Who would buy this thing? The phone doesn't look to be anything special, the name makes it sound low-end, there's zero brand recognition. The magnetic wireless accessory thing is irrelevant to vast majority of consumers, especially since Bluetooth has already solved that problem and works with any device.
I can't imagine a scenario where someone is looking to buy a phone in the ~$700 range and chooses this.
I'm not sure we are talking about the same bluetooth here. I have yet to see a bluetooth device that just works (I am a non apple user, so I can't speak for IOS devices).
The worst example are my wireless headphones. When I get into the car the car radio tries to connect to my phone, so it stops the wireless headphone output. I then have to scroll through the menu and disconnect the car radio, which tries to reconnect after a while.
But that is not even the worst. If I have an audiobook playing while I connect the headphones the audio switches immediately to the headphones as soon as they are connected (which is the expected behavior). But if I start the audiobook after the headphones are connected it takes several minutes until I can actually hear something and I have not figured out a way to speed this up apart from disconnecting and reconnecting after I hit play.
I for one love my wired headsets, they just work. But I have to buy some new ones every other month because I regulary rip them when they get caught up in something.
> I have yet to see a bluetooth device that just works (I am a non apple user, so I can't speak for IOS devices).
Indeed, if you go all-in on Apple they really do "just work", and come pretty close when you use a non-Apple BT headset with Apple gear. I can't say if this is because the standards are inadequate and Apple does some extra work, or if the BT implementations on cheap hardware are simply terrible. I kinda lean to the latter, but really either could be true.
> When I get into the car the car radio tries to connect to my phone, so it stops the wireless headphone output.
BTW if you are in California it's a crime to have an earbud in both ears or cup headset covering both ears. You're unlikely to be stopped for that specifically, but if you get stopped for erratic driving, speeding, or have an accident the cops are quite willing to load that one on too, and in the case of an accident your insurance company may not cover you. So your car may have a crappy implementation (see my comment above) or it might be attempting to do the right thing.
Sounds like a data point in favor of the "the standards are inadequate and Apple does some extra work" hypothesis.
Let's hope Apple can feed some of this back into the standards organization.
Apple's efforts with standards committees has historically been so-so -- neither bad nor good, seemingly mostly reflecting the interests of technical managers unless there was a specific strategic need (e.g. USB committee, Qi), and never with a coherent commitment.
> I'm not sure we are talking about the same bluetooth here. I have yet to see a bluetooth device that just works (I am a non apple user, so I can't speak for IOS devices).
I have a 2008 Toyota Tundra pickup with no bluetooth. I bought a $20 bluetooth adapter [1]. It has worked flawlessly with my iPhone 5S/6/7 phones; I step into the vehicle, and as soon as the cigarette power adapters are powered up, it pairs without any intervention on my part (after the initial pairing). I consume vast quantities of Spotify while driving around Central Florida with this setup.
I still rely on the Apple corded headphones, as I prefer their UX to wireless headphones.
It is regretful if it does not work for your specific use case, but it does seem to work in certain scenarios without issue.
I'm just so baffled by this. I've been using bluetooth happily for over a decade. With some minor hiccups, I'd say it works near flawlessly every time. However, everyone seems to hate bt, it never works for anyone, manufacturers put it in everything, people continually switch to bt devices. Nothing adds up.
Yes, you are lucky. My experience with BT is similar to described above - it's unreliable, flaky and prone to random failure. For example, in my car, most of the phones connect most of the time, but at random times they just refuse until the phone is rebooted. Or connect but refuse to dial. Or, alternatively, randomly switch to in-car audio when you stand outside the car and are in mid-call. One of my phones topped it all - connecting it by BT to my car crashes the whole system (thankfully nothing related to actual driving uses the same system, it just makes all audio/radio/maps/etc. unavailable).
For a car, there's not a lot of choice there. For headphones, after trying to find a good BT headset for years and failing, I gave up and got RF wireless set. Seems to work fine so far, but of course requires special gadget and only useable with that gadget.
I hear horrible things about wired headphones too. I think everyone has their own sets of pet peeves that drastically change how they perceive the relative costs and benefits of the available technologies.
In the car they are used as a hands free kit. My car radio can be used to do calls as well but the headphones, only in one ear while driving, do have much better call quality
How is that less safe then playing the car's stereo? I have one in my ear at a reasonable volume when driving with others so they don't have to listen to my Geeky podcast or music.
They are paired with my linux laptop, phone, and desktop computer. Only issue is my car will still try to takeover media on my phone and my car is for phone calls only with bluetooth.
I have UE Boom 2 speakers that I use with a wide range of devices (the speaker supports up to 8 registered devices simultaneously). My main mobile devices are not Apples and everything works perfectly.
Really? I was going to take the opposite perspective and say celebrity and name recognition goes a long way, irrespective of actual success...
I always hear the "Essential" brand name brought up now whenever Apple, Samsung, etc are mentioned. Even in the non-tech news sites. Which is funny to consider given their sales count.
As someone who frequents many tech sites I can't remember hearing the name "Essential" in relation to phones before today. I don't know what sites you frequent, but they're apparently different than Hacker News, Ars, or even Slashdot.
I recently saw it in NYTimes and two major Canadian papers (Toronto Star and National Post). Each was about the new iPhones and mentioned "Essential" in the context of new pressure from competition (among other brands such as Samsung).
It was mentioned in passing as if it was a known competitor.
Note: I never complain about downvotes, but I'm confused why it's -4, do people think I'm lying? Although my comment is not yet grey, which means they were all newbie members.
I didn't say see it in any particular Tech blogs such as Ars, maybe I should have made that clear...
This article is talking about the cardinality of two very specific sets. Before, many believed that t > p, but many believed that this was not provable in ZFC. Both sets contain only sets of integers, so their cardinality is bounded above by the cardinality of the real numbers (the continuum). Some people believed that this result was related to the Continuum hypothesis, and so was only provable one way or the other if you assume the CH or its negative.
As it turns out, both sets have the same cardinality (that of the real numbers) AND it is provable in ZFC.
The title is a little misleading, its really saying that two infinite sets are the same size, but prior to this their cardinality was unknown, and it wasn't even known if the cardinality was provable in ZFC.
The natural numbers are each finite. In set theory, the standard way they are defined is that they can be constructed by assuming the existence of the empty set (or 0) and assuming that if you "insert a set into itself" the result will be a set. (So they can be thought of as {} = 0, {{}} = 1, {{}, {{}}} = 2, etc.).
The natural numbers are simply the (smallest) set that contains the empty set and is closed under this "insert a set into itself" operation (successor). It only contains finite sets since the successor operation will never turn an finite set into an infinite set.
The existence of this set of ALL natural numbers (an infinite object) relies on an axiom, the axiom of infinity.
The LCBO doesn't negotiate. The vendors set their price, LCBO adds its automatic markup and thats it. Of course, they will only stock your product if people are buying it.
You're all looking at this from a dev perspective ... look at Slack's customer base.
Slack Enterprise is expensive for a messaging service, and one of their main selling points is support and reliability. When a huge customer reports a breaking bug they need to resolve it ASAP, turnaround time is probably the number-one priority.
I can't imagine a scenario where someone is looking to buy a phone in the ~$700 range and chooses this.