$2,000 for a phone? Holy price point, Batman. No thanks.
I assume the people who would buy something like this have enough money not to care, and also would not care about the second part of my comment, because they want New Thing or use their phones enough for it to be useful.
I guess it might be the case that the only way to make the folding screen thing even remotely work is a very, very expensive manufacturing process. But as is often the case, I don't see how it's worth it?
I want my phones smaller and with Touch ID, not enormous and wrinkly.
$2800 here. What kinda of problem does that solve that's worth that kind of money? I'm seriously asking, because I can't figure it out. I can completely see buying an iPhone 18 Pro because you use it for work as an influencer or media creator, but this is close to twice the price and much less of a tool.
I don't think luxury phones necessarily need to solve problems. They're just luxury phones, people who can afford them will buy them because they like them, not because they're solving problems.
Incredibly useless. It is obvious that Apple doesn't have UI/UX designers over 40. Increasing the font size doesn't effect everything and breaks too many things. For example, you can't change the size of the time in the top left. Style > usability all over the place. Don't get me started on the stupid watch...
An influencer needing the latest iphone is also ridiculous when you think about it. They are running instagram and tiktok after all, not waiting for software to compile. They don't even need the latest and greatest camera because all their content is only going to be viewed on a palm sized screen.
It's basically for people who want an iPhone and iPad, but in a device that's worse than both, while being more expensive than just buying one of each.
That’s not a brand new folding phone. Those start at $1900 MSRP from what I see. However, you can get them a few hundred cheaper. Some of them cost even more than Apple.
People have been saying “Oh my God, who would pay $600 for a phone“ for 20 years. Clearly there are such people.
Most people don't actually realize they're paying $$$$ for their phone, as they get a phone with their mobile plan and they pay some monthly small sum for 24 months that lets them forget they'd never be able to afford it otherwise.
Not sure what expressing the cost of your current phone has to do with the discussion here, but I’m guessing this phone certainly isn’t for you. Some people choose to spend more on their phones, and some less.
Well, other than being 10 years old, having 100,000 miles on it, most likely needing a new timing chain, suspension, and generally needing a new cooling system, sure.
That's why they're $10K.
Meanwhile for about the same price differential, $10K on eBay will get you an Audi RS 5 ... engine ... with 60K on it.
I don't know that the Ghibli makes the point you want to make.
> I don't know that the Ghibli makes the point you want to make.
What point do you think I was trying to make? ivraatiems compared what he paid for a used iPhone on eBay to a new iPhone four years newer, and then said this was an absurd price difference because 8x price gets you way more car.
All I did is point out that this is a bullshit comparison because of course you can buy an older, used product way cheaper than a brand new one. I chose the Ghibli because it is one of the more entertaining (and repeatable every year, there are lots of gluttons for punishment out there it seems) examples of fast depreciating cars. To varying degrees this example could use any product, but ivraatiems chose cars so I ran with it.
But people like me cannot be the target market of Apple because that would be a very limited number of customers. Also even if I could afford it, I don’t see any use case for it so why would I even buy it?
I might get one. I've been using a mini for years and am pretty much giving up on Apple ever making one again. The AI features finally seem worth an upgrade, and I don't love the size of the Air, standard iPhone, or Pro/Max models.
If I'm going to have to two-hand it, this is perhaps not the worst. Also, it might be more one-handable when closed than regular iPhones.
Is it very expensive? Yes, especially if you don't opt for the base storage (256 is not enough in the age of LLMs). But I've not upgraded in 5 years, so I've got budget to spare.
> I assume the people who would buy something like this have enough money not to care, and also would not care about the second part of my comment, because they want New Thing or use their phones enough for it to be useful.
But what's the monthly price with Apple's upgrade program? I'd bet that's how most people will be buying it (me included, if I decide to get one).
Lots of people can afford it. If you keep the phone two years, that works out to less than $3 / day. The lease option is even less. They're going to sell or lease a lot of these.
I think it's going to be very interesting to see how well the sales for the Duo do in year two and three. I suspect sales will go up, but wouldn't be shocked if they drop.
The number of people who buy junk food on credit they can't pay off is pretty much unfathomable at least in the USA. There are plenty of people for whom "$3 / day" is something they very realistically can't afford.
