No country has figured this out, and if getting to (just!) replacement rate requires healthcare-like expenditures as a % of GDP, it is genuinely unclear to me how we do that on a global scale.

Do they skate because users can pay more to get a version of the hardware that has that capability?

It has never been easier to switch platforms, and the gulf between iOS and Android has never been shallower. Android users not having access to one also-ran messaging service is not some sort of fundamental injustice, and Apple is not a villain for building features that they think will appeal to their customers. It's sort of their whole business!

Do you really think that teenagers in America wouldn't be bullying the outgroup—to the extent that they actually are frequently ostracizing their peers over this, which is not at all clear—over something else if all the bubbles were blue?

Apple offers a product that has seen significant success in a small number of markets versus android, including the US. Dressing up what is ultimately the normal bump and tumble of competition in a market as antitrust because they're winning enough in the market(s) you care about is silly.

The total failure of any open messaging standard to capture the market seems to imply to me that control is actually pretty important to the experience of using the service!

What Microsoft did with IE isn't really analogous to Apple refusing to let another company free ride on their infrastructure. This isn't even as egregious as patching iTunes to break the Palm Pre sync was, and the legality of that action seems pretty settled by now.

The different colors of bubbles are a consequence of iMessage's origin as a protocol that supplanted SMS/MMS messaging while allowing the older protocols as seamless fallbacks; WhatsApp, Signal et al never had a requirement like that, and consequently never had to deal with different feature sets among their users (at least, not to the same extent).

It is obviously false, but his case was that all Teslas would be working as robotaxis for their owners. "Insane lie or megalomania?" is the defense, as ever.

1: https://electrek.co/2019/04/12/tesla-vehicles-appreciating-a...

This also entails getting rid of the free tier and imposing usage limits on the remaining subscribers since a few people could easily blow out the average and drive up costs.

There are definitely people willing to pay those costs (I count myself as one of them, as well), but the lack of apps like Apollo being successful at that price point probably means that it is not a sustainable business.

Like, putting aside everything else, it had to have been very obvious internally that neither of those goals were plausible in that timeframe without miracles happening.

Given those constraints, centralized capture is at least a plausible option that doesn't involve starting big fights with entrenched interests in coal-reliant states. Is it more efficient or more likely to work than direct capture? No. It is, however, politically possible and worth exploring.

Changing this requires states to adopt alternative systems, which can sometimes mean amending state constitutions. It isn't easy or straightforward, and the general sense is that there are better things to spend that effort on.

A lot of the objections around the cleaning fee are that hosts often have long lists of chores they expect guests to do in addition to a large cleaning fee, and sometimes those chores are not spelled out until you check in.

1: https://bnbfacts.com/airbnb-cleaning-fee-how-much-hosts-char... 2: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/airbnb-has-a-plan-...

Twitter isn't like SpaceX or Tesla: there aren't enormous government contracts, subsidies, or climate credits to prop up its finances. There is no plausible replacement for the advertising revenue his style of leadership is actively alienating, and there is a real risk that his strategy is exposing Twitter to enormous FTC sanctions given that they are already under a consent decree.

It is much more likely that he's deeply in over his head and floundering than it is that he has a master plan he can only execute by taking a blowtorch to Twitter's current business structure. How much worse does it have to get before that theory is validated?