In the subsequent weeks, he’s spoken with Apple a couple of times, and in both they acknowledged what had happened but did not apologize for the incident. They explained that the initial phone support he spoke with seemed to have googled ‘Gmail support’ and conference called the number she found. It’s the type mistake I wouldn’t fault my parents for making, but it’s unacceptable that the Apple Support that they relied on had made the same mistake.
I’ve also spoken with Apple on numerous occasions. I’ve confirmed as much of the story independently as I could. I’ve independently verified that he was indeed speaking with a real Apple Support representative when he was transferred. I’ve been told by multiple Apple Support representatives that until this incident, they’d never heard of anyone being connected with Google Support.
What’s clear to me is that the Siri of eight years ago was, in some circumstances, more capable than the Siri of today. That could simply be because the demo video was created in Silicon Valley, and things tend to perform better there than almost anywhere else. But it’s been eight years since that was created, and over seven since Siri was integrated into the iPhone. One would think that it should be at least as capable as it was when Apple bought it.
The growing demand for these right to repair laws is a sign that mobile technology is maturing. In the earlier days of the iPhone, it made sense to buy a new one if your phone broke. If it was more than a year old, the new model was significantly faster, had a higher quality display, and included new must-have software features. If it was more than two years old, your cellular provider would subsidize the cost of an upgrade, too. Over the past few years, those hardware upgrades have been more subtle, and the software updates less compelling. That, paired with rising smartphone costs, has led to consumers holding onto their phones for longer.
The new logos that will be used for products coming out of the MFi program are not a huge change from the previous branding, but they do notably remove icons representing actual devices in exchange for a simplified Apple logo and just the iOS device names in text.
Manjoo objects to that characterization. “I think it’s clear that I meant I ‘unplugged’ from Twitter as a source of news, not that I didn’t tweet at all,” he wrote.
But he had written, quite plainly, that he had “unplugged from Twitter,” not that he had used it only to post news stories. Reactions to his column on Twitter make it clear that many readers took him as his word.
But also: He didn’t use Twitter only to post news stories. He retweeted news stories from others and commented on others’ tweets about the news on most days during his period of being “unplugged.” In February, he retweeted Sean Hannity, commenting: “You gotta read this thread, it’s amazing.” He was clearly using Twitter to follow the news—albeit less so than he had been before starting this experiment.
10,000 steps. So easy, yet so far. On days like today.
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Thanks for reading.