But seems like that is not the case.

Through cost plus a month's supply is $14 (which means without insurance): https://www.costplusdrugs.com/medications/emtricitabine-teno...

Yes there is the additional costs of the tests on top of that, but people should already be doing regular STD testing if they are sexually active.

Regardless, nothing about that changes that you should still be having this conversation with your doctor if you are sexually active. I do not understand how this is an argument, a conversation about prep or doxy should be in the same conversation about condoms and your general sexual health.

The worst that is going to happen from that conversation is that you don't take it, but at the very least you are educated on its existence and that decision is made between you and your doctor based on your risk factors.

Edit:

In fact, the CDC backs up this opinion: https://www.cdc.gov/hivnexus/hcp/prep/index.html

> Inform all sexually active adult and adolescent patients about PrEP.

> Prescribe PrEP to anyone who asks for it, including sexually active people who do not report HIV risk factors.

Maybe it isn't worth it for you in the end after that conversation, but we should also not assume that the only way you get HIV is through "risky" behavior. That is irresponsible.

At least you would know it's an option and you can make the decision yourself, I know a lot of straight people that do not know prep exists because it just isn't talked about. Or maybe they have heard about it but they don't really understand what it is. That is a problem.

Is that threshold for using a Pro machine 3 years, I don't know probably not for most people. My M3 Pro from almost 3 years ago is still running beautifully. I could make the argument that more power would benefit what I do with this machine without a doubt, is it worth the upgrade? I don't know, but I would be lying if I have not been thinking about it.

But I also think about the mentality I had when I bought this machine, and the mentality I had when I was looking at possible upgrades just a few weeks ago. Possibly paying more to overspec the machine compared to my current use case assuming that I want to continue to use it in 3 to 4 years.

I don't know if that calculation is necessary as cut as dry.

Is a 3 year upgrade cycle for a MacBook Pro unreasonable? Would you get a lower spec machine since you were not trying to maximize the life of the machine? I know I always tend to overspec my machine to keep it for as long as possible.

My M3 MBP with 36GB of ram (looks like it was about 2500 3 years ago) would get me $945 in trade in credit. May be able to get more on eBay but I can't argue with just doing trade in is easier. A bit less than I would "save" by just upgrading at the end of the lease and this already is not the base model so the number does shift.

Especially when I look at the payment options right now I could finance that MBP about $250 on my Apple Card for 12 months no interest, or $57.99 for 36 months. and then I get a new one.

Would probably depend on what it is I was doing with the machine, am I doing tasks that would actually benefit from better and better machines like video editing and similar tasks or am I just using my computer fairly basic in a way that even an M1 machine still handles just fine.

If I am reading the FAQ here properly: https://www.apple.com/shop/apple-upgrade.

> If you decide to buy the device, the purchase option fee is the list price minus any lease payments you’ve made minus any remaining discounts or trade-in credit. (excluding tax and any damage fees).

Lets look at a couple examples:

iPhone 17 pro max would be $1199 to buy (~1273 with tax) or $34.99 for 24 months totaling $839.76. So would cost 433.33 at the end of the lease to keep it

The cheapest 16" MBP would be 2,999 to buy (3186.44 with tax) or $57.99 for 36 months (or 80.99 for 24 months). 2087.64 or 1943.76. So around ~1k to buy it at the end.

It looks like you can keep making payments for 6 months to lower the buyout price a little bit.

So worst case scenario this is a 3 and a half year interest free loan with a higher payment at the end.

Seems not terrible? As long as you treat it as a loan and not a lease you can end at any point it seems fine and nothing really shady about it. You still have the option to own the device for the original cost.

Other than the loss of the iPhone upgrade program and the yearly upgrades, am I missing something here? I guess the biggest thing is you likely can't just pay it off and be done with it if you had the money.

Yes because it is such a fantastic idea to just ignore that there is still a risk regardless of what we call "risky" sex just because it doesn't fit in your puritanical views of sex.

If someone can get HIV the first time they have sex than your entire argument is moot.

Just have the conversation with your doctor and protect yourself and stop trying to push your views on others.

This is such a simple thing to say, talk to your doctor. Thats it. If doing so stops one person who is not engaging in anything that we would deem being risky from getting HIV, that is a win. There is nothing in your world that would stop someone who is having sex with someone that maybe they have been going on several dates, from getting HIV from that person if a mistake happens.

And yet, you seem to think that we are saying that you should be going to an orgy every other day.

Oh and let's not ignore that there are monogamous couples that one may have HIV and they need to also protect themselves.

Someone could be taking the necessary precautions and a mistake happens, a condom breaks, whatever. Someone could have sex with one person in their life and they got it from that person. I would not consider that "risky" in any real sense of the word.

Any sex carries some amount of risk, and the key is being risk aware and not assuming that just because you are not engaging in what is generally deemed "risky" that you are safe. Instead you should be having that conversation with your doctor and determining what your risk tolerance is.

