Article note: This looks like a surprisingly friendly reversal, but I feel like there is a catch.
Setting up a limited program to stall regulatory action?
Obscenely overpriced parts?
Enlarge/ The back of the iPhone 13. (credit: Samuel Axon)
Apple will begin selling repair kits to consumers who want to perform some essential repairs on their iPhones themselves. Titled Self Service Repair, the program will first be available in the United States starting early next year, with more regions gaining access throughout 2022.
At first, the program will apply exclusively to iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 devices, but it will "soon" apply to Macs with M1 chips as well. A news release from Apple about the program says that it's intended to allow "customers who are comfortable with completing their own repairs" access to the parts and support they need, but that it believes going to an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP), independent repair provider, or Apple Store will still be the best choice for most users.
But for those who do want to repair their phones or laptops themselves, Apple describes the process thusly:
Article note: I'd like to see some more bands put under a regulatory situation similar to the SRD rules some of the ISM Bands allow unlicensed use under (that's the familiar 902-928Mhz, 2.4-2.5Ghz, and 5.725-5.875 GHz bands and rules that basically all useful modern consumer RF devices work in).
Especially some VHF/UHF bands (like the 13cm allocation just below the 2.4Ghz range used for WiFi/Bluetooth/Etc.) that would be give existing applications more legroom, but also some longer and shorter stuff to see what kind of fun things consumer devices can do with modern radios and encodings in those.
I can hear Elmers and commercial operators (see:C-Band politicking during the 5G rollout over the last few years) and such shrieking in the distance already.
Europe is trying some slightly-tighter-reg unlicensed use of 863-870 MHz band for LPWAN applications for the last several years that seem like a good model.
Article note: Oh please oh Please oh Please.
Please don't be unenforced "illegal" like so many scams, but actually come after fuckers with meaningful fines for their roach-motel subscription systems.
Article note: SA was never a community that I had any interest in, but it sure did have a lot of influence, and created some memorable content.
I do miss the era of people spinning and managing internet communities, it's all soulless corporate overlords and actual Nazis now.
Richard Kyanka, better-known as Lowtax, died yesterday at 45. Kyanka was the founder and longtime operator of Something Awful, the sprawling web forum from which much web culture emerged. The news was announced there in a thread that quickly grew to hundreds of pages of bullshit before being summarily locked by admins—the perfect tribute. — Read the rest
Article note: PAM is truly a horror, it's one of those things you are faintly aware is in your system, and every additional detail you know about it makes you more averse to seeing more.
The HN comments from the well-meaning people who were involved in its creation are an interesting read.
Article note: I'm always mystified by the love for the modern large Apple Trackpads.
I even like touchpads. Part of what I like is that I don't want to have to move my wrist to use them, and looking at the wear patterns on most people's macbooks, neither do they, the rest of the area is just for gimmicks and palm detection failure. I like physical feedback - not just to confirm that the software has decided I meant to click, but to reference my finger against - from real buttons.
The nicest touchpad I've used in years is the one on my Precision 7450. Three real hardware buttons with good tactile switches under them. Just a little bigger than I can traverse with fingers alone. Centered on the spacebar.
Article note: Imagine that, machines which are just (cheap, rugged) dumb terminals to access big organization-run compute environments had a spike in demand during the pandemic-induced remote schooling boom and then it crashed.
Although PCs are still selling at a greater volume than before the COVID-19 pandemic, demand is starting to drop. In Q3 2021, shipments of laptops, desktops, and tablets dropped 2 percent compared to Q3 2020, according to numbers that researcher Canalys shared on Monday. Interest in Chromebooks dropped the most, with a reported decline as high as 36.9 percent. Demand for tablets also fell, showing a 15 percent year-on-year decline, according to Canalys.
Chromebooks’ “massive downturn”
Both Canalys and the IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker shared Q3 numbers for Chromebooks and tablets on Monday. Canalys said 5.8 million Chromebooks shipped globally during this time, while the IDC said the number was 6.5 million. Both pointed to a huge decline compared to Q3 2020. Canalys reported the drop at 36.9 percent, and IDC pegged it at 29.8 percent.
Canalys said that Q3 Chromebook sales took a "major downturn" as the education markets in the US, Japan, and elsewhere became saturated. Demand lessened as government programs supporting remote learning went away, the research group said. After reaching a high of 18 percent market share since the start of 2020, Chromebooks reportedly represented just 9 percent of laptop shipments in Q3 2021.
I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.
