Realistically, I doubt most customers will care. The idea that this will be some kind of revelation that angers people into switching to Android alternatives seems far fetched to me. The people who are hell bent on focusing on specs already chose something other than the iPhone anyway, because "Phone Z has a camera with more megapixels!" or "Phone A has better battery life."
I gotta be honest here. I defended Apple when they soldered RAM onto the logic boards of the laptops. I mean, they retained the ability to upgrade it in any of the higher-spec iMac configurations (the systems with a 27" screen), as well as in the Mac Pro workstations. So it appeared it was a decision where Apple drew a line in the sand and said, "For a portable machine, you should really just buy it with a suitable amount of RAM for your projected needs through its usable lifetime. RAM has gotten reliable enough so you don't have memory modules failing that often and needing a swap-out. And by soldering it on, we get rid of the need of the DIMM sockets and issues it can cause when RAM isn't seated in one properly."
I could live with that.... Biggest problem it caused us was in my workplace, where they bought quite a few Macbook Air 13" notebooks back in the 2011-2012 time-frame with the standard 4GB RAM configuration, only to find they were good enough computers to keep on using in the last quarter of 2016 *except* for the limited RAM becoming a performance barrier. After 4-5 years of regular use, it's really NOT a big deal to argue it's time to get those users new computers anyway. But just saying -- we could squeeze another 1-2 years of life out of these if they were possible to upgrade to 8GB RAM.
But soldered in SSD? That's a whole different ballgame. As someone else pointed out, it now eliminates your ability to just pull a drive out of a failing machine and install it in another one to immediately get a user back up and running. Big downside for us in the office setting. Additionally though? It means Apple is trying to lock people in to paying their hugely inflated prices for larger capacity storage. I really liked the alternatives provided by companies like Transcend for older Retina 15" Macbook Pros. You could buy a much cheaper machine with a 256GB SSD and double the storage down the road, cost-effectively (leaving the original drive you took out to install in an external USB 3 enclosure, making a slick little external drive out of it).
I know if I was going to buy a new Macbook Pro myself, I'd want one with between 1TB and 2TB of storage capacity in it. I just think anything less feels like buying "last year's" specs or standard-issue consumer grade vs. anything worthy of the "Pro" label on it. Apple wants to push this as a good video editing system for Final Cut Pro X too... another situation where you can't really have too much drive space. But that price for one with that SSD capacity? It's just unacceptable.
I think it's a mistake to equate a passive activity like listening to music in the background with an activity requiring your full attention and active participation like gaming.
Just because you can do something doesn't make it a good idea, and IMO, this is one of those situations. People really don't NEED to have access to video games from the time they wake up until they go to bed, from every single device they happen to get in front of.
We've already got problems with video game addiction as it is!
I think gaming is just fine, but it's best done in one environment where you've configured an optimal experience for it. And the rest of the "hype" promised in the original article is just talking about "gamification" -- something that marketing and advertising people have been focused on for the last few years or so. "How do we take a game and tie it into real-world activities?" I think results are mixed with such things, but it's generally going to be a tool to subconsciously motivate you to do more of something in order to earn the in-game reward. If they're rewarding you for exercising, for example -- maybe that's a net positive and a valid selling point for the game. If it's rewarding you for driving your car around more, it's probably not doing anyone any real good.
I disagree with the statement that Facebook is the press for the 21st. Century. If it's anything? It's a news aggregator.
The VAST majority of original content posted by Facebook users doesn't rise to the level of legitimate news, unless you're only interested in VERY local information - like Aunt Belma's Xmas tree getting put up for the holidays or your buddy Joe getting a new exhaust put on his car.
The reason people go to it as kind of a "news source" is thanks to all the users who like to share links to news article elsewhere they thought were worth reading. There's a lot of interest in news aggregators, as witnessed by Apple adding the "News" app to iOS and products out there like Flipboard. But what none of those can offer is a selection of news items curated by your own friends, relatives/family and co-workers. That's where Facebook comes in.
Frankly, my opinion of that company isn't too high these days....
Harman is whatever's left of various mergers or bankruptcies over the years. But everything I've seen in a car with their name on it was trashy quality car audio that was clearly designed to meet some arbitrarily low price point instead of actually caring that consumers had a true "premium" stereo.
EG. The Chrysler Crossfire came with a Harman-Becker radio and amp. The system used small subwoofers as the rear two speakers, and put full range components in the doors for the front. They didn't use a proper crossover in the circuit though, so everything sounded relatively muddy, or alternately, the rear subs barely ever fired if you adjusted it to be "treble heavy". Many of the Crossfire owners I know had these head units go bad on them too, over the years. So yeah, the cars are around 10-12 years old now -- but still, the stereo didn't last as long as the rest of the electronics in many of them.
I would say that the hobby of BBSing and running my own BBS was one of the few things that really defined my childhood/teen years.
I became fascinated with the early home computers in the 1980's, growing up. I think the first one I ever really got a chance to use was a Commodore VIC-20, which one of my best friends' dad bought. His parents were divorced so he was only at his dad's place every other weekend, but I spent much of that time on those weekends hanging out with him. He had a 300 baud "VICmodem" with it, which I recall was pretty much the only thing we did with that computer. (I don't think he bought any other software for it at that time.) We got on CompuServe because that's all we knew about, and had a blast playing one of those dungeon exploring games that drew the walls of the rooms with asterisks down the screen. That lasted until his first bill came - and then no more VICModem for us! (I forget the exact price, but CompServe used to bill by the hour after you used an initial free hour they always included in their sign-up kits, and it got expensive fast.)
I also knew a couple of other kids with parents who bought some of the early 8-bit home computers. One of them owned an Apple//e and another had a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 3. My friends and I played a few games on those (slowly loaded from cassette tapes), but those didn't have modems and were so expensive, their parents didn't let us spend that much time using them.
I really got into the BBS world a few years later (I guess it was around 1985-86), when I got a Tandy Color Computer 2 (upgraded from a Timex Sinclair 1000 I'd been playing with and learning BASIC programming on). I was able to buy a Radio Shack "Model 1B" for it, which let me manually dial up numbers and flip a switch to "Originate" mode to generate the 300 baud response tone. Then you just hung up the phone receiver and it was connected. I got ahold of several BBS numbers from the manager at the Radio Shack store I bought the modem from, and kept collecting more and more BBS's from there. I had a 3 ring binder I kept all my passwords and numbers written in, and I think I reached as many as 97 BBS's I had accounts on in the St. Louis, Missouri area.
I wound up meeting several other people around my age with Tandy Color Computers, via the BBS scene, and met them in person at a local computer users' group they held at one of our library branches. They went on to be among my best friends through college and even to this day in a couple cases.
At some point, I knew I wanted to run my own BBS -- but I had to scrape together the money (I think about $180 at the time) for a modem with "auto answer" capabilities first. When I finally made that happen, I worked with one of my friends who knew how to write assembly code. He developed a device driver program so anything I wrote in BASIC to draw on my local screen went out to the remote screen, and any INPUT statements allowed the remote end to key in responses. (Well, he got the core of the code from a computer magazine, but modified it significantly to make it more usable.) Using that, I wrote my own BBS software I called the "Dial-a-Color" system. I even sold a couple of copies of it to my friends who owned Color Computers and they set up BBS's with it too.
To make this long story a little bit shorter -- my BBS was very successful and when I eventually moved to an IBM PC compatible like the rest of the world was doing, I started using the pre-packaged software available for the Intel platform. I ran Telegard for a long time, and Renegade after discovering it was a "better" Telegard. I also experimented with PC Board because it was so customizable with all the add-in modules around. I finally did a long stint with Wildcat BBS, after a buddy of mine gave me a user license from a friend who bought the whole package but decided to quit using it. At that point, my BBS had grown to 4 phone lines and a 128K ISDN circuit with incoming telnet capabilities and selected Usenet newsfeeds carried on it. I
Yes, it just replicates it and by any kind of logic, seems like it should change nothing. BUT, how do you think law enforcement is enforcing the laws demanding people use phones hands-free?
