Random links

[Insomnia]

Honestly I'd still rather a stream deck. >.>

[ShelBeast]

@insomnia Fine. You can buy me a chocolate butthole, then.

[Insomnia]

@shelbeast Does it have to be my butthole? I mean I love chocolate, but I'm not sure if I love it enough for this stage of our sham marriage to have chocolate poured into my butthole.

[Auspice]

@insomnia said in Random links:

@shelbeast Does it have to be my butthole? I mean I love chocolate, but I'm not sure if I love it enough for this stage of our sham marriage to have chocolate poured into my butthole.

They don't pour the chocolate, just the mold. Win-win?

[Insomnia]

@auspice Oh shit, I secretly said one of my kinks out loud! >.>

[ShelBeast]

@insomnia ...this marriage really doesn't have to be a sham, I'm just sayin'.

[Thenomain]

@shelbeast said in Random links:

@insomnia Fine. You can buy me a chocolate butthole, then.

If someone has had their butthole bleached, would you use white chocolate?

I'm asking for a friend.

[Auspice]

@thenomain said in Random links:

@shelbeast said in Random links:

@insomnia Fine. You can buy me a chocolate butthole, then.

If someone has had their butthole bleached, would you use white chocolate?

I'm asking for a friend.

White chocolate is a lie.

so, no.

[Thenomain]

@auspice said in Random links:

@thenomain said in Random links:

@shelbeast said in Random links:

@insomnia Fine. You can buy me a chocolate butthole, then.

If someone has had their butthole bleached, would you use white chocolate?

I'm asking for a friend.

White chocolate is a lie.

Well so is bleaching your butthole.

So I'm told.

[Derp]

@insomnia said in Random links:

Don't tell @ShelBeast butt suddenly I'm not as big a fan of chocolate for some reason.

ICWYDT

[Insomnia]

@derp Thanks, I'm glad someone noticed.

[Auspice]

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-battery-throttling-gives-customers-reason-to-distrust-2017-12

I mean, there's been theories, suspicions, and all, but goddamn Apple. GODDAMN.

[Rook]

@auspice
Can't view the article because of "WHINE, YOU RUN AN AD-BLOCKER!!!!" crap. Sorry, not paying you a dollar to read your stupid article. plonk

[Auspice]

@rook said in Random links:

@auspice
Can't view the article because of "WHINE, YOU RUN AN AD-BLOCKER!!!!" crap. Sorry, not paying you a dollar to read your stupid article. plonk

You could just turn it off temporarily.

But the jist of it: it was proven (and thus Apple owned up to it) that Apple was purposefully throttling batteries to "encourage" people to upgrade.

So on older iPhones? That shitty battery? Might not have been an actual shitty battery so much as embedded programming telling it to be shitty.

[Faceless]

Hostiles On the Hill - A Bad Lip Reading, legit.

[Auspice]

@faceless said in Random links:

Hostiles On the Hill - A Bad Lip Reading, legit.

I finally watched that earlier today. It's good as hell.

[Thenomain]

@auspice said in Random links:

But the jist of it: it was proven (and thus Apple owned up to it) that Apple was purposefully throttling batteries to "encourage" people to upgrade.

I'm calling bullshit on this one.

Apple's explanation is that rather than let users' phones die because older batteries can't handle the peak performance, they would throttle the processor so that it doesn't over-stress the battery. Apple has long been a company that will do things that it believes are in its users' best interests even if those users would rather choose for themselves.

Even when Apple converted from Motorola-made PPC chips to the more popular Intel chips, they created code to allow people on the newer machines run code from the older architecture, and maintained it for four years, on a version of their OS that was supported via critical patches for another four.

I choose to invoke Occam's Razor for this and believe that Apple screwed up communicating iOS's behavior than forcing anyone to upgrade their phone. As John Gruber, someone at once an Apple critic and apologist, recently said:

And at the engineering level, I’ve heard from multiple Apple sources over the years that even if such a dictate were issued from on high, it would result in a revolt. If some shortsighted senior executive demanded that an iOS software update render older iPhone hardware artificially slow, the engineers tasked with the job would almost certainly object. Even if some unscrupulous engineer were willing to implement such a booby trap, how would they keep other engineers on the team from noticing it, fixing it, and figuring out who was responsible? Something along the lines of “if (deviceAgeInYears > 2) { [self _runFuckingSlow]; }” is going to stick out in code review after being checked into the iOS source code.

Business Insider has recently in tech circles been known for headline-grabbing and poorly researched tech articles. That they have a better reputation from Gawker makes the alarmist claptrap spouted in this article more believable. Apple is an easy target because Apple itself does tend to hold itself in quite high regard, but we don't even blink when Google sells our personal information, or how Microsoft defines double-speak.

No, this is Apple being Apple, and clickbait being clickbait.

[Auspice]

@thenomain said in Random links:

@auspice said in Random links:

But the jist of it: it was proven (and thus Apple owned up to it) that Apple was purposefully throttling batteries to "encourage" people to upgrade.

I'm calling bullshit on this one.

