But then US interference most directly affects US jobs and customers. That’s a much better er situation.

Think of car manufacturers that have done this for decades. They may have a global supply chain, heading mostly back to their home country, but they also have worldwide plants near their customers. Thanks partly to similar incentives and tariffs, my Honda was assembled in, I think, Kentucky, and was as us-manufactured as any us brand, meaning us jobs, us manufacturing, partial us supply chain. The result has been almost entirely good.

We’ve spent the last few decades outsourcing key industries, where US no longer has as much manufacturing and we’re way too dependent on other countries. It took supply chain disruptions from COViD to realize how much of a bad idea that was.

We’re finally trying to recapture some of those key jobs, industries, supply chains, dependencies, starting with chips and renewable energy. THANKS, BIDEN! this is what will make America great again

I thought it was just getting good.

I never actually had an account or much inclination to use it but it seemed like the first online service ubiquitous enough for local government and business notifications. In that sense, it was just starting to be a real benefit for an informed populace

However downvoting as that seemed more like a prerequisite to your posted opinion - I’ll agree that it’s fine for all the loonies to rant at each other there, but that makes the opinion “popular” …… crap, wrong community

I’d never justify that urge to spend ridiculous money updating every year to the latest and greatest, but people tend to under appreciate the massive improvements from accumulated incremental improvements.

OLED screen on my iPhone X was revolutionary (and I’m sure Android had it first), as just one example, and now most phones are. Personally I find ultrawideband and “find my” very innovative and well implemented. Or if that’s too small a change, how about the entire revolution of Apple designing their own SoC for every new model. There’s emergency satellite texting, fall/crash detection, even Apple mostly solving phone theft is innovative (even if you don’t like their approach)

When we see steady improvements, humans tend to under-appreciate how it adds up

Just like always, it depends on how you define or redefine ai. For example, what used to be called ai has been very successful in photo processing. The same thing is going to happen: some portion or incarnation of the current generative ai will be successful, but it will be dismissed similar to “it’s just machine learning, not ai”

I have a lot of hope for Apple’s approach, where they are incorporating it as tools into specific capabilities, and prioritizing privacy. While there’s no direct profit, it should help sell a lot more devices with ever higher tech specs. I also like their “private cloud” model that has a lot of potential beyond private ai

I understand you don’t appreciate where we’ve come from and how fast, can’t see the year to years changes, but the iPhone is just a little over ten years old. Do you really not see huge changes between an early iPhone and today’s?