kirklennon

I feel like this sounds worse than it is because you also don’t create a Threads account, per se, in the first place. You use your Instagram account. If you want to use Threads, you activate your Threads profile; if you want to stop using Threads, you deactivate your Threads profile. Your Instagram account is still your Instagram account and exists independent of Threads. If you want a totally separate account for Threads, you need to create a second Instagram account for it.

I’m surprised he found a firm willing to take this case. I wonder how ironclad their engagement letter is? Even if they demand payment upfront, what protection do they have against him suing them? His current M.O. is not paying his bills, and now he’s going retroactive. There are better clients out there.

Apple refuses to implement RCS on their devices in a way that is compatible with non-Apple devices.

I think it’s important to note that “RCS” in this context actually refers to a proprietary messaging platform by Google, running on Google’s servers. There is no industry-standard RCS in use in America; it’s just Google’s forked version, which in practice is exactly as proprietary as iMessage. Nobody should expect Apple to implement someone else’s proprietary messaging platform on their devices, especially one run by Google, which has the worst history of managing messaging platforms of any company on the planet.

But in case that wasn’t enough of an iPhone vibe for you, the other big update that comes with this public beta is that you can now put widgets on your desktop. Widgets! … Now, this is neat. It also strikes me as one of those iOS carryovers that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense on a computer.

Is the writer even aware that Apple first introduced widgets in 1984 as “Desk Accessories”? This isn’t an iOS thing that carried over to the Mac; it’s a Mac thing that went through a lot of iterations over the years, migrated to iOS, and then came back to the Mac in a form that’s almost exactly the same as when they were originally introduced decades ago.

These specific prices are based on a single rumor, and even that was only “up to” $200 increases. Even if this latest “confirmation” were accurate, it could easily be $50 increases. A month ago Apple released a major update to the Mac Studio but kept the price the same, unveiled the 15" MacBook Air at a reasonable price, and dropped the price of the 13" MacBook Air. That doesn’t really sound like a company that’s about to announce a ~15% price increase to their most popular product but rather one that’s being quite sensitive to price pressure on buyers.

When they released the iPhone X back in 2017 at $999, people were outraged at the price increase for the average iPhone price

I don’t really remember it that way. It was explicitly presented as a bifurcation of the line. The iPhone 8 was the successor to the iPhone 7, with comparable pricing and the same year-over-year upgrades you’d expect. The iPhone X was positioned as a bleeding-edge offering for a price premium. Was there clickbait faux outrage and pearl-clutching at the price? Sure. Were actual customers outraged? No.

Apple refers to them as “portables” rather than “laptops” for this exact reason

They may use the term somewhere when they want to collectively refer to MacBooks and iPads, but they absolutely use the term “laptop.” Big letters at the top of the comparison chart on the MacBook Pro page: “Which laptop is right for you?” The tag line for the M1 MacBook Air: “The most affordable Mac laptop to get things done on the go.” The MacBook Air line, incidentally, no longer has vents at all.

The UK’s surveillance proposal is more draconian than China’s current treatment of Apple, though. FaceTime an iMessage work exactly the same in China as they do in every other country. They’re fully end-to-end encrypted and Apple’s logging of metadata is extremely minimal. China’s policies are deeply problematic they seem content to let Apple get away with the bare minimum of legal compliance, in contrast to local companies who bend over backwards to comply with every whim of the CCP. Could Apple make a principled stand against China? Sure. Would that make some self-righteous people feel good? Definitely. Would it do anything at all to improve the privacy of people in China? Absolutely not. They’d lose their most-private option. That’s the real-world outcome.

The UK, on the other hand, is actually still a democracy. A combative and principled stand against government overreach can actually change government policy and preserve end-user privacy.

If your device locally analyzes your behavior and files, then Apple itself is not actually collecting and analyzing your data. The “locality” is a fundamental difference in who is doing what. If your private information never leaves your phone, your privacy is still fully maintained.

The scenario where they’re lying would would mean they’re falsely responding to countless subpoenas for data by claiming they don’t have information that they do. This would be a massive globe-spanning crime requiring the coordination (“conspiracy” in criminal law) of hundreds or thousands of people, and also enormous civil liability. This would instantly wipe hundreds of billions of dollars off the stock and destroy their reputation, all so they could … what? It’s cheaper and easier for them to simply collect less data in the first place. Useless user data is nothing more than a liability for Apple.