These days, the network effects of friend lists are a pretty big obstacle for switching consoles.. that's why Microsoft has been pushing for cross-play for years. Call of Duty gives them the leverage to force Sony to enable cross play (especially important now that Sony owns Bungie) and creates a bridge where users can switch to the Xbox and still play one of the most popular online games with their friends on the PlayStation.

Apple has been trying to get Mac users to use the App Store for years, but users and developers just won't get or stay onboard. (Prominent developers have even tried using it and left.) They've tried with MacCatalyst (an SDK for writing iPad apps to run on the Mac) and developers ignored it. They tried letting iOS apps run on macOS and users and developers ignored it. They've tried adding scare warnings on every app you install ("This app was downloaded from the internet.") and users just became blind to the question.

macOS apps on the iPad will be their excuse to create a macOS environment that is fully locked down and the only source will be apps from the App Store. Then developers will have to make a choice about ignoring it as a platform or start supporting the App Store. My guess is developers will ignore it and Apple will end up with a decently selling iPad that has a weird feature.

It's funny because I had been wondering what Figma could add to make their product worse, and the truth beats any idea from my imagination.

Where are they going to get the money to build their own? I hear that lately, they are running short on cash and have additional domestic expenses.

I wonder if maybe they can't even afford to continue with the ISS and this announcement is about giving them cover to cancel future ISS missions because "why invest in a dead end when something great is on the way." Then then they can hide their weakness (the inability to maintain half a space-station) behind a facade of Russian greatness. ("We don't need any partners and are building something better... you'll see!") Most of what Russia seems to be doing now is about keeping the ball in the air until the war is won, as opposed to any kind of actual long-term strategy.

Not the entire reason, but a large part of the point of "linear TV" is to create events with predictable audience sizes at predictable times so they can maximize ad revenue against a show's production costs.

I don't know if Netflix plans to keep racking up debt to produce shows, but considering they decided not to release one of their more expensive shows all at once (Stranger Things) and are investigating adding advertising to their streams, it really looks like they're moving towards more linear TV. Surely they wouldn't be bringing out the "old TV is dying" line to distract from their own recent subscriber losses though..

Someone used my info (stolen elsewhere) to create an account at Experian, and now I'm locked out of ever contacting them because I don't have access to the email address that was used. That was followed by a bunch of fraudulent accounts being opened which I tried to stop, but I couldn't place a credit freeze at Experian because I was locked out.. so all I could do was alert the other credit reporting bureaus. That means Experian is the only credit reporting agency that has a bunch of trash information about me, and the only fraudulent accounts opened were at places that trusted Experian.

I'd really love it if someone crunched the numbers to see what the rates of fraud were for credit lenders when "trusting" different credit bureaus. I'd be pretty surprised if fraud wasn't much higher when businesses use Experian.

Apple hating Slashdot commenters appear to be experts at building and managing global content delivery networks.

I'm sure you've just never looked at the numbers, but Apple collects more money in the yearly $100 developers fees than Netflix spends on all technology in a year . So you can choose to believe either Apple is really terrible at content delivery, or they are screwing developers.

Don't forget Apple charges $99 a year for a developer account, so they have collected more than $2 billion from developers every year before a single app is sold. And they will almost certainly bury any app using the entitlement in the App Store listings, so they can charge those developers for ads to improve their app's visibility. Side-loading is really the only way to make the playing field right again..

I wonder why the headline says "Apple Lets Apps in South Korea Use Third-Party Payment Systems" as if Apple had some kind of choice here? Fun fact: Complying with the law is not optional. How Apple could act like it was above the law for so long (and similarly in the Dutch case) is beyond me. Especially since they routinely say "We comply with all local laws" to justify assisting China's surveillance state. I guess they only consider laws optional when those laws are in Democracies?

Before all of the inevitable "Apple's not a monopoly" posts.. friendly reminder that the real issue is that Apple is using technological measures to prevent you from doing things you may want to do with the phone you bought. If Apple continues to get away with it, cars will eventually be "transportation platforms" and any store that they drive you too will owe the car maker 30% for allowing you to go there. That future seems pretty sad to me.

Seems Apple recognizes that most of their customers need to create debt to use Apple products. So they want to become the bank too - vertical integration, cut out the middle man

For years Sony made more money off lending you money to buy an expensive TV than it made off selling the TV itself. So no doubt. But for a couple years now I've been pretty sure Apple's long-term plan is to make the iPhone a product you essentially rent as part of a bundle of services. I think Apple's moves into financing are like the Motorola ROKR phase of the iPod's development.. test the waters with partners, then jump when the whole package is ready.

Convincing consumers to buy a new iPhone gets harder and harder each year because the iPhone reached the "good enough" phase long ago. By making the iPhone a "rented" part of a bundle, they eliminate consumers asking "Why should I upgrade?" and flip the question to "Why should I cancel?" So instead of selling specific features they can sell the nebulous "always have the latest" just like Photoshop and Microsoft Office. The future is the physical phone as a service.

You can now pay off the $250 of Smurfberries your kid bought while playing a game on your iPhone in installments. This is a godsend.

Don't believe it. Facebook can't be trusted. They've proven this many times over.

This is a dangerous product for Facebook, because there's a lot of evidence that targeted advertising isn't actually very effective. By creating a product that allows advertisers to do a direct comparison, they're inviting the chance for someone to calculate exactly what targeting is worth. No one should trust Facebook, but least of all the advertisers. I'd wager Facebook might secretly target these 'Privacy-Safe' to make them less effective so they can continue to claim targeting provides significant value.

They should have had the bar AND the fkeys on the pro models, and the bar replacing the fkeys on the toys. Approximately nobody's going to bother to program for the bar if everyone doesn't have it.

I totally agree.. having the F-keys and the touch bar would have been the way to go. But when you start thinking about apps and how to present controls, I never even understood the underlying logic of what controls you would want on a touch bar and not put on the screen. Especially since, the user has to look down at the touch bar to see what's there, which effectively makes it take longer than putting those controls on the screen they're already looking at.

Does anybody know how to touch type the function keys? Does anyone NEED to touch type the function keys? I think not.

What?? If you're like me and you take your MacBook to coffee shops, restaurants and other places, I adjust the brightness and volume with those keys constantly. Yes, without looking. Sure, you can do it in the menu bar, but no one would ever use [cmd]-shortcuts either if the keyboard wasn't much faster. Why not get rid of [cmd]-shortcuts too? And then there are the people who need [esc]...

Maybe you liked it, but Apple clearly decided that it was hurting more than it helped. So either it was a cost cutting measure, or people like me voted with their dollars and Apple decided to listen.