dann0

There are a couple of other products in the market doing very similar things. Have you done any work on positioning or differentiation? There is space for different options for sure.

I'd love to see if you can turn this into an affordable virtual offside system for smaller leagues.

PBS covered medications are extremely cheap compared to other countries. I had to stay longer in the US than planned a few years ago, and just about needed a second mortgage to get my fairly standard meds. Unaffordable without insurance.

If you don’t like your pharmacist, shop elsewhere. There are plenty of excellent ones with a strong desire to help. They probably don’t work at Chemist Warehouse though.

I agree with your assessment. But I’d move having no price to the top of the list.

If you don’t know your price strategy, a/b test it. If it’s free, tell me.

I also intensely dislike the trend of AI apps not clearly showing which AI platform/model/whatever especially with my personal information. I need to know that as part of my vetting process.

The site was down for me. https://web.archive.org/web/20230814142753/https://defacto2....

Boring and inaccurate.

I really hope they continue with the on-device approach. It will likely be less cutting edge, but keeping personal data secure, private and ideally encrypted on-device is my very strong preference.

That's not a smart take. While games are probably going to be important for Apple's XR products, it's not an area of strength for them. Apple does not talk about things they don't think they are the best at (they might and are often wrong!)

It would not be a good idea for Apple to lean into games with no credibility. They need to build that before they go hard with games.

Also, launch context is important. This was announced at a developer conference. There is no content or apps for it. They want to excite developers into creating some useful and engaging apps for their new platform. At this point, consumer interest is secondary.

Linking too closely to games excludes the massive, largely unaddressed non-game market. Linking to non-game content does not prevent a successful launch as a game platform later.

I deleted my account and my contributions. I'm very curious to see the change in user numbers from this as well.

If the number isn't very large, I'll concede that I either over-reacted or the total number of bots is way larger than I imagined. If the number of bots is large, this affects their valuation.

If the number is large, it shows that the primary asset, the user base, has reduced and this also affects their valuation.

I can't see how they can come out of this looking as valuable as before.

I wouldn't like to be an investor.

I don't think this is for 'us' yet - which is why its labelled Pro.

I think this is definitely going to be like the Watch - they can see the segment could do with a high quality platform, but they don't know what the killer app will be.

This is about getting it into the hands of the developers and people with strong ideas on how it can be used.

Also, Apple is rumoured to have been spending lots of energy and money on relationships with high quality game developers lately. I think this shows how seriously they are taking gaming, and area they are really not done well at.

Hopefully, they can make this an Apple Watch hardware-wise, and Apple TV content-wise.

I excited to see what the clever 3rd parties come up with!

That's an interesting point, but I think having a Founder's or Entrepreneurial mindset is the key to success here and not the founder's professional discipline. It's about the combination of ideas, execution, and money. No single profession owns that.

Lots of successful businesses have been founded and run by founders with no formal engineering training. They all need some level of business knowledge, but that can to some degree be learnt on the job.

Hard disagree. Marketers conceive of tractors.

They are the ones by talking to the customers and knowing what they need. They are the ones that know that one engineer has been working on a high power engine, and other on rugged, high traction trailers.

Purely engineering firms fail in the long run as they drift away from what buyers want and chase interesting things because they think they know better.

I'm a marketer. I hold a Master's and a couple of Graduate Diplomas. I have a professional designation that requires constant CPD. I spend a significant amount of my time undertaking professional development. I work longer hours and can make a good case that my work has more impact than engineers, and I get paid significantly less than engineers with similar tenure.

I can't see any reasonable argument that engineers are intrinsically worth more, (and I say that as a person that dropped out of Engineering to pursue other opportunities). There might be fewer (good ones) than what the market needs, and this obviously pushes salaries up.

You're discounting the people that identified the opportunity, scoped out and defined the project, and then briefed you about what was needed.

Sales, Marketing, and GTM are absolutely generating 100x - 1000x their salary if they take sole ownership of a project like you are doing.

SWEs are good are solving problems, but other people determine which problems to pay attention to, and how much investment to make in them.

I heard an anecdote that Alice Springs was full before QANTAS made a decision.

Singapore Airlines stored several A380s at Alice Springs: https://simpleflying.com/singapore-airlines-alice-springs-a3...

You do exactly what you are planning to charge people for.

I think you’re missing the point. The right to roam is about the public having access to public land. Public land is paid for and supported by taxpayers, and is therefore theirs to enjoy.

Surrounding public land by privately held land, with no rights for the public to freely access it is just not right. It essentially becomes the domain of the land owner that controls access, which then becomes a form of market intervention by the government.

