A woman dies of a superbug resistant to every available antibiotic in the US - happy-go-lucky https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/12/nevada-woman-superbug-resistant/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=superbug&sort=byPopularity&pre...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=superbug&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=pastMonth&type=story)

This story has been posted a handful of times now. See link for other discussions ^.

</comment><comment><USER2> Necessary knee-jerking wake-up call: Antibiotics should be rationed, those prescribed (after culturing) must be assured they are taken by some automatic/interactive means and it should be a felony to pill-mill them for a cold; otherwise, without rapid r&d, we're going to lose the survival arms race.

<comment><USER3> I saw a few articles last year that said something about new meds that can replace antibiotics (or are even better antibiotics, I don't know), but they aren't approved yet.

As far as I understand it, the problem here isn't that we lose an arms race because we don't have alternatives, but because of our approval systems.

When enough antibiotics lost their effects, laws will probably be changed OR it will take long enough till we got the alternatives in the marked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let's be clear here, she was in her 70's and received a majority of her care in India, not the US.

<comment><USER5> And she had a bone infection, very hard to treat even without resistant bacteria.

Let's be realistic here, she had the infection for YEARS... The odds are very high that the bacteria started out fairly normal and became resistant over time

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> From yesterday -

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13391886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13391886)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13402726](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13402726)

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't know why, but I have a faint hope that some day AI and Machine learning will help solve these problems. Problems like these, and selectively killing cancer cells. Of course, just a hope.

<comment><USER4> 1 person out of 300,000,000 has died that's linked to drug resistant superbug.

Hardly a problem.

Of course AI could also just solve the problem by killing anyone who has superbugs, so that the spread of such things is eradicated.

<comment><USER8> The article mentions that this isn't the first such case. It is just a more recent example.

Furthermore, there are multiple examples of bacteria that are resistant to families of antibiotics, which indicates the direction of the trend.

If we don't consider it a problem now, when should we?

<comment><USER9> > If we don't consider it a problem now, when should we?

What we should, does not matter. When it starts to cost money, or when there is an opportunity to earn money, then things will change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bacteria are called bugs now? This calls for action.

</comment><comment><USER11> And so it begins...

<comment><USER12> Nothing really _new_ for the pharmaceutical community tbh. The MRSA - which is probably the most well known superbug - has been around for years and claimed more deaths than AIDS per year in the US last time I checked.

There was an article pointing out that a techniques based on combination of ATBs + Bacteriophages might be a possible replacement. Another possible counter-measure is nano-tech.

If states do not jump-in funding various research groups, it's highly unlikely that humanity will be given another "Aha!" moment a-la Fleming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Next step is hopefully programmable nanobots. They use their tiny laser blasters to surgically kill $BAD_CELLS.

Lots of examples of public research online: [http://www.sciencealert.com/new- light-activated-nanoparticle...](http://www.sciencealert.com/new-light- activated-nanoparticles-kill-over-90-of-antibiotic-resistant-bacteria)

Imagine what's military-grade and secret right now. The future is bright!

<comment><USER14> > Imagine what's military-grade and secret right now.

I don't think this rule of thumb for technological advancement has held true since the Cold War. Whatever nanobots are military grade and secret are likely shitty prototypes that have cost billions over what was expected.</comment></comment>


Why are Researchers Averse to Risk? - <AUTHOR> http://synbioaxlr8r.com/discard-your-risk-aversion/

<comment><AUTHOR> Why are researchers, who are supposed to be pushing the boundaries of what is possible, so averse to taking risk? or failing?</comment>


Adam Adamou: How Canadian VC groupthink almost killed RIM - <AUTHOR> http://twitdoc.com/docview?doc=30650983&key=key-18mcl3su7qxnm7xw4p7u&usr=caseridge&lcl=caseridge/pofvfukg/AdamouRantforApril28,2010.pdf&hits=472&qs=4tsqkw

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if this somehow breaks the HN guidelines but needing to use flash to read this or even download the pdf if you want to is absurd.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>--

The Adamou Rant Venture Capital, Government Incentives and Research In Motion.

I had a copy of Rod McQueen's biographic account of the development of Research In Motion, Blackberry: The Inside Story of Research in Motion delivered to me recently. I congratulate McQueen on his diligence and his behind the scenes access to the company. The events that conspired to make RIM a success are well worth the read. This book is a must read for SME's, governments, venture capitalists and investors alike; it is an excellent behind the scenes account of the struggles that RIM faced at the early stages of development within the Canadian financing environment. RIM raised seed money through founders shares, they raised money through the hiring process, they raised money through their employees, they raised money from strategic partners, they borrowed against working capital lines and against their mortgages – and all of this before they completed their first venture round of financing. Their perserverence, and their "do what needs to be done" attitude which can best be described as fearless, should prove to be an inspirational tale of confidence to every entrepreneur and CEO in this country.

This account also highlights the hybrid nature of the Canadian venture capital industry; RIM is the perfect example of the value that the public markets bring to smart, prepared and persistant entrepreneurs. Venture capitalists and portfolio managers should take note that the traditional rules of venture capital in Canada were broken to accommodate RIM's needs. RIM was weeks away from a bank forced shut down of their business through a liquidation of their inventory, a struggle that far too many entrepreneurs and small business people suffer through every day. They turned to traditional VC's and got nowhere fast. They survived only because they landed in the hands of the right investment banking boutique partnered with the right venture capitalist combined with a group of public equity mutual funds and an adequate system of securities rules. There was no doubt in my mind when I first looked at RIM in 1996 that they were on to something big, unfortunately the traditional VC oligarchy at the time suffered from the same "VC group think" that prevails today: rather than looking at the realizable potential of the business, the VC's were looking to juice their returns by taking advantage of RIM's financial difficulties and through the imposition of complicated and one sided agreements. The VC's were looking to join together in order to bend RIM to their collective will – rather than to take a chance on a risky venture. They were willing to see it fail, rather than to change their documentation.

So why did this deal get done? Working Ventures – the fund that employed me at the time and that was funded wholly by retail investors via government tax credits, developed into a hybrid public/private equity venture fund. Most of Working Ventures' employees had no background in the venture capital business because the senior management team, led by James W. Hall, decided to eschew the old school VC network for new blood with new ideas. I, as a twenty something year old at the time, was able to succesfully pitch and to receive approval from senior management for a "public markets team" whose role was to leverage our strengths as venture capitalists with the money of traditional mutual funds to create an avenue for younger companies to access greater pools of capital without the sometimes oppressive requirements of private equity venture funds. Through this process, we invested in a number of tremendously succesful publicly listed companies in the mid 1990's, including SXC Health Solutions, MKS Inc., Enghouse Systems, Leitch Technologies, Dalsa Corp., Alarmforce Inc., Hemisphere GPS, Nuvo Networks Inc., Virtek Systems and many, many others at a time when venture capital was extremely tight. Working Ventures developed a reputation for making solid venture style investments into public equities, and our investment department as a group developed an expertise in making and syndicating this style of transaction.

GMP came to us first in the Research in Motion round because they knew that our lead order would provide a strong measure of credibility and comfort to the traditional public equity mutual funds that might be induced to co-invest in that round. They knew that we had the tools and the capacity to complete the "heavy duty due diligence" required for early stage investments and that we would be there to support GMP and RIM in their effort to take the company to the public markets in the subsequent round. The mutual funds took a measure of comfort in co-investing in a company with WV since they generally lacked the resources to conduct the ground level research that was required in order to support this type of transaction while we specialized in it and in effect, our money was our badge in terms of the viability of the business. I truly believe that it was this freedom that set the stage for RIM's initial success in this key financing round. RIM raised $35MM in this first round, and over $90MM just one year later. Working Ventures participated in both rounds. It was the only venture capital fund to do so.

This story does not have a fully happy ending despite RIM's tremendous success. Just over one year after our investment in Research in Motion was completed, the federal and provincial governments, lobbied I believe in part by traditional venture capital funds, decided that this hybrid private/public venture capital model was an inappropriate use of taxpayer money – and they placed some severe restrictions on our ability to invest in publicly listed companies, even if the government policy objectives relating to the size of the company, the number of employees and the use of the funds were otherwise met. The various governments, in their collective wisdom destroyed the elements that combined to finance the single most succesful investment in Canadian history. How smart is that? I left Working Ventures shortly thereafter.

