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What to Expect at Apple's September 2018 Event: New iPhones, Apple Watch Series 4, AirPods, AirPower and More
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If they do not offer smaller phones its obvious they are not sold in large amounts. Mentioned SE had quite old hardware (previous generation if I am not wrong) when it was thrown to market.
The MAC-Mini has been long awaited for an update. Let us hope that this update announcement isn’t another lackluster and unflattering reveal like the 2014 Mini. That announcement was more like. “Oh, by the way, we still have this thing to offer.”
If you look back when Jobs came back to Apple, he slashed third party clones, cut the line up and wanted to go back to more basic inventory.
And how many SKU's do they have now? 4 different iPad's in multiple colors, 5 different laptops in multiple colors and watches in a gazillion different configurations.
I've been an Apple owner since 1984 and I no longer buy into the "I will buy what they offer because even though I don't need it, they want me to need it'
I love Apple products but only what fits my needs
I won't be able to watch the event as they have become more stomach-churningly embarrassing as the years have rolled on. It's almost like an evangelical second coming.
It's a few tech products for goodness sake not a state visit. All the whooping and clapping simply isn't right.
It's a few tech products for goodness sake not a state visit. All the whooping and clapping simply isn't right.
Sure I do. I work hard for my money and will spend it where I have the decision to do so. Who says I don't enjoy what I purchase , otherwise, why would I buy it?
Deserve: to be worthy of : merit
- deserves another chance
When Apple Announced the plus for the first time with the 6 Plus, i went crazy. Landscape home screen, 5.5' screen at 1920x1080p, 2900 mAh battery. it was a dream. After that, they made no effort to make the Plus models any different then the smaller variant. I also have S0 watch that still works perfectly. I'm looking to take my S0 watch for anther 4-5 years or until it completely doesn't work. Battery life if still amazing.
My s0 randomly has days where the battery dies by noon, and then th next day it’s fine. It is missing some existing health features (resting heart rate), and won’t work with the new operating system. And it is so slow that using any third party app is out of the question.
This, this, this! ^
Upgrade Siri really REALLY REALLY REALLY hard!
I should be able to have an actual conversation with Siri. She should remember something I said 5 or 15 minutes ago and she should be able to referback to that part of the conversation.
She should have access to my calendar and reminders and alarms and she should actually BE AN ASSISTANT to me.
If I told her 20 minutes ago that I want directions to Sam's Club and now I'm driving there, she should be smart enough to look at my shopping lists and errand reminders and say, "Hey Mr. Flight Plan, on our way to Sam's Club, we'll be passing only a couple miles from a Home Depot and even closer to a Lowes. At either place, you could pick up the garden hose, cow manure, and Ironite that are on your shopping list. Home Depot has a weekend sale on cow poop and fertilizers. Would you like me to set a waypoint?"
Then I could say, "Why yes Siri, please add Home Depot to our trip."
And she would say, "Since you'll likely be buying perishables at Sam's Club and not at Home Depot, I'll make Sam's Club our last stop before going back home. I've created the Sh_tRun Detour for our errands at Home Depot today. Diverting navigation to Home Depot first."
I can accept that we don't have the George Jetson flying car yet, but why don't we have advanced personal assistance logic yet, especially from Apple? This is inexcusable.
Nice someone points it out, I see Apple likes to sell refreshed 2 year old crap SoC with new form factor iPhone, the same story goes with 3GS and 4(big design change) 5s>6(big design change and 1GB RAM) honestly i was really surprised they managed to get bump with A11 that much because it was good opportunity to sell 2 year old SoC too, it looks like they will this year because they are making major design change for all of us(not only guys with $1000+) But i hope it's not true and they will bump speed about 25%, they are finally stepping down to 7 nm, this should get us more than mere 10% and Apple "S" year iPhones were always fire(when we talk about speed bumps)
If they don't add speed I hope that at least add the new Broadcom high accuracy GPS chip. Doubt it will happen this year, though.
When you say “quite old hardware”, to what are you referring?
The SE was basically the same generation 6s hardware inside a 5s case. Some hardware parts were the previous generation 6, and the display was essentially the 5s. And if I’m not mistaken, being released 6 months after the 6s, it actually had some parts that were newer than the current model.
As for the idea that they are not being sold in large amounts: it’s unlikely given that Apple committed resources to build an entire factory in India to build the SE, a year after it was introduced.
That’s not to say that they sell enough to justify engineering a brand new small phone. Like the Apple Watch, Apple is forced to design the feature set of any model around the smallest size, leaving a fair amount of unused space in the larger models unless they enhance them. Most likely the SE-sized phone would limit the basic features Apple wants to include in any flagship phone, so for now, it may not make sense to offer a smaller flagship phone, regardless of the demand for the size.
The Apple Watch does not take advantage of the unused space in the larger 42mm watch, except for additional battery capacity, while the iPhone Plus does, by adding better cameras, etc. that shows a different kind of thinking for the phone, which suggests that customers are willing to buy a larger phone than they may prefer to carry to get more or better features, whereas for a wearable, customers are not likely to wear a bigger watch than fits them to get extra features.
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Right... and looks like we will have choices. A big phone, a ridiculously big phone and a cheaper lower quality ridiculously big phone.
