The thing here is that there isn't "Apple". There is Apple-the-parent-company, and Apple UK. From the perspective of law, Apple-the-parent is a supplier to Apple UK. Apple UK will have been ordered not to disclose information, including its suppliers. Therefore nothing restricts Apple-the-parent other than its contract as a supplier to Apple UK.

Yes I'm aware that sounds odd, but I deal with these situations fairly regularly (although am not any form of lawyer, this is absolutely not legal advice etc.). Contracts between international entities are common, and Apple US would not be in breach of US law but would be in breach of contract and would place Apple UK in breach of UK law by doing so.

Am not taking the UK government's side on this - I personally think the order is nuts and yep, I'm British. I'm just trying to show why the relationship would be more complex. Legally Apple US could disclose of course. However I'll bet you it has a supplier contract with Apple UK, a legally distinct entity, that says something like "the terms of this agreement will be bound by UK law". Hence it would be in breach of contract, and that could place Apple UK at legal risk in the UK.

Did some reading off the back of your comment and yep - I now remember the fuss when that happened. Had totally forgotten it, Slashdot even did an article at the time. I'd so associated them with Nintendo that I got it mixed up.

I remember the very first big box game in the UK. It was Sabre Wulf, from Ultimate Play The Game. At the time, games were around £5.99 to £7.99 - Sabre Wulf was the first £9.99 game in the UK and they part justified it by having a bigger box.

Since everything at that point came on cassette, this was annoying as hell because you couldn't fit it into your cassette holders that you definitely, definitely had as an 8 bit gamer in the UK. No stranger to later price gouging, Ultimate became Rare and was bought by Nintendo. I still think Nintendo is lord of the overpricing, at least these days (in ye olden times there was the NeoGeo charging £300 for a game back in the early 1980s. I think PC Engine charged a fortune too. But absolutely nobody had these in the UK).

I'm British, and have been following this from the other side of the story. In the UK it's more fragmented - this year England is up, but Scotland and Wales are down and in some cases quite significantly. Wales seems to have taken a hell of a hit in reading for instance.

It's better news in maths and science but we're still behind where we were five-seven years ago except for science. Definitely a mixed bag, though all improvements are welcome of course.

My mistake, appears to have dropped slightly to 3rd.

I had a friend visit the UK a week or so ago, from the US. He rented a BYD hybrid of some kind, and he was really impressed. That's not why I'm writing this post though - the thing that caught me was that he had never even heard of BYD, the world's largest car company.

Completely different universe.

This is years old. The third-party apps tracked people, so the consent pop-up appears. The first party apps do not track people, which is why they don't ask for permission to track. Because they don't.

Years and years of this nonsense.

You don't have to turn your head to see it. It's always in the field of view.

It's how all Teslas work, and honestly it's no hassle at all. The speed is still shown directly in the driver's view (top-right of the central display in the UK, I guess top-let in left-hand drive markets). It's also far from a new idea, my 1970s Mini 1000 had this design as well.

Personally I like it and find a lot of the "more physical controls!" crowd to be vastly overstating things. Tesla are always held up as the example, but they have physical controls on the steering wheel for most things you actually use. They did take a wrong turn with this ridiculous yoke and dropping one of the indicator stalks, but they've backed out of all of that and gone back to normal. The only truly daft omission for me is the lack of button on the glovebox - that one I'll give you is truly silly.

"A kid growing up today will never be smarter than AI, but he or she will also never have understood a world where every product and service that they interact with is not really smart and really capable and really helpful,"

OK, so show us these really smart AI things. When I have to describe in 3 different ways to the AI bot that the Amazon order is wrong, and something a human would have picked up instantly....that does not sound 'really smart' to me.

For me, price is not the killer. Even if it were $50, I wouldn't. Or even free.
AI + camera toothbrush? No thanks. Far too many ways for data to go awry.

a smart toothbrush that uses a tiny camera and on-device AI

How about no? Does no work for you?

Am in the UK. Am being paid for exporting solar-generated electricity from my house.

You are conflating two separate issues. If and probably when China does surpase the US economy, that won't mean individual Chinese citizens are better off than US citizens. It will simply mean the country as a whole is outcompeting the US, mostly because of its size.

And when it comes to engineering, the PPP salaries of US and Chinese engineers isn't that different. Chinese engineers make around $100k annually in comparable purchasing power, which is only about 25% less than a US engineer and about the same as a European engineer.

Where did you get this idea? Median Chinese income is ~$5k in nominal USD, but that only equates to ~$10k after factoring in purchasing power parity (PPP). That is still about 15% of the purchasing power of a US worker.