Unfortunately, these restrictions are still in place. Venture capitalists from across the country continue to lobby their various governments to provide them with more money, more tax credits and more taxpayer assisted benefits – but the question of enabling these credits to all companies – public or private as was the case for Research in Motion, is rarely mentioned. The traditional venture capitalists see themselves as the founders of a "Silicon Valley North" and they follow the US trends, which unfortunately do not apply to our Canadian market. They seem to see themselves as avant garde investors in tomorrow's technology companies, however they behave more like bankerss – preferring security and downside protection over opportunity. They are willing to give up tremendous potential upside on a transaction by insisting on placing unreasonable handcuffs on brilliant management teams in order to ensure, should the company fail, that they realize 15 cents on the dollar rather than 12. They will refuse to buy out some of the founders shares in order to ensure that these risk takers remain motivated. Unfortunately, this motivation leads to a lack of sleep and an aversion to risk - management is hardly motivated to swing for homeruns when failure implies personal bankruptcy and the loss of a home.

My message to the various levels of government that may be looking at policy alternatives for the venture capital industry is that less government regulation and involvement is better than more, and that lower taxes and less government is the best path forward. Unfortunately, there is a tremendous lobbying effort underway by the traditional venture capital funds looking for the government to manufacture an environment that is more hospitable to their investment style. To that, I have a few words of warning:

* Be cautious of the motivations behind the established funds and their lobbying efforts. They are typically highly targeted only to their existing model of doing business;

* Be cautious of the statistics that are presented to you by the CVCA and the other venture capital groups – these figures typically ignore money raised in the public equity markets and understate the level of activity by several magnitudes;

* Do not ignore the role of the public markets in financing venture stage companies thereby forcing them into the arms of the small group of funds that your tax credits favour. It shouldn't make a difference from a policy perspective whether the company in question is private or public if it meets your over-all policy objectives;

* Be cautious of placing too many restrictions on the use of the funds that are raised or provided. Don't look to provide sector specific tax incentives and let the market (private or public) determine where the best returns might be;

* Eliminate sector specific tax credits or write-offs to resource and energy companies – whatever the policy objectives that might be served, they are not being served and you are only sucking money away from operating companies in other sectors. Create an equal environment for all SME's and allow them to compete based on the quality of their business

* Finally – provide a framework that will allow for new players to enter the venture capital arena which would thereby increase the level of competition in the industry. How great would it be if we were to see a dozen new funds funded and run by younger and more entreprenurial investors rather than by the same old players who have been at this for what appears to be forever?

</comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting write-up. Though without further knowledge of the matter going to have to take some of the points with a pinch of salt. Regardless, there is universal criticism of Canadian VCs by pretty much everyone really. Including the VCs themselves.

The end result of this is that companies looking for serious investment go down south.

It's unfortunate, but necessary. And honestly, our financial climate mirrors that of our actual climate. It's colder and harsher, but if you can persevere and survive you come out a lot stronger for it. Those that want warmer weather (easier funding) go down south.

Interestingly the startup landscape in Canada is looking a lot stronger relative to how it did, relative to the US. There's a big trend nowadays to bootstrapping and a focus on revenue generation - which is precisely what Canadian startups have had to be doing this entire time.

<comment><USER4> As a survivor of a many startups you do start to get the default position that any law/deal/environment that VCs object to is automatically a 'good thing'.</comment></comment>


Taking a year to explain computer things - <AUTHOR> https://jvns.ca/blog/2019/09/13/a-year-explaining-computer-things/ <comment><USER2> There are things we do for the reward. And then there are things we do just for their own sake, driven purely by internal motivation. It looks like the latter is the case for Julia when it comes to teaching computer things. Being able to choose a lifestyle where you can pursue things that intrinsically motivate you is probably the ultimate form of professional satisfaction. Congrats Julia! I'm really looking forward to see what comes out of this.

</comment><comment><USER3> While I've never bought anything from Julia, I smile every time I see her illustrations online. Those of us who are attracted to tech fields also have a sense of wonder and intense desire to learn and share information. So, when we see others sharing information in ways to help them learn, we respect them tremendously!

</comment><comment><USER4> In the 1980's I learnt to program on a Commodore 64 with one of Usborne's many computer books (see at the bottom of the page on [1]). Julia's zines remind me of a similar aesthetic and I hope she is also successful at inspiring the next generation of software developers!

[1] [https://usborne.com/browse-books/features/computer-and- codin...](https://usborne.com/browse-books/features/computer-and-coding- books/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I saw Julia speak at KubeCon last year in Seattle. She's a talented engineer who has found a unique and approachable way of teaching DevOps/SRE tooling and concepts. I wish her much happiness and success in the next year!

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't want this to be read badly, so let me start with stating my greatest admirations for the author.

I have never bought any of the zines she produces, I am aware of that, and I also check them out several times. What I don't understand is why people bought them.

Do you find them informative? Do they help you somehow? Do you find them cute?

I may not be in the target market, but I don't find them informative, they are so undense of information, moreover are very easily available informations.

Really, let me restate my admiration for her and the ability to run a business, but again I wonder why people consume that kind of content.

Can somebody please explain?

<comment><USER7> The main reason I hear that people buy zines from me is that they find them informative.

I've honestly learned a lot about this from writing zines -- for example my bite size command line zine ([https://wizardzines.com/zines/bite-size-command- line/](https://wizardzines.com/zines/bite-size-command-line/)) is mostly composed of things that feel "obvious" to me after using Linux for 15 years ("how to grep recursively"). And I initially also doubted that it was really worth it to write these things down ("won't people just read the man page / google for it instead?")! But:

1\. it turns out that things that seem "obvious" when you're experienced are definitely not obvious to beginners, and the man pages are much easier to read when you already understand the tool :)

2\. figuring out what the right things to learn even _are_ is difficult, you can't Google for something if you don't know it exists yet

3\. many people who aren't beginners still sometimes have some gaps in their knowledge, for example this tweet about CORS has a lot of experienced web developers replying to it saying that they've really struggled to understand CORS and that even a small simple explanation helps them. [https://twitter.com/b0rk/status/1162392625057583104](https://twitter.com/b0rk/status/1162392625057583104)

I think of my main audience as being developers who have a couple of years of professional experience but are still missing a lot of fundamental knowledge that can really help you out as a programmer. (like "how does HTTP work?")

<comment><USER8> I can confirm that I had to show some pages of yours to some people who worked for more than a decade, exclusively writing C++ on Linux but never learned what you so nicely presented in some of your articles.

A lot of people simply stick to the minimum needed to do something. And then they need something condensed enough (and reliable) to make them doing something a bit differently.

In short, I'm very glad you're doing that work. Nobody who hasn't tried know how they poorly most of them would do it: everybody can write long winding rants about some minuscule detail of their own work. Writing a good, reliable and effective broader summary is much harder.

Please also consider having the dates on your work, or connection to the versions of the stuff you write about, you can also sell the new versions with the same title when the topic changes due to the new developments.

That's another weak point of internet: there's so much outdated information still floating as "the" solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you want a taste of her style check out her rb-spy presentation it's a great watch. [https://youtu.be/o6wWSPxYueU](https://youtu.be/o6wWSPxYueU)

</comment><comment><USER10> Congrats and these steps will help redefine who we are. Will keep buying your zines to support you. Least I can do

</comment><comment><USER10> For our own sake. Can't beat it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Never knew she sold anything. Never knew that she is earning money with it also.

Anyone here bought something from here? Just out of curiosity why?

<comment><USER12> one potential motivation i would personally consider is to support her work. her style feels somewhat refreshing for the content she delivers.

diversity in the approach of tech teaching, i believe, can only be a good thing.

i also think that the alternative method she imploys, with cartoons and colloquial language, helps engage some people who find traditional teaching formats unengaging.

<comment><USER13> Yeah - especially for those of us that get lost on the big picture when the material gets too deep too fast. Hard to find creative ways to teach GIT for example.</comment></comment></comment>


Sand Hill Exchange – Response to SEC Enforcement Action - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sandhill.exchange/post/121768113883/sand-hill-exchange-response-to-sec-enforcement

<comment><USER2> Now this is a much more measured and thoughtful response than the one from a few weeks back. A little mindfulness about why regulatory frameworks exist in the first place goes a really long way, and now that this mistake is out of the way I think Sand Hill Exchange has great future potential.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good response. Still feel that SEC has more important things to do than fine unfunded startups in a garage with 2 people

<comment><AUTHOR> Even "unfunded startups in a garage with 2 people" should be able to figure out that _faking trading volume_ when you're dealing with _trading things of value_ is gonna be iffy. Even on the blockchain.

Realistically, "creative entrepreneurs" are going to have trouble when their operation is indistinguishable in every detail from "bucket shop scammers with fraud layered upon fraud", and a $20k fine is a super-cheap lesson.

