It is possible it is the next self-driving car, or nuclear fusion.
A sudden exponential set of improvements that allowed everyone to dream that self-driving anything was around the corner. Actual promising real world result that show we are really no that far.
But the last bridge to cross is actually extremely slow and what was around the corner, becomes a decade away.
That said, it's not fruitless. AI is useful as it is today, and if does not go pick up your kids at school in the next 10 years, it would still be useful.
At Mac Pro pricing (128 GB = $1600) that's $12,800
Of course, I can imagine that there will be a significant discount even just considering the price of high end branded memory outside Apple.
Still, Apple has showed no sign of abandoning 8GB for regular people. Even if they switch by the end of the year on their high model, they have a serious handicap in their own installed base.
The world has to evolve in a different way than it is currently happening. Which is not impossible but those headset development are not cheap so the monetisation is a very high requirement.
It is a lot easier to use those headset where they naturally fit: ultra-personalised experience. Like social media v2, lot of potential to connect human, but devolving into jailing human in echo chambers: you can keep in touch with your family and friends across the world, or you can get hooked into a forever stream of news/post/video/product customised to make you engage.
VR headset used for games. I can see the social aspect winning. Spacial computing, I'm scared.
Decision driven from bad data is IMO worse than data-less decision.
Data grants authority to a decision that gut feel driven one doesn't. It is hard to argue against evidence as it should be, but that assume a certain level of quality in the evidence.
Second, if practice doesn't match the expected outcome, the first thing you will look at is what the team is doing wrong, not review the decision as not working.
That said, parent is far from unique in his skepticism, so I think the problem is more often reversed in the industry. Having some data, even flawed can help your company decide to try something new.
I guess the problem is lead time. You want overspecced because you get one shot every 10-20 years between design, launch windows and the all too present political angle.
Corollary of that is that MVP for library code is very different than MVP for business code.
MVP for business code is a great way to get the tool in front of the users and get traction, request for more work. Once you release your library, desire for changes basically drops to 0.
It's working. If it's clunky, the clunkiness just gets wrapped into a utility class somewhere deep in the belly your client application with about 1 commit change per year to change the copyright notice.
Similarly your corporate leverage falls to 0. You make a library to save people time, congrats you did it. Every update you ask people to do that does not bring new feature they need reduce your value. Good luck justifying a cosmetic change ROI.
I guess that's because they cancel the payment, not the subscription.
If you cancel Netflix that way, Netflix isn't told. They will just realise the payment failed and block your account until you upgrade your payment details.
Apple system cancel the subscription, just like if you go on Netflix account and cancel. The blocking of the payment just happen as a consequence of the subscription to the service being cancelled.
Of course maybe time changed. Like shop returns 20 years ago, it was badly seen to pick load of stuff and bring most of the stuff back. Nowadays shops expect it and during Sales period they will ask you to do it that way rather than jam the few fitting rooms.
I may not understand properly what you are saying but here in the UK you can have regular payment on your credit/debit card. Except for Utilities, basically all my recurring payments just happen like that. Netflix does not require a Direct Debit, neither does a variety of service, including Apple iCloud.
Although you can chargeback those payment, that's not really a cancellation. It's a last recourse type of stuff. I'm still subscribed and liable for whatever charge I have incurred. If I want to cancel Netflix or iCloud, I need to go there. So sure, if the payment fails your account will eventually be suspended but not necessarily cancelled.
Even Direct Debit are like that. I cancelled my Electricity DD by accident, but I still received the bill in the mail (at the time) and the electricity wasn't just cut.
Also in the UK, Paypal will allow to setting up subscription. Similarly you can cancel the subscription, but it is not a cancellation of the service. You need to go to whatever setup the subscription and unsubscribe there.
Apple system is a centralised cancellation of the service first, the fact that the payment are stopped is a consequence of cancelling the service. Not the other way around as with all the systems I listed.
That was the same in the Touring Visa that for a while was "The EU refused" and it became just the opposite a few weeks later.
But that's the story of Brexit and its 40 years of media support. Even the BBC has often been on the technically correct side happily reporting welcome change as "UK change" and blaming unwelcome on the EU, even if the UK voted for it.
That's also why they updated their large sales volume, entry level to average hardware.
That will give them loads of data to smooth out the kinks out of Rosetta and the rest of software chain while having enough time to work on the M2.
I expect the first "real" Apple silicon hardware will be in November 2021 staring iMac and MBP 16.
Then 2022/2023 for the MacPro where Apple really goes all out, deprecate the last of their x86 line up but at this stage we are at the M4 and nobody cares anymore.
I combine this with https://github.com/nriley/brightness to retrieve the brightness of the main screen, then I use ddcctl to apply it to the external screen.
I set it up in a cron job and that has been running for years now. (the external monitor brightness is not very linear though, so you need to fiddle a big to find the proper/acceptable matching)
The problem with that is that it is all or nothing. The milder approach I had in mind was that apps require you to register an account outside the app (like amazon) but the purchase is initiated inside the app and outside Apple api.
At the beginning that will be easy to simply not register and not use games that require registration. But well, micro-transaction started that way and nowadays all the major player do it that way.
Platform like XCloud that bundle various games from various studio will be used, and that basically mean you have a single app in your iPhone that can download a variety of content, all outside the control of Apple.
I'm not an idiot, I will whitelist and use the tool available in said platform, but that's one more thing to care about. One problem for which Apple just worked for me and won't anymore.
I'm scared of that though. Although on one end I would like to buy my kindle books straight from the app and play xcloud games, I'm thinking of the dodgier companies.
Right now I have little to worry about when I leave my kid playing a game, all the payment need to go through Apple or at least the offending app will not stay up for too long.
I want Apple to be forced to come up with a fairer solution (eg: same api, but different payment provider) rather than being strong-armed into getting rid of the current protection from dodgy apps abusing dark ux pattern.
Ignoring the fact that the majority of the source code is not open sourced and that "impact" biggest variable is going to be chance.
Impact of one open source project measure slightly more than developer talent. It is a combination of a lot of skills, development skill just one among other like marketing, business sense, ability to make video, ... Extreme example would be Zuckerberg: is he the best developer in the world and wouldn't you waste a bit his potential if you hired him as a PHP dev?
And in any case, impact is always going to be a star system. You are going to have a tiny percentage of developers (like a few thousands in the world) that have impact and all the other that have 0. You are back to square one at trying to find a way to differentiate between a loser that can code and another loser that cannot.
There is a "Fight club" feel to this crisis. All the "key worker", necessary job that need to be done regardless the catastrophe society is facing are literally the least desirable job on the market and often the least paid too.
Hopefully there is going to be wake up call in society. Surely a large scale demonstration like this would convince people that your "free market capitalistic assigned worth, i.e. your salary" is not a sufficient measure of your value in society and external adjustment (eg: government regulation or welfare or ...) is actually quite reasonable.
Borders. That's the problem in the EU. Cooperation for massive infrastructure project beyond a single line or a tunnel is very hard to achieve.
Discount airlines are discount mostly because of tax incentive to develop small local airport around the EU. Of course they are popular. In the UK, from London, it is basically cheaper to get anywhere in the EU than anything north of Birmingham.
A sudden exponential set of improvements that allowed everyone to dream that self-driving anything was around the corner. Actual promising real world result that show we are really no that far.
But the last bridge to cross is actually extremely slow and what was around the corner, becomes a decade away.
That said, it's not fruitless. AI is useful as it is today, and if does not go pick up your kids at school in the next 10 years, it would still be useful.