Not only is it about voluntary vs involuntary -- but when I'm on social media, I get to say whatever I'd like people to associate with my name. If you save/store that, great. I often post opinions and commentary that I see no reason to prevent others from archiving away, or even using to try to "profile" who I really am.
What disturbs me is when somebody mines my data without permission, not even giving me anything useful in exchange for it, and gives me no say in editing what they do or don't keep. I may be fine with you knowing, for example, that I'm a libertarian agnostic who likes to listen to rock and alternative music. But I may not want you to track all the details of exactly which grocery items I purchase. (I can't see anything good that would come from tracking the later. Stores might want it to target market coupons or specials to me, but that can be done without getting nearly that granular in what's stored in a database, long-term, and that data has a high potential of getting used against me. For example, some healthcare provider deciding I'm "high risk" of something or order based on how much of a food purchase I made that they deem unhealthy -- not even able to confirm if that purchase was always consumed by me or others.)
The problem I have with putting any of these auto services directly on a phone is that the hands-free/no texting laws the police try to enforce may snare you.
The cops are usually just trying to keep any eye out for anyone driving along who picks up a cellphone and holds it in their hand. That's why the navigation systems, Apple Car Play, and Android Auto on an in-dash stereo have value. It ensures the interface is actually part of the vehicle, on the dash.
You can argue that this is stupid, etc. But good luck getting out of the next "texting while driving" ticket by arguing with the cop that all you were actually doing was pressing a key to skip to the next song on your stereo from your phone.
I tried this feature out on Glassdoor, and have used others in the past, offered by various tech publications. (I believe it was InfoWorld who did one once, some years back?)
The problem I've always run into is that you often can't accurately determine what a person *really* does by job title, because employers get creative with titles in an effort to discourage this type of "salary shopping".
For example, many years ago, I was given a title of "PC Support Specialist" when everyone else I knew doing anything similar to me had a title of "Systems Administrator" or "Network Administrator", or even "Tier 3/4 Help Desk". It wasn't really appropriate for the place to have given me some kind of "tiered" help desk title because technically, we didn't HAVE a help desk. We just had an "all purpose" I.T. department that wore multiple hats, generally doing in person support for anyone in the office needing it. (Back then, remote workers were few and far between. We had dial in modem support for remote access services, but it was so slow and painful to use, people didn't do a whole lot with it.) But the fact was, the people I knew doing the same or LESS work than I did often had a title with "Administrator" in it, guaranteeing tens of thousands per year higher salaries than I got.
And in another previous job position, I was given a title of "Network Manager". It sounds relatively impressive since it has "Manager" in the title -- but think about that one for a minute. Does that title make ANY sense? Managers are hired to manage people, not things. In fact, I was the only full-time I.T. person in that company, and the only managing I *really* did was having permission to call in an outside computer service when I deemed it necessary for a project too large to handle by myself in a timely manner. Then I essentially managed the outside guy, paid hourly for his services.
I don't mean to sound all "sour grapes" about this.... I worked in both of those positions for years, each and liked a lot of things about them. (I had some great co-workers and in one of the two, reported directly to the company's owner who was a really great guy.) Salary isn't everything. But I'm just trying to point out that it's been my experience in I.T. over the years that the relatively "oddball" titles often signify a person who is put in charge of all sorts of things in a company's computer infrastructure and may have a breath of experience far more vast than others, yet puts them at a disadvantage if they try to apply for those better-paying jobs where they're looking for a hire to fill one of the more "well known job titles".
Look... the guy can't very well get up there in an interview and tell you that, "Yeah... we kind of suck at designing a new laptop that will truly make pros and power users happy." He's got to try to sell what the company delivered. But don't forget, this is the Apple with Tim Cook at the helm, who recently was quoted as not understanding why people still want to use a computer instead of a tablet/mobile device.
I really think there's a disconnect in the company between what true power-users expect and what Apple's upper management thinks makes for the "best overall product". They're heavily fixated on "style" right now, and not entirely wrongly so. They figured out that stylish hardware sells quite well and for premium prices. There's a real desire out there for computer gear that looks impressive and stands out. (Even in business.... I know the marketing firm I work for absolutely cares about having "thin, lightweight, elegant" laptops to carry around. They opted for Macbook Airs despite the performance hit, back in 2011, and never looked back. There's just too much perceived value in showing up at a client meeting and whipping out a sleek looking portable with the respected Apple logo right on it. It says "successful" and "well off enough to afford these instead of some budget portable", among other things. And when you travel a whole lot? The light weight and small size really does get appreciated.)
But IMO, Steve Jobs used to be pretty good at demanding interesting styling while still expecting certain functionality was there. I didn't always agree with his priorities, and as we can almost all admit -- sometimes his design choices were poor (Apple puck mouse, anyone?). But most of the time, he was in the ballpark, finding a good blend of the two.
Without him to provide guidance (or was that shoving it down their collective throats?) -- I think Apple has become too design/style heavy, without enough folks on the other side demanding raw power and functionality. Like it or not, the Apple corporate culture has NEVER really been about listening to what the users said they wanted. I'm not sure it's ready to start now? Apple believes it was largely successful because it DIDN'T listen to what people asked for. Instead, it came up with things they didn't even think about or realize they wanted until it was shown to them.
I get the sense that the "Apple faithful" expect to be wowed by these types of radical new ideas with new product releases, but the company is slowing things down a bit, doing more evolutionary updates to existing products. So in that sense, they're disappointing people. Evolutionary updates aren't a bad way to approach things either. I mean, once you have proven "winners" -- why mess with success? I definitely think that works well for the iPhones, where people often keep buying them BECAUSE they don't want the hassle of re-learning how to do various things in Android or another OS, and they already invested in a number of iOS apps they want to keep using. But when you go to incremental updates more than "amazing new things", you really have to also start listening more to your users and doing what they ask for.
I can't speak for everyone, but the people I generally see commenting about this stuff online seem to all be saying, "Enough with lighter and thinner as features! Give us more battery life and more ports that don't need dongles and adapters!" And right now, Apple is absolutely ignoring all of that. Perhaps they think it runs counter to their priority of "style"? But IMO, there's little more ugly than a Mac with a bunch of dongles hanging off of it so you can get things hooked up properly to it. They seem to pretend that scenario doesn't really happen..... (and for their upper management who clearly aren't power users, it probably doesn't).
Why does it seem like Facebook is working like mad, lately, to re-invent wheels and give people stuff they don't need?
In the last couple weeks or so, I heard about them offering a commercial version of Facebook to act like your internal Intranet, and an IM client for corporate use (because Slack isn't any good!?), and now this.
Like someone else already said, it's already extremely annoying if you use Windows for gaming that you're usually stuck loading at least 3 major clients/managers to play a collection of popular games. You've got Steam, but then you've got the Ubisoft launcher AND the EA launcher. And probably a fourth one for Blizzard's stuff, too.
I'd like to see it all consolidated somehow.... like Steam working a deal so after you buy an item via one of those competitor's game managers/laumchers, they support migrating it in so you can just use Steam to launch it after that. I certainly DON'T want yet another one, from Facebook of all people!
I talked to someone who claims he lives out there and he claims most of the protestors are people who came in from out of town. The native American Indians up there are actually not too happy about all of the outsiders congesting up the area and protesting, according to him.
Additionally, he says more people should research the actual land situation, because the area in dispute for the pipeline is actually privately owned land (owned by farmers in the area), AND it already has a natural gas pipeline running through it.
No... I get that, and I do see where a lot of people claim the price tag for a touch-enabled screen of this density is a "$2,700+ value by itself".
