Oh absolutely. It’s probably worth the $3500 at least. I just cannot think of a use case for myself that would justify it lol. I don’t work from home enough to claim it for work, and I can’t remote in from a Mac anyway.

And with kids, I definitely don’t have the free time to use it to watch movies or anything.

Pretty much the only reason I didn’t buy one.

I did the guided demo at the Apple Store and it’s a cool thing. If it were $2000 with AppleCare instead of $4000 I probably would have bought one.

I’ll see what they release for the “Air” version.

Nothing already pulled their app because it’s a security nightmare, storing and transmitting every message in plain text.

MKBHD pointed that out too. You’d have to be a complete imbecile to use that shit.

No it’s not. At least not in the US.

All major carriers use Google Jibe as their RCS backend which is the universal profile with a ton of proprietary Google bullshit, and routing all message traffic through Google servers.

No thanks.

$30 wouldn’t be competitive at all. A basic Garmin InReach subscription is $15 a month.

With Apples massive user base, they should be able to just include it in Apple One or as a standalone for a couple bucks a month. They would instantly have more revenue just from that than Garmin does from InReach.

GPS is a US military system entirely payed for by taxpayers, that just spams out pings to any device listening. Civilian end users can’t transmit to it.

And it wasn’t freely available to civilians for years, until the Korean Airlines Flight 007 was shot down in 1993 by the Soviets due to a navigational error causing them to drift into Soviet airspace.

This is more of a budget replacement for the original lightning pencil.

It’s $20 cheaper than the first gen and $50 cheaper than the second gen.

I mean, they’re going to be killing off the 9th gen iPad sometime soon anyway. At which point gettin an Air would be the best value for starting artists anyway since it’s only $150 more than the 10th gen and has much better performance.

Potentially. But I’m running a 15 pro max on 17.0.3 and I have not had this happen at all.

No it doesn’t. Both the regular and pro lines support 20W max charging.

CR also said the iPhone 6 Plus passed too, and Apple ended up admitting that they knew it would bend.

Because they’re getting into bed with Google going with Android Automotive to turn the infotainment system into a subscription service. They’re also dropping the free Android Auto support too.

Realistically that’s along the lines of what Apple needs to do first if they’re serious about a car. Build a full infotainment system software suite and get OEMs on board with that. Your luxury makers going to EV like lucid, rivian, Mercedes, Audi, Fisker, BMW, etc… would all fit the Apple image

The final public beta and the release version are exactly the same build.

Every developer develops for the newest devices first and foremost. Across the board.

There is nothing intrinsic about a smaller manufacturing process that transfers into software, unless they’ve secretly added new instructions to the set. What it does mean is that the new chips should be more power efficient, which means in turn that the same software on new hardware should already translate into battery life gains.

Orrrrr what it means is that the software can take advantage of the more efficient hardware and push harder while maintaining similar battery life. Which is what most manufacturers typically do.

What we see instead is software “tuned” for the new version to minimize gains on one side and suggest to existing customers that they need an upgrade.

Welcome to every piece of technology ever made. If you want the latest and greatest software performance, you need to buy the latest and greatest hardware.

Being less optimized doesn’t mean you need to upgrade. You may need to charge a little more often but that’s the trade off for running new software on older hardware. You can still run the latest software and don’t need to upgrade.

Apple supports iPhones for a minimum of 6-7 years. The iPhone XR from 2018 is supported for iOS 17, 6 years and 6 major OS updates. It will keep getting iOS patches until they stop doing OS updates on iOS 17 sometime late next year. They support security updates for even longer. They just released a security update for the iPhone 5s, released in 2013, in January this year. Almost 10 years later.

Forced obsolescence is MUCH more common with Android phones. An $1800 Pixel Fold released in June this year, 2023, is only going to get Android updates until June 2026. 3 years for a nearly $2000 device. You will HAVE to buy a new phone if you want new software after that. Which is absolutely ridiculous for Google, who develop Android ffs. An iPhone 12 Pro Max from 2020 will be supported longer than that.

A Galaxy fold, another nearly $2000 device, will only be supported for 4 years before you will HAVE to buy a new phone to get a new version of Android.

Most other Android phone makers, especially the budget ones, only give 1-2 years of support, if that.

And again, OP’s case is anecdotal. I have a base iPhone 12 from the same year, and have been running the iOS 17 betas since the first public one and have seen no drops in battery life. The first beta had a little worse battery life but the following ones fixed it a bit. The last public beta from a little while back is the exact same as the release version. You don’t even get a separate update for the release version if you are still on the beta profile, and if you want to leave the beta once you are on the RC, you just turn off beta updates and you will only get the release versions from then on. If OP is suddenly seeing a huge battery life difference, it isn’t the version they are on because they have been on it longer than they have been seeing the issue. There are things they could look at, which others in the thread have given, and they could look at their battery health. That’s a 3 year old battery and it may just need a replacement depending on how hard they have driven it over the last 3 years. Batteries are consumable parts and need replaced.

I use the OtterBox 2 in 1 stand. https://www.otterbox.com/en-us/2-in-1-charging-station-with-magsafe-white/78-80734.html

Though I don’t remember paying $130 for it.

I got it when the first beta for iOS 17 came out so that I could use standby mode and charge my phone and watch at the same time without having cords everywhere.

It’s not really forced obsolescence unless they intentionally made it perform worse on older phones, or stopped supporting older devices entirely.

The most reasonable explanation is that iOS 17 was designed first and foremost to take advantage of the advances in the 3nm a17 chip, while supporting older chips as a secondary benefit.

It’s not optimized for older devices at launch because it’s designed for the new devices, and will be updated and patched as time goes on. Staying in iOS 16 on an older device until a few minor versions into iOS 17 will likely see better battery life on older devices.

I’ve been on a base 12 for 3 years, battery health at 88%, and iOS 17 is perfectly usable for me. I’ve been on the beta since the first public release. Battery life is a little worse, sure but still perfectly usable with no noticeable performance hits. I’m giving it to my dad when my 15 pro max gets here and it will likely last him another 3 or more years, probably needing a battery replacement in a year or so though.

Guaranteed? No. They’ll have them on display so you could feel them, but likely won’t have many if any to actually buy on launch day. Preorders sold out pretty quickly and started pushing into mid October and early November within a couple of hours of opening up.

I use the MagSafe wallet, and a two in one MagSafe stand with the phone and watch chargers. I love them.

Same here but with a pro max lol. Going from a base 12 to a 15 pro max is going to be a pretty huge jump for me.

Unfortunately mine won’t be here until next week even though I preordered within 5 minutes of it opening lol.

Uh yeah. Cleaning your keyboard is pretty standard.