My ignorance? Tell me what it is that you wrote that I didn't already know. Some companies ship bad chargers. I've used name brand chargers from companies like Anker which are more powerful (30v+) and charge i devices faster than what Apple sends. I also use standard USB-A plugs in wall sockets, surge protectors and UPSs to charge i-devices. They all work. I almost never use the Apple chargers. Apple devices can handle a wide range which is why I questioned the GP's complaint about "changing specs" somehow obsoleting his chargers. He also implied that only a USB-C lighting cable would work with the new phones when any USB-A lighting cable will work fine. The difference is the available chargers. My Anker charger takes USB-C or USB-A. New specs and chargers have offered you better compatible options than what comes in the box. They haven't caused any existing Apple chargers not to work.

You don't have to use the USB-C cable. You can use a USB-A lightning cable with the old chargers on you new phone. It just charges a bit slower. Maybe you chew on your cables when you are nervous, but mine last a few years so I have surplus.

Apple lowered their prices for the chargers, assuming you actually need to buy one. I have tons of them from 10 years of iPhone ownership. I've never had an Apple charger fail. Specs changing? What are you talking about? The standard Apple 5v charger still charges all their phones and watches. It'll even charge your iPad - slowly. You can get the 15v charger that came with the iPad and charge your iPhone faster. Is that a spec change to you? I have an Anker charger (30v I believe) that charges even faster. Your old device might not take a fast charge but if it conforms to Apple's specs it'll just charge at the 5v or 15v speed it was made for. Some low quality knock off chargers can damage your device, but that's because it's a bad charger not because of a spec change. As for the environment, Apple's iPhones, iPads and Macs are 100% recyclable. The fact that you can't replace the battery doesn't change that. Soldering doesn't change that either. While you have the product you can get the battery replaced - it cost me $50 when an old iPad's battery would no longer hold a charge. You no longer have to always have Apple do that or make other repairs as Apple is loosening up their dealings with 3rd party repair shops. And when you return an old or broken product to Apple, it gets recycled - including the battery. Apple is rightfully proud of their environmental record which I'm sure they see as a competitive advantage and source of goodwill. Apple's example has has helped spur Google, Amazon and other companies efforts at eliminating non-renewable energy sources and eliminating toxic non-recyclable elements from their hardware products. It's a good thing.

You would have to be a fool to believe that. Apple is much bigger than Softbank and Nvidia. It could buy both with cash on hand. If Apple thought that this purchase was a serious threat they would buy whatever they needed to to prevent it. Apple has been developing their own internal CPU design capability. Just like they did with graphics which allowed them to end their licensing of GPU designs and with power management which allowed them to do the same, they are perfectly capable of designing whatever they need beyond the current ARM designs. If you've really been paying attention you''d also note that the role of the CPU in computer processing and management is diminishing relative the GPUs and other processes.

Tying is not necessarily illegal. The iPhone is sold with IOS installed. Together they represent the product as sold and to which any guarantees and warranties apply. If you decide to jailbreak it or install something else you can, but they won't support it. You'll also be creating for yourself a plethora of security and reliablity issues for yourself which is why such action invalidates your warranty. If you buy a car and replace the OS the dealer and manufacturer will not support you. The same with a home security system, CISCO network routers, etc. Being livid is not the basis of a legal argument, If Apple was in the services business and those services were effectively a monopoly and then later they built the iPhone and only allowed you to use their services from an iPhone, that would be illegal. Google only allowing Google search on their phones or Facebook only allowing access from their phones would be illegal tying. Monopolies themselves are not illegal. Leveraging an existing monopoly in order to gain advantage in a different market (as Microsoft attempted to do with Internet Explorer) is what is illegal. Apple would like it if Apple Music dominated its market space. Notice that you can access Apple Music from non-Apple devices. There is, for example, an Apple Music client app for Android. If they didn't do that then if Apple Music did monopolize its space then the tying of the service from one market to their device in another market would be illegal.

You can't have a monopoly on a specific product within a product category. Microsoft had a PC OS monopoly for a time with Windows. The category is PC OS, not Windows or Dell. Apple does not have a phone OS monopoly with IOS as iPhone is not the only smart phone or even the only high end smart phone on the market. They have a minority share in both cases. Your argument is like saying Ford has a monopoly on Ford F150 pickup trucks. The correct category is pickup trucks, not a specific brand of pickup truck. Otherwise every manufacturer of a proprietary product would have a monopoly.