The Matt Levine piece sets out just some of the ridiculously obvious illegalities. And he did actually tell them already that this was trouble brewing: [http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-19/bitcoin- buc...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-19/bitcoin-bucket-shop- kicks-bucket)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep up with politics and world issues? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a student of science, and I rarely spend my time reading news about politics. So compared to many of my peers, I'm very uninformed about what's going on. How can I catch up on issues I should know about? <comment><USER2> nytimes allows you to customize daily headline newsletters by topic including policits, world issues, tech etc - pretty easy to set up and forget about it.</comment>


What Does Monad Mean? - <AUTHOR> http://projects.tmorris.net/public/what-does-monad-mean/artifacts/1.0/chunk-html/index.html

<comment><USER2> Here is the video <http://vimeo.com/8729673>

</comment><comment><USER3> Hint: it's not a person with only one testicle.</comment>


Austrian Airlines Expands Summer Flight Schedule - <AUTHOR> https://kokpitherald.com/austrian-airlines-expands-summer-flight-schedule/ <comment><USER2> I am ashamed to be an austrian. This is so extremely stupid, that it hurts. Just for $$$ CASH. But the people will note that they can't eat this piece of paper, and realize what it is, printed paper. But whent that's happen, its likely too late, sadly. Austrian Airlines, you are stupid, that is unbelievable. Just fly into high risk countries, go on. You will stand in front of the world, when YOU spread the virus, because of the piece of paper, you call money.</comment>


Microsoft's FDS data-sorter crushes Hadoop - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/22/microsoft_research_flat_datacenter_storage/

<comment><USER2> We don't know what kind of machines those are:

"The MinuteSort run that Elson's team ran on 250 machines configured with 1,033 disk drives was able to rip through and sort 1,401 gigabytes of data in 60 seconds"

What Google announced 4 years ago, from [http://googleblog.blogspot.ca/2008/11/sorting-1pb-with- mapre...](http://googleblog.blogspot.ca/2008/11/sorting-1pb-with- mapreduce.html)

"we were able to sort 1TB (stored on the Google File System as 10 billion 100-byte records in uncompressed text files) on 1,000 computers in 68 seconds"

They both compare to earlier benchmarks to sound really flipping impressive, but we have too little detail to really know.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure the secret to creating a good search engine isn't the speed at which you sort data.</comment>


Children Understand Dog Language - <AUTHOR> http://www.ua-magazine.com/children-understand-dog-language/ <comment><USER2> The title is right, but the article is wrong. The article says that children understand dogs much better than adults. The original paper says that children are just-as-good as adults, which implies that we learn how to interpret those sounds very young.

Still a very interesting result!

<comment><USER3> I also took a look at the paper, because the topic is pretty cool. So what they actually found:

Figure 1 in the paper shows that six and eight year olds are a lot worse than adults, while 10 year olds are only somewhat close to adults. In this figure they asked the participants to classify if a bark was barked in three different context (stranger, alone, play). All age groups were able to tell when a dog is barking at a stranger, that seems to be pretty hardwired into our brains. The rest seems to be experience.

In figure 2 they asked the same age groups to associate different emotions to the barks in the three contexts. Similar classification findings as in the figure before. The authors discuss though that associating human emotions with the dog's real "inner state" is difficult and maybe not possible.

So the content of the linked article is very misleading and suggest that the journalist didn't really care to take a look at the paper. But the paper itself is interesting.

It would also be fun idea for a novelty app that can tell you how your dog feels. MVP might be to turn the data from table 1 of the paper into a very simple classifier. The data is however only based on 8 dogs from the same race.

<comment><USER4> I wonder how much this recognition effect varies by background. Where I grew up, two out of three houses had a dog. I've never met someone from my side of town who was scared of dogs in general. In other locations I've seen multiple households running back inside as a dog I knew was friendly was walked by.

The kids in the sample were probably all from the same area and economic class, and so would likely have similar backgrounds. Were the adults the usual 10 college students?

<comment><USER3> "We tested participants in four age groups: 6 years old, 8 years old, 10 years old and adults (over 18 years) as a control group. In each age group there were 10 participants who had a family dog in the household and 10 who never had one. The 6-year-old group was tested in kindergartens, the 8 and 10-year- old groups were tested in elementary schools. The adult group was recruited from university students. The sex ratios of each group were balanced. The mean ages of dog-owner and non-dog-owner adults were 23.80 ± 1.33 and 24.10 ± 3.19 years, respectively."

And the dogs: "Barks from the Mudi breed (a Hungarian sheepdog listed at the 238th Standard of the FCI (Fédération Cynologique International)) were used for this study. We recorded bark samples from eight adult individuals (male/female: 3/5, age: 4.13 ± 2.30 years)."

Keep in mind its some ethnologists from a Hungarian university. It's not like they will have huge funding.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for posting the details!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would appreciate "(2011)" being added to the title here. This user often submits articles from this website, and a quick check of 2 previous articles (both interesting) shows they never put the year (when older than this year) in the title.</comment>


Ask HN: Best web or Mac/Unix alternative to Excel? - <AUTHOR>

I've made a full-time switch to Mac some time ago, but the only app that still makes me fire up Parallel Desktop is Excel. Word for Mac, Numbers, Google Docs are all really bad.. I need something that will let me easily create nice-looking lists, have the same formula syntax (only the basics) and keyboard shortcuts that I'm so used to. Is there anything like that out there? <comment><USER2> If you have a high tolerance for pain you could try Office for the Mac. Not really an alternative but if you're happy with Excel it's something to consider. I use Numbers but a lot of Excel people tell me it's too limited. If you don't live inside a spreadsheet 8 hours a day it's probably good enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's wrong with Numbers? I find it a credible alternative to Excel, unless you're doing serious crunching. It's also a heck of a lot more attractive out of the box.</comment>


Amazon wants to launch thousands of satellites to provide internet access - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/04/amazon-project-kuiper-broadband-internet-small-satellite-network.html <comment><USER2> These are great news, some competition and big corporations with a lot of money trying to improve the lives of those in need and with worse life conditions.

Still I am sceptical about their interests. Facebook intentions were to create a free internet that they would control all the traffic, is it the same for Amazon? Or does Amazon profit from having more people using the internet and creating businesses using AWS?</comment>


PowerPoint is Evil - Lessons from Edward Tufte - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html <comment><AUTHOR> notes from the Tufte conference if you are interested ([http://files.jamiequint.com/tuftenotes.txt](http://files.jamiequint.com/tuftenotes.txt)) Its only the second half unfortunately - they don't give you a place to plug in your laptop?! - and I always lose loose paper notes.</comment>


Good Office furniture – how important is it really? - <AUTHOR> Hey all! Looking for some validation as to how important office furniture is for your startup and whether you would pay someone to design your office space? <comment><USER2> Unless you have a ton of money, I doubt paying somebody to design your office space will be worth it. Plenty of other more important things to focus on at this stage.

Just make sure everybody has a comfortable chair, a desk (standing desk if you really want), some tables and chairs separate from desks for meetings, etc. If you've worked in offices before, most of this should be common sense. I wouldn't worry about office design until you've grown enough to need a large office of your own.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Was actually talking more about larger offices and when startups leave shared office spaces. It seems today a lot of businesses want a cool looking space to attract talent, but wondering if this is something they'd fork out the money for, and if so how much per employee. I'm the founder of www.uneebo.com that aims to solve what you said for an affordable price - packages of office furniture essentials or if you have more money more custom options. Feedback would be very much appreciated!</comment></comment>


iPhone SE - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/iphone-se/ <comment><USER3> No 3D touch is a very odd fragmentation. You'd think they'd want to shore up their devices to be completely compatible with this across the spectrum to motivate developers to use it as a key part of their UX.

Now when only X<80% of devices lack compatibility, I'm not likely to take the time to make 3D Touch a core interaction.

So your apps have to optionally use 3D Touch, Pencil, adaptive layout, fingerprint, and several other interactions that only cover fractions of their hardware line.

<comment><USER4> It's because Apple has realised 3D touch is bad and it's also a very expensive feature to add to a phone.

The real question is if they will admit it was a misstep by removing it from their flagship model or just keep pretending and keep it in. Companies really hate admitting they were wrong so my bet is that they are stuck with it for the forseeable future.

<comment><USER5> Although 3D touch is not widely supported (even by Apple's apps) the "trackpad" on the keyboard alone is worth it.

<comment><USER6> This is going a little off topic: But Microsoft's on-screen keyboard has the best trackpoint for doing that. Doesn't require 3D touch and works wonderfully.

Looks like this:

[https://i.imgur.com/eX2bfHp.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/eX2bfHp.jpg)

The blue dot is always there, but the four way arrows only appear after you press it, and you can drag further away to move faster, or closer to move slower.

It is one of these things that after you use it you wonder why everyone hasn't copied it yet. Microsoft's keyboard is actually the best thing on Windows Mobile.

