Yes.

See, I don't know whether it was intelligent foresight or accidental good fortune, but the iPhone got three things exactly right in its initial release: it *didn't* have an App Store, it *did* leave the door a smidge open for people to install apps on it *without* an App Store, and it got a lot of features right that made the phone desirable irrespective of that.

Listening to music on a phone is a default thing now; in 2024 we probably use a phone to do that more than any other device...but in 2006, everyone was carrying around both a phone and an iPod. While the original iPhone has a small screen by today's standards, compared to other portable video players of the day, it was quite an improvement, so watching videos away from home was finally viable (you hadn't LIVED until you tried converting video for WinMo devices). No stylus, threaded text messaging, a web browser that was actually useful, and native support for IMAP email, even for free Yahoo accounts (then dominant because Gmail was still nascent) were all massive improvements that non-techies could appreciate. ...and, roughly eleven seconds after some techies got a hold of it, we ended up with the jailbreaking scene. That's where Labyrinth and Tap Tap Revolution (Revenge) and dozens of others got their start, and it was that underground scene that drew in developers. By time the App Store came into existence, many of those developers just shifted over their app from Installer.App or Cydia to the App Store.

Essentially, the iPhone's success came from the fact that it had plenty of desirable functionality without third party apps, and it enabled an underground scene of developers to get the app ecosystem started by time it was official. The Vision Pro headset had neither of these things going for it...if it's anything beyond the ability to function as a super expensive monitor for a Macbook, I couldn't tell you what it was. Consequently, the Vision Pro *needs* an app ecosystem to justify its existence in the way the iPhone did not...and it isn't there.

Why are you so fixated on 2020?

When the orange goon and his cohorts stop whining about a "stolen" election in 2020, then everyone else will. Until then, they're the ones who keep bringing it up.

Democrats have been screeching about stolen elections since 2000. ?

No, they haven't. No Democrat has been "screeching" about "stolen" elections. None. No one is out there every day claiming that in any shape or form. In fact, the ONLY time the issue was raised of irregularities, Republicans immediately went to court to prevent any vote recount by stating there were no evidence of fraud. And yet, four years later, that is all Republicans talk about. All the "fraud" they claim existed yet have shown absolutely zero evidence for it. In fact, when asked point blank by judges if their multitude of lawsuits were about voter fraud, every single time the answer was no.

When you're done with your lying, let us know.

Even at $400 is more expensive than a lot of Android Phones. And that $400 will only get you 64 GB of storage and a 4.7" screen with big bezels and a single camera lens.

A lot better deals with stuff like the Samsung A54 for instance. Maybe the iPhone SE has more horsepower, but the A54 has more than what most people need.

Also, even "normies" like to be free to do what they want with their phone. Just better customization and not being quite as locked in.

Market share is based on the number of active phones in circulation which is effectively the number of activations over several years. The new activations data above is a snapshot of the market share over a just one year. Even if Apple sold zero iPhones last year it would still maintain a reasonable market share because most people do not replace their phone every year.

I read so many contradicting numbers. Stuff like this where Apple apparently has close to 60% of market share in the US, but then reading the article in this post says new activiations are around 33%.

Why such a big discrepancy?

The Neanderthal misanthropes want more legal immigration,

Exactly, just like the con artist was hiring all those legal immigrants to work on his failing properties. The same guy who doesn't hire Americans but always finds a way to hire an immigrant.

No, but instead go with the stats, that well over 95% of the kids that are "confused", grow out of it..?

Well sure. And when 95% of all statistics are made up, who can argue with it?

In the days of yore, we had first level operators who got an initial description of what the caller was talking about and routed calls. A handful of companies still do that; Barracuda is my go-to example, and their phone support is one of the best parts of their service.

Then, we got menus - sales, press 1, support, press 2, billing, press 3, etc. Not great, but it helped weed out the support calls from the billing questions.

Then, we got voice prompts, where we *said* 'sales', 'support', or 'billing'...and that's when things got messy. For starters, the always-listening system mistook traffic for a person speaking, giving "I'm sorry, I didn't get that" vibes, and made navigating the menu take twice as long.

