SEPA is not crap. It's actually pretty awesome, considering that you can instantly transfer money between 5000+ banks in 30+ countries, with practically zero fees.
The UX of SEPA is lacking in comparison to other modern payment systems for sure. I'm confident though, that it will improve soon. Wero [1] seems like a decent start and appears to be gaining traction lately. It's basically a layer on top of SEPA Instant payment with extra features and a decent app based UI/UX.
Where in Europe are you getting charged that much?
Usually SEPA payments are completely free for consumers. And I believe there’s a EU-mandated fee cap which is much less than 2.50 €. But if you have a business account, things are different.
That is pretty expensive, I agree. I pay zero additional fees when using my private account. For my business account I'm charged ~30 Cents flat per transaction. I know that there are banks offering better terms, but I'm too lazy to switch for just a couple of Euros in savings.
In austria QR codes for sharing payment info are getting popular. Many invoices have a QR code on them. You can then use your banking app to pay the invoice.
Banking apps can also generate a QR code for receiving payments.
They are not quite as seamless as tap-to-pay, but they work with pretty much every bank in the Austria, which is neat.
I live in a house next to a moderately busy street with car traffic and also some public transport (bus lines). I noticed that the windows (and frames) facing the street get dirty much faster than the windows facing the garden. The dirt on the street side is also pretty gross, sticky and hard to clean. It's just an anecdotal observation, but I could not come up with a better explanation so far.
I had a balcony overlooking a highway in Toronto once, and it got super grimy as well. I think all the different kinds of car emissions combine into some sort of super bad tarry crap that then collects every kind of passing dust particle.
I was wondering recently if there are any downsides of using MacPorts and homebrew for different packages on the same system. Homebrew excels at keeping all my single binary CLI tools up to date, but I don't particularly like how it forces me to upgrade more complex software packages like MySQL or FFmpeg constantly.
There is also the issue, that my iMac is stuck on Ventura, and soon won't be supported by homebrew anymore.
The approach of Mac ports and Homebrew have been the complete opposite when Homebrew came into existence.
Mac ports tried to make packages compatible with whatever Apple shipped, aka their own twists on Perl, python, OpenSSL etc.
While Homebrew tried to make macOS compatible with whatever existed out there.
As a developer Homebrew gave you a more up to date and fully functional experience.
Can’t tell you how it is today since Apple removed all interpreters and such from macOS.
I highly doubt it, Apple has not charged for Mac for 10 years.
They have the profits from hardware and the upgrade cycle as new versions drop old hardware. I imagine if anything we will see a program like the iPhone upgrade program come to Mac. That would better fit their existing workflow anyways.
Apple is almost a subscription service. You just pay in huge installments once every 2-5 years, by replacing the entire device when the battery degrades or performance is starting to feel underwhelming.
I'm looking at replacing my MacBook, but it's from 2015. I think 2-5 years is a bit of an overstatement. PC laptops I've owned in the past have fared much worse over the same time period.
The lower end of the spectrum is for phones, going through daily charge/discharge cycles.
While they do a lot of things very well, desiging batteries, storage, and keyboards to be practically non-replaceable and denying any upgradeability (to upsell ludicrously overpriced storage at the initial purchase) is setting an upper limit on how long the device will remain useful for.
> The lower end of the spectrum is for phones, going through daily charge/discharge cycles.
With iPhones you can replace the battery for a small fraction of the cost of a new phone. Plenty of people are using 5+ year old phones without doing so, it really depends on how much time you spend on the device per day and if you’re recharging mid day. Deep discharges drastically shorten lifespan, but again just get a new battery.
The true cost of replacing an iPhone battery isn't the quoted dollar amount.
It's the cost of being without your phone for an indeterminate period of time if you have to ship it to Apple for the battery replacement due to not living near an Apple Store.
I have an iPhone X. When the battery degraded, I sent it in, the battery and the speaker is replaced, the latter free of charge. I even didn't know that my speaker was damaged to begin with.
The service rep said that newer batteries last longer because they're newer tech (I laughed internally), but it's going strong for 4 (5?) years now, and it's at 83%, so I had to eat my hat about not believing her.
Do you trust the quoted capacity figures, though? Or are they there to convince customers that everything's fine, the battery hasn't degraded, it's just software updates and usage patterns that have affected battery life?
Got an almost 4yr old 12 Pro that claims 85%, but doesn't feel like it's holding that much charge, feels like it's due a replacement. Would have done it myself if it was an easy screwdriver-only job rather than requiring heat and special tools.
I'm guessing that internally the capacity starts at somewhat above 100%, to ensure for example that older stock still reports 100% when sold, and the actual drop in capacity could be a fair bit more than the reported figure?
> Do you trust the quoted capacity figures, though?
Actually yes. Because even at 83%, my iPhone can last longer than its original battery's brand-new capacity. Also, I'm using Macs for ~15 years now and Coconut Battery's battery reports (which just interfaces with macOS battery information features) were always spot-on.
> but doesn't feel like it's holding that much charge, feels like it's due a replacement.
Actually, an iPhone's daily endurance depends on two things: Network connectivity & quality, and the apps you use. WiFi uses way less battery than cellular to begin with, and some applications "performance improvements and bug fixes" means "we have improved the performance of tracking you while using the app, and fixed the bugs about misreporting usage data". Applications like Instagram are so optimized at tracking its users, it drains my battery faster and heats my phone better than some games.
