>I want to use my mouse full time while plugged in due to poor reliability when unplugged, and only Apple's devices say no--for reasons that don't make sense.
The reliability would not be affected since it moves data wirelessly. The data will never go over the charging cable so your reasons for keeping it plugged in don't make sense.
If I turn off bluetooth and plug my "wireless" Apple keyboard into USB, it works fine, sending data over USB. There's no reason why they couldn't make the mouse the same way.
No, this is not on by default. After system install at first boot it asks if you want to help improve search and it describes how your data will be handled, anonymized, etc. If you clicked on yes it is on. There is a choice to opt out.
I was on by default for me, both after the macOS 14 -> 15 upgrade and after installing macOS 15 cleanly. I wonder if they ask for consent in some regions only.
>On Android, NetGuard uses a "local VPN" to firewall outgoing traffic. Could the same be done on iOS, or does Apple network traffic bypass VPNs? Lockdown mentions ads, but not Apple servers, https://lockdownprivacy.com/.
NetGuard firewall doesn't run on iOS, so there's no point in comparing to Apple. For those on Android, NetGuard is open-source, https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard
>Why can't Cloudflare do a "public service" by paying a patent search firm like most other companies would?
I'm sure they did that too, like any other major company sued by a troll. This isn't an either/or situation.
Jengo draws from many, many people across the industry. They can surface all sorts of prior art, not just earlier patents, and they know where to look due to their experience.
As I said, every large company that gets sued by trolls pays patent search firms to find prior art. I can't imagine that Cloudflare didn't do the same. Why wouldn't they, there is a lot of money at stake? They added to that through the search program because the yield from patent search firms is often poor.
The strangest concept for modern software engineers is that it had to ship bug free and it could never be updated with firmware patches. Shipping under those constraints brings a certain level of focus not experienced in modern design.
My dad used to work on certifying, servicing and making custom instruments for planes, subs, prototypes of all kinds of that era (60s to mid-90s).
His “lab” was basically all about testing and simulating environments for the instruments. He had tons of sayings about not having room for error in his line of work. This is as close as you can get from “building bridges” and to this day I don’t think I have seen this level of attention to detail/perfection in any other profession.
His job involved electronical engineering , mechanical engineering and programming amongst other things, not to mention a deep knowledge of the physics of these environments.
Back then also the tools or source of information that were available to them were quite crude compared to what we have now.
His spare time was all about flying, pimping his ham radio gear with all kind of “home made” electronics, build antennas and messing with computers. I guess he’d qualify as a “Hacker” nowadays.
I think the key is that in those days you didn't launch a product until you were absolutely sure it was going to work well, it was prototyped and debugged before it was launched. At least that is the impression one get with classical tech, solid reliability.
Umm...If you ship firmware today, sure it _can_ be updated, but almost nobody does update firmware, so yeah, that shit has to work when it ships.
Also, I've never been at a place that tested FW patches as well as full releases, so...do you _really_ want to install somebody else's random FW patch? I don't unless I have some known problem with a fix in the release notes...
You seem to be unaware that the Soyuz system has been safely moving people back and forth to LEO for decades. SpaceX has been doing it since 2020. This failure should only be taken as a comment on Boeing's broken engineering processes and incompetent management. It says nothing about our society's spacefaring capabilities.
>>For hackers, tinkerers, technical people who are interested in pushing their mobile devices beyond what can be done with the stock operating system: ...
I think this is poor phrasing. If it can't do many of the things that the stock operating system can do it is not pushing "beyond" the stock operating system. It is moving the phone into a little playground off to the side. That's fine if that's what one is interested in, but the phrasing gave me a different impression at first.
The reliability would not be affected since it moves data wirelessly. The data will never go over the charging cable so your reasons for keeping it plugged in don't make sense.