... to never buy Apple products. I don't need a nanny, and my children have parents that pay attention. Why should I have my privacy invaded and surveilled just because some parents don't know how to parent.

And anyone who doesn't think this will be easily circumvented is naive or has never had an intelligent child.

Too bad about the Amazon Fresh, I used it for years as a convenient Amazon returns drop off location.
Of course never bought anything, as it was substantially overpriced with the same stock as the nearby Walmart (and the panopticon check out didn't instill confidence).

That just means Google is now operating in exactly the same manner that Microsoft used to be when they had dominance over consumer device operating systems. Google now has dominance in the mobile market with Android, and is using that to shove Chrome down people's throats. Personally, the first thing I do with any new phone is download Firefox, just like I did (and still do) with new computers. As the statistics show, though, the vast majority of people don't bother to do that so whatever is the default is what they use. The right and fair thing to do would be to stop them from abusing their monopoly power by offering a choice of browsers at time of install, and not favor their own browser in any way. That would have been the thing to force MS to do as well back when they were being sued for abuse of monopoly power after taking down Netscape with the same tactic. Unfortunately, it didn't happen then and it isn't happening now either. So, Google will continue to dominate the market unless and until some other highly disruptive technology comes along to unseat the current smartphone market and gives another player a chance to enter and eventually dominate the market in a similar fashion.

I 'quit' LinkedIn years ago, it's signal to noise ratio was getting too high. It contained far too many articles sporting click-bait titles but simply rehashing common sense information that most should already know and recruiters that would pester anyone that posted comments anywhere and seemed employable. About the only good part was the ability to easily follow fellow team members after they found new jobs.

Never missed it once ....

I mean, it's Spirit. Their value to the society is a net negative.

Healthcare alone is 18% of US GDP. This is simply a reflection of much higher cost of medical services here vs. Europe, where comparable services with, perhaps, better outcomes are closer to 10% of their GDP. So, just that alone is close to a factor of 2.

This applies to plenty of other areas. US prices of products and services are much higher for the same (or comparables) vs. Europe.

As such, GDP does not reflect the reality of quality of life or level of development of these areas.

As Buster Scruggs said - "Can't No One Compel Another Man to Engage in Recreation", or, in this case, to engage in a new business. I mean, if Apple is not interested in running their own payment network - why should they?

The answer is still - *no*

The writing was on the wall when they stopped adding new languages. As an example, 1000s of potential users have been asking for Thai - but Duolingo isn't interested (but they have Klingon). If no new languages are added - your potential user growth at some point is limited to the rate of natural growth of population, at most. Add to that AI bs, and there you go.

Since Europe seems intent on cutting off the lucrative "Apple tax" on appstore, they are probably trying to see where else they can make some $$. Pushing these ads periodically and observing the amount of pushback. Once pushback subsides - they know they can start running ads and taking in some sweet ad revenue. (And then, a "premium" subscription without ads next)

Depends on framing and whether some people perceive AI products as sufficiently dangerous or otherwise unacceptable.
If they do, there is probably a market, much like organic foods can sell at premium compared to "conventional" foods.

Offtopic - that "conventional" in English is a crafty shift of meaning btw, since "conventional" should, really, mean - produced without additional human-made processing, that's what "organic" is. A better name would have been "artificially induced" or some such, but - marketing :)

Ridiculous point. People buy what they want to spend the money on. And, for most people, it just works no matter which one they install.

And really, the only choices for purchase are 11 Basic, home, pro or enterprise. And most people are fine with Basic or Home so it's really only two.

I'm sticking with Windows on my custom machine because Apple sucks for customizing and Linux doesn't support most of the software I use and there aren't any 'real' alternatives that don't require significant effort to get working. I work with computers all day long, I don't want to evenings and weekends too. I just want to turn it on, do my stuff, and be done with it.

Which, to be fair these days, is usually my Android phone anyway. Other than for work, I hardly use my computer unless I'm writing and want to use a dedicated workstation.

So now robots will do arts and enjoy leisure sports, while people will continue handling all the hard manual labor? Some anti-utopia that is.

Must use Whatsap - not optional because "reasons". And empirical evidence suggests that (due to its obviously mandatory access to the microphone) it does listen in and processes conversations for later ad targeting. Wish Apple had an option to block microphone access except when the app is active and in foreground.

Two russian assets combined - great syngery.