Never used mercurial. I suspect it's just as good, but the problem the author probably sees is, like me, most everyone is familiar with git and new hires need to be trained in something unfamiliar with less community around it.
I don't know what I need John Gruber is. But I'd say those quotes you pulled are pretty intentionally characterizing the potential (and legitimate) issues somehow acceptable. Why would I want Apple to regulate the third party headphones available to me? The headphone market might be a bit too large to track, but having that many choices isn't a problem in my mind. I'm free to research and select from the myriad options at any price point. Those who prefer to buy Apple endorsed products can go to their store and find Beats or whomever on the shelf. Tell me what advantage is gained by eliminating the other options in be market?
And I see no significant advantage to the change in technology itself. Optical ports provide a measurable advantage in sound fidelity over analog, but you haven't seen them eliminate composite or component ports from home receivers, because there are also significant disadvantages in cost and length of optical cables. I don't even follow that there's such gains to be made from switching to lightning...
Which leaves me at the obvious conclusion that this is just a ploy to sell more adapters and reap licensing fees from vendors at the expense of their customer.
And remarks he makes like "Cough up the extra $29 for a new pair" convey exactly the tone that is bothering us all.
Lol, yeah. Asking for a self driving car programmed to follow traffic laws that can handle Saigon or Bangkok is like asking for a smart drone that can fly safely thru a tornado.
Homeless flock to SF because it's very tolerant of them relative to many other cities (some of which actually bus their mentally ill to SF), and the conditions are moderate enough that they aren't fighting off hypothermia. It has nothing to do with their desire to live on the curb in front of expensive real estate.
I don't know that you understand the problem at all if you refer to it as a choice. Particularly if you think the alternative choice is home ownership in abandoned areas of the country's most troubled city. Owning some empty, stripped-apart house in Detroit doesn't solve anybody's problems and certainly doesn't eliminate the cost of supporting the downtrodden. Many people in Detroit who have skills aren't finding employment and are barely surviving. A property title doesn't fill your stomach day after day. And the 4-figure houses you refer to are that way because they represent more liability than asset. They need massive investment to make them liveable.
Sounds like the Netflix app just had better bandwidth detection and quality adjustment than Amazon or HBO. Not surprising, as the latter two are less mature apps and infrastructure built by relatively newcomers to the streaming business whose core competency is not in digital media distribution (regardless who may have built their system). Ironically, it might be because you bought it in HD that it buffers excessively on your roku, whereas it might stream better in SD.
But none of that matters, you are correct at this point that Netflix clearly has it figured out and working for you, while their competition does not. Only to say, the dynamic bitrate support is likely to improve on the other apps with time (not to mention, your internet connection is likely to periodically increase in speed for various upgrades to your equipment or your ISPs) so those issues are likely not permanent.
As usual, probably the poor & lower middle class unless the income tax reduction were explicitly directed to the lowest tax brackets to limit impact on working poor.
Those below the poverty line would see an increase in their energy costs at the pump and and home electric bills as energy producers raise rates to compensate (and the impoverished are the least able to convert their use, so will be the longest affected by the transition).
Are the subscription plans based on daily queries, or a monthly total represented by how many per day?
For example, my company has a password policy that reminds users every 6th Monday (we find that passwords changed on a Friday often require an IT reset the following week because they forget, so we try to encourage updates earlier in the week). If we tried your service, would we be penalized for a high volume on single days?