The Mac Platform Decline - <AUTHOR> https://milen.me/writings/mac-platform-decline/ <comment><USER2> I agree that the mac platform seems to have been neglected but Tim Cook isn't stupid, he knows that without developers the iPad isn't going to grow how he wants so I don't think this is the end of the Mac.

I think Tim Cook has ignored the Mac in favour of his favourite projects but in the meantime Schiller and Federighi have been making sure the Mac is in his periphery and fighting for resources.

I've chosen to view this update as the start of the uptick where we go back to regular updates (perhaps with a longer period than historically) and more exciting things to come.

I think the Mac Pro is over and the iMac will replace it with TB3 enabling external devices to take the workload of what Apple don't want to handle internally but other than that I hope we will see a strong line up in a couple of years and look back at this time as the trough.

That or Apple is over and I need to work out what computer I will use in 15 years as I can't stand Windows and Linux is a nightmare.

Also, I think the TouchBar looks pretty damn cool and I'll be ordering one as soon as I can.

<comment><USER3> > I've chosen to view this update as the start of the uptick where we go back > to regular updates (perhaps with a longer period than historically) and more > exciting things to come.

I'm just curious as to what brought you to that conclusion? Was something said?

The last few years I've been sitting around kicking dirt waiting for an OSX convertible type of machine, I know there's never been any talk of it, but I figured if anyone could make it correctly it'd be Apple.

I've given up at this point. It almost feels like I was suffering from Stockholm syndrome looking back at it.

<comment><USER4> Why were you sitting around waiting for a convertible when they've said on the record multiple times they were never going to make OSX touch based? All the way from Steve Jobs to the CNET interview with Schiller, Federighi and Ive.

<comment><USER3> Hey now, Apple also said nobody wants a stylus and that no one's going to buy a "big" phone!

<comment><USER5> Stylus for main input ≠ Drawing stylus.

One is overshadowed by multi-touch while the other is needed by professionals among others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This recent round of updates made me consider what I need from a "work" machine. For me, it comes down to three items:

* Can I code on this machine? This means at minimum three tasks: write, deploy and test code. This also connotes a lot of things, including but not limited to access to a non-unobfucated file system.

* Can I view all file formats easily and successfully? This includes formats like XML and json which are not typically meant to be viewed by a human.

* Can I use and move freely between several web browsers? This also connotes a lot of things, including but not limited to access to browser extensions, console, etc.

The answer to all these questions is "Yes" for Mac/Win/Linux and solidly "No" for iOS. Which, is too bad, because I'd love to use something like an iPad Pro for work. But Apple has placed several _software_ based restrictions on iOS which, above and beyond other hardware restrictions (lack of multiple monitors, poor selection of input devices) add up to there being no reasonable way to get "work" done on the platform.

I don't see myself as a power user, either: Apple seems completely stuck in a time where all users needed was access to a decent office suite and the ability to email and print in order to "do work".

That's not an adequate description of "work" any more, but apparently no one has told Apple.

<comment><USER7> > XML and json which are not typically meant to be viewed by a human

XML and json are meant to be viewed by a human. Those are visual encodings a contrario to binary encodings.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. When someone says "not meant to be viewed by a human" I think protobuf or png, not XML/JSON.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think most of the statements in the article are true, the problem is there is not (right now) a superior alternative. Yes, Microsoft is trying with the surface, Linux I'm sure has come far, but there is simply not any alternative that can realistically compete with the Mac platform right now. There is simply no pressure on Apple to dedicate further resources to this area, because there is not much for them to gain. It sucks for users of their products, but probably great for stockholders.

<comment><USER10> Linux is already superior for developers. You servers all running Linux, all dev tools are first released in Linux, everything just work with most hardware.

For professional like video editing, photography, CADs, audio etc Windows is better when you can buy better hardware for the same price as Mac.

There is no reason to by Mac when most hardware is terribly outdated and you don't know when next upgrade will happen.

<comment><USER11> I'm doing web dev on macOS. Tried to plan how I'd work on Linux desktop if I ditched Mac and it doesn't look that bright actually.

\- I basically can't stand the usability linux desktop environments. But this is subjective.

\- Our designers use a lot of mac software. I sometimes need to work with Sketch, Photoshop etc. Even if it's in read only fashion.

\- Our team lives in Slack. Turns out these is no decent slack app for linux and I'd have to use the web app. No thanks.

Development generally requires collaboration with other people. I can't see myself easily working with non developers on a Linux desktop. I run Linux servers because only the developers touch them.

<comment><USER7> > \- Our team lives in Slack. Turns out these is no decent slack app for linux > and I'd have to use the web app. No thanks.

the slack app for other platforms are made from the web app (Electron).

<comment><USER11> Yeah but they are integrated (native notifications, file access, a window that does not go away with the browser or tied to it, decent looking chrome etc). When I need to use it that much I prefer an app, even if it's a shell actually.

<comment><USER12> Eh, people said the same about Gmail but that no-install email client turned out to be wildly successful.

<comment><USER13> Give it a rest - web applications running in generalized browsers make awful desk-tray applications. The mac & windows Slack app is great - all of the power and connected-ness of a web app without all of the annoyances of accidental web browser navigation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "It will be a switch from iOS developers using Macs at home to them using PCs at home and having a "work Mac" for commercial development."

This is exactly what gave rise to the Mac and OSX in the last 10-15 years. People worked on Windows PCs "at work" but had Macs for personal development. Now I'm witnessing the exact same scenario play out now that Apple is the market behemoth amongst power users and developers. Do I think Microsoft will simply win everyone back? Not at this moment. They could keep stepping up their game and possibly do so. Or the collective energy people were spending on macOS could be spent on (finally) making Linux-on-desktop a viable option that doesn't require inordinate amounts of fiddling with drivers and configuration files.

Time will tell but I'm already pretty sure my next laptop will be a Dell XPS or Razer Blade.

<comment><USER15> There could be a third option "soon"; Fuchsia, the new OS Google is developing. From what I see, it seems like a modular OS running Flutter apps, with Material Design as the system's UI.

Google has folks who worked on BeOS, Danger, iOS, ChromeOS and Android working on this new OS.

<comment><USER16> quite a list! a question that begs being asked: did they intentionally not hire anybody that touched windows or was it by chance?

<comment><USER15> This was just from the top of my head. I doubt they would refuse to hire ex- Microsoft employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow, I really liked that article. I thought it articulated some really important insights, first that Apple could reasonably be seen as abandoning the core computer user market, and second an acknowledgement that the market they are leaving in favor of the consumer market is probably immaterial to their current business model.

It is clear that there are two "kinds" of users of computation platforms, the "apps only" users and "developers." It is also becoming clear that "content creators" (graphic artists, writers, video producers, Etc) are seen more and more as "apps only" users rather than developers as well, even though their content tools are very demanding on the platform.

If they are correct and the market is segmenting, then I think you can expect to see "artist workstations" emerge as a category with tools wrapped around a computer to help in their content creation, I think that certainly became true of synthesizers which have "workstations" as a category distinct from instruments you might play on stage or in a studio setting.

<comment><USER18> Apple is fighting too many competitors at the moment. It used to just be Microsoft, but Google's dominance in smartphones and slow but constant pressure in tablets and "good enough for most people" laptops is causing the company to lose focus.

Microsoft also traditionally didn't have a credible hardware story, giving Apple a complete vertical integration story. Now both major competitors are vertically integrating (Microsoft with Windows + Surface and Google with Android/ChromeOS + Pixel).

I think Apple is having to choose where they're going to focus and tbh, the Mac line is a smaller line of business for the company. If you simply don't use a laptop/desktop at all, then nobody cares that you can't connect your other devices cleanly to it, your other devices _are_ your primary computing devices.

Microsoft doesn't have a good story on the phone front, but it's not inconceivable that they'll try again with a shrunk down surface line if the it proves successful enough.

Google's desktop story is also incomplete, but they're moving rapidly towards _something_ if they ever stop having OS confusion.

The iPad Pro is large and powerful enough that it basically can be the "good enough for most people" computing device. And they have a cohesive ecosystem from small to large in the iDevices.

There's no significant future for Apple with the Mac line and the company is allergic to commodification in ways that their competitors aren't (and that's where that line is heading). Apple is more likely to keep playing with iDevice sizing and software than to continue dedicated serious resources to keeping the Mac line alive.

I'm not calling it a deathwatch yet, but it's clear it's a backburner line of business for the company.

<comment><USER19> The problem with the iPad Pro is that it is still an iPad. Look at the metrics of iPad sales[1], down 15% or so. There is no compelling reason to upgrade iPads on a year over year basis for most people that have them. Everyone else bought a Kindle or Asus or <insert tablet> here for $100 and called it a day.

[1][https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/26/iphone-ipad-and-mac- sales-...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/26/iphone-ipad-and-mac-sales-are- down-but-apple-only-cares-about-services-now/)

<comment><USER18> This seems to speak to a larger problem for Apple of identifying their "Pro" markets and going after them. The iPad Pro seems to do a reasonable job targeting visual artists in the hardware, but the software isn't there yet.