But my point is that you're getting the (presumably pretty amazing looking) display and the digitizer functionality here as part of a $4K computer expense, but over on the Mac side, you're getting some other things instead, like a true workstation/server class CPU and a system designed and optimized to run Mac OS X instead of MS Windows. Plus, again, don't forget that the Mac Pro came out almost 2 years ago now and nothing about it has changed since then.... It was a better "value for the dollar" back then that it is today. You could buy a fairly nice IPS 4K panel for the Mac Pro for under $500, making the whole system less than $300 more than this new Surface desktop.
Conclusion? We've definitely got a market out there willing to pay $4K or so for a personal computer, despite all the nay-sayers, and it's not just some "crazy Mac thing because they always charge insanely high prices for no reason".
I actually think this sounds like a pretty nice, well spec'd out machine.... but then I saw the price tag!
$4,199 for the high-end config?
I thought everyone was throwing a huge fit about the insane pricing for Apple's Mac Pro "trashcan" workstation? Yet it's been offered since the end of 2013 in a configuration with a 3.5Ghz 6 core Xeon processor (not just a Pentium 4 desktop class CPU) and Dual FirePro AMD graphics w/3GB of VRAM per card, for $200 less than this! (Yeah, it "only" has 16GB of RAM instead of 32GB and a 256GB SSD -- but RAM is pretty inexpensive, and we don't even know for sure what type of storage makes up the 2TB in this new Microsoft Surface desktop. Pretty certain it's not just a 2TB SSD, in any case.)
Of course, it's often a bad business decision to make one's political views public. Just ask the CEO of Chick Fil-A, for example.
But sure, it wouldn't normally be a problem..... except with Facebook and other forms of social media, their purpose is supposed to be to give a voice to EVERYONE who wants to use it and contribute content. If that can't be done impartially, it means the site can't be used properly for its stated purpose. (If you have to worry that your content might get censored/deleted or somehow marginalized so it shows up far less often in feeds than those expressing other viewpoints -- you need to find a different web site to use.)
Fox News can report the news any way they see fit.They hired their staff to do things the way they wished, and they own the network. That's not the same thing.
All things considered, I would have rather seen Apple buy Time-Warner than AT&T -- though I'm sure that would have raised the same alarms about anti-trust.
From Apple's point of view, they sell the AppleTV, a nice little set-top box that's never achieved more than what they keep calling "hobby" status. Primarily, that's because Apple has always hoped to partner with a large selection of partners so users would be able to cut the cord on cable and have a similar amount of content with just the AppleTV. (Essentially, doing for TV and movies what iTunes did for music.)
Unfortunately for Apple, most of the big players are refusing to negotiate with them, or at least not on Apple's terms. Many are afraid that doing so would lock them into being unable to ask more money for programming down the road (similar to the record labels who really wanted to ask more than 99 cents per album track, but found iTunes pretty much nailed that down as "the price" they had to accept).
So now, while Apple keeps trying to tip-toe around the issue by pretending their big challenge is just building a better UI for TV watching.... they're *actually* facing the facts that they probably need to start offering a lot of good original programming as the reason to buy AppleTV. (Netflix and others are learning the same thing.) Buying Time-Warner outright would give Apple a big boost in getting to where they want to be, though.
With AT&T, by contrast? I'm not seeing how the acquisition would do much of anything to benefit me as the end-user? Possibly it will improve TV content for U-Verse customers, but that service isn't even sold out here in the Northeast. Otherwise, I guess since they own DirecTV now, they think it will give them some more options to sell on satellite? But again... that's kind of a snoozer, in a world trying to cut cords and rid of programming packages with limited or no reasonable "a la carte" options.
I agree. The main reason for demanding such a thing is to test the legal waters and see if it flies. If so, they'll duly note that and use the tactic much more often. They'll ALSO likely try to take it a step further and see where the line is drawn.
That's why it bothers me a bit when people smugly say "Just lock your phone with a PIN code instead of a fingerprint!" The fingerprint technology is popular precisely because people hate tapping in PIN codes every single time they need to do something useful with their phone! I grant that if you're targeted specifically by a warrant or even under arrest and dealing with the police one-on-one, they might have more legal ability to demand you unlock a device by fingerprint than by some other password you have in your head. But this is more about police having the ability to broadly poke around on everyone's phone or tablet, reading all sorts of irrelevant personal info in the process of trying to find content of interest to their case.
Except the public is led to believe that securing a device with a fingerprint is, in fact, practical and reasonably ok security. I remember when it was quite common for a phone answering machine to be secured with only a 2 or 3 digit code. (The devices often wouldn't even support using a longer one if you wanted to.)
That led to some problems with people getting access to ex-girlfriends/boyfriends/husbands/wives machines and listening in on messages or maliciously erasing them, etc. But still, it provided enough security to stop the casual would-be tamperer from messing with your machine. (Even with only a 2 digit code, you would quite likely have to call back dozens of times to guess it -- and that might lead to the owner becoming aware you were trying to guess it, if he/she came home and heard the phone ringing over and over like that.)
The fingerprint requirement is certainly more secure than some 2 digit code.... and it's so convenient, I can see why phone owners would like to use it. Entering a long PIN or password every time you need to unlock your smartphone gets really tedious, especially if you just need to access a single app quickly.
I think the real lesson here is that the law needs to be reviewed, to ask why it's ok for police to make a blanket demand for people to unlock their phones for them? We all know smartphones are repositories for such a wide variety of information (even with full search functionality), that asking someone to unlock one with even a fingerprint amounts to asking to view a LOT of personal, private data that a warrant should explain WHY they're trying to get their eyes on it.
Our company has definitely experienced a bit of this.... BUT this is also where I.T. needs to step in and set some ground-rules, if the budget is limited.
For example? I got tired of all the expenditures on (IMO inferior) "Magic Mice". So I did some research and found a couple of solid,reliable bluetooth mice that could be used instead at far less cost. There's a Microsoft model that only costs about $30-35, for example. Doesn't support "gestures" by rubbing the top of it, but that's just really NOT necessary for any use-case I've seen a user come up with. It does have a scroll wheel which doubles as an assignable 3rd button and 2 regular buttons, and is very conservative on battery usage too.
If someone wants that "Magic Trackpad" mouse? I don't have a problem with buying that one, IF they honestly can be more productive with it. This is no different than in the Windows world though, IMO. A trackpad mouse will cost a premium for Windows too. It's a different way to interface with the machine, and if you really do a task regularly where the gesture support is helpful? One of these beats trying to do the gestures on top of a regular "Magic Mouse" any day.
We had to fight with some of our Creative professionals about the displays, as well. They were just SO certain that those nearly $1,000 each Thunderbolt Cinema displays were better than anything else. We cracked down on that and started physically removing a couple of them that they'd gone around I.T. and purchased for their department, substituting a matched PAIR of HP 24" IPS panel displays with anti-glare coated screens. After a few days working with a dual display environment with glare-free versions of panels with the same or better color calibration capabilities and similar resolutions? They really had no argument to want the Apple displays back. (And to be fair, those displays were kind of slick IF you had the right make/model of Macbook Pro laptop to pair with them, since they acted like a port replicator for one at the same time. But they replicated ports like Firewire 800, which are getting phased out in current machines!)
Yes, Macs are more friendly to users who aren't willing to learn more than the very basics of how to navigate a computer. They're far less likely to succumb to random malware/spyware/virus threats than Windows machines -- and in my experience as a regular Mac user, when they DO get infected? They tend to clean up more quickly and painlessly too. (EG. They make a Mac version of Malware Bytes now, and it generally knows how to fully clean just about any of the Mac malware created to-date. It runs quickly, does its thing, and after a reboot - chances are high that you're back to normal. There simply aren't the challenges the Windows world faces of people constantly modifying existing malware into new variants that hide in different sub-folders, do different kinds of damage, etc.)
On the other hand? There's no good reason to claim you can somehow do more on a Windows PC, and/or a Mac is only appropriate for the most clueless of users.
