> The Steiners were bombarded with anonymous material including deliveries of live cockroaches and a bloody pig mask. They were threatened online. Much of the material they were sent, including a funeral wreath and a book on surviving the loss of a spouse, suggested imminent death. The security team was on the verge of breaking into the Steiners’ garage to put a tracker on their car when the plot was derailed.
I guess this is why the settlement is so large. These actions are beyond the pale.
So you have two, one for you and one for your wife? What is it like watching a movie next to someone, with both of you wearing headsets?
I would have been much more likely to get one when I was unmarried, but now with a family it greatly reduces my use cases since I don't watch content alone (except when doing the dishes, when I am largely focused on the real world task in front of me).
Yes, my wife took the M2 version when I upgraded to the M5. We find it pretty great, and it really is not much different from having a huge personal theater. The headsets appear to display the content in perfect sync. When sharing content with someone in the same room, it does not render a persona or avatar as it does when using FaceTime (where users appear as floating heads and hands).
As far as I know, she only uses it for movies and YouTube. I have demoed mine a few times, but I honestly do not like doing it much because it feels pretty gross to share something that sits on my face all day.
There weren't a lot of details regarding rollout. Does clearing this one hurdle allow them to roll out across the US? I would think that states or local governments might have rules that could prevent this. For example, there are safety concerns, noise concerns, and privacy concerns. And for those thinking about the long run, there are employment concerns, as this will undoubtedly put some people out of work.
> Klarna spokesperson Clare Nordstrom tells The Verge that if customers miss three payments in a row, the company will “terminate the lease agreement and the customer will need to pay the full outstanding balance.”
Considering this is the outcome they landed on, I wonder what negotiations led to the inclusion of this code in iOS27.
I used to listen to and read NPR. Since about 2015 they've been slipping, and at an increasing rate. After submitting several corrections, none of which were heeded, I have stopped taking them seriously. An outlet that does not correct clear-cut falsehoods is peddling a narrative, not reporting news.
I'd be cautious describing market sell offs as good news for anyone since the fall out could be pretty bad (that's a "worst case" scenario, so far nothing like that)
There's some winners though, people dumping AI stocks are mostly buying stocks elsewhere, Apple being an obvious winner[0].
I wasn't referring to the purely financial angle. I meant that whatever news is driving this apparent valuation change could have impacts on other companies (like ones that are having to cope with the chip shortages).
Note that they already do this if you buy a mac on an Apple Card, and they even go so far as to link your AppleID that you may have had for decades. I bought a new mac last year and signed up for the 0% Apple Card financing and if I'd have known about this little bit of leverage they use, I would have created a brand new AppleID to partition it off.
> If the contract is no longer in good standing, Apple’s system services can place the iPhone in “Restricted Mode,” which blocks access to most apps until the payment or contract issue is resolved, while keeping a small set of apps available.
> You know those financially irresponsible people don’t need this program, right? They would have used a credit card to buy it with much worse terms
I thought of this also. The question is whether they will now spend even more on the phone since they won't be paying as much in interest. If so, it's savvy of Apple to suck up that difference instead of letting it go to credit card companies.
Presumably Klarna's share is lower because Apple is rumored to be able to nerf these devices if a series of payments are missed. [1]
> So the goal of the program is the same as every other similar one - they want to turn a one-time device purchase into a perpetual monthly revenue stream, while keeping ownership of the asset at the end.
Yep, which reduces the need to make new devices notably better than old ones, since you'll always have a steady stream of customers coming off their leases.
That gets it backwards. They're not doing this because they want to make devices that are less compelling purchases, but they are aware that their coming pipeline will in general not as be compelling to potential upgraders as in the past. This is largely because the category has matured, and people don't feel the need to upgrade nearly as often as 5-10 years ago.
By getting people to be default-subscribers rather than purchasers who may decide to upgrade, they improve their odds of keeping a larger chunk of their hardware revenue stream.
I remember seeing the original NYT article and thinking of some of the same critiques that this piece raises.
In particular, the NYT authors don't consider that "jobs that can be remote" tend to have different demographics (more highly educated, more female, more dem-leaning) than jobs that cannot be remote. All of these traits correlate with use of counseling, anti-depressants, etc.
So it's entirely possible that the rise in unhappiness among "remotable" workers is an artifact of who is more likely to have those jobs, and the underlying tendencies of those populations.
I guess this is why the settlement is so large. These actions are beyond the pale.
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