Notionally speaking, what would a Pro work environment look like using tablets? I'd argue that Pro software tends to be hard to use and complicated -- but highly efficient in that domain, and this has been a struggle for Apple to get...and fundamentally there should be some kind of solution for cobbling together several iPads and a couple peripherals into some kind of workstation, where the iPads can do dual duty as both reconfigurable low-latency interfaces and displays for various parts of a pro-oriented workflow.

Or at the very least offer real support for pro workflows with a Mac as the main computer and the iPads acting as interfaces.

You sort of see some of this in things like DJ setups [1], but you'll notice none of these solutions lets you just use more iPads as additional screens/interfaces.

I write music as a hobby, and I wouldn't even know what to do with a single screen for it, and I feel cramped on two. I'd love to be able to get a tablet device, connect it to "the studio" and now it handles EQ or provides some virtual knobs, or gives me a spectrogram or something. And the system just sort of makes it work. A half dozen interfaces/displays would be great.

I also enjoy photography, why not have one display showing a gallery, one showing the before edits, and one showing what I'm editing, with one or two providing common edit controls?

But this interconnecting magic is simply missing.

1 - [https://www.algoriddim.com/hardware](https://www.algoriddim.com/hardware)

<comment><USER20> There's another problem with the iOS ecosystem: it is very difficult for app developers to make money: no trials, no way to reach customers, poor discovery, and other well documented challenges. This does not bode well for the future of Pro-grade software on iOS, in contrast to macOS.

[http://www.cultofmac.com/451594/we-made-our-app-free-and- tha...](http://www.cultofmac.com/451594/we-made-our-app-free-and-that-sucks- or-why-freemium-is-killing-the-app-economy/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I see a lot of parallels of Tim Cook's Apple to John Sculley's Apple. Tim Cook's, like John Sculley's, is focused on immediate short-term bottom line improvements rather than long-term investments. John Sculley kept staying the course, and Tim Cook is doing much of the same. If anything, the most recent iteration of MBP is sidelining serious developers and content producers.

So yes, Apple's bottom line is growing. Lots of revenue are being made from iCloud subscriptions to Apple Music. Steve Ballmer was very good at improving Microsoft's bottom line too. But they lost search, music, and cloud at the expense of chasing revenue.

<comment><USER22> I keep seeing people say things about how the Mac is sidelining serious developers and content producers, but I haven't seen any actual argument as to why this is so. Can you explain?

<comment><USER21> TouchBar killed the tactile ESC key. People using vim or BootCamp and/or Linux, Windows, VMware, or Photoshop are in for a more difficult ride. So instead of having access to ESC/Func keys, we can type emoji or use Apple Pay.

The hardware on all Macs are updated on a very infrequent basis as mentioned in the article. GPUs sold with machines today are often the same as ones sold years ago.

Apple killed their external monitor option.

<comment><USER23> Look at all the screenshots of the Touch Bar. Many of them have the Esc key present. And you must be seriously out of touch if you think it's a deal breaker.

Also it's rumours that Apple killed their external monitor option.

<comment><USER24> It's a dealbreaker for me.

I was considering switching from years of buying Thinkpads to getting some Apple hardware. One of my big beefs with Lenovo is that they keep redesigning the keyboards, steadily making them worse from my perspective. But the Esc key thing kills it for me. Partly because the escape key location is baked into my brain, and I want it to be a physical key with tactile response. And partly because this is a sign to me that they are likely to keep screwing with the keyboard in a way that makes it better for whomever they're targeting but worse for programmers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was a PC user my whole life, since the days of DOS and PC Tools, until I made the switch to Macs in 2011. The last time I used Windows (10) was last year when I was stuck with a PC for 2 months.

I don't feel the Mac is in decline at all.

Although the new MacBooks are out of my budget for now, there is still nothing that makes me want to go back to PCs/Microsoft. I still remember the almost daily frustrations I had with Windows, some of which continue to plague it to this day. It remains a massive, kludgey hodgepodge of inconsistency. Even if Windows wasn't bad in my opinion there really isn't anything bad enough on the Mac side to make me switch.

</comment><comment><USER26> I agree it worries me. I've been with the Mac since OS X came out. The focus on more professional users like myself seems to have started a decline beginning with Snow Leopard.

Of course I understand the rational. It is a small chunk of Apple revenue now, but can't there be some solution to this?

What if they simply outsourced the professional products to other companies? I know the clone makers was a disaster for Apple, but they can do it smarter this time, by specifically only allow the clones to sell computers at the high performance and high end. The consumer grade computers and laptops should be Apple only.

Fortunately for me I see that a lot of Linux distros have gotten a lot more OS X like over the years to if I got to switch there are actually systems out there which somewhat resemble what I am used to.

Still Linux simply doesn't have the same breath of quality desktop applications available as the Mac today. Every time I use Linux I get reminded that while I might be able to get all the functionality I need, it is too often served up in a package or UI which is extremely kludgy and poorly thought out.

</comment><comment><USER27> > From where I'm standing, Apple are redefining (shrinking) their target > audience for the Mac platform. If you feel left out by the latest updates > and the neglect on the desktop, it's simple as Apple deciding not to serve > your segment's needs. I know that it can feel quite personal to Mac > devotees, like me, but it's simply business and strategy.

How does this work? Can someone please explain to me how Apple can neglect macOS if all iOS/watchOS/tvOS app development needs to happen on macOS?

I'm with you however on the fact that Apple has seriously disappointed me with the latest launch. I was hoping to finally get a much better, powerful notebook and an accompanying iMac. I feel very sad that the legacy left behind by Steve Jobs is being destroyed so badly.

If this is truly the decline of Apple as I'm starting to think, at the very least, Apple should open-source macOS.

<comment><USER16> > How does this work? Can someone please explain to me how Apple can neglect > macOS if all iOS/watchOS/tvOS app development needs to happen on macOS?

precisely because you are forced to use macos to access the lucrative ios market, they can get away with a lesser experience for developers. (Note that I'm not saying this is what is happening, just saying how that would work; although I often feel like they are indeed leaving the pro/advanced user market behind)

<comment><USER28> For iOS devs, you don't need that much RAM fortunately, since xcode takes about ~2-4GB ram itself for large projects. But the tooling is not great and it's annoying to run CI systems with them. iOS dev is definitely geared towards small team projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I bought an SE rather than a 7. Size is a better fit for me and I still use the audio jack. A lot. So Apple had an upgrade path for me.

But with the new MacBook Pro, they cut out USB-A. If they'd kept it on the entry level model, that'd be my upgrade path. Instead, I'll eek out maybe a couple more years on my current MBP.

BTW, I'm not sure at all why they ditched MagSafe. They did all this and kept the RCA port. Now that's a head scratcher.

On the plus side, I'm a big fan of the T1 Secure Enclave processor.

<comment><USER30> I think the losses of Magsafe and the 3.5" headphone socket will go down as the point Apple finally lost it. Magsafe was such a perfect example of Apple doing small innovation, utterly brilliantly; if they've ditched it purely to save half a millimetre off thickness, it's all the proof I need that the lunatics have taken over.

<comment><USER23> You guys are hilarious.

I just picture you back when the iMac was first released without, god forbid, a floppy disk drive or ADB ports.

The fact is that just like before in a year from now when all peripherals support USB-C we will herald Apple as a visionary once again.

<comment><USER31> Yeah - but probably 2-3 years. USB took that long to catch on.

I detect a whiff of hyperbole in everyone postings on the subject. The sky is not falling. That said, I am annoyed at the net loss of two ports - just one USB A port would have been helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is it too much to ask to wait until we get the actual machines in our hands and use them for 30 days before deciding our verdict? Maybe they suck. Maybe they don't.

<comment><USER19> You don't need a "hands on" nor 30 days to realize 16gb of RAM isn't going to be enough for the CAPEX of a $2500 to $4000 dollar machine over the span of (hopefully) 3+ years. That is just one example... there are many more.

<comment><USER33> Pfew, I may not believe how professional you are if you had just used the word "price" instead of "CAPEX".

<comment><USER19> You are right... In my defense, it is not only "funner" to say the same thing differently, but sometimes drives the point home "more better."

<comment><USER33> That's very (p/f)unny, . Please don't let people like me take the fun out of funding for you, and inform me if you ever start a religion, cult, country, CAPEX LIMITING INVESTMENT SCHEME(TM) or hummus-based fast food chain,

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The main premise here is "Apple did not update its desktops in a while, so they don't care about this". I think this is inaccurate - according to [http://www.macrumors.com/roundup/imac/](http://www.macrumors.com/roundup/imac/) , they do plan to update them, but are still waiting for Intel to produce the necessary chips.

Also, I seem to remember reading pretty much the same thing before the Mac Pro was launched (which was apparently 1046 days ago...).

So yes, desktops are becoming less important, but no, I don't think Apple will drop them any time soon.

<comment><USER35> As a datapoint, I'm a very long-time Mac User (started with an LC) and have used Macs heavily in scientific computing. A Mac Pro was my go-to machine for a very long time. But when my lab got a grant to buy some new workstations? The Mac Pro wasn't even on the list being considered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> There's a basic premise this article gets wrong: that there is a tradeoff between the Mac platform and the iUniverse. That's just not true, at least not on the 5-years plus timescales that we've been hearing these complaints. The most valuable company in the world can certainly afford staffing the Mac division with what they had back in 2000 or so or whenever people believe they were at their best. And the Mac business is without doubt profitable and that's the only thing that counts. We're not even talking about "innovation" issues anyway, where Apple may be constrained by not cloning SJ or JI. Note people don't want innovation (no floppy, no headphone, no F9) but rather simple grunt work like updating the chipsets.

