291–300 of 452 posts
"Several pre-installed system apps make regular network connections that share device identifiers and details ... The Clock app connects to Google Analytics ssl. google-analytics.com/batch."
Really, the clock app calls analytics on a regular basis. That is just ridiculous.
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Yes Steam are still perfectly comfortable staying at 30% as I said it's clearly a market driven level.
Steam keys sold off steam do not give valve a cut.
They didn’t have to acquire the user themselves and now they have more eyeballs on their service. How many of these users buy a few things later and make waiving the fee worth it?
Steams not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
" Modern cars regularly send basic data about vehicle components, their safety status and service schedules to car manufacturers, and mobile phones work in very similar ways." -Google This is a beautiful quote because it is an example of one industry's bad behavior leading to another industry's bad behavior, upon which the first industry then users the second's similarity to justify themselves. Cars only started doin…
Cities frequently do this when they want to raise fees or taxes, 'Hey look at City B and City C, our fees are still lower even with this unneeded and uncalled for increase'
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Steam keys sold off steam do not give valve a cut.
I wonder what a user is worth to Steam? They didn’t have to acquire the user themselves and now they have more eyeballs on their service. How many of these users buy a few things later and make waiving the fee worth it? Steams not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
As users, we are assured that telemetry is only for the purpose of "improving products and services", "improving user experience", etc. If one company is collecting 20x as much as another, all else being equal, one would expect that this would be reflected in the quality of the product/service/experience. Of course, Google's service is to advertisers, first and foremost. Users generally do not pay for what they recei…
YMMV, but as much as I like Apple Maps and use it as much as I can, for the more complex/unknown routes I definitely rely more on Google Maps to get it right. I don't know if telemetry is the cause for the better service, but it is noticeably better for me. Separately, I'm also a google customer as I run an Ad campaign for a small business (skilled labor), and the dollars spent on search ads are extremely efficient w…
There is no Apple Maps web page. With Google I can do a complex route plan on my PC and my phone will have the "recent searches" in it ready to go when I get in the car.
Apple Maps doesn't show how packed the trains are. Google Maps shows me how full individual train carriages are!
Apple Maps can't provide cycling directions in my area (a world city!), Google can.
Apple Maps routinely provides driving time estimates that are 2x longer or 2x shorter than the actual time. The Google maps estimation error is more like 5-10% instead of 100%!
Google Maps has a trustworthy "star" review score for local restaurants. Anything that's mid-4s or higher with over a hundred reviews is definitely worth going to. For a popular local cafe Apple maps shows the worthless Tripadvisor score with just 16 votes. Google shows its own data with 357 votes.
Etc...
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OT, but since you mentioned it, does anyone happen to know what the most recent model years without any kind of cellular radio might be? In a similar vein, can the radios be physically removed from any newer cars without the car complaining about it?
Depends on the package you opt for, but I'd guess up to 2011 for cars without onstar
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as i understand it, by not communicating directly, companies avoid the most damning potential evidence that they are colluding. it's theoretically possible to still determine that their behavior is collusive, but quite difficult in practice. i personally think anti-trust/anti-monopoly regulations should be tightened by an order of magnitude or so. any market that exhibits such extended, obviously inflated profit marg…
> in short, make markets fair (not just 'free'). I'm all for it. What's your concrete proposal to change in the current law for digital store distribution "tax"?
for instance, make platforms like apple allow other app stores equal footing on their platform. then they would have to compete on price and features to get the best apps to be on their app store rather than resting on their laurels of being the only viable option. apple already has lots of advantages, so they don't need monopoly power on top of that to be able to compete effectively.
I've switch off every possible toggle on Apple TVs, iPhones MacBooks and all the devices still ping back to Apple HQ with time.apple.com, time-osx.g.aaplimg.com, metrics.icloud.com..... so I take this with a grain of salt. I've logged all DNS - using nextdns - and the number of requests back to HQ is more that it should be.
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> I can't help but feel like having it this way is breaking one of the huge reasons that made computers so absurdly exciting and enticing in the past. We live in a bubble, so it was exciting for us . The iPhone was exciting for everyone, for the whole world , and in no small part because normal people finally felt confident enough to try all that sweet sweet software that became available thanks to people like you wh…
People were still doing iPhone stuff before the iPhone. You had blackberry and palm offering email, internet, games, and mms to the masses and the devices were quite popular for those who could afford them. The iPhone only became a device for the masses, truly, when carriers started subsidizing the older models for zero down, around the iPhone 4g era. This has continued today where Verizon currently offers the iPhone…
Lots of revisionist history here.
Until the iPhone 3G, vast majority of people I knew here in Sydney had Nokias. Getting data was also expensive.
Apple changed all of that here. Affordable plans with data to make a smart phones useful. Then they were everywhere. So it wasn’t a “rich persons” phone here in Australia. Maybe a middle class phone. They also got software updates for years, letting you keep the device longer. Once Android got their act together, I remember all the Android users churning through phones at least once a year because they were so bad.
The iPhone was first launched in Jan 2007. The App Store launched July 2008. So it wasn’t “years” before third party apps either. Most of the useful ones were for public transport, messaging, GPS, maybe a few games.
Don’t let their questionable acts now, cloud your memory of what they did. Apple nailed it with the iPhone. They were the under dog back then and took down all the big players to bring smart phones and digital software purchases to the masses.
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They said a system, not their system. Car computers report telemetry to mechanics, and given that digitization allows for economies of scale, this isn't that different.
> Car computers report telemetry to mechanics Yes -- and they shouldn't.
You can feel uncomfortable that this is happening, which is an entirely okay opinion to have, but when it comes to forcing that opinions on others, please don't.
Imagine if we were debating the qualities of buttons because the Amish were uncomfortable using them.