I'm a semi-retarded product manager that was interested in what it was like building linux desktop apps. With a hand from Claude, I was surprised to get a simple Gnome/gtk widget that was functional and understandable. I was also able to iterate on it without any headaches.
Why not? It's a physical building with lots of equipment that produces products shipped to its customers.
Its products are sequences of electrons, instead of atoms. But so are power plants. And in the context of what happens when they're hit by missiles, a factory, data center, and power plant all behave the same.
Google Cloud also has middle east locations. As does Azure, Oracle and Alibaba. Afaik, IBM Cloud does not. I think those five and AWS are the top 6 global public access clouds.
Yes of course. But they also have to know that concentrated compute is an attractive target for marauding countries that decide on a whim to bomb you from outside.
Not really, although things may be trending in the wrong direction. Pick any “weird” current event and you can find much worse examples in relatively modern history. Just compare whatever you think of to the siege of Leningrad, for instance.
""Apple has better app selection (for most people). Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS.""
You mean Apple has been forced by regulators to implement core features like USB-C and RCS?
Sure, but uninformed consumers won't see it that way. Maybe in their circles it just sounds like a great idea and they thank Apple for implementing it.
Saying they were forced to implement USB-C is really overstating things. Apple loooved USB-C - so much so that their ill-fated butterfly switch laptops went all-in on it. They also helped design it. It's highly likely they were planning a move to USB-C anyway and the EU just pushed it forward a year.
This is untrue. Apple was fighting EU the entire time trying to avoid a switch to USB-C on iPhones. EU representatives were publicly critical of Apple, eventually Apple was forced to give in.
I realize a conspiracy narrative gets more clicks but … you know Apple started the development of USB-C and shipped some of the first devices in 2015, right? People whined about the MacBooks requiring new hubs, etc. for a couple of years and got over it. The same thing happened with the iPad in 2018, AirPods, etc.
When they introduced Lightning in 2012, they made a commitment to all of the third-party hardware developers that iPhones would support it for a decade. I’m sure the EU pressure helped but USB-C iPhones shipping in 2023 is right on that original timing.
But why would Apple, the company that famously hates backwards compatibility, make things easier for third-party accessory manufacturers, instead of making things easier for users bought into the ecosystem who had USB-C on their iPads and Macs?
Sure, I’m not saying they’re altruists. I just think the most likely explanation is that they promised compatibility under the “Made For iPhone” program and kept that promise because they’ve been in business long enough to know that screwing people who supported your last product is a great way to ensure they don’t support your next one.
I’m not: each thing I wrote is common knowledge—read the Wikipedia pages for the Lightning and USB-C pages if you don’t believe me—and it’s a little silly to spin this as something other than large companies not making massive supply chain changes quickly. I’m glad USB-C has won but you don’t change things deployed in the hundreds of millions in a year–I saw an original iPhone connector in the wild as recently as last year!
Truth is, apple didn't want to migrate their phones due to some internal decision not relevant for us, and the fact some other devices were on it doesn't change this. Users comfort was never part of the equation, its politics, sales projection, stabs at competition and similar.
Truth is, apple fought EU hard, we saw it from inside quite well. Backstabs, some cheap tricks trying to delay and evade this, even when it was clear how things will be. Not their best days to be polite.
Why giving some heartless mega corporation free moral credits if they are not well deserved?
People can and do fight things they agree with on the principle of not wanting to do something because they were told to. You fight it just to say “you can’t tell me what to do” (for precedent) not just to actually defend a position you believe in. Even if the other side wins, they had to pay a cost that may discourage or at least raise the floor for future regulatory efforts.
Truth is, no one has the full facts so any reasons as to why this was made the way it was is pure speculation. Only a fool would move to condemn or endorse what is not yet fully understood.
As someone who's implemented custom Bluetooth protocols, it's actually quite easy to condemn an Apple manufacturer ID check to expose custom services.
And what do you mean by "conspiracy"? I would be shocked to find out this was done by some lone wolf and wasn't built with broad (even if grumbly) consensus in the relevant teams. That's how corporate software is built.
Every time someone opens an argument with the classic appeal to authority “as someone who has…” you can almost certainly expect to have that person miss the point of the discussion entirely.
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