You may have a personal hatred for Apple and possibly even for the design of Mac OS X... but quite a few "power users" use them all day long, every day, to get real work done.
I work for a company that has close to a 50/50 split of Macs and Windows machines in use (we let employees choose which they prefer in most cases). It's really not a problem managing the mixed environment, other than a bit of extra work creating 2 sets of instructions with different screen-captures for Mac and Windows, when you want to document something. As it stands today? The Mac actually makes it easier to get a VPN connection going from a PC back to the office network. We use Cisco Meraki hardware which doesn't provide any special "extra friendly" VPN connection client. You're just supposed to properly configure what's built into the OS. On the Mac side, that pretty much "just works". In Windows, there are still annoying bugs in Microsoft's TCP/IP stack implementation that can create "gotchas" -- even when you use Windows 10. (For example, if you don't manually edit the "metric" values for each adapter, ensuring the VPN adapter in the list has a higher metric manually set, like 15? Win 10 will stupidly try to send out DNS lookup requests over ALL the available adapters, instead of only going through the VPN tunnel when it's up.)
And especially with the new update mechanisms Microsoft now uses in Win 10? It's just creating a lot of needless havoc. For example, we have a number of Surface Pro 4's out in the field, and because Microsoft insists on pushing updates through at some scheduled time (defaulting to 3AM or something like that), it will leave the tablets in odd states at times. People leave their system on to go into "sleep" mode overnight, and when they come back in the morning? They may have a solid black screen and seemingly unresponsive computer. Bingo... another trouble ticket gets put in, "high priority", for I.T. to troubleshoot. In reality, it can be things as simple as the Intel video driver getting an update pushed to it that needed a full reboot to start working correctly again. This is NOT something I've ever had issues with on the Mac side.
I'd argue that as far as I've seen, practically every single project or experiment labeled "AI" is really just fake intelligence.
In other words, you've cobbled together a mechanism so a standard human language formatted query (spoken or written/typed) can be parsed out and searched in a useful way through extensive databases of information and a sensible result spit back, again in a manner that mimics a human's way of communicating the result.
This is a pretty cool thing, as we've seen by how handy the "personal assistants" like Cortana or Siri can be on our smartphones.
But IMO, Hawking is talking about achieving a way to simulate the way a human brain actually thinks. That's something we're NOWHERE near doing successfully, and I'm not even sure it's realistic to pretend we could with today's computer technology.
For starters, it's becoming more and more clear that humans don't really file away tons of information in our brains like a computer does on a hard drive in a database. A big part of what we "remember" goes to "short term memory", meaning we'll try to keep it in our heads for a little while -- but as soon as it becomes something we don't need to recall again for a period of time, it starts fading away and eventually is forgotten. At the same time though? Our brain seems to make lots of other connections to these things. (Even though you forgot, say, an old phone number of a friend you haven't called in years? When you see the number again, you may recognize it from a list of other random phone numbers and remember that's the one you USED to remember. Computers don't do that.)
The entire concept of being "reminded" of something is pretty foreign to how binary computers compute... They either have or don't have information. They don't struggle to remember and occasionally recall things, and/or realize they used to know them when reminded.
Yeah, good point.... I admit I used a bad example with the printers. To be honest though, it's been quite a while since I bought one. I still own and use several older ones here, and in at least one of those cases, it actually did include a USB cable with it. But sure, the cost of a cable is relatively minimal and if they're going to make you buy it separately anyway -- no big deal to go with a USB-C type.
But flash drives are going to be a problem, as are plenty of specialty cables. (EG. I have a USB to OBDII programming cable that's needed to download custom tunes to one of my cars.) I guess you can use any of this stuff with USB-C to USB adapters or a hub that converts the connection -- but again, that's extra stuff you have to carry with you on a laptop, so not really an attractive option.
I've been a long time Apple supporter, even going so far as to pay all the $$$'s for one of the late 2013 "trash can" Mac Pro workstations, shortly after it was released. (I did that only because I owned both a 2006 and 2008 Mac Pro tower before it, and both were excellent computers that I got years of daily use out of -- paying for themselves several times over with the work and entertainment value I got out of them. I figured I'd invest in the new direction Apple was taking things, with faith they'd make sense of what seemed at first to be kind of a step backwards in design and functionality.)
Well, unfortunately, what I'm seeing is a trend away from Apple catering at all to "power users" or "computer enthusiasts". Under Steve Jobs, at least their push towards minimalist styling/design was still well-balanced with giving the user what they really needed to get things done. (EG. When Apple declared the 3.5" floppy was dead and removed it? The rest of the Windows PC world thought that was crazy. Yet the advent of IOMega Zip disks, Syquest cartridges, dirt cheap CDR media, flash drives, SD and CF cards and more proved Apple was right. They were just pushing people a little further towards that "cutting edge" of tech, instead of sitting complacent in the middle of the "tried and true, but fading in usability" zone of technology. And when Apple decided to quit including optical drives in any of their systems? Again, some people threw fits but it's ultimately proved to be the sensible solution. External CD/DVD/Blu-Ray players and recorders are cheap and easy to plug in if/when needed, and they don't bulk up or weigh down a computer when you DON'T intend to use one. It also means when they break down, which they do fairly often with all their mechanical parts inside, they're easier to replace.)
With Thunderbolt? I feel like Apple tried, once again, to "skate to where they thought the puck was going to be" instead of to where it was. But that time, perhaps they took a chance and weren't quite right. Nonetheless, it wasn't really a big problem for users because it was only there in addition to plenty of other ports. The ability for Apple's Thunderbolt port to double as a "Mini DisplayPort" connector ensured people would use it with a dongle to attach extra monitors even if they never used it for anything else. And on higher end systems like my Mac Pro? It's actually quite useful since you pretty much need some kind of external drive enclosure to have a decent amount of storage space directly attached to the machine. There are a number of good options for multi-drive cabinets with Thunderbolt connections, and it provides great throughput without bottlenecking a USB bus.
But now, I feel like options are getting deleted just because Apple would prefer to have fewer configuration options to stock in their lineup, or because they're pushing change just for the sake of being different. (That whole elimination of matte vs. glossy displays is a great example, even if it still happened under Steve Job's watch. There was clearly a LOT of demand for anti-glare screen displays, yet Apple simply ignored it and told people "Tough luck. We think you'll love our product enough to buy it anyway, so we don't care.")
This move to USB-C? I think the new standard is just fine for netbooks or "Ultraportables" where people are primarily concerned about how light and thin it is, and probably don't WANT to connect very much up to it. But it definitely has no business in a Macbook PRO laptop being sold any time this year... Not unless it's just there in additional to a couple of regular USB 3.0 ports. Otherwise, you're ignoring a universal standard that has no signs of dying yet. Go shop for a new inkjet printer and tell me how many have USB-C connections on them vs. traditional USB right now. Same for any digital cameras with connection cables.)
Secondarily, I agree that this change means eliminating a connector (mag-safe) that really does offer a great feature that competing laptops never had. IMO,
When you talk to some of these people who work full time for low wages, yet buy something like a high-end automobile on credit? You discover something interesting. Most of the time, it's not about them being so unable to do basic math that they don't realize they're "living above their means".
Rather, they're taking the attitude of, "Screw it.... If some lender is willing to let me get this, why not do it? Then I can drive something around I'm proud to be seen in and enjoy driving. If something happens and I can't make the monthly payment anymore? Oh well... let them come take it back from me. At least I got to enjoy using it while I had it."
In other words, they'd see YOU as the sucker for working as hard as they do, and still settling for driving around some 10 year old Toyota. I mean, YOU'RE the one playing into the hands of the bankers and the "system" -- all worried about hurting your credit score, instead of realizing that in the worst case scenario, you can just file bankruptcy, wipe away all the debts while hanging onto most of what you amassed up until then. Wait for 7 years and you're right back to where you were before with those scores and levels of "credit risk".