That is where I disagree, how many people are positive that never considered themselves engaging in risky behavior.

To me it is very dangerous, and leads to the situation we are in now, to just say only even consider prep if you are engaging in risky behavior.

That blanket statement I very much disagree with. Sure there are side effects but that is part of why you also get tested every 3 months for liver issues (not that it is the only side effect, but still).

Instead of it being a blanket statement it should be a conversation with your doctor about the pros and cons.

You can still get HIV even if not engaging in risky behavior. Same with people getting pregnant when they did not intend too.

I am thinking college kids that are still figuring out their sexuality and exploring new things. You're going to make mistakes so having a conversation about prep with your doctor is a really good idea.

We also have education and stigma. While within the LGBT community it is far more common to be open about status and taking prep and doxy (far from perfect though), it still feels like outside of that the conversations are not happening as much as they should.

Throw in doctors that are not being proactive about the conversation.

Right now it seems like having prep and doxy is largely considered only if you are engaged in "risky" behavior (not saying that in a judgmental way to be clear), instead of just being sexually active and protecting yourself. Money and investment alone won't fix that, that is a societal shift around how we talk about sex.

That is also before we get into the cost issues in many other countries just for those that do need it.

That being said, I don't understand enough to parse this very buzzword heavy release. Is this fundamentally different than the every 6 month vaccine we have now and is a more traditional vaccine or is it just continuing on that trend?

And there is some truth to that given that the features we were supposed to get in iOS 26 did not come out. But it also was just that they were not shoving AI into every single thing.

I still have hope that they will be the company that will (mostly) apply AI in a more meaningful way instead of it just being "AI magic" in everything. There were some genuinely useful things shown at WWDC.

Will have to wait and see though. I was disappointed to see them leaning more into the same branding.

Sure we could argue that there were times that ML was likely not really necessary, but it was still largely invisible to the user what the mechanism was.

I think about autocorrect, sentence completion (or just next word recommendation), music recommendations, etc. All of those were clearly ML but the user was not made aware of that at every step of using them and in many cases it being ML was only in technical documents or the original announcement.

Now obviously there are exceptions to this, but it was the exception that shoved ML in your face compared to the current situation around AI.

We have had ML features for years and it provided real benefits but most people did not know or care how it worked, it just did its job in the background without the underlying tech being shoved in your face.

Everything AI though is the opposite, it wants to focus on the technology first and the benefits second. It is actively making a worse UI and often providing little to no benefit.

Most consumers don’t actually care how their tech works, just that it does and gives them benefits.

They already require that you use Sign in with Apple, I would think that it working fully is also a requirement?

It is a fact that there is a government lead effort in various states to ban books from k-12 libraries. That part of this is not up for debate because it is happening. So they are in fact “banned”. As a society we generally accept that words have more complicated or nuanced meanings when connected to other words, as “banned” is in this case.

We also as a society generally accept that those other words may be implied or require looking at something for more than a minute to understand the context. If you are in a country where a book is actually banned, I would wager that you would likely just say “this book is banned” implying it is banned where you are instead of adding in “this book is banned here in X” since it would be unnecessary to say and would be generally understood.

If you don’t like the word than propose another word.

In many cases these books are not simply being removed at the school level but are being driven by the government and it is politically motivated.

Ignoring the problem won’t lead to them being banned in the sense that having them would be illegal, but it could make it more difficult to get. It would not be hard to imagine states like Florida going further and attacking public libraries or possibly even making it so you have to show an ID to buy these books.

Some public libraries are already being attacked.

“Banned” may not be technically correct but it also properly communicates the seriousness of this and the goals of the people pushing this.

Though, I have yet to find myself in a situation that I wanted to use an iPad and I was not already in a position to be carrying one. I use mine for work and I am already carrying a laptop, throwing in an iPad is a very small addition to my bag.

Any time I have just been out, was never a situation I felt like I needed something like an iPad. Throw in that this looks like it will be the size of a Mini vs the 13" pro that I use now, it puts it in an awkward position. And I could justify the rumored $2k cost to replace 2 devices that cost more than that combined.

It will be interesting to see how it does in practice, but also what it does to the separation of iOS and iPadOS.

The fact is we live in a world built for humans. I have a robot vacuum and for it to be effective I had to setup my home in a certain way, and even then it is not fully effective.

People pay for cleaners to come into their home all the time, it shouldn't be hard to think why a humanoid robot would (theoretically, if it worked well) be far better than a purpose built machine in the home. But also in many cases working with those machines.

There are tons of closed source games that have zero online component to them.

I don't see how you can actually argue that this is a good thing, especially when they say:

> The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others.

That... basically kills the entire gaming industry.

Am I missing something serious here or is this really trying to advocate for that.