<comment><USER7> Wow. I wish something like this was available on Windows 10 for tablets/convertibles.

<comment><USER6> Don't get me started on that.

I still want gesture based typing (Swype) on the Surface Pro. The on screen keyboard is substantially worse on full Windows 10 than it is on Windows 10 Mobile, it makes no sense at all...

What the heck Microsoft? Why is a keyboard on a 5" device better than a keyboard on a 10" one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> $399 USD is great, but why are we still stuck with 16 GB of storage on base model phones? You can barely put a day's worth of music on your phone and you cannot always stream via services like Spotify.

Spotify accounts for 2 GB of traffic per month on my phone and some plans are barely affordable when you want more than that--fortunately I can do up to 6 GB before I am traffic shaped, but that isn't the say the same for all carriers in this country.

<comment><USER9> I am always surprised by these expansive US plans.

In France for instance, you can have 50 GB LTE for 20 € per month (with Free). In Austria, 10 GB LTE for 15 € is not uncommon.

<comment><USER8> France and Austria, unlike Canada are very much dense so the infrastructure required to setup an LTE/UMTS/etc network is less costly.

To travel from Vancouver to the next principal Canadian city (Calgary), it requires 900 KM of driving and there's only really one metropolitan area of sorts between the two, meaning that you're going to be setting up cell towers that handle only so much traffic in a day.

As a result, to get service where you end up with just traffic shaping once you go beyond 6 GB (beyond that there is no real limit really), you need to go with a carrier that only services the larger cities. So in my case, my carrier services just Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, and Ottawa, which are fairly dense areas with a combined population of 18 million or so, or just about half of the country's population. Once I leave the city, I have to piggyback on to other carriers however.

Hence why mobile carriers suck in Canada because the bigger carriers do not want to eat into their fairly large profit margins. They can afford to offer such plans, but they simply don't want to.

For the record, I pay $40 CAD/month ($30 USD or 27 EUR) for unlimited North American calling and text plus the "unlimited" data use.

<comment><USER10> For the joke, I studied mobile networking in Canada, and we studied how actually, the dense areas are what cost the most money to the mobile operator.

The "we are a big country" is just a marketing stunt.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. This is a sad excuse used by mediocre gov't and corporate entities to offer poor service and value for money.

For example, when I visit relatives in the Frankfurt region (Mainz), I am always amazed by how similar geographically and demographically it is to the greater Toronto area in Ontario. Population and industry wise Toronto and Frankfurt are very similar -- similar financial sector jobs, similar population densities.

And yet their infrastructure is _far_ superior. I take the train from Frankfurt to Mainz in like 20 minutes. From the Mainz train station there is integrated light rail and bus to a whole network of suburbs and villages, right out into the countryside. If I want to go for a hike in a forest preserve, I don't even need a car necessarily, I can take a streetcar and a bus to many very nice places.

Accessibility of food -- groceries, farmer's markets, restaurants. All better.

And yes, the telecoms infrastructure is far superior value for the money.

North America has let itself fall behind for several decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm one of those hold outs. I had a iPhone 6 for a month and it literally gave me anxiety because I couldn't thumb around Spotify and other apps like I was used too. I traded it in for a 5s and have been using it ever since. I figured I would have to keep it until they stopped putting iOS updates on it. Really glad they did this.

<comment><USER13> I predict they will sell a ton of the SE's. I'm in the same boat, the 5S was great and the 4.7" and larger screens just seem too big. I have been waiting for the SE to come out.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. My 5S broke over winter, 4.7" was too big as a replacement. I tested a 6 in my jeans pocket and it felt odd to me. I immediately purchased another 5S instead.

Looking forward to a SE.

<comment><USER13> I could have upgraded a few months ago but held out as rumours of this phone have been around for awhile. I'll be happy to upgrade as I suspect the iPhone 7 will be a 4.7 or 5.5 and those are just too big for me.

<comment><USER15> Same here, I'm not really after a cheaper phone, just a phone I can use with one hand. I wish they also released a 128gb version.

<comment><USER13> 128GB would have been nice. I have a 32GB now and will upgrade to the 64GB as I'm sure 4K video will take care of a large chunk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here's hoping that they'll include something like this in the Google Nexus lineup. They keep growing the phones, but my pocket is the same size.

<comment><USER17> That's why I've been desperately holding on to my Nexus 4! It is the perfect size.

<comment><USER18> Got mine sitting right next to me here.

I was going to jump to the 5x, but a limit of 16GB storage with no external storage in this day and age of high-end phone cameras, video, app bloat, etc. is just flat out unacceptable for me in a phone at this point.

It's a shame they have such an awful UI, because Samsung is doing some really great stuff with their Galaxy line on the hardware side of things.

<comment><USER19> The Nexus 5X is not limited to 16 GB, they also sell a 32GB version. Thats not to say that that will service everyone's space needs, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I remember Jobs talking about never making a larger phone. I really wonder if it was a case of him caring about "taste" over "giving people what they want."

There was some leaked Apple internal document where they said that people wanted larger phones. The post-Jobs Apple created larger phones to meet market demands.

One thing that always makes me giggle, though, is the fact that if you double tap the home button the screen slides down so you can reach the navigation bar at the top of the screen. If you have to provide a hardware solution like that, isn't it proof that the larger phone provides a worse user experience?

I'm excited about the smaller phone. My iPhone 6s is overly difficult to maneuver.

<comment><USER21> This is a user preference thing. I cannot stand using the smaller sized iPhones, my fingers and thumbs are too large to accurately use the screen. My vision isn't very good either so I wind up having to squint and/or hold small phones very close to my face.

I love my gigantic Nexus 6, some people hate it. I like that I can make the text big and still see enough of it on one screen. I can accurately input text, and comfortably hold the phone in my hand.

At this point if somebody told me that my large phone was a poor user experience and I had to use a smaller phone, I would be very upset.

<comment><USER22> I'm a smaller phone fan, and that's perfectly fine with me. You're welcome to your large phone if that's what works for you; I just wish more manufacturer would also make high-end phones that are under 4.5" screen size, i.e. with good screen, memory, camera, speed, etc. I've never had an iPhone, but I'm glad that Apple is making this. Hopefully some of the android manufacturers will follow suit, or I might seriously consider switching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Only Apple would launch a new phone that looked physically almost identical to one that has been out for two and a half years.

Similar to keeping the design language of the MacBook family the same across generations of the product, it's a reaffirmation of Massimo Vignelli's famous quote "Styles come and go. Good design is a language, not a style."

<comment><USER24> I still kind of wish they'd bring back the iPhone 4 industrial design; as far as I'm concerned it was their high point. The 5/5S is a close second, though.

<comment><USER25> I was not a fan of the glass back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm becoming rather impatient with the stagnating Macbook/MBA/MBP product category. Would very much like a lightweight retina Macbook 13" or larger.

<comment><USER27> As indicated in the keynote, Apple views iPads as the future of personal computing. This was said multiple times by multiple people. I wouldn't be surprised to see the MacBook lines continue to stagnate.

<comment><USER28> That will be incredibly shortsighted though. Developers are looking for more powerful machines all the time.

<comment><USER29> But developers are not the majority of customers.

<comment><USER30> Developers are the ones creating the apps for the majority of customers.

Ignoring the tools that developers and creatives use to create and sustain this thriving ecosystem is a very dangerous move on Apple's part. Skylake chips for the Macbook lines have been available for months and the Mac Pro hasn't been updated since 2013. OS X itself continues a long list of bugs and this only grows with "customer" features inevitably introduced down the line. El Capitan was supposed to give Apple a year to slow down and fix things but we have found it has been a huge problem in our work environment.

Datacenters don't run on iPads stacked in a rack, media companies don't play stuff out of an iPhone with a dongle. Xcode alone is the single reason OS X is still incredibly relevant. I don't see Jony Ive designing the latest iOS devices on an iPad for years to come and ignoring these professionals is not a good move.

Here's to WWDC, when the Skylake chips suited for the Macbook line were introduced 9 months prior.

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure I agree that XCode is the reason OSX is preferred by developers. Maybe some?

Most of the developers I know prefer OSX because of the close-enough-to-linux terminal experience and compatibility of most libraries. Rails, Scala, Node, JAVA all run pretty similarly on local machines as they do on the servers.

I suppose it just depends which flavor of developer you hang with!

<comment><USER26> I would say that OSX is preferred by any power user who needs/wants access to a "desktop"-style UI, a complete filesystem experience, layered windows, etc. The bizarre opaque filesystem on iOS drives me crazy, and is one of the biggest reasons I've had trouble committing to an iPhone.

I don't know of many people working in an office environment, much less as a developer, who would be satisfied with an iPad Pro as a daily driver when it comes to getting the amount of work you can get done on something like a Macbook Air.

