Is that true? If there's one component that's stood the test of time in my home theater setup, it's been the speakers. I've purchased a ton of speakers in my time and I'm still rocking some 15 year old Kenwood speakers in the living room.
And that's fine, I have some Dick Sequerra MET-11's that have been around for many years before I was born and I only had to repair the tweeters two years ago. However these were high quality expensive speakers when they came out. Cheap drivers were not used. Looking at the HomePod and the processing hardware and their margins, there's no way the drivers they are putting in this thing are any better than what you'd find in a cheapo HTIB system.
The way I see it, these speakers are great for somebody that wants to remain in the Apple ecosystem and has $350 to drop on something that's going to be obsolete and incompatible in a few years. So yeah maybe these drivers won't need to be replaced, but that's only because the software driving them has a shorter life expectancy.
Indeed, as pointed out by the Accidental Tech podcast and others, even if the speakers hold up, what is going to kill it for longevity is the lack of a line-in. It is very unlikely that HomePod's version of AirPlay is going to be supported for more that 10 years. If the device had a line-in, it would still serve as a fine speaker beyond that. But now it is practically useless, even when you are in the Apple ecosystem, once Apple deprecates AirPlay 2.
In the meanwhile, I enjoyed the Altec Lansing speakers that my parents bought in the 70ies for quite some years.
(We were interested in the HomePod, but the lack of a line-in, and low-reparability has made the choice difficult. Added to that, I don't really like that it has so many Mics. 2025's Apple could be 2015's Lenovo, there is no guarantee that they will keep focusing on security & privacy, nor that they will resist government surveillance.)
Why do you assume that? AirPlay has been around for more than 10 years. You can still use a 15 year old AirPort Express with AirTunes the same exact way as when you bought it.
Except that you cannot configure it anymore unless you have an (insecure) Leopard or Snow Leopard machine on the same network [1]. Snow Leopard was released in 2009, the first generation Airport Express was sold 2004-2008 [2]. So Apple is not unwilling to axe support for a product rather quickly.
If they plan to support the latest AirPlay on the HomePod for 10 or 15 years, why not just state this? If you are not doing that, you want to keep the possibility to end support earlier.
The thing that's frustrating about it is that there's no way to use it as a speaker without multiple seconds of latency.
Getting rid of line in would be fine if you could still use it as a speaker with a modern wireless protocol, but this is just a regression in functionality.
> I'm still rocking some 15 year old Kenwood speakers in the living room.
I swiped a record cabinet from the 1960s out of my grandma's basement when she moved into a retirement home. To my surprise, after replacing the needle it still works and sounds great! These are 50 year old speakers stored in terrible conditions, yet they still work.
my senior citizen parents have surround sound speakers and the left rear is blown out. Drives me crazy every time I go there but they don't seem to notice it.
With Google, for example, right now they have a pseudo monopoly in search with 80% world wide market share. With that kind of power, it is very easy to manipulate search results to control what people see which can have a profound affect on society, elections, etc..
Read the class action lawsuit recently filed against Google by James Damore. That at least in part answers this question. Also check out Project Veritas.
> Read the class action lawsuit recently filed against Google.
Depending on your definition of “recently”, I can think of at least three, none of which seem on point (though the UK one about data collection might be arguably connectable to an argument about a need for anti-trust action.)
Well, you sepcified which lawsuit (and it was one of the three recent ones I had in mind), but not how it is in any way germane to a need for anti-trust action.
I actually wouldn't advocate for anti-trust action, I'm just pointing where there is perceived imbalance caused by the dominance these tech companies have.
> I actually wouldn't advocate for anti-trust action
You literally just did by using the case to answer a question about the need for anti-trust action.
> I'm just pointing where there is perceived imbalance caused by the dominance these tech companies have.
But the case doesn't support that; it supports (taking its allegations—many of which are diametrically opposed to those in the other recent employment discrimination class-action against Google—as true for the sake of argument) a claim of an imbalance within Google, but not the existence of an imbalance in society caused by Google (whether through its dominance in some areas or otherwise.)
The law isn't the only way to solve this problem. Just because I agree there is a problem doesn't mean I must support the blunt force of legislation to fix it.
It stands to reason that outward imbalance begins with inward imbalance and pointing to bias within the company culture is relevant when it comes to validating why there might be an outward imbalance in how their products are run.
Again, I'm responding to someone asking "what needs balance". If you don't agree with me it might be more useful to provide a more compelling opinion instead of picking my words apart.
> If you're trying to buy a coffee, don't use BTC.
