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My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

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Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#161

Post by ptaffs »

phanimahesh wrote: post #126
sigmoid10 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something. It actually does - in a free market. That's, like, one of the main arguments why capitalism is good for the population and not evil. But in a gate-kept oligopoly like phones, actors can abuse the system to squeeze more money out of consumers, leaving the corporations as sole beneficiaries. That's why this kind of stuff usually…

> capitalism is good for the population and not evil This is the biggest lie that we keep telling ourselves. Capitalism is destroying the only place in the universe we can survive, and with the absurdly unequal wealth distribution and centralisation it enables, has caused more collective misery than any other idea in human history, in my opinion.

I agree and piling on. Capitalism is good for those with capital, the wealthy few. Then wonder where they got the capital, and mostly it's something environmentally bad, like the extraction industry such as coal and oil.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#162

Post by cortesoft »

kccqzy wrote: post #125
irrational wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can’t be that many iOS developers that the $99 really affects their bottom line. I always assumed it was a barrier to entry to help discourage low effort apps.

But it's asinine for developers to have to pay $99 in order to test their app, such as on TestFlight. When you have an app idea, when you are far from deciding on monetization, you just want to test out the central features of the app among friends, it's wrong to require payment for that. Remember all apps have once been low effort apps: the first few weeks when you begin working on them. Polish comes later.

You aren’t paying $99 per app, you have to pay that once per year and you can develop as many apps as you want. $99 isn’t a huge amount.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#163

Post by carlosjobim »

behnamoh wrote: post #29
nancyminusone wrote: post #12

>I’m saving approximately $84-120 CAD annually. I suppose most of this is eaten up by the need to pay apple $99 per year just to run your own app on your own phone for longer than a week.

This Apple fee is one of the most absurd things they do. Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? When I buy a device I want to know that I own it, but Apple keeps pushing the narrative that "we LET you use this device in ways we see fit". So basically the customer is just borrowing a device from Apple while paying the full price. I'm a longtim…

What other serious business to business agreements can you enter into without spending at least $100? The fee is not to cover technical costs, but administration costs.

Welcome to the world of having a small business. Be happy it's only $100. Your fees for cost-of-doing business is many times higher for a hot dog stand or any other thing you can come up with.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#164

Post by cortesoft »

timewizard wrote: post #100
cortesoft wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something. A company sets prices based on what will make it the most money. A company only lowers prices if they think doing so will generate higher total profits in the long run. Apple seems to think charging $99 a year for…

> A company sets prices based on what will make it the most money. No company does this. Prices are set based upon demand. This does provide opportunities to make more money during some periods than others. If you have a monopoly then you can ignore this and just pick what makes you the most. > Apple seems to think charging $99 a year for developers will help its long term bottom line the most. It's absolutely a besp…

Demand is a factor in determining what price will generate them the most money in the long term, but it is not the only factor. Competition is another factor, like you mentioned.

They want to prevent spam and automated misbehavior because that will maximize their long term profit.

Business models can be illegal, but not your pricing.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#165

Post by cortesoft »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #95
cortesoft wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something. A company sets prices based on what will make it the most money. A company only lowers prices if they think doing so will generate higher total profits in the long run. Apple seems to think charging $99 a year for…

>How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something. It actually does - in a free market. That's, like, one of the main arguments why capitalism is good for the population and not evil. But in a gate-kept oligopoly like phones, actors can abuse the system to squeeze more money out of consumers, leaving the corporations as sole beneficiaries. That's why this kind of stuff usually…

Even in a free market, not every product has perfect competition. Luxury brands always charge a lot more than it costs to make a product, because there are other factors that go into price.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#166

Post by engcoach »

kccqzy wrote: post #158
KeplerBoy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping low effort apps out of the store helps their bottom line. It's a second order effect.

Yes but the $99 fee doesn't just allow selling apps on the App Store. It is also required for testing the app such as on TestFlight. Apple should long ago make the $99 an App Store fee, not tied to any provisioning certificates or code signing.

Without a fee, people would make new accounts and circumvent distribution restrictions.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#167

Post by lucb1e »

kccqzy wrote: post #159
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plug your charger to any Homekit-compatible "smart plug," and create a shortcut that turns the the plug on when the battery reaches 45%, and off when it reaches 55%. This will of course require a Homekit hub.

A timer is sufficient. No need to be precisely 45% or 55%.

I can't imagine that a timer wouldn't quickly drift and either drain it to zero or charge it fully

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#168

Post by kccqzy »

cortesoft wrote: post #162
kccqzy wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's asinine for developers to have to pay $99 in order to test their app, such as on TestFlight. When you have an app idea, when you are far from deciding on monetization, you just want to test out the central features of the app among friends, it's wrong to require payment for that. Remember all apps have once been low effort apps: the first few weeks when you begin working on them. Polish comes later.

You aren’t paying $99 per app, you have to pay that once per year and you can develop as many apps as you want. $99 isn’t a huge amount.

> $99 per app

Meaningless distinction. Most starting indie developers don't have more than one app anyway. It's like going to a fancy steakhouse and being offered a $99 all-you-can-eat where the only menu item is a 18oz porterhouse.

> $99 isn’t a huge amount

It isn't if this is your main job. It could be if this is merely a hobby.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#169

Post by lucb1e »

romain_batlle wrote: post #23
joshstrange wrote: post #16

I wonder if someone will make a LLM farm from older (probably not too old) iPhones using Apple's new foundation models. I know they won't hold a candle to SOTA models, they are much smaller for one, but when they announced API access that's the first thing I thought of, a sort of "folding @ home" but routing queries to a phone and spitting back the results. It's silly and probably makes no sense at all based on how w…

nop probably a very bad idea even if you had enough iPhones and you could parallelise them, it would be 10x less electricity efficient

Manufacturing newer CPUs makes sense only if the device it's meant to replace is like 25 years old:

"The emissions from production of computing devices far exceed the emissions from operating them" [...] "the European Environmental Bureau [7] makes the scale of the problem very clear. For laptops and similar computers, manufacturing, distribution and disposal account for 52% of their Global Warming Potential [...]. For mobile phones, this is 72%. The report calculates that the lifetime of these devices should be at least 25 years" https://wimvanderbauwhede.codeberg.page/articles/frugal-comp...

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#170

Post by rfoo »

latexr wrote: post #124
behnamoh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Apple fee is one of the most absurd things they do. Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? When I buy a device I want to know that I own it, but Apple keeps pushing the narrative that "we LET you use this device in ways we see fit". So basically the customer is just borrowing a device from Apple while paying the full price. I'm a longtim…

> Apple keeps pushing the narrative that "we LET you use this device in ways we see fit". No, they do not. That is how you are interpreting their actions . It’s obviously not the narrative they are pushing, that would be utterly absurd. The narrative Apple pushes over and over is that it’s your device, and that what you do with it is private and stays with it. Outright saying the device is theirs and they only let yo…

Apple pushes a narrative that their devices are secure (not private, but secure). And my less tech-savvy friends sincerely believe that it's due to it being a walled garden, with curated software only.

Apple made no attempt clarifying this.

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