My government should stop giving money to poor people in x country because we have people here who are poor!
Governments can support international development while working on domestic poverty
I don't understand the thinking of people who say things like this:
...
Of course, I'm wasting my time.
Money well spent
How about fix the most basic cockups first?
Temperature here is currently -3 CELSIUS. If I ask Siri what the temperature is in Fahrenheit it just repeats the 'witty' Celsius temperature by saying "Brr! its -3 outside.".
Basic little things like this really shouldn't take a few seconds to fix.
Can they?
Here in the UK, Millions of £ are being cut from budgets for councils. Free bus passes, winter fuel allowances are all ripe for curtailing, while at the same time the UK Government is sending hundreds of millions of £ a year for overseas aid.
I might be stupid, but to me it seems that if we didn't send all this money away to people who mostly never appreciate it, it would help here at home for some of the people that paid in all their lives and are now being shafted.
I don't know what utopian world you live in, but it sounds nice. There must be plenty of everything to go round and people want for nothing.
Can they?
Here in the UK, Millions of £ are being cut from budgets for councils. Free bus passes, winter fuel allowances are all ripe for curtailing, while at the same time the UK Government is sending hundreds of millions of £ a year for overseas aid.
I might be stupid, but to me it seems that if we didn't send all this money away to people who mostly never appreciate it, it would help here at home for some of the people that paid in all their lives and are now being shafted.
I don't know what utopian world you live in, but it sounds nice. There must be plenty of everything to go round and people want for nothing.
Why?
Compared to everyone else in the consumer electronics space Apple is THE innovator. No one, not a single company, has changed the landscape of consumer technology one tenth as much as Apple has, even if you only count the last decade, but you don't hear people saying that Samsung has to invent and innovate to stay relevant or that Nokia needs a big new paradigm shifting product to survive - they do but no one says it. Even if we accept that, since the iPad, Apple has not really pushed out a big, game changing product, who exactly has? Samsung with their Phablet? Google's G+? If Apple has been slow for the last three years, then by that standards nobody has innovated at all since about 2002! Surface? It's like an iPad. Chromebooks? Basic thin client devices - been around for years.
Right now Apple has three big lines. iPhone, iPad and MacBook (Pro/Air) - two of which have redefined entire technology categories in a little over five years. All three are growing rapidly, especially the iPhone and iPad which are seeing YoY growth of 35-50%. Apple has just launched the iPad mini which is likely to outsell the original iPad and add millions of units per quarter to Apple's sell-through. If Apple did nothing but keep improving these three lines for the next five years they would remain the most profitable company in technology without a sniff of doubt. They don't NEED to do anything to stay relevant other than keep pushing these products harder. Yes, sooner or later a new product will be needed but that statement is true for ANYONE in ANY INDUSTRY.
They will do other things, of course. It's probable that they'll be moving into a new product category within the next 18 months. It's also likely that they will expand the iPhone line in some way and new services will be launched to bolster their ecosystem. But even if they didn't they would stay relevant for years to come. Apple has the world's most popular smartphone and the world's most popular tablet range. Apple has the world's largest and most popular App Store and is dominant in online music distribution. Apple has a big chunk of video too, not to mention being the world's leading mobile games platform. Apple currently sits atop the pile in no less than five product/service categories in terms of profit, scope, size and influence.
EDIT - just wanted to add that spending time on presentation is not gimmicky in the slightest and that's what Siri's "personality" is - presentation. You don't, I assume, consider spending time on the look and feel of a product a waste, do you? How Siri responds, the jokes and quips that make him/her feel more like a real person, are a part of the product and one of the reasons that Siri is the only voice assistant that anyone who doesn't use one can name. If making the product more fun to use encourages people to have a go then the time spent on it is in no way a waste.
Well, Apple has enough resource to do both and more.Why not spend time and money on innovation instead of gimmicks? Siri itself isn't a gimmick, but trying to expand its 'witty' personality is. Market analysts (and I don't mean DigiTimes...) are saying almost daily that Apple is starting to lack in innovation and has fallen into an iterative rut of just applying minor tweaks to each of their product lines
...a big push into the living room is by no means beyond them.
Beyond that, I don't know. We'll have to wait and see.
Why is Apple so intent on turning Siri into a big joke? Make it more functional and faster and stop wasting time on this garbage.
Nor normally so cynical with respect to Apple but perhaps they could hire some backend engineers to make Siri respond faster? Google Voice takes less than a second most of the time. Siri takes 2-3 seconds just to recognise your voice.
Make it more functional and faster and stop wasting time on this garbage.
The expectations from Apple are very high . Yet if you look at this list of innovations objectively- they have 4 major contributions in the last 20 years. The original apple computer with the GUI and mouse in the 1980s (taken from Xerox but made main stream by apple), the ipod in 2001, the iphone in 2007 and the ipad in 2010. Smaller but significant changes are itunes and the macbook air (the ultrabook concept) and the app store .
It is impossible for any company to keep coming up with "innovation" every 2 years. However , the expectations from apple are very high because the came up with the iphone and the ipad in rapid succession within a span of 3 years when the competition was taken by surprise. The sad demise of Steve Jobs has lead people to believe that Apple is on the way down. However , even if Jobs were alive, I dont think that he could push out an "innovation" every year.
http://www.mcelhearn.com/2012/09/20/why-wont-siri-tell-me-the-temperature-in-centigrade/
On the iPhone, set your Weather app to C or F. Siri will respond in those units. On the iPad, it's hidden away in the Clock app. C or F. Go figure.
Money well spent
How about fix the most basic cockups first?
Temperature here is currently -3 CELSIUS. If I ask Siri what the temperature is in Fahrenheit it just repeats the 'witty' Celsius temperature by saying "Brr! its -3 outside.".
Basic little things like this really shouldn't take a few seconds to fix.