poor white kid who lives in an inner city, who could excel in college if he/she was only given the opportunity? Clearly, McDonalds thinks it's more beneficial to ignore that kid because he/she is "too white" to make them look good.
I saw this kid speaking on the news last night, and it's great that he's made up his own mind about what he wants to do with his body. And yes, it's also true that it's rather sad to hear that his mom chose to use Facebook as her SOLE source of information gathering to come to HER conclusions about the merits/disadvantages of vaccinations.
But this whole debate seems to me like it involves a lot of polarization that's uncalled for.
The vast majority of people I talk to are "tentatively for" government mandated vaccinations. That means, they're not just against vaccinations on the whole. They got their own kids immunized for all of the usual childhood diseases. BUT, they also get that it sets a dangerous precedent to let one's government dictate that you MUST put a substance in your body, any time they say so. And really, there's no reason to blindly assume that any NEW vaccines that come along will be as safe or effective to receive as the tried and true ones we've been collectively receiving for decades.
I grasp the argument that failure to get vaccinated against a terrible thing like polio or rubella starts risking the safety and health of others, due to herd immunity -- and that's why it's not JUST about what you want to do with your own body. But that doesn't necessarily stand when the vaccines are for things like genital warts or even common strains of the flu. What happens if a dozen new vaccines are developed for other diseases, but we discover the human body can't create immunity for all of those things and maintain it at one time? If government DEMANDS you get all those vaccines, but the last one you get overloads your system so a couple of other vaccines you got become ineffective -- THAT could cause you to contract measles or polio or what-not!
I'm much more of follower of computer-related things than game consoles.... but I remember checking out the Vita when it was new, because one of our kids wanted a portable system. (They wound up with one of Nintendo's offerings, which I suspect most kids did?) The Vita seemed like it was priced pretty high, and didn't have the compelling game selection to justify buying it, back then.
I believe it had pretty decent specs and graphics capabilities .... but that's where I think they run into some issues with these portable consoles? Only the younger audience really sees the value in the hand-held consoles. (Correct me here if I'm way off-base, but this has been my observation.) It seems like they're most attractive to kids/pre-teens who don't drive yet and are liable to send a lot of time "captive" on road trips with their parents or what-not. Once you're a little older, you can just set up a superior system on your own LCD TV (like in a college dorm or apartment) and you're going to take your smartphone with you on the go ... not some pocket sized console. So .... price is a key factor here. Younger buyers can't get one unless it's priced low enough so it's a reasonable "ask" as a gift.
When Tesla started calling their system "auto-pilot", it was years before others copy-catted or tried to "one up" it with "driver assist" features. The idiots who fall asleep at the wheel and crash are just that; idiots. You can't even get a Tesla to automatically stay in a lane without slightly tugging the steering wheel every 15 seconds or so, or else it beeps and disables that mode. It's frustrating how badly it's crippled in the name of "making things safer for idiots".
Musk likes to over-promise, but it seems to me like most of it comes from being so excited about what they're working on. Anyone following the brand for a while learns how that works and tempers the Twitter comments with a dose of reality. Basically, you can go test-drive a Tesla right now and learn what it REALLY does/doesn't do. You can optionally pay another $5,000 or so to get "first dibs" on future stuff Elon promises but may not materialize for years.