Walmart Network Exception: Fill & Download for Free

They aren’t. Add my voice to those saying “they aren’t.”I can get a laptop for $99. I know, because I own one (PINEBOOK | PINE64). It works. I haven’t been able to get it to connect to a network for a while… you get what you pay for. You can buy a Chromebook for $200, or a starter laptop for a bit more. Why don’t we all buy the cheapest thing on the market?I look at Apple as similar to Tesla. They don’t make an entry-level product. They do make an exceptionally good product that is no more expensive (and often cheaper) than their competitors. That $250 Dell at Walmart is not Apple’s competition. They’re competing with ultrabooks, etc., from a variety of vendors. They offer one huge advantage, which is macOS.Personally, I don’t want a touchscreen. I kind of like the TouchBar, but if it went away, I’d be fine. I want a rock-solid OS. I want the UI aspects that Jef Raskin wrote about in The Humane Interface that have been central to the OS for nearly four decades. I want the various UNIX tools that I get with a real UNIX system.However, I’d love to have USB A ports. I think Apple was stupid for dropping MagSafe. I’m frustrated with the inability to add RAM or increase drive space. I’m no Apple fanboy. Even macOS is not what it once was.Recently, I made the decision to stick with Apple for one more round. I used a Windows laptop (one that was more expensive than the MBP I ended up getting). I have somewhat mixed feelings about the laptop, but it was the better choice.

Power doesn't just mean influence, it means the ability to use that influence for your own goals. With that in mind, the most powerful is Google, then Apple, then Amazon, then Facebook.Google controls the information we see everyday and is nearly indispensable. There is one practical alternative, Bing, which trails it significantly. DuckDuckGo can't scale to Google's query rate. Google also controls one of the top 2 phone OSes, one of the top 2 AI assistants, and the top browser, although its ability to leverage those things is reduced by the presence of strong competition. Still, it has a great deal of control over the information we receive.Apple controls the other top phone OS, along with the distant #2 desktop OS. But that's basically it. And their phone faces a strong competitor in Android that is already beating it in market share. Apple therefore has limited ability to use its leverage without losing it.Amazon is the least powerful except in one important regard. Consumers can easily shop at Walmart or a local store. Companies can fairly easily migrate their AWS infrastructure to Azure or Google Cloud, and in any case it's hard to see how Amazon could exert power through AWS. However, Amazon has enormous power over sellers and manufacturers. It's simply not realistic for most businesses to refuse to sell on Amazon, so Amazon has tremendous power over them.Facebook and Instagram are completely optional. I stopped checking Facebook a couple months ago and haven't really missed it. There are many competing social networks. But it does have lots of power in controlling the flow of information to those who do use it. It's particularly powerful because, unlike Google search results, there's no such thing as an “incorrect” Facebook feed, which means manipulations can't be easily detected. WhatsApp is systemically important and hard to leave, but there's no obvious way for Facebook to exploit that. So overall, Facebook is too disposable to have much power.

Because they don't want to install two machines per cash desk.Domestic Chinese banks (and now, certain Hong Kong banks including HSBC) issue credit and debit cards. Many of these also carry the Visa or MasterCard symbol, but they all carry this symbol:UnionPay was founded in 2002 and is currently the only nationwide multi-bank ATM and POS network (point of sale transactions, using your card to pay for things in stores). Beforehand it was each to their own, and it was common to see 8-10 different banks' card payment terminals cluttering the desk at department stores.Internationally, UnionPay is being groomed as a competitor to Visa and MasterCard. Within China, Visa is trying to compete with UnionPay. I think I'm right in saying that the two don't have an agreement to be able to route domestic Chinese renminbi transactions through each other's networks.The standard terminals that businesses sign up for are provided by whatever the merchant's bank is, and process transactions through the UnionPay network. Cards carrying the UnionPay symbol are what most customers have - except for visitors from abroad. Businesses anticipating dealing with a lot of the latter (including Jenny Lou, April Gourmet, City Supermarket and other supermarkets that sell large volumes of imported products) get extra terminals installed for Visa or MasterCard; sometimes these are on only a fraction of the cash desks, and you'll have to walk over with your cashier to do the transaction.As to why banks don't make their machines accept Visa/MasterCard as well, this is where it gets very complicated, and there's been a trade dispute about this that has gone to the WTO:WTO China UnionPay Ruling Paves Way for Visa, MasterCardVisa ready for China market openingTo cut a long story short, Visa isn't yet licensed to offer renminbi transaction services within China. There's also the question of who does the currency exchange - you have to be licensed for that as well. This means paying with a foreign-issued Visa card in China entails Visa paying the Chinese bank in (usually) the dollar equivalent, the bank converting the currency, and then the bank paying the merchant.