The first iPhone did not have 3G when it came out, no GPS either, and no App Store - you were stuck with all the stock apps. It was definitely far behind its peers in several key aspects
I’ve said it before, but Ballmer was exactly right WHEN he said that. I know because I was one of the very few people in my area, notable for being a tech hub, who had an iPhone at release… only because my employer at the time paid for it.
I had a large, relatively well-paid, tech-savvy circle of friends (and many random strangers) who openly envied me but could not justify the price point.
The numbers back this up because iPhone sales didn’t start hockeysticking up until the next version was released, which allowed carriers to further subsidize smartphones with data plans that brought the upfront costs down to $200.
The iPhone was as much a technology revolution as it was a consumer financing one, but it is never discussed as such.
also another thing people forget is that merely 10 weeks after the first iphone launched, Apple cut the price by $200 in sept 2007. it then launched the 2nd gen iphone (iphone 3g) at an even lower price the next year due to carrier subsidies.
I am with you on this one, probably sales charts are up for foldable phones but I am not sure those people are reading the room correct. We want smaller devices more tactile if we wanted ipads we would get ipads.
I try and usually succeed at using my phones for around 3 years, so it's not out of the question. Still have another year on my current one, I'll check out the next duo next year.
Depending on the age, people are spending between 4-6.5 hours a day on their phone. How much are people spending on computers? Their mattress? 2,000 for the cutting edge version is frankly reasonable for what a phone provides in this day and age, especially considering the last 3 years of inflation in the US...
to sell a phone for such a ridiculous price you need to make it as obvious as possible - a folded phone is pretty obvious - now people can buy it as a status symbol. what's the point of a status symbol if not everybody around you immediately recognizes the item as very expensive. there you go.
First mention of this in the whole thread. Its the first demographic that came to mind as well, for example filming yourself (maybe even with auto prompter?), any, center stage, etc. Not sure how practical it really is, for example you would still need some sort of way to put the phone ‘at eye level’, if you put it on a table the camera angle would be awkward unless you sit on the floor or small stool, or have they implemented some optic tricks that can compensate for this?
Yes, I think this is an artifact of the new under-display camera (at least on the inside). The official copy states:
> iPhone Duo uses Touch ID, which is integrated into the side button. This gives you an easy, secure, and consistent way to authenticate iPhone Duo, whether it’s closed or open.
Probably no way to do FaceID from under a display yet.
Not the person you're replying to, but Face ID just works much less reliably for me. I usually wear glasses, and when I get up in the morning and am not wearing them yet, it usually takes a number of tries before my phone will unlock. Sometimes it will also randomly not work in the middle of the day, maybe because of glares or something. Touch ID always just worked.
After jumping from an iPhone to a Pixel and back, the only thing I miss is fingerprint unlock which is way faster and more convenient than Face ID. You don’t need to adjust the phones position or anything if it’s too close to your face or in a position where it can’t scan your face.
I prefer TouchID because FaceID doesn't work when my phone is flat on the table and away from me. That's is how I use my phone most of the time, I don't really hold it up to my face.
I echo what lutoma said. I hateHateHATE the endless having to tilt and/or move around the phone all the time (especially, but not only, after awaking) to get Face ID to "work". Give me Touch ID any day.
You get the choice to pay the remaining value of the phone and keep it, or enter a new "lease" agreement for a brand new phone at the end of the term. The formula is simple:
purchase fee = device list price – lease payments made – remaining discounts or trade-in credits.
If you're paying $1368 over 24 months, you could pay the remaining $632 after those 24 months and keep it with 0% interest.
So let's say you go to Hertz or Avis at the airport, you get a car for a month at $1700. The car has an MSRP of $40,000 and Hertz/Avis gives you the option to buy the car for $38,300 after you return it.
Let's say you go to BMW or Lexus or Ford. You pay them $3000 and agree to pay them $500 a month for the next 3 years to use the car according to some conditions. The car is worth $60,000. You pay $21,000 over those three years. When you bring it back, they offer to let you buy it outright or to just hand it over to the dealer.
Is that leasing or renting in your country?
Is the difference between renting and leasing even meaningful? You chose a car rental agency for your example because it costs more per month to rent from a short-term rental agency. What is a lease but a long term loan? What difference does it make that I rent my apartment by signing a document called a "lease agreement"? Am I a renter? Or a leaser?
Renting/leasing is not automatically bad. The terms are what make one a good or a bad deal.
Is that $3000 a deposit that you get if you return it in good condition? In that case we would definitely call that renting.