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Realistically, I doubt most customers will care. The idea that this will be some kind of revelation that angers people into switching to Android alternatives seems far fetched to me. The people who are hell bent on focusing on specs already chose something other than the iPhone anyway, because "Phone Z has a camera with more megapixels!" or "Phone A has better battery life."
I gotta be honest here. I defended Apple when they soldered RAM onto the logic boards of the laptops. I mean, they retained the ability to upgrade it in any of the higher-spec iMac configurations (the systems with a 27" screen), as well as in the Mac Pro workstations. So it appeared it was a decision where Apple drew a line in the sand and said, "For a portable machine, you should really just buy it with a suitable amount of RAM for your projected needs through its usable lifetime. RAM has gotten reliable enough so you don't have memory modules failing that often and needing a swap-out. And by soldering it on, we get rid of the need of the DIMM sockets and issues it can cause when RAM isn't seated in one properly."
I could live with that.... Biggest problem it caused us was in my workplace, where they bought quite a few Macbook Air 13" notebooks back in the 2011-2012 time-frame with the standard 4GB RAM configuration, only to find they were good enough computers to keep on using in the last quarter of 2016 *except* for the limited RAM becoming a performance barrier. After 4-5 years of regular use, it's really NOT a big deal to argue it's time to get those users new computers anyway. But just saying -- we could squeeze another 1-2 years of life out of these if they were possible to upgrade to 8GB RAM.
But soldered in SSD? That's a whole different ballgame. As someone else pointed out, it now eliminates your ability to just pull a drive out of a failing machine and install it in another one to immediately get a user back up and running. Big downside for us in the office setting. Additionally though? It means Apple is trying to lock people in to paying their hugely inflated prices for larger capacity storage. I really liked the alternatives provided by companies like Transcend for older Retina 15" Macbook Pros. You could buy a much cheaper machine with a 256GB SSD and double the storage down the road, cost-effectively (leaving the original drive you took out to install in an external USB 3 enclosure, making a slick little external drive out of it).
I know if I was going to buy a new Macbook Pro myself, I'd want one with between 1TB and 2TB of storage capacity in it. I just think anything less feels like buying "last year's" specs or standard-issue consumer grade vs. anything worthy of the "Pro" label on it. Apple wants to push this as a good video editing system for Final Cut Pro X too ... another situation where you can't really have too much drive space. But that price for one with that SSD capacity? It's just unacceptable.
I think it's a mistake to equate a passive activity like listening to music in the background with an activity requiring your full attention and active participation like gaming.
Just because you can do something doesn't make it a good idea, and IMO, this is one of those situations. People really don't NEED to have access to video games from the time they wake up until they go to bed, from every single device they happen to get in front of.
We've already got problems with video game addiction as it is!
I think gaming is just fine, but it's best done in one environment where you've configured an optimal experience for it. And the rest of the "hype" promised in the original article is just talking about "gamification" -- something that marketing and advertising people have been focused on for the last few years or so. "How do we take a game and tie it into real-world activities?" I think results are mixed with such things, but it's generally going to be a tool to subconsciously motivate you to do more of something in order to earn the in-game reward. If they're rewarding you for exercising, for example -- maybe that's a net positive and a valid selling point for the game. If it's rewarding you for driving your car around more, it's probably not doing anyone any real good.
I disagree with the statement that Facebook is the press for the 21st. Century. If it's anything? It's a news aggregator.
The VAST majority of original content posted by Facebook users doesn't rise to the level of legitimate news, unless you're only interested in VERY local information - like Aunt Belma's Xmas tree getting put up for the holidays or your buddy Joe getting a new exhaust put on his car.
The reason people go to it as kind of a "news source" is thanks to all the users who like to share links to news article elsewhere they thought were worth reading. There's a lot of interest in news aggregators, as witnessed by Apple adding the "News" app to iOS and products out there like Flipboard. But what none of those can offer is a selection of news items curated by your own friends, relatives/family and co-workers. That's where Facebook comes in.
Frankly, my opinion of that company isn't too high these days....
Harman is whatever's left of various mergers or bankruptcies over the years. But everything I've seen in a car with their name on it was trashy quality car audio that was clearly designed to meet some arbitrarily low price point instead of actually caring that consumers had a true "premium" stereo.
EG. The Chrysler Crossfire came with a Harman-Becker radio and amp. The system used small subwoofers as the rear two speakers, and put full range components in the doors for the front. They didn't use a proper crossover in the circuit though, so everything sounded relatively muddy, or alternately, the rear subs barely ever fired if you adjusted it to be "treble heavy". Many of the Crossfire owners I know had these head units go bad on them too, over the years. So yeah, the cars are around 10-12 years old now -- but still, the stereo didn't last as long as the rest of the electronics in many of them.
I would say that the hobby of BBSing and running my own BBS was one of the few things that really defined my childhood/teen years.
I became fascinated with the early home computers in the 1980's, growing up. I think the first one I ever really got a chance to use was a Commodore VIC-20, which one of my best friends' dad bought. His parents were divorced so he was only at his dad's place every other weekend, but I spent much of that time on those weekends hanging out with him. He had a 300 baud "VICmodem" with it, which I recall was pretty much the only thing we did with that computer. (I don't think he bought any other software for it at that time.) We got on CompuServe because that's all we knew about, and had a blast playing one of those dungeon exploring games that drew the walls of the rooms with asterisks down the screen. That lasted until his first bill came - and then no more VICModem for us! (I forget the exact price, but CompServe used to bill by the hour after you used an initial free hour they always included in their sign-up kits, and it got expensive fast.)
I also knew a couple of other kids with parents who bought some of the early 8-bit home computers. One of them owned an Apple //e and another had a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 3. My friends and I played a few games on those (slowly loaded from cassette tapes), but those didn't have modems and were so expensive, their parents didn't let us spend that much time using them.
I really got into the BBS world a few years later (I guess it was around 1985-86), when I got a Tandy Color Computer 2 (upgraded from a Timex Sinclair 1000 I'd been playing with and learning BASIC programming on). I was able to buy a Radio Shack "Model 1B" for it, which let me manually dial up numbers and flip a switch to "Originate" mode to generate the 300 baud response tone. Then you just hung up the phone receiver and it was connected. I got ahold of several BBS numbers from the manager at the Radio Shack store I bought the modem from, and kept collecting more and more BBS's from there. I had a 3 ring binder I kept all my passwords and numbers written in, and I think I reached as many as 97 BBS's I had accounts on in the St. Louis, Missouri area.
I wound up meeting several other people around my age with Tandy Color Computers, via the BBS scene, and met them in person at a local computer users' group they held at one of our library branches. They went on to be among my best friends through college and even to this day in a couple cases.
At some point, I knew I wanted to run my own BBS -- but I had to scrape together the money (I think about $180 at the time) for a modem with "auto answer" capabilities first. When I finally made that happen, I worked with one of my friends who knew how to write assembly code. He developed a device driver program so anything I wrote in BASIC to draw on my local screen went out to the remote screen, and any INPUT statements allowed the remote end to key in responses. (Well, he got the core of the code from a computer magazine, but modified it significantly to make it more usable.) Using that, I wrote my own BBS software I called the "Dial-a-Color" system. I even sold a couple of copies of it to my friends who owned Color Computers and they set up BBS's with it too.
To make this long story a little bit shorter -- my BBS was very successful and when I eventually moved to an IBM PC compatible like the rest of the world was doing, I started using the pre-packaged software available for the Intel platform. I ran Telegard for a long time, and Renegade after discovering it was a "better" Telegard. I also experimented with PC Board because it was so customizable with all the add-in modules around. I finally did a long stint with Wildcat BBS, after a buddy of mine gave me a user license from a friend who bought the whole package but decided to quit using it. At that point, my BBS had grown to 4 phone lines and a 128K ISDN circuit with incoming telnet capabilities and selected Usenet newsfeeds carried on it. I
Yes, it just replicates it and by any kind of logic, seems like it should change nothing. BUT, how do you think law enforcement is enforcing the laws demanding people use phones hands-free?