And then, it continued to get worse, with the "in a few words, tell me what you're calling about". It got even worse, because it's like getting to a bash prompt for the first time, with no 'help' or '?' option...so now we had to distill the description of a problem into a few words, hoping one of them is a keyword...God help you if the issue is "I can't get the app to show me my current balance" - obviously a support issue, but "current balance" is more likely to be a keyword to send to the billing department. Oh, and systems vary as to whether they'll listen the whole time, or if they'll ignore you until they've given their whole spiel. Frequently, with long annoucements that aren't relevant to the situation at hand.

Also, there's a special place in hell for whoever decided to inject advertising into hold music.

As a counterbalance, I *will* give some credit to my cable company, who really went out of their way to make the automated functions actually-helpful. It detects the account based on the incoming phone number, checks for outages in the area, and can reboot the modem and do a connectivity test right from the IVR. Does it take six minutes to get into the queue? Yes. Is that annoying? Yes. Can I appreciate that "reboot the modem and router and do a connectivity test" solves the majority of technical issues for the majority of people, and that streamlining the process to do that is helpful for both the ISP and the customer? Yes, I can.

So, let's move the football down the field and discuss the AI element...In certain areas, it probably *could* be helpful. Tier 1 tech support is probably a great application for it. At our office, we take turns calling Intuit for support, because they seem to be trained in being infuriating, and even our lowest tier techs don't deserve that kind of torture. Would I rather talk to an AI when calling Intuit for support? Yes.

However, I could see areas where this would be bad. Insurance carriers would be my perfect example of this - there's a *need* for both human judgment and accountability when dealing with insurance claims. Having each statement from the phone system conclude with a paragraph-long ChatGPT disclaimer would be insufferable, and they'd all amount to "I'm just a chatbot, you need to verify this information with a CSR..." "then let me verify this information with a CSR" "Before you verify this information with a CSR......", it'd easily devolve into being unproductive...but if 'fool the AI' is the name of the game, some enterprising troublemakers will get the phone system to agree to do some massive payout, which will then make it even more impossible for end users to get their claims sorted properly.

Ultimately, there are indeed places where an AI system can be helpful in a phone system. If the goal is for it to be helpful, I do think it can be. However, if the phone system is intended to be a barrier to customer service, rather than an enabler of it, AI will look great this quarter, and terrible every quarter.

Of course, things will get *really* interesting when an enterprising developer with a grudge and a GPU cluster gets so pissed that he writes his own AI who can call customer service with the express intent of doing what he wants...six hours over the phone and ultimately finding an exploit? Sounds like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object...

This is exactly what Tesla did for years. In addition to getting billions of dollars in socialist payments from the taxpayer, the company used regulatory credits to keep itself going. It didn't make money on its poorly designed vehicles.

Ford does not have the luxury of using those same credits so its numbers are more reflective of the cost to start up an EV car company.

On the other hand, hopefully this sort of technology will reduce the number of exploited people being forced to work in slavery conducting scams in call centers in India and other places.

They'll just be moved to forced prostitution or manually breaking ships. Then again, have you seen all those videos of "manufacturers" in India where everything is done in a room with no safety precautions whatsoever?

Not all abuse is physical, and women have basically the entire government (men with guns) at their disposal to meet out abuse if a relationship turns sour, if they so choose.

Yes, "abuse" when the woman doesn't want to be with the guy any more and the guy doesn't take no for an answer. Sort of like this guy. Or this gold medal catch of a "man".

Because, as usual, the "man" always blames the woman for his faults and issues. Nothing is ever on him.

Ford made the Ford Ranger EV 1998 to 2002, then the Ford Focus Electric from 2011 to 2018 before switching to the Mach-E. They are not "new at it". They're just bad at it.

To be fair, I have a lot more hope for Ford than GM, as Farley seems to actually understand the critical importance of turning things around and the limited timeframes to do so, unlike GM, which still seems to only care about press.

Or even abuse it seems.

That's the exact opposite of how it actually works. Fertility rates tend to be highest among socioeconomically challenged groups, and lowest among high earning groups.

I've never had a problem reading Chinese or Japanese books or watching movies. Yes, translation of idioms is always problematic, particularly from languages that are not related to our own, but a good translator can usually deal with that. For me, the problem with The Three Body Problem was the loopy plot, shallow characters and the author's abrupt genre jumping. I'm reasonably familiar with the Cultural Revolution and its profound effect on Chinese society, so ironically, reading the first chapter was the best part of the book. There was an interesting story there that wasn't a science fiction story.