Perhaps I just don't understand iOS well enough. I'd love to see a video of someone actually working and multitasking effectively on an iPad at the speed that is possible on a Macbook. Most of the videos that Apple releases show _work_ that is limited to video capture, editing and illustration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Curious that the Sensors list does not include a barometer. It used to be the case that the A9 with coprocessor carried a barometer inside it. Has this changed for this phone? That would be incredibly sad if they removed sensors. Did the M9 iteration of the coprocessor remove the barometer?

[http://www.apple.com/iphone-se/specs/](http://www.apple.com/iphone-se/specs/)

Edit: Interestingly, the new iPad Pro does have a barometer in the Sensor list: [http://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/](http://www.apple.com/ipad- pro/specs/)

<comment><USER33> Out of curiosity what use did people find in a barometer?

<comment><USER32> Apple themselves use it to count the number of flights of stairs you climb. Google uses it in Android phones for faster GPS and for indoor location mapping.

I'm using it to forecast the weather by crowdsourcing billions of live atmospheric pressure measurements at Sunshine ([https://thesunshine.co](https://thesunshine.co)).

Other use cases are for migraine headache prediction/prevention and other health-related issues. The primary and most exciting use case however is weather forecasting!

Edit: Basically, barometers are useful for any altitude-related task, as their error margins for relative altitude changes are very small. Additionally, if you can filter out the altitude data as noise, you're left with atmospheric data, which has immense applications when crowdsourced at scale.

<comment><USER34> It's also used for emergency phone calls. When 911 calls are made, the barometric pressure is also relayed to give the emergency operators an idea of how high someone is, which is especially useful if the call is made from inside a building.

<comment><USER35> How does it work? Isn't 911 just a voice call?

<comment><USER32> E911, or Enhanced 911, is much more than just a voice call. For some time, E911 calls have sent sensor data from smartphones to the 911 dispatch, such as latitude and longitude. Soon, the FCC is going to mandate all barometer- carrying smartphones to send the barometric pressure when an E911 call is made.

[https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-15-9A1.pdf](https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-15-9A1.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This seems very interesting / surprising, comparing[1] SE and 6S shows SE doesn't have second generation Touch ID.

I understand the 3D Touch with the space avaliable & all but why not the second generation Touch ID?

[1] [http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/](http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Here is the fundamental problem for Apple WRT new iPhones:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eSrdgTHhK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eSrdgTHhK0)

The processing power wall. The difference in processing power is extremely negligible between the latest models. What application are you going to be running on your phone that needs more power than the A7/A8, which can load webpages almost instantaneously? More processing power at this point seems like it will only be abused to allow sloppier code to slip through the cracks.

Additionally, innovation in the app ecosystem is basically dead to me at this point.

Differentiation through size, color, camera stabilization, 3D touch, fingerprint reader, lower price point, etc. is cool...but not really $500 cool to me as a user who would like (more than) 64gb on a phone.

It's also interesting that they are still pricing the phone at $400 and not really making it an accessible play for growth markets where Android reigns supreme...maybe we'll see another "C" version made of plastic that will continue Apple's push into the lower-price-point markets. Interested to see if the tradeoff of market share for product focus and brand value is worth it in the long run, and how the market reacts.

<comment><USER38> Paradoxically, increasing processing power actually improves battery life, which is one of the most important features of a smartphone. If the CPU can finish its tasks extremely quickly, it can spend more time in a low-power state. Also shrinking transistors usually causes both an increase in performance per watt and a reduction in the number of watts used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> So, 6mm longer than the iPhone 4, but 1.7mm thinner. And with an A9 processor.

Seems like a good size - I haven't cared for their "thinness at all costs" trend lately, as it makes the phone hard to hold onto. This appears to be much more hand-friendly.

<comment><USER6> Plus battery life is the first thing to go when they aim for thinness.

I know they've improved battery life in the SE, but still, overall the trend is thinner with a smaller capacity battery (but more efficient components, so you ultimately break even).

I have a phone with a 3100 mAh battery @ 5.1" 1080p, it isn't the thinnest phone around, but boy does it last three or four days. It is super nice. We need more phones like that.

<comment><USER40> It seems to me like Apple almost wants you to charge your phone almost daily... I do not know... I do not see the reason for them too keep slimming their phones when it noticeably affects the battery. I kinda dislike their attitude. Expected to do the same as they did with laptops, for example, where MacBook Pro came so light and thin that I was like, it's a little heavier than Air and a little thicker, but hell it works better! They didn't sacrifice anything at brought amazing performances both in terms of raw computational power and battery life. What bugs me is that iPhone SE got thinner... WHY?! Why Apple didn't fill that space that saved by battery... Nobody would say, HEY CHANGE IT! _Never enough battery power_

<comment><USER41> If the battery lasts 1.5 days, people have to start charging their phones in the middle of the day - which is usually a bad time and a huge inconvenience. If you have to charge it every day, you don't notice it, if the battery runs out in your lunch break, you will curse Apple for the bad battery life.

In contrast, if you charge your phone daily anyway, you don't gain anything by 0.5 days of added battery life.

<comment><USER42> Except that when they claim 1 day battery power, it's actually at most 0.5 days, with slightly above average usage or after the phone has aged a year. I'd love to have something that's designed for 1.5 days, so that I could actually get a full day out of it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> As a stubborn iPhone 4 user, I was excited for this press conference because of the return to a smaller form factor. I'm not sure the SE is going to push me over the edge just yet, despite the price.

Think I can hold out for a couple more months, just in case something amazing happens with the 7.

<comment><USER13> You're using a 6 year old, 3.5 inch phone. 7 is going to be bigger than 5, 5S, 5SE, I would upgrade if I were you. Can iphone 4 even get iOS 9?

<comment><USER43> Yes I understand 7 is going to be bigger than the 5S/SE size. I'm willing to go bigger if there something really compelling about the 7, so I want to wait.

(and 4 is stuck on iOS 7)

<comment><USER13> What about the SE doesn't appeal to you then?

<comment><USER44> OP didn't say that the SE doesn't appeal to him/her, just that they prefer to wait to see what the 7 brings.

<comment><USER13> I guess I assumed they weren't impressed with this statement "I'm not sure the SE is going to push me over the edge just yet"

If the SE doesn't push you over the edge from an iPhone 4, then I don't know what will... iPhone 28?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Sweet, but it's always risky getting the first generation hardware. I'm holding out for the iPhone SE/30.

<comment><USER46> beige plastic would seal the deal for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I wonder if reverting to the iPhone 5 design indicates that the design of the 6 is viewed as a flop by Apple.

I've dropped my 6+ so many times that I love the design (it's indestructible) but perhaps Apple's market research is showing that some people love the look of their 5 and are avoiding upgrading for that reason.

<comment><USER48> Not indestructible at all--I run a repair shop, and 6/6+ are the most common phones we repair. The bigger the screen, the easier it is to break, in general.

You may have gotten lucky, or you may have a good case on it (a good case and a glass screen protector do go a long way.) But we've had people bring in phones even in very high-end Lifeproof cases with broken screens, bent frames, etc. It happens a lot.

Apple launched this phone because of the huge number of iPhone 5/5S users who didn't want to upgrade because they felt that the 6/6S was "too big." There was a fairly large/high-demand secondary market for 5S phones for this reason. Apple's hoping to pick up some of that market with the new SE.

<comment><USER47> Hmm, no case on mine. I chose it b/c I thought it seemed lighter relative to the area that shock would be disbursed over in impact.

<comment> ux-app sounds like you've been lucky. my wife dropped her 6 onto concrete and the front shattered into a million pieces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm still on the 5 and was reluctant to upgrade mainly due to the size. Might consider this one when the 5 finally breaks down.

<comment><USER50> I used to be in your camp but honestly, after using iPhone 6 (not PLUS) I am okay. I actually don't use my phone all the time. It is mainly sitting on my desk or in my pocket on the go. My hand is not huge per se, just regular size, like any grown up male in his 20s. Comparing to the old model with smaller screen, the larger screen does increase read space which is quite pleasant. Give it a try.

<comment><USER51> If you really want to use an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus with one hand, just double-tap ( _not_ press, tap) the home button and the software adjusts the display size for you.

<comment><USER52> Except IME it's not very good because (with a 6S) you have to hold the phone very low to reach the home button comfortably enough for a double tap (which is lower than extending a bit for a firm press), which makes the phone top- heavy and much less hand-safe. I've dropped my 6S _a lot_ , I've probably dropped it more in the few months I've had it than I dropped my 4S (at all)

I expect a Plus has an even worse hold and I wouldn't be able to use it 1-handed at all.