By "cost effective to maintain" I'm referring to Total Cost of Ownership. If its too hard to debug, fix, patch or update then it's not good. If you can't add new features without rewriting major pieces of code then its not good. If you can't get the data in or out in a straightforward way then it's not good.

"Real programming" along with real architecture and design results in applications that are scalable, flexible and cost effective to maintain over many years. They also manage data in a consistent way that can be leveraged by other apps and users and merged with other enterprise data to provide greater insights. Small DIY projects don't require this so yes, they don't require high level skills to implement. You can do so-so UI's without a high level skill set also if the UI is effectively decoupled from where the heavy lifting is done. It's why API and SOA services exist - to provide that decoupling so a UI designer, subject matter expert or a self taught mobile app developer can provide ways for users to get powerful things done. Based on the summary, this writer doesn't have a clue about where the real work is being done in IT. I've had to deal with situations where Access databases and spreadsheets created by shadow IT programmers hold critical enterprise data. Converting it to something that can be shared with others and pumped into the data lake is a challenge because the modeling and typing of the data was inconsistent and often wrong. There was also minimal QA built into the app or spreadsheet so a lot of data becomes suspect if not outright garbage. This author might also think that you don't need real medical doctors in order to provide quality medical care.

When someone claims the moon landing is fake or that the earth is flat, unless they connect it to an attack on some group it is not hate speech. Hate speech against NASA engineers, maybe?

Really? Name a couple of these "credentialed forensic historians" and a work or they have published. Are they skeptical about the Holocaust or just about certain assertions of fact associated with it? Also, who are these big Jewish skeptics you refer to? What are their credentials? Are they skeptical about certain assertions of fact or the idea that the Nazi's in fact began to carry out a genocide of Jews and in the process murdered millions of them?

Your wording in your first post was not clear. In the 1960's lobbyists for the Israel government did begin in earnest to try to conflate the two in order to silence their critics among American Jews. Many of my Jewish friends were quit vexed by this. Israeli lobbyists have continued to try to guilt Jewish people into supporting not just the State of Israel, but the policies of its government. It's a view that is dangerous to Jews everywhere. A lot of anti-Semitisim we see on the left these days seems to come from people conflating the two. Strangely in the US a number of anti-Semites on the political "Christian" right are vociferous supporters of Israel because they think it will deliver on the Biblical prophecy of Armageddon. They still think Jews will all go to hell and don't want them in their country clubs.

Don't conflate the Jewish people and the State of Israel. They are not one and the same. Criticizing the State of Israel or even disagreeing that a Jewish state should have been created in Palestine are not necessarily anti-Semitic. If criticizing Israel was anti-Semitic then many Israelis and members of the Jewish Diaspora would be anti-Semitic. You might have anti-Semitic motivations for criticizing or even opposing the State of Israel, but alternatively you might have legitimate ethical, policy or even religious reasons for doing so. There are many ultra orthodox Jews living in Israel who don't think Israel should exist. You might legitimately question why guilty Europeans were so eager to take land that was not theirs and give it to a people they've tried for centuries to get rid of. (Slaughtering Jews by the thousands has been a European pastime for centuries.) On the other hand you might just hate the Jews. The earliest Nazi solution to the "Jewish problem" was in fact to support the Zionists and to actively encourage the emmigration of Jews from Europe to Palestine.

Holocaust Denial is not some legitimate alternate perspective of history. It denies facts which in many cases are the documents created by the people who devised and implemented the Holocaust. There is also plenty of film footage and witness accounts by non-Jewish people. That is not History and it is not a perspective and a shared set of facts. It's a dishonest attempt at gaslighting people so they are less sympathetic to Jewish concerns. The algorithms are tuned to provoke page views and enhance ad revenue. Zuckerberg, et al is either willfully blind or just too greedy and dishonest to care. I think it's the latter.

Part of the announcement is that both Microsoft and Adobe have their flagship products running on ARM. That includes the Office suite.

Zoom is a U.S. company so the U.S. government has jurisdiction over them. China does not. The U.S. government is also a Zoom consumer. They want to know what influence or control China has over Zoom and why. Private companies and other consumers may also be interested in the answers to these questions so it is something of a consumer protection - which the U.S. government may want to pursue and is entitled to pursue. (Zoom also for some reason has routed conference traffic through China on purpose. Why?)