I don't have any coherent theory. I'd say it's a combination of:

\- Mac Pro: possibly waiting for something that then didn't turn out as expected? It's a segment that may actually be obsolete in that anything you can't do on an iMac happens on a cluster? I mean – what's there besides video editing and chrome compiling, two things the iMac is absolutely capable of.

\- MacBooks: There's a minority complaining very loudly, who just! can't! work! professionally(!!) without 32GB of RAM and F7 – and they're real professionals by the way, not like those unprofessional hipster-wannabes.

Meanwhile, there have been quite a few advances but it's just not exciting any more: SSDs have had the most significant performance impact since the Pentium. Battery life has reached the point of diminishing returns (as has battery durability). Retina displays are on the level of vector fonts in terms of UI improvements. No idea about wide-gamut colors, but I certainly thought "why didn't this catch on 16 years ago?". A modern Apple trackpad is the hoverboard my fingers have been making memes about for a decade. Build quality and durability at the highest they have ever been, and if IFixIt complains, it's because YouDontHaveToAnymore.

Software is a different story maybe, but a large part of that may just be that it's solved. It's a stable, safe, fast, pretty OS. The Apple applications have seen a bunch of stumbles, indeed. But even Photos does what I actually need and there are alternatives for all of them.

</comment><comment><USER36> Yahoo finance says they're doing well. If this is a sign of decline then most companies would be happy getting such results.

[https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL?ltr=1](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL?ltr=1)

<comment><USER37> Yes. And Microsoft was doing extremely well during Ballmers reign, and BlackBerry was doing extremely well for many years after iPhones release.

Current revenue doesn't necessarily say anything about future decline, you need to look deeper than that.

<comment><USER24> Exactly. Current revenues for Apple are a result of decisions they made years ago. You can't look at this quarter's numbers to evaluate decisions made today.

If anything, Apple's fat profits are a danger sign. That kind of money attracts people who like spending lots of money. It removes any need for discipline. It discourages innovation, because people are afraid to do anything that might disturb the giant cash pipeline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Easy fix, bring macOS to non Apple hardware.

<comment><USER39> I don't think "easy" is the way to describe that endeavour. Ever tried a hackintosh?

<comment><USER40> _> > Ever tried a hackintosh?_

Yes, I've been running a hackintosh for several years now. It works flawlessly. What point are you trying to make?

<comment><USER28> Years ago it wasn't working perfectly :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I really just want an upgrade for the MBA.

There's finally a few Windows machines that don't look like complete dogshit, but I don't know how to connect to multiple exchange servers in Outlook.

</comment><comment><USER42> Speculation time: What if the big master plan is an Apple Compute Cloud? It would be a public cloud that can run all your favorite resource-intensive macOS apps.

Then you could actually run Xcode and VMs and machine learning on your iPad Pro, because it runs on the cloud instead and the iPad is just RDP'd into your cloud account. The need for a separate Mac product line would then be obliterated entirely.

Within that theory, the disappointing update can be explained as the Apple Compute Cloud being delayed, so they had to scramble something together quickly.

</comment><comment><USER43> Its not just the mac but the entire product line. Unfortunately Jobs did not do a good job of finding a sufficient replacement prior to his health issues getting the best of him. \- Round edges on the iphone6 \- protruding lens on the iphone6 \- removal of 3mm headphone jack on iphone7 \- forcetouch keys on the new macbooks \- video cam on the pro

<comment><USER37> Sorry, but Steve Jobs also released lots of products with rough edges like that. (Remember "antennagate"?)

I think we won't see how Apples management really works until there's a new product space that Apple entirely misses, and I don't think we've seen that yet (it could be AI, VR, or something entirely different we haven't thought of). If they miss that just like Microsoft did in the tablet / mobile space, then we can start comparing Tim Cook to Ballmer.

<comment><USER44> Steve Jobs died just over a year after antennagate. He had already been extremely sick for years at that point.

<comment><USER37> I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but he was still CEO at that point (his biography has a section about how he dealt with the antennagate issue) after having made a recovery from the transplant.

<comment><USER44> My point is being sick may have affected his abilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is a poorly written article mainly complaining about the lack of an update to the Mac Pro product despite it's thesis that: > Apple, the MacBook Pro is not a pro-level computer. It's simply not.

However, the article is indeed self-contradictory as it later goes on to say: > Who needs anything more than a MacBook Pro? The answer is a very small segment of high-demanding users.

So given that the main thesis that the Macbook Pro is not a professional machine is entirely unsupported, I argue that the Mac Platform Decline described in this article is not an accurate portrayal or reality.

Edit: Update The linked article even states the different thesis that the Mac _DESKTOP_ product line is doomed.

> Apple's desktop Mac lineup is headed for the graveyard. Dead. Done. Over.[1]

[1] [http://www.tedlandau.com/slantedviewpoint/index.php/archives...](http://www.tedlandau.com/slantedviewpoint/index.php/archives/2016/2014)

<comment><USER46> It doesn't sound like a contradiction to me. A very small segment of users are 'pro-level' users.

Now yes, it isn't supported, but if you accept that as the reality then it is not contradictory.

<comment><USER47> I think the whole 'pro-user' description needs examined a bit. Tons of developers at companies use macbook airs which are far less powerful than the newest laptops.

Ex: Rob Pike uses a macbook air. Is he not a professional?

There's a huge range of needs even within the pro user camp and I'd posit that the majority of them will be well served by the new Macs. If you're doing game development I'd argue Apple hasn't made great machines for you in the past so I'd expect a continued miss on the portable VR front as well.

For those that are doing visual work - are current generation machines actually not powerful enough?

<comment><USER37> Nobody is claming that your're not a professional because you don't need a Mac Pro. Of course the majority of pro tasks will be served by the new Mac laptops. But that's not what we're discussing here.

For the ones that need more performance, it can be a dealbreaker to go so long without updates.

For the ones that have their needs are met today, there's a very clear signal now that if your needs ever grow, Apple won't be there to meet them.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Uploadfiles.io – simple file sharing - <AUTHOR> https://uploadfiles.io - Actually launched just over a year ago, but recently revamped with lots of new features and a makeover, currently supporting ~5m monthly users.
Open to feedback and new feature requests. <comment><USER2> is this site profitable?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes</comment></comment>


Herpes Virus Reactivation in Astronauts During Spaceflight - <AUTHOR> https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2019.00016/full <comment> xkcd-sucks Space is cool, but I didn't see any gravity related controls nor any other space specific controls.

Consider that the relationship between stress (HPA axis, etc.) and viral activation is pretty well known. Models of chronic rodent stress include constant loud noise, uncomfortable environmental scale (open spaces versus "comfortable" places with places to hide/nest), weird lighting and temperature, "violent" (freaking them out, not hurting them) handling, etc. These rodent models seem pretty similar to "put humans in a cramped little box, shake them around and mess with their sleep and eating schedules".

There's nothing novel and space specific here except for "going to space is stressful" and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

<comment><USER2> I would humbly suggest submarine crews as control group.

Canned air, tight space, weird sleep cycles, noise and artificial light. Submarine crews are even more isolated because they can't contact families while underway.

<comment><USER3> I'd imagine this whole "being strapped to a ton of explosives and using them to fly" moment is a tad bit more extreme and stressful than a submarine dive.

After that, they both have similar constant stress factors, but imho the launch alone is probably way more than what anybody on a submarine would go through.

<comment><USER4> Nuclear submarines?

<comment><USER5> I suspect that far more rockets have undergone rapid, unplanned disassembly than nuclear submarines. And when they do, the death rate is very high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article doesn't mention, among possible stressors, that spacecraft are always operated at reduced air pressure and high oxygen fraction, and low humidity.

The problem is, nobody knows which factors are actually responsible for downregulating immune system activity, because every astronaut gets all of them.

A few ought to be variable. Sleep deprivation ought to be entirely avoidable, but NASA cannot quite manage not scheduling more to do in a day than there is day.

<comment><USER7> ISS, Soyuz and soon the crewed Dragon 2 all operate at sea-level air pressure with standard o2 partial pressure. Apollo was the last high oxygen environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminder that the stigma against herpes is a pharmaceutical marketing creation from the mid 1970s:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_simplex#Society_and_cul...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_simplex#Society_and_culture)

>Pedro Cuatrecasas states, "during the R&D of acyclovir, marketing [department of Burroughs Wellcome] insisted that there were 'no markets' for this compound. Most had hardly heard of genital herpes..." Thus, marketing the medical condition—separating the 'normal cold sore' from the 'stigmatized genital infection' was to become the key to marketing the drug, a process now known as 'disease mongering'.

>Much of the hysteria and stigma surrounding herpes stems from a media campaign beginning in the late 1970s and peaking in the early 1980s. Multiple articles were worded in fear-mongering and anxiety-provoking terminology, such as the now-ubiquitous "attacks", "outbreaks", "victims", and "sufferers". At one point, the term "herpetic" even entered the popular lexicon. The articles were published by Reader's Digest, U.S. News, and Time magazine, among others. A made-for-TV movie was named Intimate Agony. The peak was when Time magazine had 'Herpes: The New Scarlet Letter' on the cover in August 1982, forever stigmatizing the word in the public mind.