> Is the difference between renting and leasing even meaningful?
Where I live, yes. If you lease you are the owner, with the financing company having the ability to seize it when you don't pay. If you rent you are not the owner, but are allowed to use it. Renting is a bit plebeian.
English is not my first language, sorry. If you have a device that you pay a monthly fee for, but you can't keep it at the end of the contract, where I am from we call that renting.
Leasing is a financial construction where you actually own the product / property, with the bank having the option to claim it if you fail to pay.
This is not true, with leasing you don't own the product or property at all. Leasing is basically long-time rent. For example, when you lease a car, you don't own it - the leasing company does. In some cases, you can buy out the object at the end of the lease (like cars), in some cases you can't (like apartments).
> a financial construction where you actually own the product / property, with the bank having the option to claim it if you fail to pay.
This is called financing - basically, buying a thing with bank's money which they give you as a loan. For high-value purchases, there are often limitations on what you can do with the object, or requirements (like a requirement to have homeowner insurance for mortgages), but there are usually less restrictions compared to lease since you are the owner.
Renting is you pay $X a month and when the contact ends everyone walks away. You don’t get the thing back, the other party does.
Leasing is close but slightly different. You still pay $X, you still don’t own it and can walk away at the end.
But with a lease you are given a choice to buy the thing at a pre-arranged price when the lease is over. So when you sign the contract you know that at the end you can pay $700 and it’s yours. Or you can still walk away.
It’s far, far more common with cars. The dealership guesses how much the car will be worth and offers you at lease based on that. If the car is worth more at the end of the lease than your buyout price, you can buy the car cheaper then you could, on the open market. If it’s worth less, you can walk away. You didn’t lose as much as you would have if you had gotten a loan, and you could go buy the same car used if you wanted for less.
For something like a phone, I’m not sure it really matters that much. So I don’t know why they decided to do leases.
It’s a lease, not rent. I don’t know the exact numbers on this but you can pay “rent” for two years and then pay like $300 (I don’t know what the right number is here) at the end to own it outright at that point. So at the end of the day you pay like $200 more than someone that buys it outright from the get go.
You think most folks on HN are making $500,000 after taxes (being charitable and assuming "in a day" means a working day)? Moreover, does one commenter have to represent most folks? If someone makes less than $500,000, are they not allowed to voice their lack of desire for a phone that is affordable for the alleged majority who do make $500,000?
Come on, most people are not making 700k a year even on HN. Probably closer to $300k at the high end and there are a lot of Europeans on here so probably closer to $100k.
There's maybe something cool at the core of this - help you ideate by seeing things in images! - but it's lost in all the other awful ways this gets used. More fake menus with food that looks nothing like the real thing. More fake book covers displacing real artists.
I can admire and enjoy the work of coding agents, which mostly just help solve problems and save me time. I can appreciate that there are creative uses for agents with text, that they could save people time, and that the environmental and safety concerns potentially have solutions.
I just can't see my way to appreciating these art agents, or any use of AI as a replacement for a human creative process. It's not because their output is bad, anymore (though sometimes it still isn't great). It's because it is bereft.
Even if I could, nobody in my life would be okay with my using them alongside my actual creative work. In fact, they'd be pretty upset if I did. And if I found out they'd been sharing stories with me written by AI, I'd be mad, too.
AI art is making me realise that through my whole artistic career, the reason it's so hard to convince people that they need good design is because no one really appreciates good art and design other than people who have studied art and design.
I am building an app and I need illustrations. Hiring someone is out of the question.
Previously, I would either not have illustrations or try to fit a stock image to my use case.
Now I can just generate illustrations that fit my use case well, and it takes very little effort.
Mine is just one out of thousands of conceivable use cases for image generation and editing. I appreciate that this capability is now available to everyone.
As a software user, I feel just as frustrated and disappointed when I look at a projects website, code, and commit history and it’s slop, why in the world would I use this garbage when I can just prompt my model to make my own?
Realize the people using this to make slop menus and book covers feel the same way, wow this is useful and saves me so much time/money!
I'm a solo coder. I love coding. Never used (or trusted) AI to generate code, only to review.
But good art and especially animation, beyond basic UI and logos, is a full-time commitment that requires giving up coding while you're working on the visuals (yes many great solo devs did their own art, but I prefer using the extra time on other shit, like making music and getting on with life)
Getting a good meat-based artist to hop on my Awesome Game Idea #458235 is easier if I can show them a running gameplay example, so they can see what the actual game will be like.
