illuminati1911

100% agreed. This is going to be the point in history that people will remember when Apple went too far and how it destroyed the company...or destroyed the Apple as we know it today.

I've understood every single Apple product so far (with some small exceptions) but this is just DOA. People are used to thinking that Apple doesn't go into a product space unless they can really nail it in terms of implementation and pricing.

There is no excuse for 3499. This product is dead. If they can't manufacture it any cheaper they should have never done it.

Of course if we lie to ourselves. It's just an iOS app browser inside Oculus Quest like product + Disney content.

The price is so insane and outrageous that this will be pretty much 101% failure.

It's essentially iOS app browser inside Oculus Quest like glasses + Disney garbage content. Hard to see even value for 1000 USD price tag.

3499. Could this finally be the turning point and beginning of collapse of Apple?

There is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that the dislike count was "abused by troll hordes". Your arguments are very weak and remind me of the rhetoric used by totalitarian regimes in justifying their censorship.

"Public shaming" is the result of creating content that most likely deserves to be publicly shamed. This has also not disappeared, but is now in the comment section. This is just as "elegant solution" as SWAT team shooting all the hostages in order to be able to injure one hostage taker.

Most likely the reason to remove the dislikes is either because

a) YouTube for some reason wants more user engagement in the comment section

b) To protect American corporations (advertisers) from the uncomfortable reality that 95-99% of the people don't like their woke-content.

Whether AI comes for our jobs or not is not really relevant. Whenever there is technical revolution some jobs will vanish, new jobs will be born and some existing jobs will remain but they will also change.

In regards to software engineering, automation and abstraction in our industry (compilers, high level languages etc.) has always increased the demand for software and people working in the industry. This is very unlikely to be any different unless we'll come up with ultimate general purpose AI that can solve any problem humanity can ever face.

No one said anything about creating boilerplates.

It's a significant advantage for developers to ask AI to solve technical problems, get right answers right away and move to a next task vs keep on scratching your head for the next 5h wondering "why it doesn't work".

Lol. This clearly shows it's made by Samsung/Android manufacturer. They just don't understand why people use iOS.

After scanning the code this happens:

1) Hey! Please copy this page URL and open it in Safari!

I open it in safari

2) Hey! Please add this to your home screen!

sigh...I add it to home screen and open it

3) Now I'm greeted with mandatory 5-10 seconds long UI tutorial

4) Finally I can start using it

This is exactly why I use iOS despite Apple being asshole company. After I scan the code I want end result IMMEDIATELY. No bullshit. I don't wanna press 20 buttons and change browsers, add stuff to homescreen etc.

Next time open it right away in whatever browser I choose to use and then add additional option: "Hey! Wanna get a full screen experience? Add this to your iOS homescreen in Safari and try out. Click here to start!"

"Spotify would consistently "rabbithole" me into the same ~150 songs, most of which I didn't even like."

They do that because their fake top/featured/popular now playlists are crafted by major record labels and other influential people/companies in the music industry. Those 150 songs are what they wanna push right now and what are at least remotely close to your taste. The trick is to find custom and good quality playlists made by others.

I listen to a lot of thrash metal and I just found "New thrash 2022+ only" playlist (or something like that) and it's full of awesome small never-heard bands that have only 50-5000 listeners per month. I would have never discovered any of them if I just followed the algorithm.

”If they take a stance, they will be banned from China completely.”

Unlikely as that kind of a move would have a huge global impact. That might lead to all Chinese companies (Bytedance, Xiaomi etc.) being banned in the west/US etc.

There would be consequences though.

Laying off staff of a company that has barely added any new features during the last 10 years and has always been operating at a loss is not necessarily a bad thing for the future of the platform.

You are right about the chaotic way things are added/removed right now, but I personally prefer it to what Twitter was before Musk: Force login on the main page and unfair ideological censorship.

We'll see what happens in the long run.

”(probably less action on more contentious issues, but you still can't use racial epithets and call for violence)”

This hasn’t been the case until now. Just as an example lot of radical leftists, BLM activists etc. have openly called for extermination of white people and contantly used racist rhetoric without any consequences. Meanwhile a lot of convervatives, libertarians etc. have been banned/suspended from Twitter due to false ”hatespeech” reporting.

