Pretty sure this is not about revenue but profit margins, since the Services line was under heavy surveillance by markets back then.
Though that's the core issue, margins on services are just too addictive for big tech. Not sure Apple can keep its recipe for success with both services and hardware.
You could argue that macOS development is too slow, not too fast and in need of a maintenance year.
Basic OS features have fallen way behind in term of UX - and of vision. Managing files and searching for information have become a chore compared to most internet- or llm-based services. Even a bug-free Finder or faster Spotlight would not bridge that gap.
All apps listed in the article feel similarly lost behind - Mail, Messages, Photos. The only exception is System Settings that does definitely need a snow version.
This is obviously true for other platforms as well.
We are possibly lacking a leap forward. Not faster horses, electric cars.
An obvious root cause of this is the lack of newcomers to the OS again. It's an oligopole that has no interest making things much improved.
tl,dr: CCP involves as many ordinary people as it can into the judicial and extra-judicial killing process in what could be "life insurance" for the regime: too many have blood on their hands to ever face accountability.
Personally, the dissonance around China has come to an extreme. Is most reporting incorrect, or has CCP become the most efficient and durable totalitarian regime in history? Or is it a form of social engineering that has actual mainstream support in China? Or is it a doomed experiment, just like all other previous authoritarian regimes in history?
There is something quietly unsustainable building up.
Your post seems to me that you intensely believe the creed that western-style “liberal democracy” is the most stable political regime. It is true it is very stable though you should try to separate the reality with the propaganda set up by those states, especially the US one. For example:
> Or is it a doomed experiment, just like all other previous authoritarian regimes in history?
The Pharaonic system which was may be the most despotic ever created lasted for nearly three millenia. The current age of all “democracies” (~ representatively guided states with some kinds of power separations) pales in comparison.
And regarding the robustness of those regimes the only continental country to not crumble when confronted to the shock of the blitzkrieg was the USSR (operation barbarossa lead to the death of 5 millions people in 200 days to give an idea).
I am not trying to defend authoritarian regimes but the questions of which political system is the fairest, which one is the most legitimate, which one is the most stable and which one is the most robust are not the same and should not be conflated
There's an unsustainable component to every empire, in that the premise is always growth-centric and stratified; empires do not "prosper together". Growth turns to killing when the psyche of the nation needs a boost, cleaving a harder line into the social constructs of stratification by informing everyone of who is clean and goodly, and who is guilty by default and deserves their punishments. It reallocates praise and blame such that the established in-groups get the most credit by their own reckoning. On this I see Heather Marsh's views as some of the most clear-eyed.
The thing about authoritarian impulses throughout history is that they flare up and, for time, keep a country firmly gripped. Then they relax, and are somewhat forgotten about, even reconciled, until something comes along to trigger it again, in a replica of the abuse cycle. And China is not going to be different in this respect - moments where things get more oppressed for a time, and then moments of relief. The Xi regime has been relatively more oppressive in most recountings by Western sources. This is believable yet also not meaningful, since clearly the apparatus was there before.
IMHO, just because China has gotten this far with its current model says little about tomorrow. There is propaganda coming from all directions these days, so I'm always a little hesitant about "real truth" coming from random sources, but simultaneously suspicious of the official ones too. It's that climate, in itself, that damages the credibility of all regimes; it leaves truth and credit up for grabs to those who can forge a new path that makes the world cohere better. It's hard to defeat the real truth in the long run.
> Is most reporting incorrect, or has CCP become the most efficient and durable totalitarian regime in history?
Neither. Most Americans and Europeans have zero idea what life is like in China. The media doesn't help. Anyone who knows something about the country has noticed the rising level of hysteria and propaganda about China since Trump was elected.
> has CCP become the most efficient and durable totalitarian regime in history?
Not really, here are just forces at play which would benefit if you thought so
We are in due time for the US and Western public to have a new evil boogyman presented to them. People are getting too unruly these days, so this will help keep them in line
I've always been a fan of those projects but it's clear they've now mostly turned to greenporn.
For this specific project: nothing makes sense. The farm is operated by "Nordic Harvest", with claims that it can produce 200 tons of products in 2021 on a 7000 sqm footprint. The products would be fresh herbs and salads (the website only displays fresh herbs). So the total output of herbs on year 1 would be more than the equivalent surface of beetroot, one of the heaviest products. The site says the farm uses "no fertilizer" then comes to explain than they only use "natural fertilizer". The entire thing looks like a byproduct of the windmill industry, which is crumbling because of intermittent surplus of cheap electricity. All details on https://www.nordicharvest.com/
This reminds me of for urban farming in Paris a couple years ago, where I witnessed most "startup farms" from inception to failure: it's a perfect PR choreography. Some company builds a "farm" on its roof (with bee hives), advertises it as a totem of some vacant post-carbon strategy, collects fiscal incentives, then the farm never gets to see its 3rd year because it's so impossibly hard to even dream of reaching profitability or large-scale production. In Paris, the "largest farm in the world" is twice the size of this dutch "world largest" and actually operated by Unibail Westfield (and produces barely anything): https://www.urw.com/en/press-room/press-news/world-largest-u...
There are exceptions in urban farming (Lufa in Montreal, some sites in Singapore) but the PR pressure and laziness of journalist coverage is ruining it from the inside.
Al Jazeera is 100% owned by the Qatari state (itself lacking democratic institutions), with its 2 last CEOs being from the ruling Qatari family. The current editorial standards are supervised by AJ chair man, who is Qatar's former minister of information.
So no, there's no comparison whatsoever with CNN or BBC and it's a problem that articles and information from AJ is shared without any caution.
>So no, there's no comparison whatsoever with CNN or BBC
Yes, in the sense that the US (CNN) and the UK (BBC) have had and have their gruby hands all over the globe, in occupation, colonisation, invansions, interventions, trade wars, national interests, resource grubbing, etc., whereas the Qatari interests are somewhat limited.
So, I'd take the AJ editorials on most matter with smaller grains of salt than CNN and BBC.
Not sure this is the weakest link in value-for-money for Apple products. Like many people I know, my iPhones have been changed for no fee, outside warranty, for minor or major issues.
I'd say it's more about Apple moving from a yearly/bi-yearly iPhone renewal goal to a 2-3 years calendar, with now lucrative gadgets to buy in between. Fine by me: just get the long lasting core products and then pick what you want/need.
But sure, you could have `(my name is)john."..".doe+spam(...)@gmail.com` if you wanted to. Syntactically valid! The parenthesised bits would be stripped out before sending, and I have no idea whether Gmail would be willing to accept the quoted dots bit.
Haha, I debated about throwing in the multi-dot address. Bummed that it was a bad example. :(
As for parens, I recollect the spec lets you nest your parens and quotes! It's insane. e.g. `f(oo."(bar."baz")."quux)@example.com` is valid in the spec.
I wrote an Oracle regex to parse for valid email addresses and I went against the spec rather than what is what's practically used. It was an insane thing.
Though that's the core issue, margins on services are just too addictive for big tech. Not sure Apple can keep its recipe for success with both services and hardware.