Apple's explanation is that rather than let users' phones die because older batteries can't handle the peak performance, they would throttle the processor so that it doesn't over-stress the battery. Apple has long been a company that will do things that it believes are in its users' best interests even if those users would rather choose for themselves.

Even when Apple converted from Motorola-made PPC chips to the more popular Intel chips, they created code to allow people on the newer machines run code from the older architecture, and maintained it for four years, on a version of their OS that was supported via critical patches for another four.

I choose to invoke Occam's Razor for this and believe that Apple screwed up communicating iOS's behavior than forcing anyone to upgrade their phone. As John Gruber, someone at once an Apple critic and apologist, recently said:

And at the engineering level, I’ve heard from multiple Apple sources over the years that even if such a dictate were issued from on high, it would result in a revolt. If some shortsighted senior executive demanded that an iOS software update render older iPhone hardware artificially slow, the engineers tasked with the job would almost certainly object. Even if some unscrupulous engineer were willing to implement such a booby trap, how would they keep other engineers on the team from noticing it, fixing it, and figuring out who was responsible? Something along the lines of “if (deviceAgeInYears > 2) { [self _runFuckingSlow]; }” is going to stick out in code review after being checked into the iOS source code.

Business Insider has recently in tech circles been known for headline-grabbing and poorly researched tech articles. That they have a better reputation from Gawker makes the alarmist claptrap spouted in this article more believable. Apple is an easy target because Apple itself does tend to hold itself in quite high regard, but we don't even blink when Google sells our personal information, or how Microsoft defines double-speak.

No, this is Apple being Apple, and clickbait being clickbait.

It's not going to make me walk from my phone or anything similar. And it's still better than the Android method (which has been: 'your phone is older than 6 months? well you aren't getting anymore software updates at all and might not get any app updates as a result either, depending on the developer!'), but it's still something Apple should have been up front about.

As https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/12/20/16803190/iphone-slowdown-is-needed-but-also-a-problem explains, they could have better mitigated this in other ways. Larger batteries. Allowing people to more easily swap batteries. Making it more obvious, if not, that you can get a replacement battery for "only" $79 rather than an entirely new phone.

It still, ultimately, comes across as somewhat shady in the end. I don't like Google or Microsoft's practices either. While Apple has reason and explanation, they've otherwise been above-board on things (such as the reason for withholding video in the iPhone 3) and this just looks bad on them at a time when they really don't need it.

[Thenomain]

@auspice said in Random links:

but it's still something Apple should have been up front about.

This is the most common sentiment I'm getting from what I'm reading, yes.

But it sure as hell isn't "Apple Hates You, Wants Your Money". That's Business Insider devolving into clickbait media, which is what they've been doing for about four years now. I know reputable news outlets have been grabbing to hold onto the decline in paid news, but they have pretty much sold their souls. If I trip across the various articles I've seen about this starting around 2013, I'll link them here. It's pretty interesting to know how shitty they treat their bloggers.

The fact that they came out to explain themselves at all is a post-Steve Jobs/mid-Tim Cook era Apple phenomenon. Remember "antennagate", one of the biggest mountain-out-of-a-molehill "problems" with the iPhone 4? Steve Jobs' answer was: You're holding it wrong. Then he said: Fine, have a free bumper. And they ignored people complaining over this legitimate, free solution until they went away.

@auspice said in Random links:

you can get a replacement battery for "only" $79 rather than an entirely new phone.

Nice "scare quotes". Apple is the epitome of capitalism: If you want our services, you pay our fee, if you don't want our services then go somewhere else. The problem that they are solving is not theirs; rechargable batteries fail over time. This is chemistry and physics. You might as well complain to Ford that your car needs constant maintenance or complain to Sony that that your 20 year-old non-HD-ready TV needs a special adapter to get over-the-air programming.

And if that's not good enough, then there are a lot of non-Apple places that make and install the batteries for $30-$50. Caveat Emptor. If you don't want to pay Apple's prices, don't buy Apple's devices. If you don't think they bend over backwards and spend billions each year trying to make sure that their customers are content, then you haven't looked very far. Like, at all.

[Auspice]

The inability to swap out your own battery is something that always bothered me re: iPhone. And I know other phones are moving that way now. I don't think it's a good thing, personally.

Their stores are a PITA. And third-party locations aren't always trustworthy, sadly.

I had an appointment for an in-warranty charger swap for my Macbook at an Apple store (my Macbook was given to me as part of my tuition through my school; only reason I have one). I was late because of rain and traffic. I could not get through, at all, to the store. Try calling a store. You get put through to a central phone tree that never puts you through to a person.

I finally got to the store about 10 minutes late.

'Oh, sorry, since you missed your appointment, you can reschedule. Our next available appointment is next week on...'

Apparently the look on my face, however, scared the girl enough that she immediately ran off to get a manager without me even saying a word and they just swapped out the cable without even testing it. Even so, it was absolutely, insanely infuriating.

Would I prefer to go to an Apple store for any replacements? Yes. Because it's hard to trust 'hole in the wall' shop. Do I want to? No.