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Apple’s Deleting iCloud Emails That Contain The Phrase 'Barely Legal Teens'

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161–170 of 395 posts

Re: Apple’s Deleting iCloud Emails That Contain The Phrase 'Barely Legal Teens'

#161
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has been doing this for decades. Ever try to collaborate on a web project using MSN Messenger? Every message you sent that contained 'index.php' was mysteriously dropped. It IS Orwellian, but you should not be surprised. The big communication services all seem to have their own little moral or technical hacks they use to keep your discussion limited and away from certain topics / words.

It is even worse than that -- it also seems to automatically insert graphical smilies whenever it sees what it thinks is a text smiley. Makes it very hard to cut-n-paste a code fragment. Of course you can turn this off, but only on the receiving side -- if you are sending someone a command or piece of code (that contains parentheses and colons), you have know idea if their end will convert to the graphic smilies, and…

That is not "even worse", that is relatively insignificant. An IM client converting text to smilies by default is standard and easily disabled, or avoided by a different using client.

On the other hand, the issue above represents a horrible failing on the part of MSN as a network/protocol. Silently dropping messages without giving error to either party is insanely stupid behaviour, and MSN's done it frequently for as long as I can remember.

Re: Apple’s Deleting iCloud Emails That Contain The Phrase 'Barely Legal Teens'

#162
This may sound weird to say, but I'm starting to think that most of Apple's problems come from the fact that it is a hardware company rather than a software company. In a very real way, it seems that they don't get software. I think it comes from pervasive product focus.

They are great with products. Less so with the area around the product. Can't have something as nebulous as a cloud without trying to control the product experience.

Re: Apple’s Deleting iCloud Emails That Contain The Phrase 'Barely Legal Teens'

#163
post #67
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"True Apple fashion" has only recently been about resisting power users. Before about five years ago, they were all about enabling power users while still being friendly to regular people. This was much more compelling than their current direction. Remember, this is the company that built their OS on top of UNIX and shipped a terminal app with it standard . It all changed around when the iPhone came out, though.

While we're keeping history in context, let's also not forget this is also the company that was borderline irrelevant prior to their current direction.

And I would argue that the very OS he just described (combined with the switch to Intel) is what set them on the path towards relevancy.

Re: Apple’s Deleting iCloud Emails That Contain The Phrase 'Barely Legal Teens'

#164
post #61
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iCloud is first and foremost just a bit of service glue to make the native email/calendar/etc apps 'work' without sending people to Google or assuming they have a work Exchange account. In that capacity, it's as good as it needs to be. [1] Similarly the file sharing is just to set a third-party baseline so that file/save sync'ing between Apps on the mobile devices 'works' without sending people off to Dropbox. And in…

My girlfriend's iPhone has been complaining about iCloud storage being full with some cryptic lockscreen message and she has no idea what it's complaining about or how to fix it. The "just works" narrative is a lie.

"Just works" is a great concept when you don't have any complexity to not work.

Re: Apple’s Deleting iCloud Emails That Contain The Phrase 'Barely Legal Teens'

#165
post #61
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iCloud is first and foremost just a bit of service glue to make the native email/calendar/etc apps 'work' without sending people to Google or assuming they have a work Exchange account. In that capacity, it's as good as it needs to be. [1] Similarly the file sharing is just to set a third-party baseline so that file/save sync'ing between Apps on the mobile devices 'works' without sending people off to Dropbox. And in…

My girlfriend's iPhone has been complaining about iCloud storage being full with some cryptic lockscreen message and she has no idea what it's complaining about or how to fix it. The "just works" narrative is a lie.

Tell her to turn off the total phone backup and do it to a laptop. Settings>iCloud>Storage&Backup>iCloud Backup set it to off. She will still have her photo stream if she leaves that on.

Re: Apple’s Deleting iCloud Emails That Contain The Phrase 'Barely Legal Teens'

#166
post #105
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're keeping history in context, let's also not forget this is also the company that was borderline irrelevant prior to their current direction.

I got a 17" Macbook Pro in 2009 (when they were still riding the wave of the iPhone) because it was a solid piece of hardware and gave me a sweet spot of down-the-road-choice (I exchanged the cd bay with another hdd, added Ram, installed Linux). I was looking forward to buying further Macbooks in the future. All that was shattered with their new Macbook lineup (which are pretty much just beefier MB Airs). They flat o…

My boss and I both had Early 2008 MBP 15". He spilled a large cup of coffee into the keyboard. He turned the machine upside down and it was pouring out.

I sprung into action and opened that machine up and started dousing all of the parts with distilled water then drying them. I didn't need any special tools or even a service manual.

That generation MBP had the most beautiful design inside and out that I have ever seen. It was the pinnacle of geekdom beauty and it only lasted a year or two.

Re: Apple’s Deleting iCloud Emails That Contain The Phrase 'Barely Legal Teens'

#167
post #105
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're keeping history in context, let's also not forget this is also the company that was borderline irrelevant prior to their current direction.

I got a 17" Macbook Pro in 2009 (when they were still riding the wave of the iPhone) because it was a solid piece of hardware and gave me a sweet spot of down-the-road-choice (I exchanged the cd bay with another hdd, added Ram, installed Linux). I was looking forward to buying further Macbooks in the future. All that was shattered with their new Macbook lineup (which are pretty much just beefier MB Airs). They flat o…

You can still get 13" and 15" "traditional" (non Retina display) machines which are part of the "new" lineup. My early 2011 15" with matte display, SSD, and 16GB RAM seems to be a good compromise of still being under my control, yet gaining most of the performance benefits of the 15" rMBP.

Re: Apple’s Deleting iCloud Emails That Contain The Phrase 'Barely Legal Teens'

#168

Why do they mention "child pornography"? Maybe I'm wrong but isn't "barely legal" meant to mean 18 year old adults and not "nearly legal"? Or is it just a common code phrase child pornographers use I wasn't aware of?

That's a good point. Barely legal is still legal, and why is Apple even blocking emails that contain those words? It might have to do with spam filtering. Trying sending an email that talks about Cialis.

I thought that too, but the article mentions that the messages couldn't be found in the accounts' Spam folders.

Re: Apple’s Deleting iCloud Emails That Contain The Phrase 'Barely Legal Teens'

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac OS, prior to Mac OS X.

That was when Mac users used to mock Windows for being a GUI perched on top of a character-based operating system. They generally dropped that line when Mac OS X became a GUI perched on top of a character-based operating system. Oddly, Mac users have also stopped mocking Windows users for having Intel processors, for not using SCSI and whatever else made Macs special before they turned into a variant of Windows PCs..…

Pah. I'm old enough to remember DOS users mocking mac users for using GUIs and mice.

Re: Apple’s Deleting iCloud Emails That Contain The Phrase 'Barely Legal Teens'

#170
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their media stores take hours, sometimes a day, to propagate metadata changes. Any time an App Store app gets released or updated, there's a fun game where you watch it slowly propagate to visibility among your friends and acquaintances. Their store for physical goods goes down every time they make a significant change to the product offerings. Both are highly successful , but all this tells us is that a web service…

>Their store for physical goods goes down every time they make a significant change to the product offerings. Many years ago it used to go down for technical reasons. Now it is purely PR/Marketing. They get massive traffic spikes whenever it goes up and it instantly results in thousands of web pages going up with free PR. Why would you give that up ?

According to Gruber a few months ago, it is legit a technical issue: http://twitter.com/gruber/status/264135810566209537
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