The age verification system is being developed with an EU-wide standard. It's supposed to become part of the EU digital wallet initiative.
The trick with age verification is to do it in a way that doesn't allow tracking by the service itself (i.e. returning the same token/signature every time) or from the government (shouldn't see what sites you use when). That has pretty much been solved now, though.
Checking Apple's store, I can't find a cheaper configuration than $5100 for the M5 + 128GiB version.
Here in Europe, including 21% VAT, that's €6.124,00 ($7.094,35 equivalent).
Because of pricing strategies and such, the 128GiB version comes with a 2TiB SSD at minimum, and also requires the M5 Max (not Pro) at its highest configuration.
Not sure if this is new, but it should be noted that these laptops don't come with a charger any more.
70W USB-C Power Adapter (included with M5 Pro with 16-core GPU)
96W USB-C Power Adapter (included with M5 Pro with 20-core GPU, configurable with M5 Pro with 16-core GPU)
USB-C to MagSafe 3 Cable (2 m)
Devices should be offered without a charger. There's no law that states that that should be the default configuration. Nor that the charger should cost extra.
I know RAM is scarce and everything, but doubling down on LLM local acceleration with all of that dedicated silicon while at the same time sticking with Apple's traditional lack of RAM availability makes for a very weird product proposition to me.
Has been for a while, assuming you can get work done on the iPad UI. It doesn't do a normal mouse and there are some limitations to things like screen dimensions.
Works in a pinch but Apple is not going to compete with themselves on this front, they're expecting you to buy a macbook for serious work and an iPad for work in a pinch.
Mobile payments used to work without any interference from Google through a bank's own implementation of the wireless payment protocols. On iPhone you got stuck with Apple's system (they restricted their NFC stack so competitors couldn't do this) but most phones were paying wirelessly without Google ever seeing a transaction.
Over the years banks phased out their NFC support and all moved to Google Wallet on Android, I think the last bank finished their transition a year and a half ago. A real shame.
Wero extends iDeal in that it comes with its own app/wallet and user account service. A bit like Paypal.
A step backwards, in my opinion. I'm not sure what this system adds that sharing an IBAN doesn't, but then again Tikkie's conquered that market pretty quickly for some reason as well and each bank has had to copy that feature individually.
My bank app scans Wero QR codes and works fine on a rooted custom ROM, maybe after dismissing a popup about weird software, as long as it's already custom and rooted at the time of setup.
It would be a pain if your bank wouldn't provide direct Wero integration, though.
Also Netherlands: I've seen quite a few Motorolas. Not their high-end phones, though, mostly mid-range phones. They don't seem to do a lot of advertising and don't have free watches/earbuds/accessories to give away with their phones so they don't create a lot of hype on the high-end market.
My experience is that they provide decent hardware with clean software that doesn't get updates as often as you would hope. Most end users don't really seem to be all that interested in updates, though. They may not always be the fastest phones, but if they work for you, they will for years.
The niche that draws me the most is the cheap segment. Now that we're moving towards a society where all sorts of vendors (including government) require code execution on a device with remote attestation of DRM (or attempts thereto), having a nonfree/untrusted secondary device for 200€ with decent hardware and EU-mandated updates is pretty doable
> don't have free watches/earbuds/accessories to give away with their phones so they don't create a lot of hype
The times vendors shipped free e-waste are long gone in my experience. I don't think anyone selects a 400€ phone based on getting 15€ earphones with it, if you can even find one that still does this
Google has APIs to do the same. In fact, it works on most apps. The biggest exceptions are security sensitive apps (2FA, password managers) and WhatsApp for some stupid reason. If you're a HN Android user who turns off any form of data sharing like me, you wouldn't notice, though, as this requires the "back up my data" checkbox during setup of the old and new phone to work conpletely.
Another issue on Android is that iOS allows for syncing data through the user's iCloud, which can be gigabytes in size, but Google has you use the Google Drive API which sucks and involves handing over credit card info.
The Android file transfer has another trick that Apple doesn't seem to do, which is fully offline local sync rather than going through the cloud. This has reliability issues and requires both devices to stay on and nearby while the transfer is in progress, but on slower internet connections the process can be a heck of a lot faster thanks to modern wifi speeds.
The trick with age verification is to do it in a way that doesn't allow tracking by the service itself (i.e. returning the same token/signature every time) or from the government (shouldn't see what sites you use when). That has pretty much been solved now, though.
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