Apple's gross profits for ‘22/’23 were $166.8BN. As a parent who is lucky enough that stuff like this won't effect my family, I can't help but think about those who are not so lucky. Right now, the vast majority of Apple TV subscribers are probably worrying about feeding their kids, paying the rent and keeping warm while trying to keep their kids happy over the holidays. Then along comes an Apple exec who think's he's a pr genius, and hikes the subscription price by 28%. What a foul message to send to an esimated 25 million families for the holidays. Ok "so what, its only £2" and "its only Apple TV we've still got regular tv". But its not "only" a number or "just Apple TV" when people are being bled-dry by banks hiking interest rates, landlords increasing rents and not maintaining their properties, credit card bills charging 90% apr, and rampant inflation devaluing whatever you've got in your pocket/bank account. For a lot of people, its yet another straw on the camels back, and they're going to have a knee-jerk reaction and cancel their subscription. The *people* that comprise major corporates like Apple must think about this kind of thing, and make it a personal rule to excercise actual social responsibility, not just open a CSR department and point to it when they feel criticsed. They should know that its not just hard to get new customers, it's harder still to get ex-customers back. Yep its a rant, but this is happening all over the place, and Apple TV just walked into my rant-sight waving their price hike at me.
Posts by Sanlorenzo
11 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2014
Apple jacks prices to juice profits because $19.3B a quarter isn't enough
Boris celebrates taking back control of Brexit Britain's immigration – with unlimited immigration program
Confident blustering...
Countries don't bluster, Johnson's do, especially the one with PF who's friend calls him 'Al' or 'Alex'. Were it not so utterly immoral and corrupt, it would be funny that a man who can't stop lying then spends our money on employing a professional liar to help him get elected.
Microsoft's Blue Screen of Death dead in latest Windows 10 preview
Inside our three-month effort to attend Apple's iPhone 7 launch party
Apple blacklist
Sadly no matter how witty and honest your writing is, I suspect we all find that most large concerns are blindly suffering from a culture of irresponsibility, created by "plugging people in" to systems instead of careers, and made famous in the UK by David Walliams and Mat Lucas. This effectively turns an organisation into corporate moron. In your case the truth is more pointed and interesting, as you have so entertainingly demonstrated; though the synthetic arrogance created by Apples internal systems is apparent, as is the frustration of the Apple people you correspond with. Keep up the good work, we all look forwards to reading your narrative as we watch as the corporate moron heap itself, hopefully prior to waking-up and reinventing itself, post-Jobs.
Flying Spaghetti Monster is not God, rules mortal judge
This judgment is irrational, illogical and unreasonable.
Since there exists no proof, nor even the slightest evidence of cause and effect, that would even ever-so-tenuously support the stories comprising any religious text that I know of, then, if this ruling is to be held as rational, logical and reasonable, it must also be held that all other religions, being "widely held beliefs", are in reality no different than pastafarianism, or jedi knights etc.. The idea that this religion was created by someone in order to parody other religions is not germain, because no statement to this effect is within the texts of the religion itself. So it seem to me that by extension, if it is widely held as acceptable for a judge to rule in this irrational, illogical and unreasonable way, then it is clear that something is very wrong with the legal system that facilitates his/her behaviour. In summary, it's either turtles all the way down, or it isn't.
Why Microsoft yanked its latest Windows 10 update download: It hijacked privacy settings
If integrity is everything, then what price software developers?
When will MS begin behaving as though they actually care about their customers? An O/S has one task; to support the applications built upon it in the most secure, efficient and reliable way possible. By now MS should be purveyors of the fastest most reliable O/S in the world, thereby also making it the most cost effective choice. Instead they chose to constantly add more and more annoying useless, fascile and fatuous bling to Windows, killing its performance and efficiency and thereby increasing cost of ownership, reducing user productivity and destroying the reputation that the MS, the O/S provider - is trying to build. How naive can these people be? Is the average age of employees at MS just 12? By all means make and sell applications, the Office suite is good, (it would be great if it too weren't also bloated with the same kind of bling that began with W8). For years we have resisted Linux and Apple because of the applications MS sell; for us that principally means Office but also Visio and many others. However W8/10 is the straw that will push us into Linux once W7 has lost all reasonable levels of support. Apple is no option as it is clearly headed down the MS path too. So wake up MS before you finally commit commercial suicide, suffocating at the hands of all the garbage you've been choking your O/S with. I'd end by saying "rant over", but I mean it.
