The fact they made it possible is impressive in itself. Sure it’s not competitive for the latest games or such, but society is more and more reliant on smartphones, so having a local option is valuable in itself.

It’s a bit like countries making their own planes instead of buying the F-35, which is better and cheaper. They looked stupid at the time, until Trump came back and it turned out strategic autonomy had value.

As for the price, probably it is due to small production ; but also simply underlines how we got used to not paying the “true” price of things, by moving production to places with cheaper costs & labor.

You’re missing their point, they’re saying from the point of view of those in power millionaires are middle class.

Although there are some that distinguish a “managerial class” that is in-between the middle class and the billionaires : people like CEOs and such, with net worth in the tens of millions but who are not those who benefit the most from the system and are culturally distinct. I think it’s a useful concept personally, as their interests aren’t necessarily the same as the owner class but they still have a lot of political power.

Loads of fossil power use gas turbines that do not involve steam :x

My (probably incomplete) understanding is: phones have a GNSS chip (such as GPS, Galileo, or Glonass), but getting location from that takes a long time and a lot of battery. So they estimate location based on other information such as what cell tower they are connected to and the list of available wi-fi networks. This requires a database with all that info, which Google built through its Street View cars.

So the location provider is a service to which your phone sends all the info it has and which replies with an estimate of your location; which means it handles a lot of sensitive data.