I'd go further and suggest that metal is a lousy substance for laptop enclosures.

I would say "No keyboard backlighting" is a true show-stopper for a huge portion of the target audience (students).

My experience with students (outside of engineering) is that the most common show stopper for MacBooks is price. They’re not nit picking about keyboard backlighting.

Most people have no problem using a keyboard in the dark or with light from the screen.

Backlit keyboards are a nice-to-have, not a showstopper.

I would say the vast, vast majority of people are completely unable to use a non-lit keyboard in the dark.

Learned touch typing just fine on a non-backlit keyboard. What would you feel would be the issue?

Can't see the keys in a dark classroom or bedroom.

...the skill of touch typing is that you don't need to look at the keyboard.

And the keys are still labeled...

The F and J keys still have bumps, to be able to locate them and position your hands correctly on the keyboard without looking.

"No keyboard backlighting" is a show-stopper. Nuts.

You're not the audience, obviously.

It's a show-stopper for the main audience: students.

Very small percentage of students (the primary audience) are touch typists.

Plenty of people work in dark or dim places, like school classrooms, where backlighting is great and RGB lighting is useless.

That you seem to think everyone shares your needs and goals makes you a far less effective participant in these kinds of discussions. Maybe think for a bit before asserting what people who care about backlighting need it for and don't.

Aren't classrooms usually well lit?

No. And multi-resident dorm rooms much less so.

I think this could stick. The supply chain competence needs to get built in the USA.

Didn't work out well when Malco tried to keep Vice Grip production here in the States:

https://toolguyd.com/malco-eagle-grip-locking-pliers-final-u...

I would say Malco is not Apple and I have no idea what a vice grip is.

Why is this getting downvoted? It's good faith and probably more accurate than not.

All of driving is designed for visual.

TIL roads don't have rumble strips

How well does PG work with 10-20 million (financial) records per day? Basic stuff: a few writes per, some reads, generating some analytics, etc.

The merchant/processor/issuer network with all the correct incentives is (nearly) impossible to replicate. Visa and Mastercard work more or less, perfectly.

The only entities that need/want "instant, non-recourse payments" are fraudsters.

In the EU countries with local instant bank payments schemes they are much more popular with consumers than credit cards when paying attrusted merchants, who in turn pay around a quarter in fees of what they'd have to pay for cards. No need for expensive credit cards schemes in Europe any more.

How is that better than a card payment? Cards are accepted by far more merchants, have dispute rights, are inexpensive (in Europe) to process, supported by Apple & Google Pay, superior checkout experience, etc.

I've never used their dispute system, and I don't think that holds much value in Europe. At least in Germany a contract is a contract, if I claw back the payment the other party will just start the collections process. A process that has teeth and generally will recover the money from me, worst case by garnishing wages.

On the other hand Visa and MasterCard are not neutral actors. They have used their market power in the past to pressure merchants to change according to American moral values. And with the current administration I have little faith that this will stay at moral values

The whole flow is so much better than card purchases, where you have to enter all the data (or see your password manager's autofill fail) and then you have to go to your credit card provider's app to acknowledge the transaction.

Cards are accepted by far more merchants,

The vast majority of Dutch online transactions are done because pretty much every Dutch online shop supports it. Also many international shops through Shopify and Stripe. Many Dutch online shops do not support credit card payments. So iDEAL is the far lower friction option here. And there is no American company in between (at least for most national payments). It's great to see this system, that served us two decades by now finally get rolled out across Europe. They tried it before in the early 2010s, but the non-Dutch banks were fighting turf wars.

1. Credit cards are not that common. People usually have debit cards. Those can sometimes be used online but they're not widely accepted. My debit card is Maestro, which is not accepted in many places.

2. Even with my Mastercard credit card, the process is still inconvenient. For small purchases, it's fine. But for larger ones, there is an annoying second factor authentication, I have to enter a special password, and the wait to receive an SMS.

3. Visa and Mastercard fees. Most of the time these are paid by the merchant. But sometimes the customer has to pay more if the payment method is credit card. Some places don't accept these at all.

In general iDEAL is simple, secure and convenient. Not only to pay online, but also for example for splitting a bill with friends. I'm very happy to see this being adopted more widely in Europe.

Cards are reliant on US companies -> Visa / Mastercard. The European Payment Initiative wants to remove reliance on the US. Perhaps there can be a ECB payment rail/network that would support cardlike payments too.

So it's mainly a nationalism thing? Is that enough to displace the superior option?

It's not really nationalism since this is a European effort across multiple countries. But for all of them, it will improve the national security posture.

The only superior aspect of Visa/Mastercard payments is that they are more widely accepted, and that's something that can be changed.

I don't see where card schemes are inherently superior in the age of NFC payments.

There are huge countries (China, India, Brazil, ...) where people moved from cash to mobile payments.

Europe has always been in the forefront of this space, Swish exists since 2012, it's about time we get a pan-European solution.

Industry observer Dwayne Gefferie took a stab at it (although I'm still highly skeptical): https://dwaynegefferie.substack.com/p/epi-european-payments-...