RIP Sir Terry Pratchett: Discworld author finally gets to meet DEATH
Virgin Media to splurge BEELLIONS on UK network infrastructure expansion
Re: Wonder
Wish I was with VM. BT screwed up my 1.8Mbps "broadband" about 2 years ago, when they began "updating" the local infrastructure - I suffered 5 to 10 outages a week until last Christmas, when the outages ceased. However the speed dropped to about 700Kbps where it has stayed. Since 2012 they have been telling me that I will get infinity in a couple of months, so I have been patient. Bad move that. Last visit from a BT engineer improved nothing, but he did say "I don't think you will ever get infinity here, it just won't work over the distance" [I am from the cab]. The cabinet I refer to is about 1.5km up the road. However there is another fully equipped cab about 650m down the same road, but when I told this to BT Openreach, they simply said "service can't be delivered to me from that one". I no longer complain as I am now thoroughly demoralised by BT, who I now consider to be institutionally moronic, and not a company anyone should have to deal with. I'd be happy with your 1.5Mbps from VM but of course they aren't in our street.
Pull up the Windows 10 duvet and pretend Win8 and Vista were BAD DREAMS
MS - ditch the dogma and succumb to reason,logic and customer opinion.
Ever since NT I have been wondering why commercial reason and engineering logic seems to have eluded those who make the ultimate decisions concerned the development and sale of new products at MS. This especially as I have met many of them (at least from that era). People have liked and still do like the Windows interface partly because its familiar to them and partly because they have had to in the past, and are loath to invest the time and money in learning anew. But the GUI look and feel, and the underlying system structure are almost entirely different issues. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that "screens sell machines" (a phrase I first heard in the 1970s from a salesman at Data General Corp when referring to DG's Star-Trek inspired Dasher VDU with blue phosphor), the ability of the system to cope with matters like efficient thread/task scheduling,coping with errant user code, and general installation and maintenance work-flows are critical matters that determine the actual cost of ownership of a desktop, as well as shaping the user experience. So I ask Microsoft, "since you have such vast resources at your disposal, why haven't you written a new system in the mold of unix? You know by now that in the real world, the architectural differences between unix style and NT by Vax-VMS style have been settled strongly in favour of unix, and yet you dogmatically ignore the facts as experienced by the techies in every major MS site, corporate, gov, ngo et al. Imagine the ecstasy and goodwill you would create by providing your users with an ultra-fast and responsive interface on legacy hardware. Imagine how happy users would be to see no more "oops sorry its broken" dialogs and worse! True, my experience is a little out of date; and in my idle moments I have been wondering if Win10 will finally be a unix style system with a warm and cosy Win7 style GUI on top, bundled with a new Office suite and a vmc for legacy Windows apps.......? Is MS big enough to hold its' head up and make the change? If MS can't stomach the idea of a complete change, how about a choice for your customers; a unix based Windows and or a 'traditional' Windows? Of course, that would be letting your customers make the change for you.....and who said they were always right?
Hawking: Higgs boson in a BIG particle punisher could DESTROY UNIVERSE
Higgs universe slayer...
Given that we affirm ideas about the age of the universe and the ubiquity of intelligent life, then this should already have happened somewhere. Alternatively the structure of the universe is such that by the time we are able to build such a big accellerator, then we (all sentient life) are (will have become) wise enough to know that its use would/would not destroy everything. If the latter is true then we can deduce what will happen to everything (how all things evolve) in our universe. If not then we should go to the pub and order 6 pints of bitter, some peanuts and a towel right now.
Job for IT generalist ...
Re: Job for IT generalist ...
Were I still running an ISP I would be interviewing to find someone with your skills and outlook to run support services. Good generalists are rare and have the potential to become hugely valuable assetts to any business if they are prepared to train in customer facing roles. Ultimately the best course may be to start your own business, but be prepared for this to fail (not you, the business), at least once before you succeed. To some extent being a generalist qualifies you as a team builder, and with a little training and experience, a team leader (skills that is, not titular roles). You have built a good foundation on which to build a career, corporate or startup, so don't undervalue it; but also be prepared to invest; there are many start ups that would benefit from your skills, but don't have the cashflow to support your salary.
Best of luck
T
Biting the hand that feeds IT