> to ensure for example that older stock still reports 100% when sold...
Low self discharge batteries are borderline magic. A low-discharge Li-Ion battery sitting at ~40% can sit there for years, if the cell is good. A low discharge Ni-MH battery can sit at ~90% for a decade. I recently opened a new blister of Eneloop AA batteries which were sitting there for a couple of years. All of them were at ~95% charge.
Because it's been made intentionally difficult, with significant risk of further damaging the product you're trying to repair. And there's no official supply of replacements.
A battery change shouldn't require heat guns, special suction/clamp tools, or adhesive-dissolving chemicals.
It also shouldn't require being without your device for an unknown period of time to send it in for service.
Reading through bluescrn's comments, it seems like anything short of "I can easily replace the battery myself" is unacceptable. Would I like to be able to replace the battery in my Apple devices myself? Absolutely. Is it an unreasonable amount of money and effort to have the Apple Store do it? Not at all. Getting them to replace the battery is no big deal. If there's something to complain about, it's that they (probably intentionally) don't do a good job advertising their battery service.
There’s just no way very many people would pay for a Mac upgrade program. The iPhone one works by having you pay the monthly installment price for the phone forever. That’s usually in the $30-40/month range, which many people can stomach in exchange for guaranteed new phones every year. But Mac installment prices are $200+ a month. There just isn’t a market for a laptop subscription that costs as much as car insurance.
A Mac Upgrade program doesn't have to be the same upgrade cycle, same if they went the route of doing an iPad upgrade program.
It would also help minimize the need to try to future proof your choice. I know when I go to buy a Mac I often way over spec since I am planning for at least 3 or 4 years. That conversation is completely different if I know I am getting an upgrade in 1 or 2 years.
Meanwhile if the Mac Upgrade Program could be, idk a 2 year upgrade plan. Looking at the cheapest 16" M3 Max MBP. Right now that is $291.58 month for 12 months.
If a Mac Upgrade Plan did the same timeline as iPhone where you paid over 2 years but could upgrade after a year that would be about $147.28.
But it could likely be a 3 or 4 year timeline and be even cheaper.
If we look at the lower end it gets even cheaper with the cheapest 16" MBP could be $104 a month. The cheapest 14" MPB could be $66.5 a month.
Keeps going cheaper if you look at the Air. I feel like at that price the market very much exists when the top iPhone is $74.91 a month.
The question is if the numbers make sense on Apple's side.
True, but you have to rebuild the app every six or seven days, because it stops working. Unless you shell out for the paid developer account I think. Then your apps won't expire.
My guess is that Apple thinks this route could be used to circumvent the App Store.
That was the issue, it still felt separate (I'm not sure if this was due to regulations or legacy systems). I was given logins to access their systems, and there were over a dozen, and no one ever did explain what they were all for. When I asked, the best I got was that it depended on the country, but even that wasn't too clear. I never did bother to figure it out. Eventually I transferred out of the team that had to care about that and had them delete my accounts. It's cropping back up in my new team, but so far the team in the EU is handling everything for their region. If they try to have us take if over, I think we'll need to run everything we do past legal, because none of us in the US have any idea what all the laws and rules are, not being around it.
This explains a lot, as this happened to me recently too. First, I thought that someone had managed to hack into my account. Booking support was not very helpful. In the end, I just changed my password and canceled the booking, hoping for the best.
It is baffling that a major travel website is allowed to operate like this.
I'm no expert so don't treat my comments as health advice, but viruses are large complex molecules and they don't tend to survive intact very long outside of living cells, do they?
When smallpox was eradicated, the WHO organized teams to collect and destroy samples of smallpox used in remote places for variolation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation#Decline IIRC the samples they found were too old and did not contain viable virus, but they were afraid they could start a new smallpox epidemic. So ... I guess they think virus can survive for a long time.
Really depends on where you buy it. Some real cheese maker, or some random crappy industrial brand?
In France we eat cheese made from raw milk all the time, it's almost never a problem, it's so rare that when it does it makes the news and products are recalled.
It is a French cheese, but bought in a German supermarket. So most likely more industrial production for the mass market. It's still tasty, but probably not the best one you can buy out there.
Lots of European cheeses are made from raw milk and cases of people getting sick from anything commercially prepared are vanishingly rare, even when the end product looks and smells like death.
Please explain. I’m afraid I’m too dense to understand that.
I didn’t mean to insult anyone’s sacred cow. I just have some experience in this.
However, unhomogenized milk can be pretty cool. When we lived in London, we used to get daily deliveries of bottled, unhomogenized milk, and I always loved taking the cream off the top.
It's not too far-fetched, I think. Apple could have collaborated with Google and car OEMs to standardize an open interface for smartphone-car communication. Instead, we have two APIs that essentially do the same thing in every car OS.
The UX of SEPA is lacking in comparison to other modern payment systems for sure. I'm confident though, that it will improve soon. Wero [1] seems like a decent start and appears to be gaining traction lately. It's basically a layer on top of SEPA Instant payment with extra features and a decent app based UI/UX.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)