<comment><USER9> "The stigma against" is exclusively a US bound thing. I consume a lot of media (Plus memes) from the US, and people make a real fuss about it.

In my country people give it the same importance as a simple cold.

<comment><USER10> widespread cold sores in a given society i think have 2 pronged effect:

1\. a something widespread does usually have naturally higher societal acceptance

2\. [IANAD] kind of "de-facto" vaccination/immunization. For example i (like many many Russians) have occasional cold sores (once in a 1-4 years, in CA seems to be less frequently than back in Russia) since childhood. I've had it on both sides of my lips which probably means that i have both - HSV1 and HSV2. That also means that i never going to get it anywhere else on my body (once any one site in the body gets infected with herpes the rest of the body develops immunity)

From descriptions genital herpes seems to be worse than lip cold sores. In US (at least in CA) i see no people with cold sores, so the majority of the population is most probably susceptible to the infection. Given that sexual contact is a frequent transmission method in adulthood (while not a factor in childhood), i'm not surprised that for US population "herpes" statistically means and happens as "genital herpes" (while i haven't heard about such a thing back in Russia where we get it early in the childhood as cold sores on lips).

<comment><USER11> >I've had it on both sides of my lips which probably means that i have both - HSV1 and HSV2. That also means that i never going to get it anywhere else on my body (once any one site in the body gets infected with herpes the rest of the body develops immunity

This is all contrary to my understanding.

You can definitely spread either strain to other areas of your body. You can spread it around your mouth more and transfer it from your mouth to your genitals.

Thinking you can't get it more will not lead to pleasant outcomes.

<comment><USER12> To clarify: you don't spread herpes around your mouth or genitals, because that's not where herpes takes up latency.

HSV takes up latency in usually either the dorsal root ganglion (which typically presents with lesions in the genital region), or in the trigeminal ganglion which typically presents with oral lesions.

You are right that infection with one strain does not necessarily grant immunity to infection with another strain.

It is also not true that oral lesions necessarily indicate HSV1 infection, and that genital lesions necessarily indicate HSV2 infection.

Source: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK47447/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK47447/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am surprised to see this data, because my impression was that you essentially had to be a physically and mentally flawless human being to go into space.

<comment><USER14> Over 60% of humanity has HSV-1 [1], aka "cold sores" virus. When people "get tested", they generally don't even check for it unless you request it, because it would create unjustified concern.

[1] See [https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/28-10-2015-globally- an-...](https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/28-10-2015-globally-an-estimated- two-thirds-of-the-population-under-50-are-infected-with-herpes-simplex-virus- type-1)

<comment><USER15> So almost 40% of humanity does not have HSV-1.

Astronaut selection is already severe. You don't get selected if you have tuberculosis, diabetes, amputations, or deafness. Once selected, you won't go on the launch if you are sick with the flu.

It doesn't seem like HSV-1 needs to be a problem in space. Simply add that to the gigantic list of conditions that prevent space travel.

I highly doubt that HSV-1 is anywhere near 60% in the pool of astronaut candidates. Disease presence is correlated: if you have one, you probably have another. Since lots of other diseases would already be disqualifying, adding HSV-1 to the checklist won't strike off very many potential astronauts.

<comment><USER16> It's related to age, as you would expect from any contagious virus that's ubiquitous in the environment and doesn't go away. 0.01% of newborns have HSV-1 [1]; 90% of 50-year-olds have it [2]. The 40% of humanity without HSV-1 are largely under 30. Your typical astronaut is much more likely to be towards the 40-50 year old end of the scale.

[1] [https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/pediatrics/infecti...](https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/pediatrics/infections- in-neonates/neonatal-herpes-simplex-virus-hsv-infection)

[2] [https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary/conditions/adu...](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary/conditions/adult/infectious_diseases/Oral_Herpes_22,OralHerpes)

<comment><USER17> It says "90 percent of adults have been exposed to the virus by age 50", but I didn't think that exposure necessarily meant infection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At first I thought this was going to be about breakouts of shingles on the ISS, the thought of which nearly put me off spaceflight entirely. What a relief!

</comment><comment><USER19> Interesting to me personally because I'd never heard before that HSV-1 reactivation was stress-linked.

<comment><USER20> If you ever had chicken pox, high stress can re-activate the dormant virus, and it reactivates as "shingles". There is a vaccine that came out a few years ago to suppress it from happening.

<comment><USER21> I think the vaccine is only covered by insurance (USA) for people over 50 in most cases. If you are lucky enough to have coverage, get the vaccine. Shingles as an otherwise healthy 42 year old was no picnic, I can't imagine how bad it must be for someone older or more immuno-compromised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> NASA could send a control group of astronauts to space with NO duties and see if it has any effect on health (relative to those with "jobs"). Space travel is surely stressful, but perhaps the additional pressure of having tight schedules and deliverables is an additional stress?

<comment><USER23> That seems like it would be an extremely expensive experiment.

<comment><USER24> Make it a rich person, call it space tourism and you could make it profitable.

<comment><USER3> That makes me think of Richard Garriott [0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott#Spaceflight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott#Spaceflight)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I get cold sores when I fly commercial airlines.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Filthy stinking astronauts" \-- upright citizens brigade [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK-30442RII](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK-30442RII)

<comment><USER27> I was thinking "space herpes," but couldn't remember what movie it was from.

<comment><USER28> Ice Pirates.

<comment><USER29> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-me2inj1nNw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-me2inj1nNw)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building Your Two Sentence Elevator Pitch - <AUTHOR> http://www.npdbd.umn.edu/deliver/elevator.html

<comment><USER2> Once you're done, test it on your mom or annoying uncle. If they get it, you're golden.

<comment><USER3> I'm still up-voting for the aviators, but even if I wasn't, that garnered a chuckle.

Mom to Mark. "oh, you're building a website, like Google?"

<comment><USER2> To some you need to reply "Yes, we're going to be just like Google."

That relates to the other meme about setting expectations to force hard work to avoid embarrassment :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm working with an incubator in Atlanta now that gives a couple exercises like this for entrepreneurs. It's actually a good way to get your messaging about your startup sharpened to a finer point. Having a very crisp, easy two sentence overview of your business is difficult but critical.

</comment><comment><USER5> Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore pg. 154 : Define the Battle. Is a _great_ book that discusses the positioning process.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen That's fabulous. I love bite-sized articles like this one.

</comment><comment><USER3> That was an excellent find.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice one! Really helpful.</comment>


Adobe Systems Incorporated: Eliminate the mandatory subscription model - <AUTHOR> https://www.change.org/p/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model?utm_campaign=share_button_action_box&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition

<comment><USER2> Are there Gimp and Inkscape developers who will accept donations to improve the usability of these open-source tools, specifically targeting customers who want to migrate from Adobe CC?</comment>


8 Things That Help Apple Design Innovative Products - <AUTHOR> http://uxmovement.com/design-articles/8-things-that-help-apple-design-innovative-products

<comment><USER2> This is like 3rd time it's being posted, you just changed the headline.</comment>


Deal would bring Google jets, millions of dollars to San Jose airport - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22546083/deal-would-bring-google-millions-dollars-mineta-through

<comment><USER3> To be fair, this isn't a private airport, it's really just a private terminal at San Jose International (SJC). Don't get me wrong, that's pretty darn cool, though really no different to, say, Lufthansa's dedicated First Class Terminal at Frankfurt. Well, apart from the private Google planes, of course :-)

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure Lufthansa owns their own planes as well. Not so different, really. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Chrome says that site had malware on it...

"Content from us.bernerverein.ch, a known malware distributor, has been inserted into this web page. Visiting this page now is very likely to infect your computer with malware."

<comment><USER6> This actually looks like a false positive (I'm not 100% sure though, still waiting on confirmation from my researchers). Earlier today the Mercury News reported on Chrome blocking a number of websites, including Youtube, for distributing malware. The article specifically mentioned the malicious server ( us.bernerverein.ch ) that google is claiming is present on that site, and I think they got it from the article itself.

[http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22556675/google- chrom...](http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22556675/google-chrome- browser-blocks-websites-malware-warnings-including)

It's also possible that there's an advertising network that's compromised and pushing malware (as seems to be the case quite often).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does it occur to anyone that the folks who are working on driverless cars might have a reason to want a place to work on pilotless planes? While the current autopilot in many commercial planes can handle a lot of the flying, there are some decent savings available if you could reduce the number of pilots. Especially if you can make the solutions small and cheap enough for 2-4 seat planes.

<comment><USER8> My understanding of modern airlines is that unless your plane is in the process of taking off, landing, or crashing, it's already essentially pilotless.

There's always been too much at stake in the airline industry to allow a lot of room for human error. Combined with the huge leaps that fly-by-wire planes have made in the last few decades, that made for some very powerful incentives on everyone's part (engineers, regulators, and companies) to advance autopilot as far as they possibly could.

<comment><USER4> In normal conditions, yes. But when things go wrong (your "or crashing", perhaps), the pilot is suddenly very much involved, and screwups can be fatal.

Take, for example, Qantas flight 32, an A380 that was successfully landed after one of the engines more or less blew up, damaging several other systems. Truly pilotless operation would require automated systems that could do as well --- and hopefully better than the pilots of Air France 447, the transatlantic flight that was lost due to recoverable pilot error.