No one has ever asked for ”hounds to be released”. No one sane wants Twitter to become another 8chan. What people want is the one-sided 1984 experiment to end.

This. As someone living in China and having used wechat for years I've always found it ultra cringey when American businessmen/influencers are like "omg have you guys seen what Chinese are doing with wechat! They have this all in one app where..."

First of all this idea of a superapp is nothing new. In fact iOS or Android is also a "superapp". Basically a software that has an ecosystem inside of it. Wechat has just created their own ecosystem within a ecosystem, because they want to control everything.

Second, when compared to most other Chinese apps I do have to admit that wechat is much more finished, but when compared to other global messaging apps like Telegram, Slack etc. I'd say wechat is about 10-15 years behind in everything and lacking the most fundamental features. The social media aspect of wechat which is called "Wechat Moments" is also extremely limited: Basically like Instagram without you being able to see or follow people you don't know personally. If your friend posts a photo and his friend (who you don't know) makes a comment on it, you cannot see this comment but you can see your friends replies to him/her. Yes, super confusing. Also no images, videos, gifs in the comments etc.

Third, a lot of people like to mention that "you can do everything with wechat". You can do a lot of things, but I don't know anyone who only uses wechat. There are a lot of other apps that you need to live comfortably: Alipay (this is another superapp), Taobao (like ebay), Jingdong (like amazon), Dianping (like Yelp), Eleme/Meituan (like Uber eats), Baidu maps, banking apps etc. etc.

Wechat does have it's internal "miniprogram" system (alternative to native apps) where you can have some of these apps I previously mentioned, but there are severe app size, memory and performance limitations, proprietary API and the performance and functionality is from early 2010s internet. Laggy and slowly opening pages, collapsing and bouncy layouts etc. Also wechat does not support multitasking: When you are using for example Tim Horton's miniprogram to order coffee, you can't chat with your friends, you can't open a Starbucks/some_other_coffee_company miniprogram on the side and compare prices. You have to close and kill the current "app" and then open a new "app" for new action. This is somewhat understandable due to the iOS/Android limitations of a single app (in regards to performance and memory), but it highlights why this kind of a "superapp" idea is fundamentally flawed.

So basically IMO "superapp" is a solution looking for a problem. We already have iOS, Android or web browser. We don't need another forced ecosystem but we need good apps for existing ones.

Honestly this whole "responsible AI" thing is a sad last attempt to run away from the inevitable. The reality is that our politicians will end up in fake photos/videos/audio recordings, people who can't even draw a straight line will be able to make crazy online memes with any kind of imaginable image in just seconds no matter how offensive it is to some people and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.

When these companies and OS projects create "responsible" or restricted AIs they are at the same time creating a demand for AIs that have no limitations and eventually open source or even commercial AIs will respond to this demand.

I hope while they still play this "responsible" game, they are at least using the time to figure out ways how we can live with this kind of advanced AI in a future where everything is fake/false by default.

”So once all that is done, the user needs to click away cookie consent banner, newsletter sign-up and the continue reading button. And only now can we stop the clock on "time to read content".”

You forgot the paywall that you will see at this point.

Maybe there is also a customer service bot saying: ”Hey! Ask me about our special offer on 12 month subscription!”

"when in reality there are a lot of talented people in India and from India."

There are skilled people from India, but rarely in India I'd assume. The market for software engineers in India is not great to put it politely so the talented people will obviously go where the money and benefits are which is US, Europe etc. And yes I'm sure there are exceptions, but probably not too many or do you know anyone actually buying software engineer services from India and paying western salaries?

Lol. They have probably defined how to money is to be sent to them. Even if they had not it's probably better to stfu and comply. More your try to fuck with the regulators, more they will punish you.

I didn't say that it was more inconvenient than installing a native app, but it's not more convenient either. I don't see any reason to switch to these PWAs when native apps are usually guaranteed to have better UX, features, Apple Pay, Face ID support etc.

Exactly.

Can someone tell me what PWA even is from user perspective? I think most users just see web and web apps that they can use through their browser and then there is the app store and its native apps. Most people have no idea what the hell is a PWA. Even I don't fully know what it is because I don't really care.

