That's a reasonable take - Apple had a gun to their head regarding tarriffs and exposure to China, but I'd still love to know how Steve would have played the same hand.
I have worked with people in their mid 30s who had an utter disgust for computers. I was “the guy who knew about computers but was more approachable than the IT guy” at a large office. Even though some people hate doing this kind of work, I always enjoyed it. Sometimes, people would hang around my desk first thing in the morning to get help with IT issues.
I made contacts with the executive team when I had to sign them up for their ChatGPT accounts and set up their VPNs (which often just involved pressing a button). They saw a YouTube ad about how a VPN kept them safe, and they paid for a year in advance...
People of all ages can have a hard time dealing with technology. And to be honest, the IT ecosystem has become adversarial. About a decade ago, installing antivirus software would eliminate many risk factors. But these days, with sponsored content and advertisements, there are so many ways people can mess up their systems.
I am also 54 years old, and I've grown up with every single user interface conceivable in a computer or device.
However, though that gives me an advantage in knowledge of how the systems work, I don't think I'm very good at navigating modern user interfaces.
My hypothesis goes like this: the people who are writing graphical user interfaces today are video gamers. They were playing twitch games and first person shooters until they got hired to program a user interface. The people who write them, and the people who use them, think nothing of split second reaction times and hand-eye coordination in order to navigate a user interface.
This is a very very bad approach. You should not need reaction times to navigate a user interface of an app that is used for business or what have you. The web is full of dynamic flows and ever-changing presentation. This is very detrimental to our mental health.
I believe that it's the inconsistent presentation of the interface and the ever-changing buttons and the ever updating methods of interacting that are so detrimental. It can really hurt someone who is on the edge of dementia or mental issues. Even the sanest people must have trouble navigating these things.
Every office program and every social media app has settings and configuration more complex than flying a 747. We should not need a pilot certification just to get through these settings. The settings multiply quite deliberately, so that they confuse and beguile the user and get us to give up! If the settings panel presents 1000 settings then we are far more likely to just leave them alone then try and manage them all. Especially when they are ephemeral and basically change themselves upon every update!
The problem is not with elderly people or with their mental status. It is with the very poor presentation and the video games that now rule our everyday life. Even a point of sale or a public computer kiosk is presenting these issues. There is something very wrong with that.
Looking forward to seeing solid state batteries for aviation, but the scary part is that they get heavier when they discharge as oxygen from the air turns into solid oxide.
Isn't that good for aviation? Makes it relatively less expensive to carry reserve energy you don't expect to use, don't have to pay the weight cost during takeoff when weight costs the most energy because you just charged the battery and once you're at cruising speed more weight is just neutral momentum.
Probably the least convenient thing would be if you had to land and take off again somewhere without recharging.
The issue is maximum take off weight. Presumably the discharged battery weight would be the one you use in the pre-flight MTOW calculations, because the worse case scenario is one where you're landing an almost discharged battery and have to go around.
100%. We have this thing where every 10 years or so we collectively admit that if we started nuclear 10 years ago it would be fine, but we need it now, so it should remain illegal because its too expensive. Its some of the most insane doublethink in human politics.
And we are swimming in Uranium and water for cooling, and we are tectonically stable.
And every single argument is a weird either or scenario. Like some people want Gas. JUST Gas. Some people want Solar and Wind. JUST Solar and Wind.
Nuclear power can also fill batteries. Can also fill pumped hydro storage. Ditto Gas. Nuke and Gas are good for restarting a grid when theres a catastrophe, see Spain.
Give engineers more tools, not less. Its infuriating.
Doubly so when you consider their enormous reserves of bauxite, iron ore, and met coal.
They could have set up green steel and aluminum industries supplying the world. Instead they ship millions of tons of unprocessed ore and thermal coal to east asia where it's processed with CO2 intensive energy, and then the metals are shipped back in the form of automobiles and construction materials.
Yea, micro reactors sound like a great idea for pollution control. But, given how many ships get seized every year trying to fake inspections and a dozen other things- the only way this works out is a modern version of Clipper ships (with less sinkings). Large premiums for getting your cargo across the ocean faster.
How much faster, is for somebody more knowledgeable than me to answer.
And now politics comes into play: these ships would have to not only have significant permanent armament, but given significant latitude to use lethal force.
I suspect this unawareness of language use is universal. When I lived in the UK in the early 90's, people would discuss the weather in celcius when it was cold and fahrenheit when it was warm with seemingly no idea that they'd switched.
Easy transfers between different people's iThings with Airdrop. I got my CompSci degree over 30 years ago and yet my 74yo aunt taught me this - the shame!
One other benefit, if it happens to matter to you, is that Airdropped files like photos or videos retain their original quality as opposed to taking a slight hit to quality when being transferred via text or email.
Also good to know is that if you crop a picture in your iOS photos app and then airdrop it to someone, they can undo the crop in their photos app. It is a non-obviously non-destructive operation.
I am not sure as I mostly use android. Perhaps there is an app to help with that. On android, I use an app called Imagepipe[0] as the default app for sharing/opening images. It crops images destructively and removes exif information.
Make sure you select the “All Photos Data” in the Options, right at the top showing the selection in the share sheet. This has to be, somewhat annoyingly, done each time one Airdrops photos/videos.
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