<comment><USER9> Yes. The failure/recovery mode for "speedometer is reporting inconsistent speeds" is stop the engine and coast to a stop. That doesn't work as well with planes.

Then again, human pilots are fallible, and lots of crashes would be avoided if they paid more attention to instruments and less to instinct (where's that horizon again?), so maybe programming planes to just blindly follow the instruments would result in a net reduction in crashes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems like a downgrade from their current arrangement[1]. I'm surprised TechCrunch did not mention this agreement with Moffett Field, which is much closer to Google HQ and much more private.

[1] <http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/tech/150386125.html>

<comment><USER11> Google's attempts at buying Moffett field and taking it private have been unsuccessful. The 'take measurements when we fly in' was a nice hack to get around stipulations about all aircraft must be working on research but at the end of the day both Sunnyvale and Mountain View have made it clear they do _not_ want Moffett turned into a General Aviation airport and once the Naval armory got Lockheed moved it has become only a matter of time before the Military wants out. NASA doesn't have the budget to run the airport facilities.

It has been the topic of quite a number of spirited debates at both city halls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For the lay - could someone explain the benefit of a private airport (as opposed to a fleet of private planes)? The speed at which you can get through security can't be worth that much - can it?

<comment><USER13> Private flights (aka "general aviation") have to take off from somewhere. I don't know if there are currently private flights taking off from SJC - <USER2> think the Google executive planes take off and land at the nearby military base.

<comment><USER14> Moffett Field (a NASA-run federal airfield, and former Naval Air Station) has significant operating restrictions for Google, and there is probably strict limits on what aircraft they can base there, and how often they takeoff and land there.

<comment><USER13> That's the one. Not military - my mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Oh what lengths people will go through to bypass the TSA.

</comment><comment><USER16> from a Prius to save the world from Global Warming <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3666241.stm> to 8 planes for 3 people.

 _(I'd probably have even more planes, just pointing out the upgrade)_

<comment><USER17> Number of planes per person seems irrelevant because you can only be in one plane (and thus emitting carbon) at a time.</comment></comment>


Ikarus electric "rocket" – Thrust-vectored flying ducted fan [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMeEh5OUaDs <comment><USER2> Great project. Though as a former pilot, I was wincing at all the foreign object ingestion happening in the opening sequence! :)

<comment><USER3> Yeah it could have used a FOD trigger warning ;)

<comment><USER4> FOD: Fear of Destruction?

<comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_object_damage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_object_damage) :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had a similar project on Kickstarter. [https://youtu.be/xRviasOMCvk](https://youtu.be/xRviasOMCvk)

We made 300k$ but then dropped the project and gave money back to backers. Basically beyond the "damn cool" effect there is no edge over quadcopter. It is less efficient. You gain something by the duct effect but the duct is heavy. It is very noisy. More sensitive to wind, especially when you try to reduce weight to make something affordable to build and sell. The only benefit was safety due to ducted fan but the point vanishes against mini drone the size of your hand like latest dji.

But for sure it s dann cool and fun tech to master. Kudos!

<comment><USER6> This is really cool. I find it very strange that it's less efficient though.

<comment><USER7> I believe it is because propellers get lift from air pressure, which is more efficient than just pushing air for thrust. If you are sucking air through an engine you don't get that bernoulli effect.

I could be wrong. I am not an aerospace engineer

<comment><USER5> The efficiency of a propeller depends on the ratio thrust/area, the smaller this ratio the higher the efficiency. (See 11.7.3 at [https://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes...](https://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/node86.html)) The issue with the ducted fan is that the propeller size is constrained and the weight is higher due to the mechanical structure. A small quadcopter has twice or more propeller area for a portion of the weight.

<comment><USER7> Thanks! I learned something from this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool, add a camera and some AI and you've got an autonomous leaf blower.

<comment><USER9> Oh wow. Making those way more annoying previously seemed impossible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, it seemed straight forward for the first 10 minutes or so, when he introduced the biggest challenge: gyroscopic motion due to the high speed rotation. this is a gripping video.

<comment><USER11> I was expecting some sort of dynamic feedback system based on a gyro sensor, but apparently the compensation is just hard-coded? I'm amazed that can work.

<comment><USER12> Ducted-fan VTOL aircraft are surprisingly stable. Here's the Hiller Flying Platform of the 1950s.[1] It's very stable, even though top-heavy. It's mostly steered by leaning, but there are thrust-vectoring vanes to control yaw.

Many variations on this theme were tried in the 1950s, and many of them flew. But it never caught on. There's been recent interest in larger ducted fan drones. This apparently scales better than quadrotors. But nobody seems to really need large ducted fan drones.

If you like early small VTOL craft, many of them ended up in the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, CA.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3FS3D1rCos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3FS3D1rCos)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm glad I'm not the only one that found this project fascinating (see my [http://weeklyrobotics.com/weekly- robotics-4](http://weeklyrobotics.com/weekly-robotics-4)).

If you are interested in drones/robotics then it's very well worth it to watch this video. You can learn a lot from the author.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how much more power you can provide it to lift a human for a say half an hour.

I've always wanted to build a jetpack like that from xDubai [0]. This is definitely easier to build for an amateur compared to the one professionally built in the video.

[0] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VPvKl6ezyc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VPvKl6ezyc)

<comment><USER15> It would probably look something like this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD8vcTCWpmo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD8vcTCWpmo)

<comment><USER14> I saw that and while that is super cool - (it's being sold for ~$100K btw), that's not what I was looking for. (think more human plane / human with wings rather than an human + machine if that makes sense)

(more horizontal than vertical if you will - I'm getting my solo skydive certification soon and my plan is to move on to wing gliding - which I want to follow up with something similar to xDubai's suit).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> earlier: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_RQ-16_T- Hawk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_RQ-16_T-Hawk)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiller_VZ-1_Pawnee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiller_VZ-1_Pawnee)

<comment><USER17> Not quite, as they use contra rotating fans to counter the gyroscopic forces the creator had to tackle. The RS-16 might have a single but can't find any info on it.

<comment><USER18> Somewhere in the youtube comments it says it uses fans below the propeller to counteract the torque.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Total noob here, what's the difference between wrapping a quadcopter with a duct and this?

Is it because a single rotor is much harder?

<comment><USER20> I believe a quadcopter has variable-pitch wings that spin to create lift. This is a fan that pushes a column of air down to create thrust.

Helicopter blades pull the vehicle up from the top, rocket thrust pushes the vehicle up from the bottom.

<comment><USER21> No, not at all.

The technical difference is how the overall thrust is steered:

* Quadcopter: the speed of four (fixed pitch[1]) propellers is managed independently. Spinning a single propeller a bit more tilts the copter away from that propeller[2]. This is very unstable, so speed needs to be adjusted at kHz rates[3][4].

* "Electric rocket": the thrust of the single propeller is steered using the control surfaces at the bottom to deflect the thrust. This is called thrust vectoring. Since the propeller is not directly used to steer, the speed doesn't have to be adjusted that often. However, the position of the control surfaces does.

* Helicopter: tilts the rotor plane[5] to tilt the aircraft, and inclines the individual rotors to change the magnitude of thrust. The rotor speed typically remains constant.[6] Helicopters are aerodynamically stable and don't require an automatic control loop [edit: no, see follow-up post!].

In theory the "electric rocket design" with a single propeller might allow higher efficiency: larger propellers are generally more efficient (thrust per watt). (However, the model in the video won't be very efficient, the props are quite small. And there'll be other tradeoffs too.)

Also, this is a refreshing take on RC aircraft that hasn't been done as much before.

Lift is generated on both sides of the propellers in both cases.[7]

Optional reading:

[1] Generally - variable pitch quadcopters exist. However that gives up the mechanical simplicity that's one of the main advantages of quadcopters over helicopters. Their advantage is that they can actively decelerate a lot more efficiently and also fly upside down easily.

[2] And turns the copter (yaw). Quadcopters use two pairs of counter-rotating propellers to be able to cancel the yaw.

[3] Quadcopters are unstable and need to measure linear and angular acceleration and correct the propeller speeds very quickly. Control frequency of 100Hz flies, 1kHz is somewhat standard, 32kHz is state of the art. (Note: Propellers have significant inertia. To give an idea, reversing prop turn direction in-flight takes ~1sec (and requires special symmetric props if it's supposed to work efficiently).

[4] This is feasible since the propeller is smaller (less mass, less inertia) than for helicopters.

[5] Due to gyroscopic effect, the tilt of the aircraft is 90 degrees out of phase.

[6] Assuming the typical variable-pitch helicopter. There are other options both for real life helis as well as for models (fixed pitch, coaxial, ...) but they're rare (or very cheap toys).

[7] Side remark: lift is generated due to flow turning, not due to different pressure differences caused by different airspeeds over top/bottom of wings as is taught in school. Search for "NASA incorrect lift theory" to learn more. [https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/wrong1.html](https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/wrong1.html)

<comment><USER22> > Helicopters are aerodynamically stable

That's not my experience as a helicopter pilot.

I believe the textbooks say they are "statically stable and dynamically unstable", but the bottom line is you surely do need a control loop.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for correcting that part then.