That works well but carries a risk of "painting yourself into a corner"; the longer you test a game in a particular art style (or music) the more you subconsciously tend to develop the rest of the game around that style! At least for me
AI-generated PLACEHOLDER art lets me iterate on a game closer to how I envision the final product to look like, right from Day 1.
I'd still hire/kidnap an actual artist before publishing.
"We are committed to fixing these problems, as long as it doesn't involve buying things other than AI computers, hiring humans, or using non-Microsoft products."
Calling Azure the solution to this problem when it is in fact the source of most of these problems is just fantastic doublespeak.
Github is ripe for disruption and I hope it is disrupted soon.
"While accelerating our migration to Azure," meaning, they will only solve problems if it helps them also use Azure more.
It is unbelivable that aload of 2.8b commits was totally fine, and a load of 2.9b was a sitewide outage, unless they have no reporting or their tooling is completely incompetent. If things can fall apart so easily, throwing more capacity at the problem won't fix it.
You’re torturing your own logic to make Azure the villain here. And it also sounds like you lack experience with capacity exhaustion. Things fail slowly, then suddenly.
I don’t owe you anything, much less a separately sourced counterargument. You openly admit that your opinion is not based not on GitHub’s proffered statements but on your self-admitted assumption that GitHub is actively lying in an attempt to cover up an Azure-related root cause.
I’m firmly in the camp of “something stinks at GitHub” but
> It is unbelivable that aload of 2.8b commits was totally fine, and a load of 2.9b was a sitewide outage
In my experience, there are hard thresholds that get passed that expose hidden bottlenecks like this. A previous system I worked on we had absolutely loads of headroom by all of our measured metrics, but one day we filled a cache because the value hadn’t been tweaked in recent memory. Plenty of space on disk and in memory, but all of a sudden we went from a very high cache hit rate to a very low cache hit rate, and everything ground to a halt.
This absolutely can happen in large systems. If some part of the system is at capacity, then slightly increasing the load can cause it to fall behind and start accumulating a backlog.
These backlogs can cause clients to make more retries, exacerbating the problem. Potentially further cascading through the system.
Sure. But you might not even be realizing that something is just at the cusp if the load is spiky enough.
The art of large system design is to identify and avoid these kinds of chokepoints. And when something happens, propagate the "backpressure" up the stack to avoid queuing.
Ok, but there's no universe where a major Microsoft-owned property is not being forced to run on Azure. Just like AWS pushing to get off Oracle back in the day. It would be career-destroying to suggest otherwise regardless of technical merit (and tbf, no infrastructure is bulletproof, unless you want to port GitHub to z/OS on mainframe)
Azure just has very poor performance and reliability characteristics. It’s a particularly bad migration target for a colo-based company that mainly runs on owned hardware (such as GitHub or LinkedIn). Requires much larger architecture changes than (say) a company coming from AWS.
I'm betting on Tangled and Codeberg. Tangled has a better press and in general is a dark horse, Codeberg has the "brand" and some network effects from projects that moved to there. (famously, Zig.) I heard that Sourcehut is having a moment as well, and I love the idea of email-based workflow and not having to have an account to contribute to someone's project hosted there, but I'm not maintaining anything worthwhile paying the $4/mo sub.
that is more manageable but c'mon I can't even keep Google One 100GB up on a consistent basis, that's how poor I am. self-hosting would be a far better option because apparently I find enough people to provide free Hetzner VPSes and stuff as long as I can sell this as mutually beneficial.
for context, I would GLADLY move there my Neovim plugin. all it does is brings the current jj message into your editor and lets you integrate it with a status bar (or anything in nvim, really). that would be a decent measure against drive-by slop contributions, and I'd accept contribs over private github mirror from those who I know but can't bother setting up git mail
EDIT: TIL that one can host SourceHut themselves. discoverability may still be a problem (sr.ht just ranks higher in search engines) but 1) fixable with github mirror that points to sourcehut instance as a canonical development platform, 2) it's moderately easy to sync contributions between tangled and sourcehut, so tangled is also an option
EDIT 2: the email part would be PITA, so $4/mo is attractive on that background
> We have since added more than 3 million CPU cores, 120 petabytes of high-speed storage, and significant network capacity. We installed as much hardware as available power allowed in our existing data centers while accelerating our migration to Azure.
