That's 10 times more than I'm willing to spend on a phone.

That's fair.

But do remember, there are a LOT of people out there with a LOT of disposable income.....

I don't trade phones often I currently have a 12 Max Pro....and it's looking a bit long in the tooth. Not holding a charge long enough, and the lightening connector isn't dependable for charging, so I've been using nothing but magnetic charging past year or so.

While I'm quite interested in hearing about and seeing the "fold" Apple phone.....from my early understanding, it will NOT have the camera specs they 18 Pro Max (or whatever they call it) phone will have.

I'm MUCH more interested in camera than folding...

What really scared them was other countries not tolerating that bullshit and in most other countries if you lose a lawsuit like this the other party can come after you for damages. They don't care about negative PR, but a case where they are forced to pay out for having their spurious claims disproved scares the living shit out of them because it sets a precedent.

Yeah... Android manufacturers need to pull their finger out and give Apple some better ideas.

Multiple manufacturers have tried the folding phone several times with little to no success. I can't see Apple succeeding (they'll pretend they are though).

What I can see is Apple presenting their most rigid phone ever as "the iFold 1billion and 2 PRO" with someone standing on stage showing us that it flexes slightly if measured with laboratory equipment... and when people break it in real life telling us "you're folding it wrong".

Special Operator type training is far too advanced for a corporate retreat, what they really need is basic. Learning how to march as a unit, work as a unit, understand and follow orders, et al. Shit that a soldier is expected to have down pat long before they ever get advanced training. Training that might actually be useful in helping people work together or improving discipline... However the ego of your average corporate dick will never allow that, they think they're special so they want the special training.

But in reality they aren't getting anything special, just paying to be shouted at by someone who claims they were a SEAL, SAS, et al. but in all likelihood never were.

Not really an unknown consequence.

Popular brands know never, ever release your cheap products under your brand. Airlines are famous for this, when QANTAS wanted to release cheap, no frills flights under a LCC model, they didn't brand it as QANTAS CHEAP because that would cheapen the brand QANTAS, they created a new airline called JetStar and even though they are wholly owned subsidiaries. It's not unusual for a budget airline to operate under the parent airlines AOC (Air Operator Certificate... the bit of paper that says you're allowed to carry passengers), LEVEL (Spanish low cost carrier) operated under another AOC until it got it's own (Iberia's I think). The point is, they didn't want to associate the parent brands just in case they got successful.

But this isn't exactly off brand for Apple, they're charging $700 for a $300 laptop and $300 is being generous as we know it's really a $200 phone.

And it tasted like chicken.

I know I do.

Chips are tested after manufacture. A large number of them have tiny flaws in one or more areas, but work perfectly otherwise. The ones that are flawless go in the highest-end models, the others have the flawed area disabled and go in the lower-end models. Some are just rejected outright.

Well, my Pentium 90 has both 3 1/2 and 5 1/4 inch drives, beat that!

At Walmart, extremely low quality everything is available year-round.

It's been ages since I was last in a Walmart.....when I looked at the extreme poor quality of meat and even most veggies/fruit I could not believe how bad it was, and not significantly cheaper than one of the "real" grocery stores around the area.

I just can't believe people regularly shop at Walmart....at least for food....???

Sort of shitty to drag Mandela's name into this.

(I mean, he was a **convicted felon** who also wandered around free for years before he died, right?)

Trying to identify the event from the enormous amount of background data is difficult, like trucks driving by. The problem here is collecting the data. It's one thing to isolate your detector in a purpose built lab. Collecting this kind of data in the field is a much bigger problem.

Why do they disable the GPU core....?

Sure, maybe nice to live in... how about a job so you can afford to live there? Pretty sure Mayberry (that sort of town) doesn't have many $100k+ jobs around.

See that's your problem....there aren't 2 choices....NYC or Mayberry.

That's been dead for a 100 years.

I've never lived as an adult in a major metropolitan area, but in what I term "normal city"....mostly in the SE of the US.

I've worked in IT for most all of it...various things, lead DBA, some sys admin Linux....etc.

I've made well into the 6 figures area and lived in areas where there was plenty to do, cost of living was more than reasonable....and great folks to live with a next door to....

Nothing remotely resembling "Mayberry" nor anything remotely rural....but nothing urban either.

And around here, making $133K+ can buy you a nice house and a pretty sweet life.