If it’s a machine used for business: corporate espionage.

Yes, there are massive advantages. It’s basically what makes unified memory possible on modern Macs. Especially with all the interest in AI nowadays, you really don’t want a machine with a discrete GPU/VRAM, a discrete NPU, etc.

Take for example a modern high-end PC with an RTX 4090. Those only have 24GB VRAM and that VRAM is only accessible through the (relatively slow) PCIe bus. AI models can get really big, and 24GB can be too little for the bigger models. You can spec an M2 Ultra with 192GB RAM and almost all of it is accessible by the GPU directly. Even better, the GPU can access that without any need for copying data back and forth over the PCIe bus, so literally 0 overhead.

The advantages of this multiply when you have more dedicated silicon. For example: if you have an NPU, that can use the same memory pool and access the same shared data as the CPU and GPU with no overhead. The M series also have dedicated video encoder/decoder hardware, which again can access the unified memory with zero overhead.

For example: you could have an application that replaces the background on a video using AI. It takes a video, decompresses it using the video decoder , the decompressed video frames are immediately available to all other components. The GPU can then be used to pre-process the frames, the NPU can use the processed frames as input to some AI model and generate a new frame and the video encoder can immediately access that result and compress it into a new video file.

The overhead of just copying data for such an operation on a system with non-unified memory would be huge. That’s why I think that the AI revolution is going to be one of the driving factors in killing systems with non-unified memory architectures, at least for end-user devices.

To add to this: Apple is actively working with Google and the GSMA to add E2EE to the RCS standard. Apple can no do this on their own, as RCS is a standard set by the GSMA. They need to go through the entire slow and bureaucratic process to add a feature to RCS, so while this will appear eventually I wouldn’t hold my breath.

This also shows exactly why something like RCS cannot ever offer anything other than the bare basic messaging functionality. You cannot innovate on RCS because every change needs to go through a committee who’s all want to have a say in it and before you know it you’re spending years in committee meetings to add a single feature.

Meanwhile, Apple decides they want to add a feature to iMessage, they roll it out in the next iOS update and it’s available to billions of users pretty much overnight.

Encryption is supposed to come when the working group has aligned.

I wouldn’t hold my breath.

The whole RCS thing is a Bad Idea™ . It’s a standard by the GSM Association, which consists of over 1150 members (750 operators and 400 other companies). Getting all these companies to align will take forever.

To illustrate: the RCS initiative was started in 2007 and the steering committee was formed in early 2008. The first version of the Universal Profile, that would enable interoperability between different operators and networks was released in 2016. It took 8 f-ing years to come up with an interoperable messaging standard to replace SMS. It was intended to be implemented by operators, but since hardly any operator did Google had to run their own service, bypassing the network operators, just to get it off the ground. Operators are now slowly beginning to support it.

If Apple decides to add a feature to iMessage, they implement the feature, roll out an update to their servers and release it to a billion users in the next iOS update. If they want to add a feature to RCS, they first have to discuss it in the committee until they agree on a solution, this alone takes forever. Then every player needs to update their software to add support. This means potentially 750 operators who need to update their shit, and that is after their software suppliers add support for it. In the mean time, the new feature will work for some users when they communicate with some other users, depending on which phone and operator each party has. Rinse and repeat for every new feature you want to add.

This means RCS will at best only ever be a very basic messaging service. It’ll be an improvement over SMS and MMS, but that’s not saying much. It will be in no way a threat to Apple’s dominance in messaging.

Exactly. These sanctions take some time to be felt. Russia is also very selective in what economic numbers it publishes. They are also artificially keeping up the exchange rate of the ruble.

These are all things that you can only keep doing for so long and it makes the crash afterwards even worse. Basically: they can pretend everything is all-right in the short term, but they have to screw themselves over in the long term to do so.

Russian oil\gas\etc revenues have grown.

Is that why Gazprom posted its first annual loss in 20 years? a loss of $6.9 billion. Because revenues have grown so much?

Dude, you’re an idiot.

Yes, you would be an idiot for buying a machine worth thousands of euros and not keeping the invoice. That’s completely unrelated to activation lock.

It you’re a business then it’s double stupid not to keep invoices.

And it shouldn’t be possible for an employee to render thousands of dollars worth of company hardware useless trash ready for the landfill.

And it isn’t. Like I said before: Apple will remove the activation lock for the owner of the device. Just provide them proof of purchase.

You can request the unlock here

It’s not really about the hardware, is it?

It’s about everything, that’s the point

The option you mentioned won’t enable an alternative app store, it won’t enable access to android app emulators

I don’t see how that would help in any way to secure the device if you don’t trust Apple.

The level of trust iPhone users give to appeal is wildly higher that what android users that tweak their phones give the manufacturers.

You either trust a company or you don’t. There is no grey area. If you don’t control the whole thing, you don’t control anything at all. A custom ROM on your Android device is not going to do anything to prevent a firmware or hardware level backdoor. Your custom ROM doesn’t improve security, on the contrary. If you unlock the bootloader you break the chain of trust and all bets are off.

I wasn’t presented with a dialogue that said “login to establish device ownership”.

There is an entire screen in the initial setup that explains that the machine is added to your Find My and what that means. You probably just clicked ‘continue’ without reading.

Also, you don’t have to do anything inconvenient. It’s not your laptop so not your problem. The owner can have activation lock removed if they provide proof of ownership to Apple.

Nothing is secure about a system designed so poorly you have to give out your password. That should never be needed.

You didn’t have to give out your password, in fact you never should. If the machine remains locked, that’s not your problem. Your IT department should have created an admin account on the machine for IT before handing it over to you to avoid this scenario. The IT departments incompetence is not your problem.

If you wanted to unlock it as a courtesy, then they should have offered to send the laptop to you so you could unlock it. You never ever give anyone your password, and IT should know better than to ask for it.

If someone is holding a family member at gunpoint and threatening to kill them if you don’t give up your password; you do NOT give up your password. If an evil mastermind is about to destroy the world, and it can only be saved by you telling your password to another person. You do NOT give your password. There is no valid reason to ever give your password to anyone.

The issue here is that while baseline apple is more secure than baseline android, a user with knowledge or a guide can improve the android security by a lot, whereas the apple baseline is also the ceiling.

Not true. iPhone can be locked down much more than it is out of the box, and it’s as simple as changing one setting. Lockdown mode, it significantly tightens down security of iOS at the cost of some convenience. It is not recommended for the average user, only if you expect to be targeted by highly sophisticated attackers.

There’s stuff you can do with iPhones but if you don’t trust apple, you are kind of fucked.

That is always the case. If you don’t trust the company that made the hardware, there is nothing you can do. Unless you’ve got your own chip fab, there is always a level of trust involved.

It’s the “we have Apple Music” at home of streaming services.

Basically: more expensive, shitty UI, no lossless or high-res audio. Oh, and they pay the least to artists of all streaming services.

Different incentives. Apple makes privacy a selling point, and I’m the one paying. Who’s paying for Chrome and Firefox?

Switching from Chrome to Firefox is like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

I’ll stick with Safari thank you very much. I don’t trust Firefox any more than I do Chrome. They have too much of a history of shady stuff.

DVD? What’s next, a post on how to copy VHS tapes?

A disposable rocket at $4 billion dollars a pop, if not more. They built one rocket, they may build a second and maybe even a third. Eventually.

SpaceX is not building a rocket, they are building a rocket factory. A factory that will mass-produce fully reusable rockets.

A ‘more than usable’ machine that doesn’t even support more than 32GB RAM? That’s not a serious machine, that’s a toy.