I've never even been in a real helicopter unfortunately. I really wish I could touch the stick of one once to see how it compares to models in terms of touchiness... it's (un)fortunate that there's probably no realistic way to try that.

<comment><USER23> If you can afford $150 some helicopter flight schools offer prospective students a brief introductory lesson where you can touch the stick.

[https://www.specializedheli.com/helicopter- training/](https://www.specializedheli.com/helicopter-training/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The YouTube codec did some wild stuff with that slow-mo flying mulch at the beginning... any video experts around that can explain?

<comment><USER25> Tom Scott did a video on this very subject with a decent amount of depth: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Rp- uo6HmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Rp-uo6HmI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In the future I have a feeling that's the sound you hear before death is approaching in a battlefield. Much the same way as the sound of jets overhead or the squeal of dive bombers in WW2 or the whistling of artillery in WW1.

<comment><USER27> This is our future [https://youtu.be/TlO2gcs1YvM](https://youtu.be/TlO2gcs1YvM)

I'm not really sure how we counter this type of threat.

<comment><USER28> Wow, mind blown, your video link scares the shit out of me.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, wow; it's just an application of existing tech. very scary.

<comment><USER30> There's a couple sizable leaps in there in particular the combination of size, payload, and autonomy for the main mini murder drones. Particularly quads/drones of that small size just don't have the payload/flight time combination to really do that, they're extremely sensitive to weight and have really short flight times that are hard to extend because more weight requires more power in kind of a mini version of the rocket equation.

<comment><USER31> Well, if you deploy them close to the targets, they don't need much flight time to deliver the charges.

The idea is that instead of packing a truck with explosives (which create a large but very localised detonation) you just deploy a swarm of these and let them take out whatever group of people you want to target.

Unlike in Black Mirror's _Metalhead_ this isn't a scenario that requires long- lived machines. You just need them to be readily available at scale and to use facial recognition (or whatever -- the US already targets drone strikes based on cell phone signals I hear) to determine their targets.

Or hey, imagine a white supremacist group (not like the US has any of those) using them to just kill people of color. Terrorism doesn't need anything approximating a 100% success rate to achieve its goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Amazingly cool. If he can find some lighter batteries with the same output it would make a huge improvement in stability I am assuming.

<comment><USER33> If it's heavier it's actually more stable because it's harder to move a heavier object. But maybe you mean that a heavier craft is slower to stabilise?

<comment> 52-6F-62 I think it's because the batteries are teetering above the centre of gravity?

<comment><USER34> you want center of gravity above the propeller, its the classic balancing a broom on the tip of your fingertip trick

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So glad birds don't make that kinda noise.

</comment><comment><USER35> As I understand, much of the difficulty controlling this comes from the gyroscopic effect. So wouldn't it be feasable to add a gearbox and a secondary rotary mass to cancel out the angular momentum? If you spin the secondary mass fast enough it also wouldn't add that much weight.

<comment><USER36> Adding weight to solve this problem doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This almost looks like the original App Engine logo.

</comment><comment><USER38> Pardon my ignorance. Is this that different from a helicopter besides having walls? Does this mechanism serve a different purpose?

<comment><USER39> A helicopter uses a rear rotor to counteract the main rotor rotation. Here he is using thrust vectoring to perform that task.

<comment><USER38> Ah, thanks! Some helecoptors also just use a second main rotor spinning in the opposite direction instead right?

Would that not be sufficient? Sorry if it's covered in the video I've only seen the beginning so far.

<comment><USER40> Yes but he only had one fan. Just a rotating ring mounted somewhere would help too. But not as much fun I guess :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Nice! I wonder if it would be possible to add wings and build a VTOL plane with thrust-vectoring?

<comment><USER42> Fixed wing and let the thrust-vectoring pitch it over for forward-flight. Pitch up for SpaceX style landing.

<comment><USER43> It's been done with two electric motors. This is the E-flite X-VERT:

[https://www.horizonhobby.com/efl1800](https://www.horizonhobby.com/efl1800)

You can fly it like a regular plane, or hover like a quad. It doesn't do that well hovering in wind though.

<comment><USER41> But no trust vectoring :( still looks neat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> the future is loud

</comment><comment><USER45> Very cool, some nice hands-on engineering going on here.</comment>


DigiCert to Acquire Symantec's Website Security and Related PKI Solutions - <AUTHOR> http://investor.symantec.com/About/Investors/press-releases/press-release-details/2017/DigiCert-to-Acquire-Symantecs-Website-Security-and-Related-PKI-Solutions/default.aspx <comment><USER2> Presumably the idea here is that DigiCert is buying Symantec's customer database, and instead of Symantec painstakingly transferring its users to a new, trustworthy certificate issuance system, everyone will just use DigiCert's.

Which, if that's the case, will mean Google and Mozilla more or less killed the web's largest CA.

<comment><USER3> > Which, if that's the case, will mean Google and Mozilla more or less killed > the web's largest CA.

No, no it did not. Symantec deserve zero benefit for any "customer base" transfer and digicert should be ashamed for rewarding Symantec's behaviour.

What Symantec did should result in punishment so severe no CA would dare do the same ever again. Their business should be null and void and considered to be worth absolutely nothing.

<comment><USER4> You seem to be conflating expectations and reality.

They did kill the business, but Symantec was able to salvage part of it.

<comment><USER3> They should have been utterly destroyed; not parted out to the highest bidder. I want every Symantec shareholder to feel the pain of a zero share price for what they enabled.

<comment><USER3> The point I'm trying to make is that they're not dead if they own 30% of digicert as a result of this instead of being left with nothing.

<comment><USER2> What exactly does Google accomplish by somehow trying to prevent Symantec from having a beneficial interest in its customer base? The alternative to this deal is that Symantec continues limping forward with a broken CA customer base that browsers have to accommodate for years to come. The economics of this deal are what enabled it to happen at all.

<comment><USER3> > What exactly does Google accomplish by somehow trying to prevent Symantec > from having a beneficial interest in its customer base?

What digicert is doing, in allowing Symantec to continue operating in their name, is wrong and really lessens what it means to completely fuck up the core mission of what a CA does and it makes a mockery of any sort of censure any browser/TLS developer/user could do. They should have to limp along while browsers distrust their certs and their customers leave to other providers competing on an open market. Then once they've been bled dry they should die alone. I _want_ this to be difficult for their customers. Part of choosing a CA is doing due diligence and you can bet that once people have been burnt they'll be a lot more cautious about their next choice. This makes the CA/PKI system stronger as result -- a bit of pain now is a good thing.

This is the interest Google should have in ensuring that the rats go down with the sinking ship.

<comment><USER2> I'm really having trouble following you. You keep writing as if the alternative to Digicert's fire-sale acquisition was that Symantec's CA would simply vanish off the face of the Earth. No. False premise.

<comment><USER3> Please explain. If their certs become useless and no-one will touch them because, in turn, their certs will be useless... then how _wouldn 't_ Symantec's CA vanish off the face of the earth? Their customers can't exactly live without the PKI -- they would just have to go to another vendor, as they should in any case. If those customers have made poor engineering decisions in their own products, well, that's their problem isn't it?

<comment><USER2> I think you've oversimplified the pre-existing Google/Mozilla distrust plan, and your misapprehension about what was happening has harmed your understanding of the economics of this acquisition.

<comment><USER3> You're right. I probably do need to go back and re-examine the details. Generally when disagreements happen, one or both parties is missing something. At the same time, I still feel this is far too nice an ending for Symantec given the shit they pulled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a reseller for Digicert - they just sent an announcement email about this, here's the most interesting bit:

"Earlier this year, the browsers proposed a plan to limit trust in Symantec certificates after discovering issues with how they were validating and issuing digital certificates. Importantly, we feel confident that this agreement will satisfy the needs of the browser community.

DigiCert is communicating this deal and its intentions to the browser community and will continue to work closely with them during the period leading up to our closing the transaction. DigiCert appreciates and shares the browsers' commitment to engendering trust in digital certificates and protecting all users. "

<comment><USER3> You may want to come up with an escape plan then. If digicert can buy Symantec so that Symantec can escape censure what message does that send? At this point Symantec should be considered so radioactive that nobody would go near it for fear of contamination. Symantec betrayed all of us and digicert, in buying it and rewarding the behaviour is doing the same.

<comment><USER6> The message is that Symantec doesn't get to run a CA business anymore. Presumably the fact that a sale was somewhat necessary was priced into the purchase price.

<comment><USER7> They will own 30%of digicert.

I think this deal should put digicert on a "one strike and you're out" zone as well.

I don't understand what's going on. Digicert will give Symantec 800M+ cash and a 30% equity?

And Symantec will generously allow the current digicert CEO to continue as the CEO of digicert? Doesn't look like Symantec is selling anything. Looks like Symantec is buying digicert from the owners of digicert.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. Classic reverse buyout to escape a bad name. It's complete bullshit and the browser vendors should see right through it.

<comment><USER2> It would be a "classic reverse buyout" if DigiCert was going to continue to operate the Symantec CA infrastructure. If it is not, then Google and Mozilla will have accomplished their most important objective, which is the elimination of insecure certificate issuers in current operation.

You clearly have other objectives you would like Google and Mozilla to accomplish for you, and I probably agree with many of them, but let's try to stay focused here.

