My Iphone has had some bugs in the last year that are so sloppy yet impactful its almost funny. About half the time im looking at my lock screen notifications, the screen will lock less than a second after touching the screen. I have had other issues as well, but for a company with so much money I expect a little more craftsmanship.
I have had other issues as well but something that actively locks my phone while I am obviously using it is an extremely frustrating start to my day.
I really appreciate that I'm not the only one. Using Apple software is increasingly an experience in navigating a minefield of bizarre UX mistakes.
The big concern for me is if I ever find myself in an emergency situation and I need to use my phone to contact someone. Apple's iPhone is so inconsistent and unreliable even in the best of conditions.
A good faith cooperate tax would solve most if not all of our deficit, and arguably increase our GDP growth.
A 5% revenue tax on the fortune 500 would get us half way there. I could not quickly get a number for total revenue of more than the fortune 500, but I would not be surprised if a 3% VAT would cover the entire deficit. We lose so much tax revenue due to all the loop holes deliberately left in the corporate tax code.
On top of that, ban stock buy backs entirely, that way more of the record breaking profits have to go to wages or other means of investing in the business.
"A 5% revenue tax on the fortune 500 would get us half way there."
Given that ~20% of that group have net income margins below 5%, how much of such a tax policy would simply be an inflationary tax on consumers? I.e., we know Walmart cannot simply pay a 5% revenue tax, that would instantly make them deeply unprofitable. So they would have to raise prices to afford the tax. And if they know Target, Kroger, Costco, and Amazon also need to pay the same 5% tax, there is less competitive pressure to eat into margin. Even with zero collusion, there is perfect information symmetry regarding the tax.
At their present 3.1% net margin, if Walmart passed a 5% gross-revenue tax entirely to consumers while all else stayed equal, prices would have to rise MORE than 5% -- about 5.44% just to preserve its existing margin. Of course, some of the tax burden likely gets shared between Walmart, its customers, supply chain, vendors etc... In a world where the Fortune 500 (Walmart) has to pay the 5% revenue tax but a supplier of some SKU (not a Fortune 500) does not pay it, I imagine Walmart would lean extra hard on them to eat some of the tax. It all seems like a very messy and inefficient tax.
On the VAT, the CBO has actually studied a 5% VAT tax and modeled that it would raise $330B. That's 16% of the current $2.1T deficit.
Right there’s a lot of easy answers mechanically but they are challenging politically. The longer we wait to do anything the better they’ll look though that’s for sure.
Well intentioned laws today can be used by illintentioned actors in the future, and mild legal exceptions can become significant ones with a couple additions.
The 100 mile zone is a good example - that 100 mile zone assumes the entirety of the great lakes is international waters, even though Lake Michigan is 100% American Territory and over 300 miles long. So, you could be in a landlocked county of Indiana, and be harassed by the federal government for being in a border zone.
Whats to stop someone from saying, the entire Mississippi river and its tributaries are a border zone? With that you could get 80% of the US population into the border zone.
By enabling some "rule based" decisions that skirt the constitution, you enable a legal mechanism for constitutional rights to be violated without any legislation.
Also crazy that lake michigan counts as the border, despite being entirely in the US, so you could be minding your business in Fort Wayne, Indiana and have your phone searched for no reason.
You can complete a water crossing by phone or so (so like in some random harbor in Wiscansin).
That doesn't justify a random search of course, but if there was some reason to believe that you were importing something illegal they could come search ya boat.
There are much worse things the government spends money on (or doesn't tax) than well paying jobs that play an important role in society. What do you think happens to that $200k? Do you think it just gets sent to the void? That money is spent on things like food, local businesses, rec sports and trips for family... and all that money gets spent again by those local businesses.
Meanwhile Boeing did enough stock buybacks from 2014 to 2019 to give every single boeing employee $200k... and when the 737 max crashes happened, the stock crashed back to pre buyback levels. THAT is truly sending money to the void to be lit on fire, money that could of been used to change the lives of thousands of employees and factory workers.
Dumb question, does backing up my iphone to icloud help solve this? Assuming im willing and able to get a brand new phone? What 2fa would the Apple store need, if hypothetically my lost iphone was my only apple product?
It's not a dumb question, but there isn't any single answer. It depends on what protections you have on your iCloud account. For most users, if you've lost your phone, but remember your iCloud password and have a new phone with the same number, you can get in. It's made even easier if you have another device already signed in, such as a laptop.
Luckily I do have a macbook, and try to put all my passwords in a "neutral" password manager, but this post has made me think about the edge cases of this sort of thing.
Ive always said, the number one reason I will stick with an iphone - despite any present for future dumb ux changes - is that I will always be able to physically go to an apple store and get someone to help me.
I've long been thankful for a lot of ADA requirements in software, like OSX, which has enabled some interesting automation tools over the years. More recently, I have been saying the best part of MCPs and AI era is all of a sudden its gotten companies to expose all their data in a universal format, so I am no longer beholden to what a PM or UX designer things is best for me.
Selfishly, I will always advocate for this, but as someone who is colorblind (which barely counts as a disability) I am very aware of how easily inaccasbile so many tools are.
The powerbi dashboard that ships w/ fabric usage credits is the only place I have to know how much my work costs, and its the same color as several other things. Id so much rather they just give me the raw data on an API feed but instead I need to use like 400mb of ram to view an illegible chart.
Legal issues asside, I find this agentic commerce goal naive. Its like expecting me to buy a different microwave so the popcorn button works with the official amazon popcorn. Theres no way they will be able to replace the context and tooling I have setup for my own personal agents. And theres no way in hell im going to give Amazon every piece of information in my life so they are slightly better equipped to recommend which usbc dongle I need.
I understand that the sheer size of Amazon, and industry standard of forcing AI into every tool, makes them think its worth investing in. But from my outside perspective this is not a winable strategy.
If this is basically an MCP/api with curated data sources, then yes im interested.
I think there is some legit market opportunity to try to provide this to small - medium businesses. The biggest advantage Amazon has over them is visibility, and the tooling that comes with it. If you made a squarespace plugin or otherwise that would index someone's store, then that store owner would be able to get business from the shared platform, while not worrying about having a good search tool. As a potential shopper, I would have value in buying on this network, especially if I had reason to beleive the reviews were legit.
After I typed the above out I checked out your profile... you may already be working on this but I have some other ideas, can I message you?
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