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Quote of the Day: Apples and Oranges
“Do I look like I have stupid written all over my face?” – Ernest P. Worrell
In the case of Jim Varney’s iconic character, well, yeah, that’s exactly what he looked like. But what about the rest of us? We’re constantly being told stories by the government, the media and corporations that would strain the credulity of a five-year-old.
Apple is currently experiencing a bit of a public relations problem after being forced to admit that they have been intentionally slowing down the older models of their phones. Of course, they would never do something like that to try and promote the sales of newer models. No, it was done solely because as the lithium ion batteries become older and no longer perform at peak efficiency, the performance must be degraded to maintain full functionality. They really had no choice. It’s not as if they could have made that information public from the beginning, and offered replacement batteries at a reasonable price.
Although that is just what they have done in response to a deluge of public outrage, and lawsuits by several state’s attorneys general.
At the same time, we have various polling organizations telling us that Donald Trump is the most unpopular president in the history of presidents. We’re not supposed to notice that these groups include more than one organization whose polling shifted wildly in the closing days before the election. Polls that had Hillary Clinton up by 14 points four days before the election closed to just 2 points the day before the election, when the major campaign news during that time had Clinton once again being cleared of wrongdoing in the email investigation. Hardly the sort of news you would expect to drive up Donald Trump’s poll numbers.
We’re supposed to ignore that the cross tabs on that polling showed wildly different samples between those polls. We’re supposed to ignore the fact that pollsters care most about the accuracy of the last poll, because that’s the one that people remember. We’re supposed to ignore the palpable hatred for the man displayed in the last year by the very newsreaders reporting those polling results.
And we’re to ignore the fact that Rasmussen, one of the few organizations that gave Trump the slightest chance of winning, polled him at 46% in the last few days.
We’re not as dumb as Ernest. But they sure seem to think we are.
Published in General
Why’re you ragging on Earnest P., JM? :-) That fella had more smarts in his little finger than…Well, you know. Besides, he made me laugh, intentionally, not like these puffed-up pundits and pollsters who do it with a totally straight face.
I’m operating purely off public perceptions here. I can’t say from personal experience; I never met the man.
I’m quite sure that there are “news” organizations and maybe even pollsters who are making up bad approval ratings out of thin air, and they were doing it during the election too. And not only do they feel no shame, but they’re all patting themselves on the back for helping The Resistance. It’s pretty sickening. They do constantly reveal how stupid they think we are.
If we’re doing movie references here I think the more appropriate one is They Live. Everything seems fine, but then you put the glasses on and you can see what’s really going on.
Great little movie. And includes the most over-the-top ridiculous fistfight in movie history.
I love both They Live and Ernest P. Worrell.
This is the MSM.
Know what I mean Vern?
It sounds bad when you first hear about it. Hell, it is bad, but mainly because Apple made changing the battery difficult. If the consumer could change the battery for himself, then there would be a tradeoff between (1) paying for a new battery (2) living with reduced time between charges, or (3) getting a new phone. Apple removed one of those options and now they can live with the consequences.
They also over price things like batteries to encourage new sales. Witness the fact that suddenly they can offer cheaper batteries.
No doubt Apple can trot out a few reasons for their approach, but yeah, in the end they went with the option that tended to maximize their profits. Nothing wrong with that, but it does leave them open to the characterization that they are actively doing what they have been accused of doing — gimping phones they have already sold in order to sell new phones.
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Apples and oranges. I see what you did there. ;-)
I remember when his character started as a TV commercial series. First I saw him was advertising for one of our local TV stations back in the 80s.
Apple is evil. All the big corps. are pieces of work.
I try not to think about the zillions of things we never discover . . .
I’ve had a few days to mull over this Apple issue, and I can see both sides of this.
In Apple’s defense:
Now, mind you, if Apple had done this competently, then likely most users would not have noticed a degraded system speed. Likely this is the case, and only the power users noticed the performance drop. I don’t consider myself a power user of my Iphone 6S, and I didn’t notice any performance issues. But since IOS11 I sure as heck noticed that my battery life went to spit, and in such a way that mere battery age could not account for it.
Against Apple:
In my own reading of how these large corps work, my final take is this:
Apple’s software engineers likely made a good faith effort to keep older phones going longer, knowing what they were up against, but higher-ups thoroughly torpedoed themselves in the implementation. Best not to attribute to malice what is more easily explained by incompetence here. Apple is doing the right thing in discounting the batteries.
Did we ever see Vern?
Would have ruined the joke.
Yup (except I didn’t change my battery). I put down the reduced battery life to battery degradation. It hasn’t annoyed me enough to make me get a new one yet.
Obviously, the answer is to switch to an Android or Windows phone.
Google at least warns you that gmail is running in the background and using the battery more heavily.
Maybe I’m reading this wrong but I thought the issue was that they didn’t tell anyone. Well that and that they can mess with your phone like that.
It’s simple. Battery performance starts to drop off when it’s time to buy a new one. It’s not Apple’s fault if you fail to upgrade in a timely manner. No True Apple Customer could possible take money into consideration and decide that it’s not that bad to have to recharge your iPhone one or two additional times a day if that keeps the speed where you set it, or even worse, that they don’t really need a new iPhone.
If you’re not a True Apple Customer you’re lucky they let you get your grubby mitts on an iPhone at all.
Besides,
I don’t get new phones for myself. I have an Apple 6 now that’s a discard from my granddaughter who has to get the new Apple as soon as it is released. She doesn’t keep them long enough to need a new battery.
Well, Apple’s sales model, by design, presumes its buyers are “stupid.” Given that Apple caters to people terrified by manuals, and entranced by Kardashian and Beyonce, Apple may have figured that most people don’t care, and slowing down phones would be both unnoticeable to most users while extending battery life. Had the tech journalists not figured this out (trivial to do, btw) Apple users would still be sending each other moronic emojis of poop on devices far more powerful than a mainframe was 2 decades ago.
This is hardly confined to Apple. Practically nothing comes with a manual anymore, and Microsoft is ever busy finding new ways for Windows 10 to second guess you. Arrogance in the tech industry is nicely aligned with technical ignorance and fear from most customers.