Ah, yes, the millions of developers in the world are all evil and trying to eat your babies. No-one just wants to share fun or useful programs any more. Those open sores people especially are known for their greed and a culture of exploiting others for selfish personal gain. And there are no software companies in the world that are trying to make money in any way other than abusing their own customers, which is why no-one will benefit from any hypothetical competition in the market and any potential reduction in costs of delivering software to users.

There is certainly some Schadenfreude here, but I suspect it would be more fun for millions of Apple customers in the EU if it opened up its walled garden as the law requires so all those users could benefit.

My point is that it doesn't have to upset their customers. It can also upset the EU authorities, who are demonstrably willing and able to hand out 10-figure fines. That will definitely affect its bottom line.

For reasons I cannot fathom, Apple seems determined to pick that fight. It's a policy living somewhere between stunning hubris and utter madness.

When is it time to start shorting Apple? Its leadership seem absolutely determined to pick a fight with the entire EU over a predatory business model that the EU leadership clearly has no intention of allowing to continue. There seems little chance Apple wins that fight and even if it gets close it will surely cost astronomical amounts of money one way or another.

Chuck Norris enters the room designated for the fight. It is filled with his opponent, element number 2, competing under the name Helium honoring its Greek roots. After a few minutes of stretching and warming up, it gradually came to Norris that he was in fact an 83-year-old man breathing an inert atmosphere. He sagged to the floor. Neither Jesus nor any of Norris' fascist friends came to his aid, and he took a final oxygen-free breath. When he hit the earth, it did not, as one might have believed from many references found on the internet, get knocked out.

But why wouldn't you want to build your business around a company with a track record of shutting down entire services on a whim and innovating in the space of not offering customer support?

But what if I want to use my car when I'm not physically present?!

Oh, wait...

(Someone will be along in a moment to justify restoring the previously near-totally-solved problem of vehicle theft because they want to remotely turn on a seat warmer on a cold morning or something.)

No wireless. Less space than a QUEST. Lame.

Leaving your grad students down that long is cruel but not unusual.

What law exactly is that?

On evidence already heard by the official inquiry it seems all but certain that several senior people at both the Post Office and Fujitsu knew something was badly wrong and continued anyway, which would likely make them guilty of perverting the course of justice at a minimum. The questions that now need answers include exactly which people were involved in both the original inappropriate actions and the subsequent cover-up and the degree of culpability and harm in each case.

Don't worry. The wise Texas rulers will soon outlaw moving jobs out of state. And don't bother seeking a court injunction.

Look, I know each user is making us -$67.51 on average, but look at the size of our user base, we'll make it up in volume!

JK We are screwed blued and tattooed.

https://news.mit.edu/2018/comp...

Same here, probably. We dropped Windows as our default choice after 7, and now run most day to day stuff on some flavour of Linux. A lot of the businessy applications that used to have a lock-in effect for Windows have gone online now anyway, so it doesn't really matter what OS you use as long as it can run at least one safe, modern browser. We still get situations where having a "genuine" Office document that will definitely be compatible with someone else's system matters, but only occasionally. I can't remember the last time someone sent us graphics in an Adobe format instead of one of the online tools or some standard file type they'd exported to. Permanent documents for distribution are 99% PDFs. The modern, online-first world not always be progress in the right direction, but it's certainly done a lot to break the MS stranglehold over both personal and business computing.