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The throwaway design of the products should downrank environmental to a C. I'd give them a D but they show real efforts in recycling and ethical material sourcing.

Doesn’t the fact that the iPhone 5s from 2013 still getting updates in 2019 kind of contradict that? You can still get battery replacements and screen repairs for it.

iPhones are getting too expensive

Apple sells more than just the $1500 512GB iPhone XS Max. You can buy an iPhone 7 for $450 and still have a faster phone than most Android phones and probably get updates longer.

the Air/Mac Mini price increase mirrors the iPhone's and we've never heard again of the new Mac Pro, while they STILL sell the trash can.

The $499 4GB Mac Mini that Apple sold was a computer that no one should have ever bought. $699 was the cheapest of the former Mac Minis that anyone should have bought. The $799 Mac Mini has an extremely fast SSD hard drive, thunderbolt 3 ports, etc.

Apple said during their round table that the Mac Pro wouldn’t come out until this year and they reiterated that when the iMac Pro was introduced.

I bought a bunch of those entry level Mac mini’s and swapped out the HD for an SSD.

Filled an office with them, they’re totally great for team members that don’t have heavy data or graphics needs.

Yes I probably agree with most if not all you said. The throwaway design was more geared towards the Macs and the hardware side. Also the fact that repairs are very expensive. Former Mac Minis had great upgradability for a cheaper price. They didn't change the design so what's the reason? iPhones are worth their money, which is why I continue to buy them, but the improvements from X to XS are minuscule, compared to the price increase.

As I said I could've written a more nuanced criticism, I just wanted to point out that Gruber was too generous. I'm inclined to say he didn't do a proper job.

Mac Minis are far more upgradable than they have ever been thanks to TB3 and USB-C. You couldn’t upgrade the graphic performance before for instance. The only things that you could upgrade before were RAM and storage. You can upgrade the RAM on the newest ones and there is no performance penalty from using an external drive with TB3 and probably not one with USBC. You can also add more higher resolution monitors.

I’m sure Spotify is better than AM with discovery, but I never used that feature of Spotify. Being able to upload my own files to Apple Music (got a lot of music not in streaming services) and play it anywhere is a killer feature for me.

I know everyone says Siri sucks, but I use it hundreds of times a day now and it's just... working. Though my use consists entirely sending messages, asking to play artists or music tracks, and making reminders

I get that as a trivia and knowledge service it's pretty sucky, but as a voice assistant it's doing a good job

I also use Siri all the time for voice dictation and it's pretty good.

The only reason to actually type a message on an iPhone, instead of voice dictate, is if you're in a place where speaking will bother other people or violate your privacy. Otherwise, press the microphone button and dictate what you want to write!

It's also completely free, for unlimited use, which is worth keeping in mind.

I did a test with both Siri and Nuance’s app on my iPhone. I set both to listen to a podcast playing on another device. Nuance’s app did far better with dictation.

When I tell Siri to message my girlfriend she misunderstands the name and wants to send a message to a person that I have never messaged before, who has a last name that sounds similar to my girlfriends first name.

When I ask Siri to show me the route to somewhere, she'll invariably send me to a place hundreds of kilometers away, because the place in my city wasn't an exact match or something.

The only thing that works reliably is setting timers.

Hah, I’ve had that problem with Siri. Friend with a similar first name to the last name of a person you never message

Definitely seems like they could use some context here to improve contact selection (time of day, message regularity, name similarity)

Yeah I use Siri for Homekit, reminders etc. too and it works great. But that's because I've learned what not to ask and that sucks. Checking for restaurants, shop opening times, cinema schedules works so well with Google assistant (in Germany). With Siri it's a game of chance. Asking basic questions about what distance two cities are turn into a game of how to pose the question so siri understands me.

Absolutely. I wouldn’t rely on Siri for those things either. But I have come to realise that I use it hundreds of times per day to do messaaging, music, weather and reminders. So I’ve gotten some significant value out of the service

> They give memory size options they can use to upsell, rather than what customers need, and there are no options for people who want smaller handsets other than buy outdated devices or switch to Android.

My family members – whom I do the obligatory Computer Support for – are all asking me for years about those two issues: why does my iPhone always say this backup thing is full/cannot take new photos? I wanted to buy a new iPhone, is it still ok to buy this SE or is this outdated – it’s not so big as all the other phones. Same to questions for years.