<comment><USER53> I'm not sure I follow. I just sat here with my 6S trying various ways of holding it for a good 10 minutes, and I can't figure out for the life of me what you're talking about when you say that you have to hold it lower to double tap the home button than you do to firmly press it. If anything, I find the exact opposite to be true: I need to support the bottom of the phone less when I am simply double-tapping on the home button, while I need to have more support towards the bottom of the phone if I want to firmly press it.

This seems to make sense, intuitively, as well: I'm applying way more pressure to the bottom of the phone with a firm press of the home button than I do when I lightly tap it, even if I have to tap it twice.

<comment> k-mcgrady I think hand size is important to consider here. In order to reach the majority of my 6S screen I have my hand close to the centre of the phone. If I try to double tap the home button with my thumb it cannot reach unless I move my hand further down which involves readjusting my entire grip and I often come close to dropping the device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> If they don't offer a (limited) model styled after the Mac SE, they're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER55> Complete with the loud _BING_ as the startup sound?

<comment><USER56> Not to burst your bubble, but the sampled startup sounds didn't come until after the SE. The SE just went _BEEEEEEEEEP_.

<comment><USER54> Yeah but the beep had an envelope to it. There was definitely a strong attack followed by a less-than-square wave rather than a uniform beep. Though whether that was part of the sample (which the mac SE definitely could've played) or an artifact of some analogue circuitry I don't know.

<comment><USER56> It was a software thing. Here's the story of how it came to be:

[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Boot_Beep.txt](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Boot_Beep.txt)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Aww, no barometer in the SE: [http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/](http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/)

<comment><USER58> This bummed me out as well, but it's worth noting if you have an Apple Watch that has a barometer in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would buy it if there was a 128GB version. It's the only form factor that works for me. I can't reach the whole of the screen with a single hand on the 6s and 6s plus.

<comment><USER59> You're probably already aware, but there's a nice feature on the 6s and 6s plus which somewhat handles this: double touch the home button (without pushing it down) and the screen moves down by half, leaving only the top half of the screen visible. Makes it a lot easier to reach options located at the top of the screen.

<comment><USER15> I actually am aware, but that doesn't make up for not being able to reach the whole screen, not even close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> They say it has the same general dimensions of the iPhone 5s from 2013. I quote two specs of that phone (source Wikipedia)

Dimensions 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6 mm (4.87 x 2.31 x 0.30 in)

Weight 112 g (3.95 oz)

I'm about to buy a new Android phone (or an iPhone SE if I could flash Android on it :-) ) and the problem is that there are only mid (few) and low range (many) phones with that size and weight. Hopefully the SE will sell well and in a year Samsung and the like will start selling again something with the size of a Galaxy S2 which was their flagship in 2011 - a few months before the iPhone 4s. Apple is proving that you can do it with modern chips and modern amounts of RAM and storage. What's closest to that in the Android world now are Samsung's A3 and Alpha and the Sony Z5 Compact, but they're not really there on all specs.

If you haven't guessed it yet, I really don't care about the size of the screen, I care more about the dimensions and weight: I've got a tablet and a PC at home when I need a large screen, I want something small and light for when I'm outside.

I'm still looking forward to something like this [http://www.yankodesign.com/2012/01/20/not-a-pamphlet-its- a-s...](http://www.yankodesign.com/2012/01/20/not-a-pamphlet-its-a- smartphone/) or the more realistic [http://phandroid.com/2016/01/08/samsung- might-launch-its-fol...](http://phandroid.com/2016/01/08/samsung-might-launch- its-foldable-smartphone-this-year-according-analysts/)

</comment><comment><USER61> I haven't looked at an iPhone in a while but doesn't the SE look a lot thicker than people would like in 2016? Is that because of bigger battery or Apple wanted to differentiate on thickness?

It's good to see they are making a $399 model available - but I am not sure it had to be this small and this thick. A 1080p 4.7" model would have been the sweet spot at this price point.

<comment><USER62> Vanilla Iphone 6 has 4.7inch albeit higher resolution.

<comment><USER61> Oh, ok. I guess even for the sake of differentiation lot of people would have still loved a 4.5" 1080 on SE - at least it covers a larger audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> The 16GB storage size is a deal breaker. :( Going to stay on the 4S, see how things pan out later on.

<comment><USER13> There is a 64GB model.

<comment><USER63> It isn't competitively priced. The 32G used to be a sweet spot I could go for, but it's gone now.

<comment><USER13> Why not upgrade to a 5 or 5S now though? The 4S is quite a ways behind, and with the 5 and even the 5S being out for so long, you could get some great deals.

<comment><USER63> It all comes down to AppleCare: I don't want to own an aftermarket phone that isn't covered for damage by anything other than my own wallet. The 5/5S can only remain a viable option for me if they're sold directly by Apple & allow me to purchase AppleCare. Anything less means I take on the risk of having to keep repairing/replacing the phone every time it breaks. Unfortunately, this happens far too often.

<comment><USER64> I think your math is a bit off. A refurb or MNVO 5S costs about $200 right now. AppleCare costs $99 + $79/replacement up to two on top of the phone. So, if Apple sold you a new 5S for $250, you'd pay $349 for it, $428 if you had to replace it, and $507 if you had to replace it twice. Replacing once sounds nearly breakeven until you factor that the price of a refurb 5S will continue to fall but the deductible on your replacement will stay fixed.

Two breaks would still justify AppleCare, but the odds are pretty low.

I understand if you just greatly value getting service from Apple and want to pay for that privilege, but if you won't buy a 5S only because it's risky, then you should reconsider.

<comment><USER63> The last 5S I've owned got replaced five (5) times. I'm not joking! Every apple device I've owned since my first PowerBook G4 in 2003 completely justified the purchase of AppleCare.

<comment><USER64> Wow, okay! You are in a special class; I think my math does apply to the normal curve. :) Isn't that more replacements than AppleCare allows for one policy?

<comment><USER63> I wasn't aware of a specific limit. Those were very legit "QA lapses" (to quote one Apple genius). I had three iPhone screens separate from the housing despite never having been dropped, and two other iPhones lost all cellular connectivity. I diligently collected data points and such until another genius told me to LOL forget it, and replaced the phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Hey, an upgrade path for the 5s form-factor. I'm actually liking this announcement. The absurd size has been why I've avoided 6.

</comment><comment><USER66> This really good news. My iPhone 4S has never had a case on it and is still in like-new condition after close to 5 years. Those were built like little tanks, and this SE appears to have the same body. Great news. I like a phone that fits in a pocket easily and these monsters they've made since just aren't for a lot of people. Yay for the SE.

</comment><comment><USER67> I immediately thought "Secure Edition" when I read the title...

<comment><USER50> I read it special edition like motherboard / slimmed edition. Usually SE is a trimmed down edition...

<comment><USER37> Or "Standard Edition" ala Java SE...really not doing themselves any favors with the ambiguous, expanded naming conventions here.

<comment><USER68> Or "Second Edition" ala Windows 98 SE.

<comment><USER69> Or "system expansion" as in the Mac SE which followed the Mac Plus with an internal hard drive and developer accessible bus. (It was followed by the SE/30 which was a great machine. Things went downhill in naming from there.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> The market is not impressed with the announcements so far.

[http://i.imgur.com/IfkUcJ9.png](http://i.imgur.com/IfkUcJ9.png)

<comment><USER71> "Buy the Rumor and Sell the News"

[http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/news- trader.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/news-trader.asp)

Not uncommon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I know they don't talk about RAM and we won't find out until after release, but I wonder if this has 1GB or 2.

<comment><USER73> Looks like it's still 1 GB according to a leak from a few days ago.

[http://www.besttechguru.com/apple-iphone-se-retail-box- image...](http://www.besttechguru.com/apple-iphone-se-retail-box-image-leaked- confirms-1gb-ram-and-a9-cpu/)

Too bad; I would love to have a smaller form factor than my 6S. I waited for awhile to upgrade from my 4S to see if they would introduce something like this, but with ad-cluttered pages, web browsing can be really painful on 1 GB.

<comment><USER72> Yeah, that's about the only reason I wouldn't buy this thing. I hate 3D touch so the fact that it's missing isn't a concern to me, but the missing ram is a huge problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I think it is one of the first times Apple couldn't bring the best out of a specific technology/concept.

As you can see from very beginning, Apple most of the time took an existing technology/concept, made it better and made it so user-friendly, usable, and simple that it always took off and became a standard. People loved it. Look at touch screen phones, tablets, buying music online, beautiful keyboard design (mac) and etc.

With forced touch technology, even though it really is promising and advanced, Apple's user base did not really consider it as a key feature yet. It has been some time and you don't feel like you are missing something if you don't have it.