This is often a direct subsidisation of a private enterprise and should be opposed by the left because it denies equality and freedom of movement to the people that own the land. It should be opposed by the right as government intervention and interference. It only benefits the individual landowner.

Of course, this issue is magnified by the colonial concept of land ownership and ignores any preceding title or use of the land. This also prevents traditional owners from accessing sites of significance.

This is not a Nordic idea. Ideas similar the right to roam built many of the economies of new world countries. Cowboys and cattle drives in the US, Drovers in Australia relied on the free movement of men and stock over public and private land.

Finally, the land belongs to the people. Laws exist in many jurisdictions for governments to reclaim any land for any reason. Private ownership should be considered long term, but temporary. Denying access to something that the people own is undemocratic, unfair, and unnecessary. Access and maintenance shouldn’t be reduced to the cost of stewardship.

I don't use one anymore, but I remain extremely fond of my now defunct Acorn RiscPC from 1994! I have similar feelings about the software and how powerful and simple it felt then!

I find it amusing that Intel MacBooks were slammed for being overpriced compared to Windows and Linux boxes, but now Mn Macs are being smashed for not running Windows or Linux.

No one is forcing you to buy a Mac. Just buy the machine that best suits you and enjoy all the money you’ll save.

Apple, Acorn Computers and VLSI were founding partners of ARM, if I remember correctly.

My StrongArm powered RiscPC was amazing for the time. It was strange that the contemporaneous Newton was powered by the same (and in some ways better) processor.

The connection between ARM processors being used in desktop and mobile devices is in its early DNA.

I have an Intel Mac with a small internal SSD.

Pointing the user directories to an external drive is trivial while maintaining the advantages of booting from an internal device.

You’re right.

It’s so frustrating to see this kind of thoughtless Apple criticism based on brand only when they so many things that are actually bad.

AirTags are better in nearly every way to the competition. They have considered design factors, like privacy, that no one else has. Yet, they are the bad guys that should never have released this product.

Apple should be releasing products like this. They offer significant improvements over their competitors because they consider more than pure profit seeking. AirTags without privacy protection is the same as everything else available, is cheaper to make and easier to design.

I like Apple pushing the bar here. Because their products are perfect, and balance different trade offs, they encourage other manufacturers to fill those gaps. This is a win that wasn’t happening when Tile was the dominant player.

Obviously, I can’t speak for this person or their mother, but there is a desire to find a miracle cure, or even a way to provide a feeling of control in an otherwise hopeless situation.

I think there are ways to do this that aren’t exploitative like homeopathy is.

It’s evil to prey on the sick and the dying for profit. Homeopathy should be illegal.

It is worse than a scam.

Homeopathic practitioners sell false hope. They do their own tests, their own diagnoses, sell their own preparations, and then review their client’s progress. There is no check, no balance. But “big pharma gives medical doctors kick backs” and that’s bad!!

They don’t see a lack of progress as them not being effective, but as an opportunity to sell more. If you aren’t progressing, then it’s you, the client, that is not doing something right.

But they are stuck in a scam too. They’ve paid for expensive training and materials. Some buy expensive equipment. Some of that equipment is legitimate, but they aren’t trained how to use it properly. Given that they have been convinced to invest so much, they in turn need to get an income from clients. They are victims too, at least in the short term.

But long term homeopaths and their ilk prey on our fears and hopelessness purely for profit.

I do believe that many start out believing, and that it is the recruiters and trainers that are even worse, but they can’t honestly keep practicing without realising it’s wrong. That would require them to admit that they have been scammed, have lost a sizeable investment and ripped off a number of people that they probably care about.

It’s scams all the way down.

If it worked, there would be no poor homeopaths. None would be struggling paying back loans for training and equipment. They’d be working for hospitals and command wages like medical doctors.

Indeed I do. I have deep knowledge of the process in two markets. I also have a very good knowledge of the homeopathic industry.

There have been thousands of homeopathy clinical trials. None has ever proven any effectiveness beyond placebo. So, I asked not for pharmaceutical industry level studies, but for academic level - that’s a much lower bar.

Homeopathy will never met the requirements of pharmaceutical testing, which, for other readers, is why they are sold as as supplements. They pose minimal risk as their are no active ingredients. That does not mean that they do anything. It means they do nothing or nothing harmful.

The reason that you’re resorting to ad hominem attack and twisting my statements is that you can’t demonstrate any effectiveness. You have faith in the idea of homeopathy and no amount of proof will ever dissuade you. You didn’t need fact or proof to believe it works, so no fact or proof will change your mind.

While I really don’t care what you believe, but don’t position your opinions and insubstantial faith as fact. It isn’t based on any fact.