<comment><USER3> And now the same people who made that shitty infrastructure will control a large chunk of the business that created what was once (probably) a perfectly good one -- and likely make the same shit decisions that made their old one shit as well making digicerts' infrastructure worse, and eventually probably shit as well.

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure the Symantec CA people aren't coming along or taking over Digicert.

<comment><USER3> With 30% control, you can _bet_ there are Symantec CA business people coming into Digicert.

<comment><USER2> Would you like to make that bet more explicit? I would be game.

<comment><USER3> Sure. How would we judge it though?

<comment><USER2> Lay out the scenario, in as much detail as you can, where employees of Symantec brought over to DigiCert somehow corrupt the certificate issuance process. If it's specific enough, I'll take your money over it (I assume proceeds to charity; mine's Partners In Health).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _From the email announcement:_

      ... snip ...

Also, some of you may be wondering about any implications our announced acquisition will have on the ongoing debate between Symantec and the browser community about trust in their certificates.

Earlier this year, the browsers proposed a plan to limit trust in Symantec certificates after discovering issues with how they were validating and issuing digital certificates. Importantly, we feel confident that this agreement will satisfy the needs of the browser community. DigiCert is communicating this deal and its intentions to the browser community and will continue to work closely with them during the period leading up to our closing the transaction. DigiCert appreciates and shares the browsers' commitment to engendering trust in digital certificates and protecting all users.

      ... snip ...

</comment><comment><USER9> How is Symantec's cert business not a toxic asset given their historical practices?

<comment><USER10> I don't recall the exact details of their poor historical practices, but I think they at least had audited issuance, and reasonable control of their roots, although their intermediates issued questionable certificates?

If so, the new owner can relatively easily shut down issuance under the current pipelines of questionable quality; issue new intermediates from the root, to be used in the new owner's pipelines and to make it possible to revoke/detrust the old intermediates if more serious trust issues are uncovered in the previous practices. Then the new owner gets to enjoy the benefits of the previous customer base, and installed base of the roots and pins.

In short, as long as they do a good job of making a clean separation of issuing practices, it's not a toxic asset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Under the terms of the agreement, Symantec will receive approximately $950 million in upfront cash proceeds and approximately a 30 percent stake in the common stock equity of the DigiCert business at the closing of the transaction."

</comment><comment><USER12> In any case, I wonder if Google "senior executives" are really involved.

</comment><comment><USER13> Make no mistake, this is going to be an even greater period of uncertainty for current SYMC CA customers over the next six to twelve months.

</comment><comment><USER14> Eh ? About to be untrusted by google... interesting time to sell it.

<comment><USER15> It's Symantec's past operation of the CA that's untrusted by Google, and in fact one of the proposals was that Symantec make a new CA and cross-sign it with their old one, which would maintain compatibility for previous customers that pinned the Symantec root as well as customers using up-to-date browsers. So if the setup here is that DigiCert signs their own CA with Symantec's, then everyone's happy: DigiCert gets the customers, the community believes DigiCert is competent, and old Symantec customers get business continuity. It possibly makes _more_ business sense for Symantec to sell their root to a trusted CA than to continue to operate it.

And I think it makes sense for DigiCert to buy it: Symantec's customers are people who are clearly willing to pay too much for even a low-quality certificate because they let Symantec consultants set up their trust infrastructure years ago and have no idea how to modernize their infrastructure. If you want a target market of people who will pay lots of money for CA services despite the presence of free services like Let's Encrypt, Symantec's existing customer base is a perfect fit.

<comment><USER16> I work in the financial infrastructure space, and while I'm no fan of Symantec, using Let's Encrypt would get me laughed out of the room by compliance and our auditors.

Some checkboxes are ceremony, some have real purpose. One size does not fit all.

<comment><USER17> What about Let's Encrypt certificates make them non compliant to your auditors?

<comment><USER18> they didn't pay several million dollars to get added to the checklist</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ian McHarg, Landscape Architecture and Environmentalism [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.annewhistonspirn.com/pdf/environmenalism.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> A presentation from 1969: [https://youtu.be/S76_thtZ6k8](https://youtu.be/S76_thtZ6k8)

An interview with Charlie Rose: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZLVs5weric](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZLVs5weric)</comment>


Machine Learning: Working with Stop Words, Stemming, and Spam - <AUTHOR> https://www.codeschool.com/blog/2016/03/25/machine-learning-working-with-stop-words-stemming-and-spam/ <comment><USER2> Neat. :) We did some of this recently for our [https://friskr.com](https://friskr.com) 3D concept extraction website.</comment>


A cure for pain - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2017/04/the-cure-for-pain/ <comment> le-mark I've suffered from occipital nueralgia for over 10 years now. Luckily mine isn't as severe as it ca be for some. I'm able to self treat by applying pressure when it gets really bad. So I manage and it doesn't effect my life much aside from usually being a cranky son of a bitch to my wife, which I do regret.

Once a few years ago I had an "occipital nerve block". That's where a pain specialist injects novacain into the nerve. I was pain free for about a month, it was marvelous. But insurance didn't cover it so I never got one again.

About a month ago I woke up feeling like I was high or something. I was in physical bliss. I realized it was the first time in many years I'd been totally pain free. It made me kinda sad.

<comment><USER2> I wish our medical system trusted patients more. Why not tattoo a tiny dot on the scalp where the patient needs to inject, train him, and then send him home with the Novocain.

Have a checklist of warning signs that should terminate treatment or require a checkup.

Here's a video explaining the procedure. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udDaNhPNwT8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udDaNhPNwT8)

<comment><USER3> Does novocain have the same dangers as lidocaine-like if you hit a vein or artery it can cause seizures?

<comment><USER4> Lesser but still bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh, geez. Pain is a messenger. It tells you something is very wrong. We need to start finding more ways to effectively treat underlying causes and stop focusing on mere comfort. That sort of medicine is what they do at hospices waiting for you to die.

I spent 3.5 years in constant, excruciating, PLEASE KILL ME NOW pain. So I am not being callous here. I am no longer in that kind of pain because I inadvertently began treating the underlying cause.

I am galled by the constant search for better ways to go numb and stop feeling the pain. I can't understand how the serious damage this guy has suffered doesn't serve as a dire warning that this is the wrong path. The right path is to wonder WHY people are in so much pain and solve THAT.

<comment><USER6> Can I ask what your condition is, and what you have done about it?

I agree it is best to consider the underlying cause, but sometimes that isn't feasible. Take psychosomatic pain, which is a massive issue, but very misunderstood by doctors and patients alike. It is arguably the largest cause of chronic pain, and yet there is virtually no information or research on it, and patients are mostly left up to themselves. A few figure it out themselves, or discover John Sarno's books, but the majority are just given painkillers.

<comment><USER7> I'm not the OP, but I've been living with excruciating neck pain due to degenerated cervical vertebrae and disks, and I've tried everything for the last 10 years, including pain killers, 4 years of chen style tai chi (was very martial, probably made it worse), 2 rounds of physical therapy, strength and cardio training, a standing desk, supplements, etc. Nothing worked - until a coworker introduced me to Mysore Ashtanga Yoga. It's like magic - my neck pain is almost completely gone. The yoga is very strenuous, and there is a ton of bending of the spine. It hurt a lot at first, and I got a lot of numbness in my arms and hands. But after about two months it all went away. It's amazing. It's not a cure though. A couple days without practice and the pain is back. Not as intense, but it's there. The practice must be daily.

<comment><USER8> Is this type of Yoga (Mysore) self-learnable or do you recommend to learn from someone who knows it well?

<comment><USER9> Go to a teacher and make sure that teacher is a responsible person. I did Ashtanga for a while and some teachers have the tendency to force people into positions they are either not ready for or should probably never do. And when someone gets injured they are told to work through it. This often works but sometimes it makes things much worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can tell your medical patient is an android when you ask them to rate their pain on a 1 to 10 scale, and they answer back to three decimal points.

</comment><comment><USER11> Be skeptical anytime you hear "cure" for any medical condition, especially with regard to something as enigmatic and complex as pain or the nervous system.

And no, another pill a patient has to take every day is not a cure.

<comment><USER12> I'm pretty sure a patient that is suffering from chronic pain would happily take a pill if that would make the pain go away without the risk of addiction.

<comment><USER13> Chronic migraine sufferer here...would happily swap the pills I currently take daily just to reduce the frequency of my migraines for one that eliminated them.

<comment><USER11> I'm sorry to hear about that.

Do you take magnesium supplements? There is some evidence it can be effective at reducing pain and frequency of migraine.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=magnesium+migraine](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=magnesium+migraine)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28286809](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28286809)

Alas, it too is a pill regimen and also not a cure.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


RubyMotion is 20% off until Sunday - <AUTHOR> http://sites.fastspring.com/hipbyte/product/rubymotion

<comment><USER3> Also, less advertised - if you're a student you can contact them for an 80% discount (bringing the price down to $40). All you need is a valid ID.

You get 1-year of support, and you cannot sign your apps to sell them. In order to do so - you'll need to cough up the remaining cost for a "full" license.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would recommend that they move from a one-time-payment model to a monthly- recurring-revenue model. Its a small market, $169 isn't that much money but is a barrier to entry, and $9 a month is more likely to get people using it.

