_s

I was just thinking more or less along these lines - I haven't been in mobile apps for a few years now, but back then my impression was -

SwiftUI is great for "surface level" UI, that has some basic data bindings - think a basic CRUD app, which needs some navigation, and the ability to scale across the smallest iPhone to the largest macOS screen, from touch gestures to mouse input.

If you ask anything more of it, then you need to start branching off into specific libraries / tools / frameworks (UIKit, CoreAnimation etc) - which is much easier now too, but you'll always have a bad time if you try to mix the two in a single "view" / "frame".

I'm not surprised that's still true today.

Yup - most models ignore specific initial instructions once you pass ~50% of usable context window, and revert to their defaults eg generating overtly descriptive yet useless docs / summaries

Same with salt.

AMD owns a lot of the consumer market already; handhelds, consoles, desktop rigs and mobile ... they are not a small player.

The pressure difference shouldn’t be significant enough in modern jets? Cabin altitude is around 6000-8000’ - we would hear complaints from a few major cities. Humidity is much lower in aircraft though.

Not just their software, the hardware is beginning to be get pretty unwieldily complicated.

From an OS / software perspective:

Have a "core" macOS that has none of the apps / integrations are baked in at an OS level.

You install the things you want, how you want - eg iMessage, Mail, and then iCloud if you want to sync it, and Photos etc.

Have a slim, fast, stable OS that I can just turn on and get going with.

From the hardware perspective, I made this comment a little while ago but what I want to be able to choose is:

- Device: Watch, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, iMac, Mac

- Size: Mini, "Normal / Default" (Air), Max

- Processing Power: "Normal / Default", Pro, Ultra

- And maybe storage.

That way I can go and buy a MacBook Pro (13"?), or a MacBook Max Pro (15"), or a MacBook Mini (11"), or a normal iPad Mini Ultra, or an iMac Mini (21"?), or a Watch Pro, or a Mac Max Ultra etc.

Device + Size + Power.

It's kinda there, but not quite.

I make and sell soap. The soap contains an ingredient that anyone can use to make bombs. Some people buy my soap only for that purpose. I know because they literally tell me how they use my soap. I can remove that ingredient but I would loose a lot of sales.

The police finds my soap in the lab of someone who blew up a building. Some people died. Was it my fault, knowing how it was being used? Did I do anything illegal? Unethical? Immoral?

Yes & no, definitely more no for practical reasons. Let me explain;

ATC are ultimately expected to know about restrictions and keep traffic away from them.

NOTAM's are a notorious pain point for nearly all pilots. Modern EFB's make that easier, but in the 121 world - the ops folks handle your routing and plan for that stuff - as a pilot you "trust but verify", and most skim through the all the things (routing, fuels, weather, pax/cargo, notams, SIDS/STARS etc) to make sure that the flight is doable, it's doable safely, and it's "legal".

What you're expecting is a pilot to have a read a NOTAM, memorised all the latitude / longitude co-ordinates that are in the NOTAM for the "grid" that's off limits, and the associated altitudes, know exactly where that is in relation to where they are, and then be able to ask ATC about it a few hours into their flight, when the instruction could be as benign as "Delta 100, turn right heading 040".

Chances are the original routing for the flight kept them safely out of the TFR, but the ATC instruction for whatever sent them through it, even briefly. That instruction could've been for any number of reasons, from weather to traffic, to sequencing to even sidestepping a different restriction of some kind.

Here's a NOTAM for a Starship launch (I don't know if it was for this one specifically, I don't want to use my limited brain cells right now):

  B0995/24 NOTAMN MMFR/QRDCA/IV/BO/W/000/999/ MMFR 2411181300 2411262300 18-22 25 26 1300-1500 2100-2300, 23 24 1300-1400 2100-2300 DANGEROUS AREA FOR LAUNCHING OF ROCKET STARSHIP SUPER HEAVY ORBITAL TEST FLIGHT 6 LATERAL LIMIT AREA FORMED BY THE UNION OF THE FLW POINTS: 25 52 0.00N 097 11 0.00W 25 18 0.00N 096 30 0.00W 24 39 0.00N 093 13 0.00W 24 10 0.00N 090 17 0.00W 24 57 0.00N 089 36 0.00W 24 27 0.00N 085 58 0.00W 24 09 0.00N 084 11 0.00W 23 39 0.00N 081 10 0.00W 23 07 0.00N 078 45 0.00W 23 35 0.00N 078 36 0.00W 24 19 0.00N 082 13 0.00W 24 50 0.00N 084 33 0.00W 25 20 0.00N 087 20 0.00W 26 47 0.00N 092 60 0.00W 26 38 0.00N 095 39 0.00W 26 27 0.00N 096 32 0.00W 26 10 0.00N 097 11 0.00W 26 00 0.00N 097 14 0.00W 25 52 0.00N 097 11 0.00W MMFR SFC UNL

For some context;

- Jaguar competes in the same demographic that Audi, BMW and Mercedes go head to head in

- Jaguar merged with Land Rover about a decade ago, and the JLR group as a whole is doing pretty well; mostly aided by the Land Rover Defender and Range Rovers

- JLR is owned by Tata Motors

Jaguar over the past year or so has pivoted to aggressively pursuing an electric-only strategy, going all in - to the surprise of many by stopping production of all its ICE vehicles by 2025 at which point it’s aiming to start introducing its electric lineup.