I guess we will see with the iPhone SE if Apple thinks the same way. They may still think that it is an essential technology and put their time on it and I believe forced touch will be great if they continue working on it.

</comment><comment><USER75> You guys are crazy. 3D Touch actually makes a screen full of apps useful. Instead of needing to have a million folders that I classify by behavior I can just have apps sprawled across a few screens and then apply a little more force on the app and then get a few actions that are related to the app.

I'm actually shocked that I'm seeing such a Luddite response to something that's objectively better. I agree that the software needs improvement (for example, what makecheck says about deleting apps) and there are a few things that are kind of stupid. For example, one can't move a full window of apps as you can with Android without moving each individual app (which is pretty ridiculous). Apple definitely seems to be falling behind but 3D Touch is a great, solid feature. It was a mistake for them to omit it from this model.

</comment><comment><USER76> I couldn't identify all the car company logos. Specifically, in 1-based (row, column) format:

(1,3), (3,2), (3,6), (4,4), (4,6), (4,7), (5,9)

Can people please chime in with the correct identifications?

(There seems to be a logo behind the speaker, which I am not counting)

<comment><USER76> Never mind, found them all here:

[http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/available- models/](http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/available-models/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Just wanted to make sure I got the dates right -- today isn't April 1 right?

</comment><comment><USER78> I was really really hoping for the 5c plastic body. It was great being able to drop the phone and not have to worry about the screen shattering on the vast majority of drops.

</comment><comment><USER79> Why are we still using the same designs / ideas approved by Steve Jobs in 2016? Its been 5 years and the new iPhones look almost exactly the same as the old ones - aside from some obvious local optimizations like processing speed and screen quality. It would be great to see something different come out of Apple, but right now it seems like the company is scared of coming out with anything truly revolutionary.

</comment><comment><USER80> What does SE mean?

<comment><USER81> According to their presentation, it apparently somehow meant "China Edition".

<comment><USER82> Sino Edition?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> UK prices are crazy.

The entry price model is £359 which is $516 USD instead of $399. The 64GB one is £439 which is $631 USD instead of $499.

So in short $100+ for shipping.

[http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-se/16gb- silve...](http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-se/16gb-silver)

<comment><USER84> VAT is included in the list price, the sales tax is not. Excluding the VAT, the UK price is ~300 GBP, which is roughly 430 USD. All we have is ~30 USD difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> I drop my iPhone 6, but never dropped my iPhone 4. They've gotten too big to hold, I'll be buying one of these.

</comment><comment><USER86> A great play by Apple for growth in developing markets. Not so flash elsewhere, don't judge by your own standards.

Clearly only low on device capacity to keep a low price point (No 3D touch - same reason). Capacity on board device is not really necessary anyway - <USER2> the reason that Apple have been developing the iCloud.

</comment><comment><USER87> No 3D touch shows you how important Apple views it. It adds a level of inconsistency amongst their phones meaning developers can never depend on it which means it'll likely get used less and less.

Oh well it was a neat idea but adding multiple dimensions to a 2D screen always seemed kinda awkward to me.

</comment><comment><USER88> So much for tech specs page, it doesn't list the battery capacity. Does anyone know how many mAh it is?

</comment><comment> c-slice Why the exact same shape as the iPhone 5S? I feel like a significant reason people buy new iPhones is the idea that people will notice you have the newest model. With SE, it will just appear like you have an out of date iPhone 5. Why not round the edges like the iPhone 6?

<comment><USER89> Wut... Because the iPhone 5S had great design?

Contrary to the popular meme, not all people buy Apple because they're shallow appearance-obsessed hipsters.

<comment><USER23> I'd even call this a statement of confidence in the longevity of Apple's own industrial design. There's a clear implication that Apple's design doesn't date easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Just in time! My iPhone 6 just broke and its about time to get a new one. I have no problems going back to a smaller phone if it still carries the class and power of the phones that have recently come out. Not to mention the price makes me happy as well :)

</comment><comment><USER91> I always liked the smaller size compared to the bigger ones. Kind of happy about it.

</comment><comment><USER92> Weird they didn't call this the iPhone 6S Mini, but I'll be getting one. Downgraded from an iPhone 6S to a 5S because the big screen is hard to use with one hand, so I'm ecstatic they released this.

</comment><comment><USER93> I just noticed that the domain iphone.se is up for sale. (I'm not affiliated.)

More info: [http://www.iphone.se/till-salu](http://www.iphone.se/till-salu) (Swedish)

</comment><comment><USER94> I found 7 occurences of sentences starting with "And", it seems a bit too much to my ears. Having one or two may add some weight to something important, but if everything is important, nothing is.

</comment><comment><USER95> I'm excited about this phone, especially the screen size. Not having 3D touch is not a deal breaker for me. I'm going to buy it as soon as it becomes available.

</comment><comment><USER96> This phone's naming convention (which at least seems better than the confusing iPad names: mini, Air 2, Pro, Pro) brings back fond memories of the Mac SE.

<comment><USER97> That said, I think Apple has too many devices now. I remember reading the book "Insanely Simple", in which the author lauded how simple Apple's lineup was. While it's not too confusing, it's definitely going in that direction.

Of course, I am being hypocritical. The 5s is my favorite iPhone, so this new product is what I wanted all along.

<comment><USER96> To think that for an instant a thought might have crossed a product manager's mind to call the new iPad the Apple iPad Air 2 Pro mini (or nano).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> $399 for the 16GB version? Seems pretty affordable to me. So instead of buying a used iPhone you can get a new one for the same amount of $$.

</comment><comment><USER99> What is going on with Apple's HealthKit UI. Right now they are showing two different UI's:

NEW?: [http://www.apple.com/researchkit/](http://www.apple.com/researchkit/)

NEW in 9.3: [http://www.apple.com/ios/updates/](http://www.apple.com/ios/updates/)

The NEW in 9.3 is a big step back IMO from all previous versions' widgets that had line graphs; the NEW in the researchkit page looks like a reasonable improvement...

</comment><comment><USER100> Meanwhile, did anyone else find it hilarious that _folders_ were pointed out as one of the great new feature upgrades for Apple TV?

</comment><comment><USER101> WTF. €609 in Europe vs $499 in the US for the 64GB model.

I will not let them get away with this pricing model. Keeping my trusted Nokia 2700 :)

<comment><USER102> US price is $499 for 64GB, but that's without tax. NL price is €588 inc 21% VAT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> We'll put this deck chair over here, and that one over there.

There's no way this ship sinks now, the Titanic is truly unsinkable.

</comment><comment><USER104> I have no reason to suspect this isn't the case, but does anyone know if the iPhone SE has the same glass as the 6s?

</comment><comment><USER105> I wonder if this will get updated in September with the other phones or stay out of step with the main release cycle.

</comment><comment><USER106> Would the Wifi power/signal strength be stronger or weaker than that of the similarly sized iPhone4?

</comment><comment><USER107> The Siri example says, "Hey Siri, remind me about this when I get in my car."

Does it only work with an iCar?

</comment><comment><USER108> At first I thought this was Security Enhanced, its not right?

Retina flash must be the gotta have feature

<comment><USER109> More like Second Edition?

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> 6-7inch screens are getting too big but 4-inch is a little too small imo...

<comment><USER111> Well then you should love the iPhone 6s with its 4.7" display.

<comment><USER112> It's like different people prefer different size phones or something

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> I know my iPhone 5c cannot use the ads blocking feature. Can this one?

<comment><USER114> It should. Content blocking extensions are compatible with A7+, and the SE model has A9.

<comment><USER113> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER115> SE -> Still Expensive

</comment><comment><USER116> Any news on security?

<comment><USER117> Yeah, I'm surprised that amidst all the kerfuffle that they aren't touting the security features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER118> My iphone 5 and ipad Air are renewed for another season.

</comment><comment><USER119> Did they exclude battery life from the presentation?

<comment><USER120> No, I saw it in the presentation, but the slide was only shown for a very short time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> Anybody have any data on pricing?

 _Edit_

From Techcrunch's post:

 _The iPhone SE will come in two models, 16GB and 64GB, priced at $399 and $499 respectively._

Kinda expensive for device that does not feature an SD card slot. :(

<comment><USER13> No iPhones have ever had an SD card slot. So you are comparing iPhones to phones made by other companies with other operating systems.

<comment><USER121> Yes, you are right. Although given how phones are now pocket computers I expect them to have additional storage options that are not cloud based. I find it that paying $500 for a device that does not allow additional physical storage is absurd. Given how good of a camera it seems to have.

<comment><USER13> The problem is that if you add an SD card slot, you have to eliminate something else (or decrease something else).