You might also like to consider holding your fellows to the same standard as your foes. Why do you let homeopathy practitioners operate in an extreme version of what you falsely criticise conventional medicine? Why not do some reading on the opposite perspective and learn why we challenge homeopathy? Don’t be stuck in an echo chamber.

I sincerely hope that you don’t need to rely solely on homeopathy to cure a serious illness. I don’t care if you use it along side other conventional treatments because it does nothing and it is impossible for it to do so.

Millions of people pray, eat meat and smoke. Doesn’t make it right or wrong.

Provide proof of any claim made by homeopathy and not only will you win this argument, you’ll be a very rich person.

It’s foolish to argue with someone that isn’t going to act in good faith and has actively ignored reason and facts.

Unless you can show me peer reviewed, academically robust evidence that your claims are true, there is no point continuing this conversation.

As others have mentioned, the idea that there is no evidence that it doesn’t work is completely invalid.

The onus of proof is on the person making the claim. It’s on the homeopaths to provide evidence that it does work. Many millions of dollars have been wasted trying to create this proof, but it has never stood up to basic scrutiny.

So it is therefore logical to assert that homeopathy doesn’t do what it claims to be able to do.

Further, many of the arguments used to justify the use of homeopathy aren’t internally consistent and are based on concepts that have no scientific validity.

The common distrust of conventional medicine and the assumption of Doctors and Big Pharma colluding to supply pharmaceuticals is patently ridiculous. This is in a system where Drs, pathology specimen collectors, pathologists, pharmacists, and pharmaceutical manufacturers are seperate entities with minimal contact between them.

However, the homeopathy practitioner is uncritically allowed to be the sole specimen collector and analyst, the only diagnoser, and the only prescriber and dispenser of “treatments”. They are also the only person that reviews the “treatment”. A homeopath is allowed and in fact encouraged to mark their own homework, while a network of specialists at arm’s length is treated with deep suspicion. Does this make sense? No.

So, why do you care what I pay for a phone or even what Apple is offering?

Makes no sense. You’ve made a decision based on what’s important to you. I’ve done the same. Why do you think you’re more right than me?!

Yes.

> The problem is that we don't have much choice brand-wise. We get to pick Apple or Android. From a security/privacy perspective, the various Android brands are more or less the same (or, more accurately, the best of them are still likely much worse than Apple, and the worst of them are likely backdoored by the manufacturer or the government where it's manufactured).

Completely agree. But this is always argued as it being Apple’s fault and not a market failure. Why don’t the supposedly better options ever gain enough share to be important?

> Capitalism and the mythical free market have given us two choices, each with very big negatives. I don't want either. I want a phone that respects and fights for my privacy and security, and is relatively easy and cheap to repair, and allows me control over what I run on it.

I mostly agree, but this isn’t an option we have. Again, is this Apple’s fault?

> (And I don't consider platforms like the PinePhone to be choices here. I want contactless payments on my phone, as well as Venmo/Cash App. I want my banking and airline/travel apps. I want Signal, Slack, Whatsapp. I want the app for my local gym. These things either don't run on other platforms, or provide a janky mobile web experience.)

Exactly. One doesn’t usually buy a thing based purely on one feature. All design has compromises, and we pick the most suitable from a limited set.

> IMO, that's the same sentiment that comes up in the app store tax threads. Some Apple users say they're willing to pay more, but the reality is they're being subsidized by the users that don't need or want those features.

Well, true, but I have no influence on other consumers decisions, but they obviously see value in the overall proposition. I don’t demand a price reduction from my ISP because I don’t use torrents or tor.

If you don’t see the total value in Apple’s offer, buy something else.

> If you want to pay 2x or 3x or whatever's needed to make up the difference that's fine by me. Just don't make me participate in that system because I don't need it.

Buy a different brand, then.

I do agree that it’s very desirable to be able to simply and cheaply replace broken components. It intensely annoys me too, but, for me, it’s ok (not great) given the overall proposition, to ensure end to end security.

I replaced a screen, parts and labour, on my phone this week for AUD$45 with Apple Care. Can anyone else do that for $15 or $25 as you suggest?

I don’t see the other manufacturers being significantly better in this regard.

The big opportunity for Apple, in my opinion, is to figure out a more compelling recycling program.

> There's not a manufacturer in the solar system that's going to forgo the use of parts serialization unless it gets prohibited with legislation. The money to be made by locking out competition is too appealing.

Our points are the same, but one never hears this level of criticism directed at Samsung or Google. Are they any better? Maybe in a few different ways, but not as a whole.

But pretending that Apple is somehow the worst, when they are categorically far from it, is just disingenuous and frankly boring.