To me there is the web with collapsing non-optimized layouts, annoying forms, "Please login"/"Enter your billing address and credit card information" popups and then there is the perfectly crafted mobile UX with Face ID, Apple Pay etc. that just has all my data and just works.

If I do something once then it's slightly annoying downloading the app from the app store, but I can live with it. It's not worse than opening browser and going to some URL.

I love cycling and bicycles, but I have to say you have a point in your second statement. Back in the days when I used to live in Helsinki, streets became much more dangerous after cycling became popular and city built dedicated cycling lanes. Suddenly all the hipsters with their 5000 USD handmake Swiss custom bikes are out there to kill the pedestrians.

Outside of some developing countries I've never felt threatened by cars, but I've been just less than a second away from death or permanent disability because of bicycles in Helsinki, Berlin, Tel Aviv etc.

”Recently, talking about the incident to the New Yorker, Tanuja said, "A number of e-mails got sent to my VP, to the head of HR, to our chief diversity officer, to our CEO directly, claiming that the talk was creating a hostile workplace, that people felt unsafe, that the speaker was not qualified to speak on the topic and several other allegations." She also claimed that in tech companies, including Google, discrimination based on caste was rife and that tech company needed to talk about it.”

Congratulations America. Now the ”felt unsafe”, ”hostile environment” etc. woke newspeak is used to protect the asses of the people who want to discriminate while victims get smoked out by these useless clowns that are called ”diversity officers”.

"I also think this article is a little out of date, some factories in China have definitely been churning out some pretty good stuff for awhile now... "

It is still how 96-98% of China and Chinese manufacturing works, but you are right. Before it was much more and there has been a lot of development during the last 10 years.

Also what most western people don't always realize is that the stuff from China that is shipped to western countries is usually higher quality than the stuff they sell domestically. This also applies to western brands. Chinese people have much higher tolerance for low quality and things getting broken so those factories producing the lower tier products are focusing on the domestic market while higher quality manufacturing is more focused in export.

As someone who has lived several years in China, it most definitely cannot be found. In some places maybe, but not anywhere or at least not in the same magnitude.

This article may simplify it too much and fail to explain it properly but the "cha bu duo" really is part of every single thing in every day life within Chinese society. It's how people cook their food, it's how delivery services function, it's the promises that are given to other people and it's also how the manufacturing works etc. And it's definitely much more common in China than elsewhere. Also it's not always a negative thing, although most western people would definitely think it is in most cases.

”Run your own text to image prompts with CUDA, a bunch of disk space, and an insane amount of memory.”

The ”insane amount of memory” turned out to be 32 GB or more. I thought we are talking about 512 GB or something like that.

” Any proof of that statement? Or are you one of those people who believes in the invisible hand of providence the way religious people believe in God?”

It’s inherent fact of the reality we live in. People like money and higher compensation.

”Hey, remember back in the good old days of cotton plantations, when the African sl…”

Slavery is opposite of free market. I don’t know why you bring up such an bad example.

The global economy and free market will always make sure that the talented people will receive higher compensation. It doesn't matter if someone outsources to India or not, but if you are getting something for really cheap you are buying shit and being scammed. There are obviously good high quality Indian developers too, but they are not going to be working for these low cost sweatshops that get contracts from Fortune 500 legacy corps.

This is not really true at least everywhere. In Europe and especially North Europe smaller (less than 1000 ppl) consultancies are usually the most lax and best paid jobs with best benefits out there and the best ones definitely do raise their rates.

It's just about what kind of clients you want to work with. If you pick any client that comes to your door and never say no then you'll end up in the race to the bottom with these large outsourcing corps.

They are not happy to pay for shit, but they are tricked into thinking that they can get same quality from India outsourcing as from actual professional devs/companies. Later they get angry and then they'll go to court. The order is following: 1) Sales people 2) Developer 3) Lawyers

100% true and even if you offer a more higher caliber consultancy instead of these India outsourcing companies, the legacy corporations and their management will never want to admit that they know nothing about tech or their business. Because the executives themselves have used iPhone or web browser they often think they know best what features the app needs, they claim that they don' need analytics or metrics from users and they don't want any advice from professionals. They just need bunch of "coders to do that coding thing or whatever".

On top of it they still want the software but they are not ready to pay the price for the software so they go for these con artist companies and in the end they have been milked 32M for a website that doesn't work.