I feel that between cloud services and 64gb+ phones, I wouldn't want an SD card slot. Accessing files on an external storage device is slow, so I wouldn't want to save direct to SD. You wouldn't want to save any apps to the SD for speed issues. So you would be limited to accessing photos and music. I just don't see a need for it, and if I did, there are plenty of android phones out there that would allow me expansion for storage.

<comment><USER121> Good points. I feel that we are discussing the same issue from two different sides. You are OK with an iPhone device that does not have expandable physical storage and I am not. I do want an iPhone (even though I develop for Android) but that keeps me away. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> For the rest of the world: 4 inch = 10.16 cm

</comment><comment><USER123> New iPhone compared to a model from 2013, apple you can do better than that. It is going be 4inch, but how thin? Same as 6s, don't think so...

</comment><comment><USER124> Ugh... Apple is so boring these days.

</comment><comment><USER125> I need a banana for comparison.

</comment><comment><USER126> At first I got really hyped, but then.. "Non-removable Li-Po 1642 mAh battery" Ugh. Come on, Apple!

</comment><comment><USER127> I'm perplexed by all the suggestions that 3D touch is a misstep. Arguments center around it being useless, hard to discover, or a source of platform fragmentation and therefore confusion.

1) "3D touch is useless."

3D touch adds a new affordance to interacting with screen elements. Perhaps you do not use 3D touch, perhaps applications have not yet incorporated the feature in a compelling way, but 3D touch is no more useless than analog pressure sensitivity in game controller buttons. I would be shocked if driving games available for iOS didn't adopt pressure sensitive accelerator features this year. Ditto drawing apps; Pixelmator has already added support.

Additionally, 3D touch means that interactions that previously had to depend on introducing latency (long-press) can now happen more quickly. 3D touch also promises a high degree of real-time feedback to a user, for example in the case of peek and pop.

Application shortcuts are also very convenient and hold even more promise as apps become more powerful and complex, and if anything serve to highlight that Apple needs to improve the springboard environment.

2) "3D touch suffers from poor discoverability."

I agree somewhat, but it doesn't make the feature bad. There is room for improvement here, and hidden features can still be good features. The solution is to improve the extent to which the elements embody press-ability.

My guess is that future iOS versions will incorporate more visual cues for the interface elements that afford 3D interaction. Consider, for example, how the lock screen camera icon bounces when you tap on it -- suggesting that it should be swiped up (IIRC it used to launch the camera when you tapped on it). At the moment it's pure conjecture, but, just to toss out some ideas, elements could appear to depress slightly when touched normally, or be given a (very) minor 3D treatment... or down the line, haptic feedback could simulate texture (see [http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...](http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- adv.html&r=17&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=\(345%2F173.CCLS.+AND+20150423.PD.\)&OS=ccl/345/173+and+pd/4/23/2015&RS=\(CCL/345/173+AND+PD/20150423\)))

(Are any 'discoverability' critics emacs users?)

3\. "3D Touch is confusing because some hardware supports it and some do not."

Other people have already argued very effectively against this point. Also...

Some mice have more mouse buttons than others. Some iPhones have processors that support power-free "Hey Siri". Some cars have built-in GPS. In general, people are not confused by higher cost/prestige features being absent from some models of a product.

</comment><comment><USER128> I was hoping (against hope) for an @3 display. Sniff.

<comment><USER129> I wouldn't mind something closer to the Nokia E70 (loved that phone), with a syncing to my google account for docs, keep and contacts, a modern camera and not much else. Yes, I use my phone for a lot more, but that's almost as much a bad thing as good

The E70 was my last not-smart-phone, replaced it with the original G1 (first android phone). It was great for taking notes, and imho was a better form factor than blackberry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER130> Made especially for Trump sized hands!

<comment><USER131> He threatened a boycott. Apple has to do something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER132> Why SE?

</comment><comment><USER133> The slow march to phone commoditization continues. There are only so many "hardware" features a phone can get, incremental spec upgrades each year really wont excite people and value shopping will slowly become the norm. This isnt a good trend for apple.

</comment><comment><USER134> The A9 chip is at the core of this smaller iPhone, which gives it the same power as iPhone 6s. It brings impressive responsiveness and speed with its 64-bit desktop-class architecture.

iPhone SE has clearly merged the best of both worlds by merging the features of iPhone 6s and the beloved design of iPhone 5s, that too at a lot cheaper price.

</comment><comment><USER135> as usual nothing that sony didnt do first and apple copied. with an hipster marketing behind.

</comment><comment><USER136> Great Price, great specs. Really loving the SE so far. I can't wait to put my hands on the device. I thought this was smaller in size but really is the same as 5S

<comment><USER137> It's the same size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER138> 399??! L M A O

</comment><comment><USER139> The name is strikingly similar to Windows 98 SE (second edition).

<comment><USER140> Or Apple's own Macintosh SE

<comment><USER141> I was about to joke that I was going to hold out for the iPhone SE/30.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER142> >With 64‑bit desktop-class architecture

Desktop-class architecture!? What do they really mean? For me desktop architecture is x86-64...

</comment><comment><USER143> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11329939](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11329939)

</comment><comment><USER144> Now if they ditch the flat UI nonsense and back to the original look & feel, they may actually see me upgrade from the best iPhone ever made - the iPhone 4.

<comment><USER145> iPhone4 is still my favourite phone in terms of feel. Dense and substantial in the hand.

<comment><USER146> I had my iPhone 4 for three years and dropped it not once. I'm used to my 5s now, and appreciate the bigger screen, but I agree with you. The 4-inch screen is a trade-off. I'll admit to preferring it, but the form factor of the iPhone 4 was superior in terms of hand feel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER147> I don't like the touch id and touch pay that they're pushing. Fingerprint scanners everyone is probably not a good thing. I'm sure they're all going to end up in a database somewhere.

<comment><USER148> Your failure to research the feelings behind this statement is obvious. Fingerprints on an iOS device are stored in the Secure Enclave, a hardware module on the device itself, used for checking fingerprints, answering yes or no to the question "is this the user's fingerprint?"

As for Apple Pay, your card details are used once -- exactly once -- to generate an obfuscated alias card identifier, again, only useable by the device.

There is no database. Fingerprint data doesn't leave the phone. No one stores your credit card details.

[https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)

Research before writing.

<comment><USER147> It seems dangerous to have the scanner on the device and I don't trust it to be safe. It's the print I'm concerned with not the hashes and crypto that connect you to payment. This is something enticing to authorities and I'm sure they'll want to figure out how to get it.

<comment><USER149> Well, getting the actual fingerprint is probably like getting the original message out of a hash function...

So they can want all day, at the end, entropy wins (by design in this case).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER150> Note how they say, "A beloved design," not, "The S5 design." Whenever a company is not detailing what their customers already know in order to emphasize that their devices are SO good that they're revisiting the old design, it's to avoid saying, "We fucked up."

</comment><comment><USER151> I still don't understand how people can spend so much money on a small device like this. I guess I'm not so much on the move, but to me, $200 is the most I would spend on such device format. I have a $60 Huawei, and yes it's not the best android, but I'll always think that software should be adapted to take less cycles, instead of just having a umpf-ier CPU. HTML is a good example of that. There should be HTML formats that are optimized for smartphones, like preparsed HTML.

Maybe expensive patents will expire soon, which might make smartphones cheaper and cheaper, but still.

<comment><USER152> >I still don't understand how people can spend so much money on a small device like this

I don't think the size is really relevant, but yeah, that's an insane amount of money. If you need it for work, and generally use your phone a lot, it can make sense to pay a premium for a better device, but for the average person, I can't see it being justified. The marked penetration of the iPhone is way to high compared to the price, suggesting to me that to many people are spending their money recklessly.

<comment><USER153> >This device is not at my price point, therefore those that buy it are spending their money recklessly

It is possible that others have more money than you do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER154> > _The only camera you'll ever need._

Apple, you are usually good at slogans and titles, but this one... At least three flops in one sentence:

"The only camera" \- so no more Canons, Nikons and Leikas? "...you'll ever" \- so there will be no more innovation ever, even from you, Apple? "...need" \- so you are confident everyone needs a camera?

<comment><USER97> The average consumer doesn't need a Canon, Nikon, or Leica (definitely not a Leica!) for everyday photography. The iPhone is "good enough".

Of course, it's a middle/upper middle class tradition to get your teen a DSLR but as we all know the end up using the iPhone more.

<comment><USER154> I thought Apple wasn't quite for "average consumers" though.

Again, I used to bring Apple as an example of good, minimum-BS, no exaggerations, well though out marketing. "Your iPhone is beautiful. Give it a complement." Nice, to the point, with a neat pun (complement, as in accessories).

The phrase about the camera is awful. I don't know why I'm getting downvoted so much.</comment></comment></comment>