Apple looks strong because their price per unit i.e. the "stupid" tax they make you pay on all their products is astronomically high. The actual demand and shipping volumes for their laptops has never set any records and the iPhone is sucking air now too. Their current lineup of products is mediocre at best when compared with what other companies are coming up with. Their biggest "innovations" lately are the touch bar (loser), removing useful ports/features that people like/love and dark mode. Really? Apple is the DeLorean of tech.
People aren't born with prejudices, they have to learn them. The most common source being religion. Without religion we wouldn't have had witch trials, the Crusades and a lot of other really miserable shit. What it didn't outright invent it codified and reinforced, it's just another way of making people afraid in order to control them.
> God did not create us in his image; we created him in ours.
Apparently you don't understand religion at all. This is exactly the opposite of what they believe. Your idea about man creating God is the atheist position. Fundamentalists believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God and his will must be obeyed. They differ only in interpretation and level of conviction.
Some people will use X to justify their behavior but most people are just too stupid for that. Evangelicals come to mind. They just believe whatever they are told because it makes them feel good or special. It's sheer intellectual laziness that allows their though processes to be corrupted or completely bypassed by religious dogma. Once it reaches a tipping point in the population you enable people like Hitler and Trump who will take advantage of the movement to get what they want.
> There are more religious people than SV/tech people trying to help the homeless.
The don't want to help, they want to assuage their own guilt by doing as little as possible. And you can be sure the only homeless they want to help are straight and white and don't live anywhere near their gated communities. The make token donations so they can forget about all the harm they really do by electing idiots who invent bathroom laws, anti-abortion laws, try to keep gays out of the military, kill people by taking away affordable healthcare, give huge tax breaks to the rich and millions of other shitty little laws.
An external HD or removable SSD drive would be a much better system for moving between home and work. It doesn't matter how heavy the base system is if you're just moving a tiny disk, but there's no money in that for Apple.
Apple has never cared what their users wanted and they've never listened to them. Design, like shit, flows downhill. The difference between then and now that is Steve Jobs isn't around to tell them that the shit landing on their heads is really gold. As a result, they're not afraid to offend Steve and they're starting to develop opinions of their own.
Moral positions are not facts, they are beliefs. if a person believes meat is bad, then that individual can give up meat. Done. That was easy wasn't it? If they want other people to join the movement, they they can shout about it from the rooftops. However, nothing gives them the right to force their beliefs on anyone else? That's what religious hypocrites do. Think about how most of the other problems you mentioned were created. Religious fundamentalists forcing their beliefs on someone else.
If they want to avoid being branded as brain dead hypocrites, they can't decide to allow one dietary choice over another. This is really just a hippie driven religious debate in lab grown meat's clothing.
Toes have been stolen or swallowed (yup) over the years and replacements have been donated. There's now a hefty fine for anyone who wants to swallow the toe.
If Tears had NO claim to TC then why would Arrington willingly give up 10%? Pity? I don't think so. Not his style. Did they have a written agreement about the 75/25 split that muddied the waters? Possibly. We're definitely not getting the whole story and both sides most likely remember things quite differently now.
Non-service animals, crying and seat kicking children, the sick, the morbidly obese (if you spill over your assigned seat), smokers, people who wear too much cologne/perfume, people who put their feet/knees on the seat in front of them, snorers, stinkers, those allergic to peanuts and all other classes of public irritants should have spots in a comfortable but separate cabin.
All of Apple's battery problems would disappear if I could replace the battery in my device instead of being forced to chuck the whole thing because the battery will no longer take/keep a charge. Surely someone at Apple can design a device with a replaceable battery?
Just rebuild the sensitive portions of your code using movfuscator and leave the performance critical stuff alone. As long as everything is statically linked and you don't do anything stupid like "if (check) unlock()" that can be easily patched, it would make life pretty miserable for the RE crowd.
Shareholder oppression is criminal. Whether the actions they take constitute shareholder oppression or not is a matter that usually gets settled in court or arbitration.
I started writing shareware in 8o's and even then there were alternative "marketing" and distribution methods to print, like BBSes, SIMTEL20 (and other FTP archives), usenet, user groups, shareware CD's and sharing among friends. It worked pretty well actually. There was abuse of course and it started a whole anti-piracy industry. Protection techniques cost a lot to create and maintain and they didn't really solve the problem. SaaS is so popular today because it practically eliminates piracy. Developers get paid for what they build or they go broke because nobody wants what they've built.
Pharmaceutical companies R&D costs for new drugs are heavily subsidized by tax credits and write offs. Capital is required to kick start the process but much of that can be recovered at tax time, the rest when they start selling or licensing the drug.
I have machines that were and are still running Windows 7 and Windows 8 (I keep them around for testing). I was never forced to upgrade them to Windows 10 and it was never done "auto-magically" for me. I've also never seen a Windows update destroy data without telling me it was going to destroy data, usually by reformatting a partition or a drive. You'd probably have to just blindly answer OK to every prompt you saw for that to happen. If you're one of "those users" then I have zero sympathy for you. Anyone who takes their computer to the Geek Squad definitely falls into that category, especially if they believed they had to buy a new machine because on OS upgrade broke their hardware. Not saying I like auto-update but this sounds like a serious case of PEBKAC.
This has been a problem since forever. I had one of the first Intel Macbooks and the damned thing blew up 2 batteries. They swelled up to about 4 times their original thickness overnight. Luckily, they didn't explode but after the second incident the Macbook got recycled with extreme prejudice.
The risk you run by using a third party licensing solution is that they are more attractive targets to crackers. Generally, once a system has been compromised, all of the software using that system become vulnerable. Rolling your own solution takes time and effort and there's no guarantee that it won't be broken but you can also change and update it as needed. In the end you're really only affecting honest customers so keep the system as unobtrusive as possible and put more focus on selling more software and that quality of what you're putting out there - that will more than make up for any shortfalls due to piracy.
There may be a skills shortage but that has nothing to do with a graduate shortage (or lack thereof). Just because you graduated doesn't mean you have a useful skill set, that you're proficient or employable.
Apple users used to be proud of their over priced trailing edge hardware (usually a year or two behind mainstream hardware) now they're like refugees clinging to a sinking ship, just hoping their machine limps along until Apple decides to pad their bottom line by releasing the next shiny "must have" like an OLED touch bar they can use to impress their barista.
The idea that you can build something and then tweak it until you find customers is deeply flawed. You built something that nobody needed or wanted. Don't do it again. Don't try to validate a product or an idea, identify a need and then find the best way to fill it.
As a Canadian this is something that would have never crossed my mind. I just go to the hospital/doctor without any thought of how much it's going to cost me. I suppose this is why "home birth" became a thing.
I actually know Ric and some of the guys who worked at Uniloc. Back in the day, they were doing real development work and R&D on activation and licensing systems. The nature of the business may have changed after the Microsoft thing happened, but there's a lot more to that story than ever makes it into the headlines. All you hear now is the spin. Calling them trolls is sexier than doing any kind of fact checking I guess. Microsoft (and others) helped create the modern Uniloc by ripping off their IP, making it more profitable to enforce their patent than to use it to their advantage or license it. As long as the patent system exists in it's current flawed form, users have two choices... license the patented IP they use or roll the dice. People who own patents HAVE to enforce them or forfeit their rights, that's not really much of a choice.