The amount of data needed to improve Siri to the level you are setting is beyond what most people are willing to pay for. It has to be stored somewhere, at least with todays technology, and to be useful across multiple devices it has to be accessible over the internet. The preferred solution by businesses, entertainment and info sites is to use remote (cloud) servers to store and process the data independent of the device and pass back the result to the phone, computer or pad. It no longer makes the news but a week never goes by when there isn't a breach of cloud security and information is stolen from some company or organization. It's become so commonplace that unless the breach is huge it isn't really mentioned in mass market media. Source, Source, Source,
Amazon and Google voice assistants may be ahead of Siri, but they are only 'good' by comparison. Limit what and how you ask a question and you can get an answer that is relevant. Ask 2 unrelated questions and the accuracy goes down, unless they are media (sports, music, shows, etc) related, where there exists very large databases covering most entertainment from the early 1900's until now.
Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and others aren't storing and sorting all that data for free. It costs, and it would cost a lot more if they weren't allow to data mine the 'non sensitive' data that you provide. Trouble is, link that data with government records and a company or hacker can figure out who you are, where you live, what your buy and if you have one click style buying from that company a lot of your financial information.
Considering very recent revelations that some of Apple's apps were data mining from approved apps (and sending the results to Chinese companies) proves that either Apple isn't as dedicated as they claim about protecting your privacy or that there really isn't a secure way to lock a system down yet.
And access to a wide range of data is what a voice assistant needs to answer questions. The companies that don't enforce privacy as much are leading with their assistants. The companies that enforce to some degree are trailing.
Give me privacy over a better assistant every time. I can easily do what the assistant does, so not an issue (for me).
I’ll catch up after the event - not upgrading my 7+ and they will probably wait until October to announce the Mac Mini.
I used to be psyched for the announcements, but not anymore.
I used to be psyched for the announcements, but not anymore.
There will be no mention of the Mac mini, they have too many other things to talk about, most likely a quite update upon October if were lucky. How many more “next year we’ll see an update” will we have to say before the Mac Mini gets an update, a worthy update?
I too, am amazed at many people's excitement over new iPhones. I bought the X and returned it -$1100 tax was just not worth it. I don't like OLED as much either. Watch 4, yes, and Mac Mini (only Macs I've ever owned) are interesting to me, as it has been left to die for so long.
But, new phones, again, same upgrades, higher price options, only large screens, new colors, yea, yawn.
But, new phones, again, same upgrades, higher price options, only large screens, new colors, yea, yawn.
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I write software for industrial assembly machines, but not for commercial or personal products or software. None the less, the apps in question have to be accessing data, hopefully just location and web browsing but in a worst case scenario financial or personal data on the phone. Requests need to be made to phone hardware to get some of that data (location) and file access for any of the rest. I don't believe that Apple doesn't require that the software requesting information to identify itself. After that you perform a small set of security checks- does the app have permissions set to access the data, is the app in use, does the app stay on after a close command and does the app ever access the data when the phone is idle. There are probably a few apps that would need to do some of these things occasionally, but not many, and not often.
For an approved app that is sending data, what does it need to do to get access to the phone/computer/pads internet access? What about where it is trying to send the data, is the IP address known and verified?
As I said, I don't really work in or with that environment, although I do work with online systems to remotely monitor or modify programs. But I would think that Apple should have requirements for when and how an App is allowed to access data, and if it violates those requirements then there has to be some form of detection and notification so it doesn't go on for an extended time for a lot of people.
Or maybe they don't. Within the last few weeks it was found that Google Maps was transmitting a users location back to Google even if you have location service either turned off for Maps or restricted to only transmitting it when you are using the app. This breach wasn't caught for a number of months. Source 1, Source 2.
And this isn't the first time that Google has done this--2017 location tracking story. I don't know who or what company you can really trust with phone privacy but Google obviously isn't one of them.
This is why I don't believe Google when they say they aren't selling your private information.
Where I was going is this. If you download a navigation app and it requests access to location services and your contacts and you grant, the app has infettered access to your location (even while using) and your contacts. If this app hosts code to upload this information to an aggregator, how is apple (google, microsoft or linux) supposed to know this? One this information is uploaded to the webserver, unscrupulous developers can monetize this information. The app has essentially lied about what it's doing with your information and the privacy policy isn't worth the paper it's written on. You gave access to the app to access your location and contacts, the app developer is using your information unscrupulously.
edit: I'm not clear on how on the iphone an app can get access to your location if you have location turned off for that app (unless the app is using restricted apis)
Because the app requesting the information has to ask the OS for that information. Once again, I don't program in this type of environment, but I can't believe that individual apps would be given direct access to hardware or files without needing the OS. Yes that is possible, and yes it used to be done in industrial equipment. That's one of the reason our electric and utility systems are said to be in danger of hostile hacking. Most of the controls being used are 1 to 2 decades old. They aren't hardened agains attacks very much at all.
If the access permission is turned on, and the app is in use I don't know what Apple (or any other phone OS) could do. But in the examples I cited the access permission is turned off and the app is still requesting current location and then sending it to a 3rd party. Is the permit access setting really doing anything if it can be easily ignored and the company can get and send information that the user thinks is safe?
What you are pointing to is either restricted apis(which apple should catch), or the cell id tower information. The article you linked to made that observation. Maybe the cell id tower id is not restricted, in which case google or other app, would know your location to within a few miles.
Maybe a dev who has done this type of programming can comment.
New iMacs? I don't understand the concept anymore. Devs can keep making iOS apps on the 2014 Mini and iTrashCan.
The 2017 article mentioned that it was being done through the cell towers. The August 2018 articles said it was being done in both Android and Apple OS systems and for that reason I don't think its being done at the tower level.
But having someone who is familiar with how either Android or Apple OS's work with their security systems would be interesting if someone knows more about this.