<comment><USER5> No, you don't want to wake up one day, find out the company went bankrupt, and after the month is up your source code is useless because the license isn't renewed.

<comment><USER4> Did you read what happened to Sparrow? Basically the same complaints - <USER2> recurring revenue they went bankrupt, and sure people had the software, but they weren't going to get any updates so they were angry and felt it was now useless.

<comment><USER5> Three points:

\- Selling SaaS is very new, and almost still a "niche" especially for consumer software like Sparrow. Software without subscriptions is still 99% of what the consumers buy. It's definitely a viable market. You can't just take one example (Sparrow) and then claim the whole traditional ecosystem of software doesn't work. _Of course it does_.

\- This is professional stuff used to build businesses on. Already it's quite risky to use this new tech made by a third party startup and invest hundres of hours of developer time to build an app. If something goes wrong in the future, for example Apple forbids RubyMotion apps, your investment (not in cost of RubyMotion but in the cost of developers which is obviously orders of magnitude higher) goes up in thin air. If you add the limitation that you need to pay a monthly fee to keep using it to that, it increases the risk that something might go wrong, decreasing the attractiveness of RubyMotion.

\- They already have recurring revenue, based on the fact that after one year you need to pay half of the license fee again to get support and updates.

<comment><USER4> > "Already it's quite risky to use this new tech ..."

Which a price tag of $169 does not help. $9 a month is easy to sign up to.

> "They already have recurring revenue..."

Good, I missed that. There's a difference in how it's presented. The renewal after a year isn't as good paying every month.

> "Software without subscriptions is still 99%"

I would love to hear where this figure came from - it seems intuitively wrong. Reference?

<comment><USER5> For a real business, $169 is peanuts. If it's $9 a month or $169 a year, that won't make _any_ difference for a professional app developer. I'm sure you've heard of the Adobe products with price tags of around $1000. That's the price tag that software regularly goes for in this world. We're talking about developers who earn upwards of $200 an hour. I'm sure you can appreciate how a pro developer wouldn't blink an eyelash at $169.

The "added risk" of paying $169 is exactly zero. Anyone who buys this is either a hobbyist or a business. The business is about to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into making apps using RubyMotion. The upfront cost of $169 is peanuts.

Sure, hobbyists or amateurs might find it more attractive to try out that way, but the extra cost in support and the decreased perceived value are probably too big of a cost, and not worth it.

Ask your mom, dad, brother, sister, what software they pay for every month. They'll probably answer "there is software you need to pay for every month?". Mac OS X or Windows, both "regular" software without monthly payments. Office, same thing. Almost _every_ app in the app store, software without monthly payments. 99% of the games, software without monthly payments.

<comment><USER4> I think you might underestimate the realities of the developer-tools business. I know how little $169 is compared to how much a fully loaded developer costs (I make developer-tools-as-a-service: <https://circleci.com>), but its pretty hard to convince people to see things how you want to see them.

If anyone understands SaaS though, its developers, so I disagree with your last point.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pioneer-era apple types thought extinct found in US West - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/4b08b6e30cbe37697120466d56f294a5 <comment><USER2> Where I'm from (very rural Northern California) there are quite a lot of old apple trees, some more or less tended, some entirely feral, AFAIK none of them harvested for sale anymore. The bears love them.

None are listed on the AppleSearch site, which doesn't surprise me: the first non-indigenous people showed up here in the 1840's and by then apple cultivation was a big deal elsewhere.

But it makes me wonder: do feral apple trees not eventually form their own varietals through mutation?

(IANAB, for $B == 'Botanist', obviously.)

<comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Breeding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Breeding)

> Many apples grow readily from seeds. However, more than with most perennial > fruits, apples must be propagated asexually by grafting to obtain the > sweetness and other desirable characteristics of the parent. This is because > seedling apples are an example of "extreme heterozygotes", in that rather > than inheriting genes from their parents to create a new apple with parental > characteristics, they are instead significantly different from their > parents, perhaps to compete with the many pests. ...

> Because apples do not breed true when planted as seeds, grafting is > generally used to produce new apple trees

That means that if you plant the seeds from a Gala apple, you are almost certainly not going to get an apple tree which produces Gala apples.

Not only that, but they are likely not going to be tasty. The folk story about Johnny Appleseed is that he planted apple seeds wherever he went (Wikipedia says he actually planted nurseries). If someone had done that, it would have been apples for pigs, and for hard cider.

<comment><USER4> > rather than inheriting genes from their parents

I understand what the author is getting at, but that is not a good phrase. Apples do inherit genes from their parents, and not from anywhere else!

<comment><USER5> It more like lots of genes affect apple flavor, so the chances of getting something viable from a non-clone is slim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I live in Oregon, and I am an avid whitewater rafter. Sometimes when you stop on the riverbank to camp, especially in more remote places, you'll happen upon an abandoned homestead and in the right season their fruit trees will be bursting with amazing fruit! I guess I hadn't thought about the idea that they could be heirloom types that aren't found anymore, but I will think about it when I find them now.

</comment><comment><USER7> the USDA watercolors mentioned are online, e.g. the sary sinap: [https://usdawatercolors.nal.usda.gov/pom/search.xhtml?start=...](https://usdawatercolors.nal.usda.gov/pom/search.xhtml?start=0&searchText=sary+sinap&searchField=All+Fields&sortField=)

</comment><comment><USER8> Iowa was an apple growing region until the 1940's when a frost killed a crop, and cultivation moved elsewhere (Oregon?)

Mentioned here before, 30 years ago taking the youngsters on a walk, made a different turn and ended up in a small meadow with a pond and a single apple tree. Surrounded by town and left until last to develop because it was hilly I guess.

There were apples under the tree, fallen to the ground. Apples the size between softballs and soccer balls. Somebody had stacked like cannon balls. Very dark.

Anyway I never heard of something like that. I never saw them again since the meadow was developed soon after (i.e. bulldozed and turned into condos).

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting, although if we really want some new types of apples you can go to Kazakhstan, where there are literal forests of wild apply trees. Some people believe Kazakhstan is the place of origin for apple trees.

</comment><comment><USER10> They didn't really answer the most important question: how do they taste?

Seems to follow that apple varieties ended up lost to the dustbin of history because they didn't taste very good? If the project had found "an apple from 150 years ago that's better than Honeycrisp"... that'd be super interesting to figure out why it got lost in the first place (and start growing them!).

<comment><USER11> I've tried lots of wild apples, apples from trees with consumable apples grafted on to them etc. Some of them make crab apples taste sweet. Most apples are probably about as sour as lemons and fairly tiny, from grape to small plumb size. They make your belly hurt and generally aren't that pleasant to eat.

They're great for making pie or jam or such things. Homemade Apple crumble(crisp, I dunno whatever same shit...both good) is probably one of the best things next to homemade strawberry rhubarb pie, but either way, they're a far cry even from Granny Smith apples which, I enjoy, but as far as I know, most people use for baking.

<comment><USER12> Granny Smith apples are popular for eating out of hand.

In North America, unkept apples are feral. There's a fair chance they are descendants of trees planted at a homestead.

The wild ancestor is from central Asia:

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/5/apples-of- ede...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/5/apples-of-eden-saving- the-wild-ancestor-of-modern-apples/)

<comment><USER13> I'm not the biggest fan but they aren't terrible. My rule of thumb is that if an apple variety has the word delicious in the name, there's s guarantee it will be mealy and disgusting

<comment><USER14> Golden Delicious were my favorite variety as a kid/teen in the early 90s, and they never seemed to have the problems you describe back then. Very crisp, with just the right amount of sweet and juicy. I started noticing them going downhill probably in the late 90s or 00s-- I think something went sideways with their cultivation &/or supply chain. Similar thing happened with Red Delicious, I can occasionally still find a good one but they're usually inedible.

<comment><USER15> Wow, that matches my experience - but I thought I had just developed a more refined taste. Golden and Red are almost and completely inedible to me, respectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If yo like this, check out Tom Brown's website in the same vein:

[https://www.applesearch.org/](https://www.applesearch.org/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Have those apples been native to the US West or have they been brought by the early settlers? If they have been brought by the early settlers I would expect to find them in the old world.

<comment><USER18> Apples as a species originated in central Asia. I assume the rare cultivars they are looking for must have been developed in the United States for the story to make sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> us-west-1 or us-west-2?

</comment><comment><USER20> > Pioneer-era apple types thought extinct found in US West

Oh God, how I totally and bizarrely misunderstood that headline: Pioneer = space probe

Apple = computer

types = tapes

US West = baby bell telephone company

<comment><USER21> Funny, I first started to misread it similarly to you, then realized I misunderstood and re-read it and understood it correctly, then I re-read your comment and thought my original misreading was actually the correct one, then I looked at the article and saw I'd re-read it correctly after all.

<comment><USER22> I thought this was a column on how new hip founders like Steve and Wozniak exist on the west coast and its going to take over the east coast soon, "new silicon valley" etc. Then I reread and just had to click. Wonderful how one sentence can be seen in wildly different perspectives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The headline made me think this was supposed to be a dig at Apple's lack of innovation.

<comment><USER24> I of course made the connection to the headline in this vein humorously but assumed it had to be about apples the fruit because

1\. apple not capitalized 2\. use of word pioneer

although the domain being appnews.com did make me question my reasoning.</comment></comment>