Not only is it about voluntary vs involuntary -- but when I'm on social media, I get to say whatever I'd like people to associate with my name. If you save/store that, great. I often post opinions and commentary that I see no reason to prevent others from archiving away, or even using to try to "profile" who I really am.
What disturbs me is when somebody mines my data without permission, not even giving me anything useful in exchange for it, and gives me no say in editing what they do or don't keep. I may be fine with you knowing, for example, that I'm a libertarian agnostic who likes to listen to rock and alternative music. But I may not want you to track all the details of exactly which grocery items I purchase. (I can't see anything good that would come from tracking the later. Stores might want it to target market coupons or specials to me, but that can be done without getting nearly that granular in what's stored in a database, long-term, and that data has a high potential of getting used against me. For example, some healthcare provider deciding I'm "high risk" of something or order based on how much of a food purchase I made that they deem unhealthy -- not even able to confirm if that purchase was always consumed by me or others.)
The problem I have with putting any of these auto services directly on a phone is that the hands-free/no texting laws the police try to enforce may snare you.
The cops are usually just trying to keep any eye out for anyone driving along who picks up a cellphone and holds it in their hand. That's why the navigation systems, Apple Car Play, and Android Auto on an in-dash stereo have value. It ensures the interface is actually part of the vehicle, on the dash.
You can argue that this is stupid, etc. But good luck getting out of the next "texting while driving" ticket by arguing with the cop that all you were actually doing was pressing a key to skip to the next song on your stereo from your phone.
I tried this feature out on Glassdoor, and have used others in the past, offered by various tech publications. (I believe it was InfoWorld who did one once, some years back?)
The problem I've always run into is that you often can't accurately determine what a person *really* does by job title, because employers get creative with titles in an effort to discourage this type of "salary shopping".
For example, many years ago, I was given a title of "PC Support Specialist" when everyone else I knew doing anything similar to me had a title of "Systems Administrator" or "Network Administrator", or even "Tier 3/4 Help Desk". It wasn't really appropriate for the place to have given me some kind of "tiered" help desk title because technically, we didn't HAVE a help desk. We just had an "all purpose" I.T. department that wore multiple hats, generally doing in person support for anyone in the office needing it. (Back then, remote workers were few and far between. We had dial in modem support for remote access services, but it was so slow and painful to use, people didn't do a whole lot with it.) But the fact was, the people I knew doing the same or LESS work than I did often had a title with "Administrator" in it, guaranteeing tens of thousands per year higher salaries than I got.
And in another previous job position, I was given a title of "Network Manager". It sounds relatively impressive since it has "Manager" in the title -- but think about that one for a minute. Does that title make ANY sense? Managers are hired to manage people, not things. In fact, I was the only full-time I.T. person in that company, and the only managing I *really* did was having permission to call in an outside computer service when I deemed it necessary for a project too large to handle by myself in a timely manner. Then I essentially managed the outside guy, paid hourly for his services.
I don't mean to sound all "sour grapes" about this.... I worked in both of those positions for years, each and liked a lot of things about them. (I had some great co-workers and in one of the two, reported directly to the company's owner who was a really great guy.) Salary isn't everything. But I'm just trying to point out that it's been my experience in I.T. over the years that the relatively "oddball" titles often signify a person who is put in charge of all sorts of things in a company's computer infrastructure and may have a breath of experience far more vast than others, yet puts them at a disadvantage if they try to apply for those better-paying jobs where they're looking for a hire to fill one of the more "well known job titles".
Look... the guy can't very well get up there in an interview and tell you that, "Yeah... we kind of suck at designing a new laptop that will truly make pros and power users happy." He's got to try to sell what the company delivered. But don't forget, this is the Apple with Tim Cook at the helm, who recently was quoted as not understanding why people still want to use a computer instead of a tablet/mobile device.
I really think there's a disconnect in the company between what true power-users expect and what Apple's upper management thinks makes for the "best overall product". They're heavily fixated on "style" right now, and not entirely wrongly so. They figured out that stylish hardware sells quite well and for premium prices. There's a real desire out there for computer gear that looks impressive and stands out. (Even in business.... I know the marketing firm I work for absolutely cares about having "thin, lightweight, elegant" laptops to carry around. They opted for Macbook Airs despite the performance hit, back in 2011, and never looked back. There's just too much perceived value in showing up at a client meeting and whipping out a sleek looking portable with the respected Apple logo right on it. It says "successful" and "well off enough to afford these instead of some budget portable", among other things. And when you travel a whole lot? The light weight and small size really does get appreciated.)
But IMO, Steve Jobs used to be pretty good at demanding interesting styling while still expecting certain functionality was there. I didn't always agree with his priorities, and as we can almost all admit -- sometimes his design choices were poor (Apple puck mouse, anyone?). But most of the time, he was in the ballpark, finding a good blend of the two.
Without him to provide guidance (or was that shoving it down their collective throats?) -- I think Apple has become too design/style heavy, without enough folks on the other side demanding raw power and functionality. Like it or not, the Apple corporate culture has NEVER really been about listening to what the users said they wanted. I'm not sure it's ready to start now? Apple believes it was largely successful because it DIDN'T listen to what people asked for. Instead, it came up with things they didn't even think about or realize they wanted until it was shown to them.
I get the sense that the "Apple faithful" expect to be wowed by these types of radical new ideas with new product releases, but the company is slowing things down a bit, doing more evolutionary updates to existing products. So in that sense, they're disappointing people. Evolutionary updates aren't a bad way to approach things either. I mean, once you have proven "winners" -- why mess with success? I definitely think that works well for the iPhones, where people often keep buying them BECAUSE they don't want the hassle of re-learning how to do various things in Android or another OS, and they already invested in a number of iOS apps they want to keep using. But when you go to incremental updates more than "amazing new things", you really have to also start listening more to your users and doing what they ask for.
I can't speak for everyone, but the people I generally see commenting about this stuff online seem to all be saying, "Enough with lighter and thinner as features! Give us more battery life and more ports that don't need dongles and adapters!" And right now, Apple is absolutely ignoring all of that. Perhaps they think it runs counter to their priority of "style"? But IMO, there's little more ugly than a Mac with a bunch of dongles hanging off of it so you can get things hooked up properly to it. They seem to pretend that scenario doesn't really happen..... (and for their upper management who clearly aren't power users, it probably doesn't).
Why does it seem like Facebook is working like mad, lately, to re-invent wheels and give people stuff they don't need?
In the last couple weeks or so, I heard about them offering a commercial version of Facebook to act like your internal Intranet, and an IM client for corporate use (because Slack isn't any good!?), and now this.
Like someone else already said, it's already extremely annoying if you use Windows for gaming that you're usually stuck loading at least 3 major clients/managers to play a collection of popular games. You've got Steam, but then you've got the Ubisoft launcher AND the EA launcher. And probably a fourth one for Blizzard's stuff, too.
I'd like to see it all consolidated somehow .... like Steam working a deal so after you buy an item via one of those competitor's game managers/laumchers, they support migrating it in so you can just use Steam to launch it after that. I certainly DON'T want yet another one, from Facebook of all people!
Are they really?
I talked to someone who claims he lives out there and he claims most of the protestors are people who came in from out of town. The native American Indians up there are actually not too happy about all of the outsiders congesting up the area and protesting, according to him.
Additionally, he says more people should research the actual land situation, because the area in dispute for the pipeline is actually privately owned land (owned by farmers in the area), AND it already has a natural gas pipeline running through it.
No ... I get that, and I do see where a lot of people claim the price tag for a touch-enabled screen of this density is a "$2,700+ value by itself".