Their sales were always minuscule compared the German 3, and this is their strategy to differentiate themselves.

Between the JLR group, and parents Tata, they have the knowledge and funding to pull this off, the only question is how long with Tata/JLR pursue losses for - they’re not driven by short term profits here so I’m somewhat optimistic.

Jaguar did launch the i-Pace a few years ago which was excellent, just ahead of its time and priced out for most.

Not at all wanting to be confrontational- genuinely curious; if they’re not on the far right then where are they? The Democrats seem fairly centrist, and it’s the more wayward independents (eg Greens) that seem to be on the Left.

My perspective is European & Australian, so I wonder if that skews it.

I don't think the GA market will ever grow that large though - not without substantial effort to make compliance with all the regulations effortless.

You need more pilots, so making it easier to navigate and comply with Parts 61/141/142, with 67/68.

You need more aerodromes; Part 139.

You need more aircraft, that's Parts 21, 23, 33, 35, 45 and maybe 34, 36 and 39 too.

You need more mechanics; Part 66 / 147.

You need more maintenance facilities, Part 21, 39, 43, 145.

There's maybe 50,000 active GA pilots (PPL or LSA) doing it for pleasure regularly? The rest are time building for the airlines, and same for mechanics.

To get that 50k to 500k to 5M actual people ... I think an affordable aircraft is probably the easiest part. Maybe it'll get people interested? Though you can already buy factory-built LSA's for $300k that'll do 150kts (see Risen); Europe already has a booming LSA scene ... but it hasn't really resulted in more people flying, not as far as I can tell.

I don't think an aircraft is the missing link, but I can't express how much I'd love to be proven wrong!

Sounds a lot like the Airbus's "normal law" flying!

My $0.02 - I'm a CPL ME/IR who gets wet a lot, and is upside down half the time. Background is Automotive and Mechanical Engineering, been in software since 2007.

Want to shake up GA?

  - 150kt Cruise, 4h endurance  
  - 400kg "useful" load for pax/luggage @ 4h endurance / batteries  
  - 3-axis AP that'll do coupled approaches + autoland  
  - BRS, FIKI, Oxy/Pressurized  
  - $100k fly away

The Cirrus SR20 is the closest we have to this, at 6-7x the cost. You can kit build a Sling or RV10, which will get you what you want at 3-4x the cost plus 2-3 years of time.

Garmin, Rotax, Vans etc ... the avionics, materials, plans and tech already exists. It's needing a few hundred million dollars to set it up to be produced at scale so the $100k avionics package can be had for $10k. The $100k equivalent Rotax or Lycoming can be had for $10k. Maybe it's electric vs avgas.

Foreflight, Garmin Pilot etc do so much of the planning - and integrate well with the "Connext" or Dynon etc already. They've like racked up millions of hours now, I know I've thrown in a few hundred hours worth of feedback to them.

Your closest competitor is Cirrus who are already very successful using off the shelf components customized (eg Perspective+ vs 1000Nxi) to their liking, and are running a pretty substantial wait list for their planes. Their training is top notch, customer service is excellent and have thousands of airframes now flying over the past 20+ years.

I'm glad you guys trying to shake up this space, and I'd like more than anything to be proven wrong - I genuinely hope there's enough runway and capital to setup manufacturing to bring these component prices down and actually deliver a plane at a comparable cost to a car.

My understanding is that it’s a bit of both.

The best analogy for USA equivalent is that imagine Alaska is where we have a bunch of oil / gas, but we need it in New York and Miami.

We can’t lay pipes because of terrain / distance, and the road infrastructure is pretty spotty too.

The companies extracting / producing / selling the oil/gas off in Alaska are private and separate to the companies wanting to buy it in NYC or Miami. There’s minimal government oversight.

It might work out cheaper for the companies to buy gas coming from eg Europe or Canada or Mexico for NYC/Miami vs Alaska (in our instance it would be SE Asia / China). Or from Alaska.

Something that I didn’t see mentioned clearly -

A “licensed” mechanic needs to “certify” or sign off on the paperwork that a given task was done to a given standard following a given procedure.

The person certifying the work does not have to be the one that did the actual work, but it’s their license on the line so they tend to make sure it was done correctly.

This is how unlicensed mechanics / apprentices actually learn and eventually get their “license”.

There are varying levels and abilities for these licensed mechanics too in terms of what they are allowed to do, and also the organisation licenses too they’re working for.

It’s not quite as sinister or as “Wild West” the author wants to make it out, but outsourcing was inevitable in the airlines economic model.