Isn't this sorta what we were hoping to do one day? A proper digital cash replacement? This Bitcoin scalability problem seems like a much bigger deal than most seem to realize. And it's only getting worse.
to pay coffee, you can use any other altcoins, monero, dash, ether has low transcation fees etc. We're past the idea of one crypto rules them all and going to a world where each coin rules in one area. Bitcoin as a store of value, ether for dapps, monero for secure/private transactions, ripple or stellar for international banking etc.
If your vision of the future is individuals carrying a balance of dozens of cryptocurrencies in order to do business, then congratulations: you have managed to reinvent barter, with cryptography as sheer overhead.
Except in this case (cellular service), there is at least some competition. And FaceTime isn't particularly a good example, as AT&T reversed their policy without Net Neutrality rules in place. Competition, at least in this one example, worked.
AT&T reversed their policy without Net Neutrality rules in place
After official complaints lodged with the FCC. Also, this was during the time period of the 2010 open internet order[0] and the 2014 court case[1], where ISPs and the FCC thought that the FCC had the authority to enforce "no blocking" violations.
So, saying "without Net Neutrality rules in place" is incorrect.
Sure. And the "no blocking" rule was eventually struck down. My point is there were no existing laws that would have forced AT&T to reverse their decision.
Not necessarily. They faced regulatory issues with some states.
The carriers deployed proxy infrastructure to inspect and control traffic and were definately experimenting with limiting apps deemed disruptive in the 2013-2014 timeframe. If you had an app that generated lots of small packets in a short period of time, you’d run into it on some networks.
And that's exactly how salary negotiations work now -- the applicant can name an expected salary, and the employer can respond accordingly. The only thing that's changed is that what you've been paid in the past doesn't have to be a part of that discussion.
Is this actually happening? After a good interview, qualified employees are being turned away by companies in the later stages of the interview/employment process, simply due to candidates refusing to divulge their current salary? I mean, I'm sure it _has_ happened, not sure if that's a strong argument though.
Impossible to know, because employers are not required to share the reason for dropping candidates from consideration. Candidates would need to speculate about the real reason, but I can tell you with pretty high certainty that it has happened to me at least once.
I'm sorry if that may have happened to you. In my experience, this has never happened and, if anything, I was given a substantial bump above the number I gave as a current salary. I guess one anecdote vs. another. I dunno, we'll hopefully see whether or not this actually achieves its intended goals or not.
You've made a lot of assumptions and came to a conclusion based on it. Does it send that data to Google for processing? Or does it happen locally on device. That's a big difference.
I'm not disagreeing, but "systems" is the reason I've often heard in this discussion without ANY real hard data expanding on what these systems precisely are and how they aren't a reflection merely of, let's say, biology. All I see generally when referring to "systems" are anecdotes and high-level conclusions based purely on personal experiences. None of which helps further the discussion. If you can find these systems, prove them, I'll be right there with ya tearing them down.
Then it should be easy to enumerate the issues, and offer some ideas for solutions. As someone who follows this issue quite closely, I've seen neither.
This entire thread illustrates the confusion – and that there is absolutely no consensus that even an issue exists in the first place.
Sure, and as someone who owns an older model, this feature (as I'm learning about it today) actually sounds compelling for my particular use case. But I also put covers/tape over my webcams. So sure, privacy concerns are all relative.
However, in this case, I still cannot understand all the negativity still being directed toward iRobot. We know data they're collecting, we know why they're collecting it, and uploading mapping data is opt-in. If any of these things concerns you, can you just not buy it and move on?
If my ranting concerns you, can you just not ignore it and move on? I just can't understand the negativity...
More seriously, I see value in iRobot and others hearing loud noise about how stuff like this is not OK to many of us.
- "We" may know this, but I doubt there's a "we also sell your data" sticker on the box, and lots of other people don't.
- If people don't push back, manufacturers will hear that this is acceptable. I'd like this to not be acceptable.
- iRobot may have floated this in order to find out what people thought, but many other companies are much less scrupulous. They need to hear loud and clear that this is not acceptable.
- If loud outcries happen each time some company tries to normalize data grabs like this, they won't be normalized. That's a world I'd like to live in, so I'll keep being loud, thanks.
Because this 404 page was probably made on a Friday afternoon while fundamental issues inherent with their core framework choices takes longer to fix. Just a guess.
This is basic supply/demand. We have an increase in demand with the supply of doctors apparently staying stagnant. I think that's the point of this particular thread – not necessarily the billing issue.
Is that true? If there's one component that's stood the test of time in my home theater setup, it's been the speakers. I've purchased a ton of speakers in my time and I'm still rocking some 15 year old Kenwood speakers in the living room.