But my point is that you're getting the (presumably pretty amazing looking) display and the digitizer functionality here as part of a $4K computer expense, but over on the Mac side, you're getting some other things instead, like a true workstation/server class CPU and a system designed and optimized to run Mac OS X instead of MS Windows. Plus, again, don't forget that the Mac Pro came out almost 2 years ago now and nothing about it has changed since then .... It was a better "value for the dollar" back then that it is today. You could buy a fairly nice IPS 4K panel for the Mac Pro for under $500, making the whole system less than $300 more than this new Surface desktop.
Conclusion? We've definitely got a market out there willing to pay $4K or so for a personal computer, despite all the nay-sayers, and it's not just some "crazy Mac thing because they always charge insanely high prices for no reason".
I actually think this sounds like a pretty nice, well spec'd out machine.... but then I saw the price tag!
$4,199 for the high-end config?
I thought everyone was throwing a huge fit about the insane pricing for Apple's Mac Pro "trashcan" workstation? Yet it's been offered since the end of 2013 in a configuration with a 3.5Ghz 6 core Xeon processor (not just a Pentium 4 desktop class CPU) and Dual FirePro AMD graphics w/3GB of VRAM per card, for $200 less than this! (Yeah, it "only" has 16GB of RAM instead of 32GB and a 256GB SSD -- but RAM is pretty inexpensive, and we don't even know for sure what type of storage makes up the 2TB in this new Microsoft Surface desktop. Pretty certain it's not just a 2TB SSD, in any case.)
Of course, it's often a bad business decision to make one's political views public. Just ask the CEO of Chick Fil-A, for example.
But sure, it wouldn't normally be a problem..... except with Facebook and other forms of social media, their purpose is supposed to be to give a voice to EVERYONE who wants to use it and contribute content. If that can't be done impartially, it means the site can't be used properly for its stated purpose. (If you have to worry that your content might get censored/deleted or somehow marginalized so it shows up far less often in feeds than those expressing other viewpoints -- you need to find a different web site to use.)
Fox News can report the news any way they see fit .They hired their staff to do things the way they wished, and they own the network. That's not the same thing.
All things considered, I would have rather seen Apple buy Time-Warner than AT&T -- though I'm sure that would have raised the same alarms about anti-trust.
From Apple's point of view, they sell the AppleTV, a nice little set-top box that's never achieved more than what they keep calling "hobby" status. Primarily, that's because Apple has always hoped to partner with a large selection of partners so users would be able to cut the cord on cable and have a similar amount of content with just the AppleTV. (Essentially, doing for TV and movies what iTunes did for music.)
Unfortunately for Apple, most of the big players are refusing to negotiate with them, or at least not on Apple's terms. Many are afraid that doing so would lock them into being unable to ask more money for programming down the road (similar to the record labels who really wanted to ask more than 99 cents per album track, but found iTunes pretty much nailed that down as "the price" they had to accept).
So now, while Apple keeps trying to tip-toe around the issue by pretending their big challenge is just building a better UI for TV watching .... they're *actually* facing the facts that they probably need to start offering a lot of good original programming as the reason to buy AppleTV. (Netflix and others are learning the same thing.) Buying Time-Warner outright would give Apple a big boost in getting to where they want to be, though.
With AT&T, by contrast? I'm not seeing how the acquisition would do much of anything to benefit me as the end-user? Possibly it will improve TV content for U-Verse customers, but that service isn't even sold out here in the Northeast. Otherwise, I guess since they own DirecTV now, they think it will give them some more options to sell on satellite? But again ... that's kind of a snoozer, in a world trying to cut cords and rid of programming packages with limited or no reasonable "a la carte" options.
I agree. The main reason for demanding such a thing is to test the legal waters and see if it flies. If so, they'll duly note that and use the tactic much more often.
They'll ALSO likely try to take it a step further and see where the line is drawn.
That's why it bothers me a bit when people smugly say "Just lock your phone with a PIN code instead of a fingerprint!" The fingerprint technology is popular precisely because people hate tapping in PIN codes every single time they need to do something useful with their phone! I grant that if you're targeted specifically by a warrant or even under arrest and dealing with the police one-on-one, they might have more legal ability to demand you unlock a device by fingerprint than by some other password you have in your head. But this is more about police having the ability to broadly poke around on everyone's phone or tablet, reading all sorts of irrelevant personal info in the process of trying to find content of interest to their case.
Except the public is led to believe that securing a device with a fingerprint is, in fact, practical and reasonably ok security. I remember when it was quite common for a phone answering machine to be secured with only a 2 or 3 digit code. (The devices often wouldn't even support using a longer one if you wanted to.)
That led to some problems with people getting access to ex-girlfriends/boyfriends/husbands/wives machines and listening in on messages or maliciously erasing them, etc. But still, it provided enough security to stop the casual would-be tamperer from messing with your machine. (Even with only a 2 digit code, you would quite likely have to call back dozens of times to guess it -- and that might lead to the owner becoming aware you were trying to guess it, if he/she came home and heard the phone ringing over and over like that.)
The fingerprint requirement is certainly more secure than some 2 digit code.... and it's so convenient, I can see why phone owners would like to use it. Entering a long PIN or password every time you need to unlock your smartphone gets really tedious, especially if you just need to access a single app quickly.
I think the real lesson here is that the law needs to be reviewed, to ask why it's ok for police to make a blanket demand for people to unlock their phones for them? We all know smartphones are repositories for such a wide variety of information (even with full search functionality), that asking someone to unlock one with even a fingerprint amounts to asking to view a LOT of personal, private data that a warrant should explain WHY they're trying to get their eyes on it.
Our company has definitely experienced a bit of this .... BUT this is also where I.T. needs to step in and set some ground-rules, if the budget is limited.
For example? I got tired of all the expenditures on (IMO inferior) "Magic Mice". So I did some research and found a couple of solid,reliable bluetooth mice that could be used instead at far less cost. There's a Microsoft model that only costs about $30-35, for example. Doesn't support "gestures" by rubbing the top of it, but that's just really NOT necessary for any use-case I've seen a user come up with. It does have a scroll wheel which doubles as an assignable 3rd button and 2 regular buttons, and is very conservative on battery usage too.
If someone wants that "Magic Trackpad" mouse? I don't have a problem with buying that one, IF they honestly can be more productive with it. This is no different than in the Windows world though, IMO. A trackpad mouse will cost a premium for Windows too. It's a different way to interface with the machine, and if you really do a task regularly where the gesture support is helpful? One of these beats trying to do the gestures on top of a regular "Magic Mouse" any day.
We had to fight with some of our Creative professionals about the displays, as well. They were just SO certain that those nearly $1,000 each Thunderbolt Cinema displays were better than anything else. We cracked down on that and started physically removing a couple of them that they'd gone around I.T. and purchased for their department, substituting a matched PAIR of HP 24" IPS panel displays with anti-glare coated screens. After a few days working with a dual display environment with glare-free versions of panels with the same or better color calibration capabilities and similar resolutions? They really had no argument to want the Apple displays back. (And to be fair, those displays were kind of slick IF you had the right make/model of Macbook Pro laptop to pair with them, since they acted like a port replicator for one at the same time. But they replicated ports like Firewire 800, which are getting phased out in current machines!)
Yes, Macs are more friendly to users who aren't willing to learn more than the very basics of how to navigate a computer. They're far less likely to succumb to random malware/spyware/virus threats than Windows machines -- and in my experience as a regular Mac user, when they DO get infected? They tend to clean up more quickly and painlessly too. (EG. They make a Mac version of Malware Bytes now, and it generally knows how to fully clean just about any of the Mac malware created to-date. It runs quickly, does its thing, and after a reboot - chances are high that you're back to normal. There simply aren't the challenges the Windows world faces of people constantly modifying existing malware into new variants that hide in different sub-folders, do different kinds of damage, etc.)
On the other hand? There's no good reason to claim you can somehow do more on a Windows PC, and/or a Mac is only appropriate for the most clueless of users.
You may have a personal hatred for Apple and possibly even for the design of Mac OS X ... but quite a few "power users" use them all day long, every day, to get real work done.
I work for a company that has close to a 50/50 split of Macs and Windows machines in use (we let employees choose which they prefer in most cases). It's really not a problem managing the mixed environment, other than a bit of extra work creating 2 sets of instructions with different screen-captures for Mac and Windows, when you want to document something. As it stands today? The Mac actually makes it easier to get a VPN connection going from a PC back to the office network. We use Cisco Meraki hardware which doesn't provide any special "extra friendly" VPN connection client. You're just supposed to properly configure what's built into the OS. On the Mac side, that pretty much "just works". In Windows, there are still annoying bugs in Microsoft's TCP/IP stack implementation that can create "gotchas" -- even when you use Windows 10. (For example, if you don't manually edit the "metric" values for each adapter, ensuring the VPN adapter in the list has a higher metric manually set, like 15? Win 10 will stupidly try to send out DNS lookup requests over ALL the available adapters, instead of only going through the VPN tunnel when it's up.)
And especially with the new update mechanisms Microsoft now uses in Win 10? It's just creating a lot of needless havoc. For example, we have a number of Surface Pro 4's out in the field, and because Microsoft insists on pushing updates through at some scheduled time (defaulting to 3AM or something like that), it will leave the tablets in odd states at times. People leave their system on to go into "sleep" mode overnight, and when they come back in the morning? They may have a solid black screen and seemingly unresponsive computer. Bingo... another trouble ticket gets put in, "high priority", for I.T. to troubleshoot. In reality, it can be things as simple as the Intel video driver getting an update pushed to it that needed a full reboot to start working correctly again. This is NOT something I've ever had issues with on the Mac side.
I'd argue that as far as I've seen, practically every single project or experiment labeled "AI" is really just fake intelligence.
In other words, you've cobbled together a mechanism so a standard human language formatted query (spoken or written/typed) can be parsed out and searched in a useful way through extensive databases of information and a sensible result spit back, again in a manner that mimics a human's way of communicating the result.
This is a pretty cool thing, as we've seen by how handy the "personal assistants" like Cortana or Siri can be on our smartphones.
But IMO, Hawking is talking about achieving a way to simulate the way a human brain actually thinks. That's something we're NOWHERE near doing successfully, and I'm not even sure it's realistic to pretend we could with today's computer technology.
For starters, it's becoming more and more clear that humans don't really file away tons of information in our brains like a computer does on a hard drive in a database. A big part of what we "remember" goes to "short term memory", meaning we'll try to keep it in our heads for a little while -- but as soon as it becomes something we don't need to recall again for a period of time, it starts fading away and eventually is forgotten. At the same time though? Our brain seems to make lots of other connections to these things. (Even though you forgot, say, an old phone number of a friend you haven't called in years? When you see the number again, you may recognize it from a list of other random phone numbers and remember that's the one you USED to remember. Computers don't do that.)
The entire concept of being "reminded" of something is pretty foreign to how binary computers compute... They either have or don't have information. They don't struggle to remember and occasionally recall things, and/or realize they used to know them when reminded.
Yeah, good point.... I admit I used a bad example with the printers. To be honest though, it's been quite a while since I bought one. I still own and use several older ones here, and in at least one of those cases, it actually did include a USB cable with it. But sure, the cost of a cable is relatively minimal and if they're going to make you buy it separately anyway -- no big deal to go with a USB-C type.
But flash drives are going to be a problem, as are plenty of specialty cables. (EG. I have a USB to OBDII programming cable that's needed to download custom tunes to one of my cars.) I guess you can use any of this stuff with USB-C to USB adapters or a hub that converts the connection -- but again, that's extra stuff you have to carry with you on a laptop, so not really an attractive option.
I've been a long time Apple supporter, even going so far as to pay all the $$$'s for one of the late 2013 "trash can" Mac Pro workstations, shortly after it was released. (I did that only because I owned both a 2006 and 2008 Mac Pro tower before it, and both were excellent computers that I got years of daily use out of -- paying for themselves several times over with the work and entertainment value I got out of them. I figured I'd invest in the new direction Apple was taking things, with faith they'd make sense of what seemed at first to be kind of a step backwards in design and functionality.)
Well, unfortunately, what I'm seeing is a trend away from Apple catering at all to "power users" or "computer enthusiasts". Under Steve Jobs, at least their push towards minimalist styling/design was still well-balanced with giving the user what they really needed to get things done. (EG. When Apple declared the 3.5" floppy was dead and removed it? The rest of the Windows PC world thought that was crazy. Yet the advent of IOMega Zip disks, Syquest cartridges, dirt cheap CDR media, flash drives, SD and CF cards and more proved Apple was right. They were just pushing people a little further towards that "cutting edge" of tech, instead of sitting complacent in the middle of the "tried and true, but fading in usability" zone of technology. And when Apple decided to quit including optical drives in any of their systems? Again, some people threw fits but it's ultimately proved to be the sensible solution. External CD/DVD/Blu-Ray players and recorders are cheap and easy to plug in if/when needed, and they don't bulk up or weigh down a computer when you DON'T intend to use one. It also means when they break down, which they do fairly often with all their mechanical parts inside, they're easier to replace.)
With Thunderbolt? I feel like Apple tried, once again, to "skate to where they thought the puck was going to be" instead of to where it was. But that time, perhaps they took a chance and weren't quite right. Nonetheless, it wasn't really a big problem for users because it was only there in addition to plenty of other ports. The ability for Apple's Thunderbolt port to double as a "Mini DisplayPort" connector ensured people would use it with a dongle to attach extra monitors even if they never used it for anything else. And on higher end systems like my Mac Pro? It's actually quite useful since you pretty much need some kind of external drive enclosure to have a decent amount of storage space directly attached to the machine. There are a number of good options for multi-drive cabinets with Thunderbolt connections, and it provides great throughput without bottlenecking a USB bus.
But now, I feel like options are getting deleted just because Apple would prefer to have fewer configuration options to stock in their lineup, or because they're pushing change just for the sake of being different. (That whole elimination of matte vs. glossy displays is a great example, even if it still happened under Steve Job's watch. There was clearly a LOT of demand for anti-glare screen displays, yet Apple simply ignored it and told people "Tough luck. We think you'll love our product enough to buy it anyway, so we don't care.")
This move to USB-C? I think the new standard is just fine for netbooks or "Ultraportables" where people are primarily concerned about how light and thin it is, and probably don't WANT to connect very much up to it. But it definitely has no business in a Macbook PRO laptop being sold any time this year ... Not unless it's just there in additional to a couple of regular USB 3.0 ports. Otherwise, you're ignoring a universal standard that has no signs of dying yet. Go shop for a new inkjet printer and tell me how many have USB-C connections on them vs. traditional USB right now. Same for any digital cameras with connection cables.)
Secondarily, I agree that this change means eliminating a connector (mag-safe) that really does offer a great feature that competing laptops never had. IMO,
When you talk to some of these people who work full time for low wages, yet buy something like a high-end automobile on credit? You discover something interesting. Most of the time, it's not about them being so unable to do basic math that they don't realize they're "living above their means".
Rather, they're taking the attitude of, "Screw it.... If some lender is willing to let me get this, why not do it? Then I can drive something around I'm proud to be seen in and enjoy driving. If something happens and I can't make the monthly payment anymore? Oh well... let them come take it back from me. At least I got to enjoy using it while I had it."
In other words, they'd see YOU as the sucker for working as hard as they do, and still settling for driving around some 10 year old Toyota. I mean, YOU'RE the one playing into the hands of the bankers and the "system" -- all worried about hurting your credit score, instead of realizing that in the worst case scenario, you can just file bankruptcy, wipe away all the debts while hanging onto most of what you amassed up until then. Wait for 7 years and you're right back to where you were before with those scores and levels of "credit risk".