A server box now has around 256 CPU cores. So that's about 12000 servers. If each one is $10k that's $120 million. Not a lot compared to Github's income.
$10,000 is only enough for CPU cost (2x AMD EPYC 9754). The rest of the servers (mainboard, RAM, storage, power supply, network card, rack, cooling, etc.) can easily triple or quadruple the cost.
But at this rate of growth, sounds like they'll need to buy around that amount every year just to keep up with current (not even taking into account future) growth.
Microsoft don't release the costs as you know, but
Compute and Storage for Free Tiers: Hosting code for over 150 million developers and processing over 2 billion GitHub Actions (CI/CD) workflows a month requires astronomical server power and data storage. The "Free" tier is a massive cost sink that Microsoft treats as a loss-leader marketing expense
Let me know when you understand how that's not free.
If you're a big company, you can afford having one engineer spend one or two days per year to maintain your self-hosted GitLab or Forgejo. On top of better reliability than GitHub, you'll get the additional bonus that your source code won't accidentally leak through being in Copilot's training set.
If you're a hobbyist, Codeberg is great, has a nice community and automatically shields you from slop contributions.
Speaking from experience, it cost mW about a week or two per year to maintain GitLab for the startup I worked at.
My personal GitLab on the other hand really does take only a day or two per year.
That said, a week or two per year is just what it costs to maintain any one thing period. I spent about that much time maintaining PCs in the office, or my personal proxmox setup. It's not onerous at all.
GitLab is super bloated and a little sucky to admin, but it's not too bad all things considered. I'm admin in my new job's GitHub org and it sucks a whole lot more to maintain.
The issue with these systems is that they lack Github's sophistication for issue tracking, knowledge transfer, and automation. I think Gitlab is a mature product in its own space and unlikey to change, for instance, at this point.
Codeberg also has the issue of having a political stance which means they will not accept just anyone's use of the platform. That is absolutely their right and I have no issue with it, but it's unattractive to me - as someone who agrees with most of their current politics - because the day they decide they don't like me, I'm screwed.
I never found GitHub's systems for issue tracking to be all that great. Cross-repository issues and development plans are hard to track within a git host. I've always used an external panning and issue tracking tool, mostly Linear, and it works really well. GitLab's Linear integration is excellent, FWIW.
I've actually worked with a couple of companies who do use GitHub for their code, and they all use Linear in addition to GitHub.
I understand the concern you're talking about wrt. Codeberg, but I wouldn't view it as a significantly bigger risk than anything else. Any platform can suddenly decide that your project is against ToS (GitHub will absolutely not accept just anyone's use of their platform either) and Codeberg introducing some rules recently doesn't, in my mind, drastically increase the risk of a dramatic ToS change in the future. But we all have to make our own risk evaluations and I won't judge yours. Luckily, moving between Git hosts isn't that difficult; setting up CI again and losing merge request history does suck but it's not the end of the world, unlike something like, say, losing your AWS/GCP/whatever account.
"sophistication" seems like a strange way to describe GitHub to me - I've found in every individual aspect (code browsing, issue tracking, code review, package management, etc), it's the worst out of all the systems I use regularly... But it's good _enough_ for most people, and it has all those features in one place, which is more convenient than wrangling 10-15 high quality but disconnected systems
Gitlab has the benefit of having very little traffic, both free and paid. Their limits are still way above the current usage so less likely to be an issue
Worth mentioning GitLab's paid enterprise offering are more expensive than GitHub's, on a per-seat basis.
Lots of companies moved because it was cheap, but it's not anymore. Ironic that companies might choose to migrate to them now for stability, rather than price.
GitLab has its own problems. It might be somewhat more available than GitHub lately, but it too is not immune to incidents, particularly involving workflow dispatch and managed runner availability.
Plus the UX isn’t nearly as good. Sometimes it feels downright clunky in comparison.
Dude no one uses github tracking for anything serious, come on. The only thing github has over gitea/forgejo is discussions. That's the only real social "innovation" github has contributed to open source development and it's just a shitty tacked on forum.
Also for accuracy, Codeberg has a pro-human and anti-corporation stance. Both of which are definitely en vogue at the moment.
Much better than GitHub's pro slop sentiment, which is doing nothing but destroy their reputation.
Semaglutide was invented in the early 2000s. Weight loss is an extremely complicated and societally mediated problem that we didn't have a 'cheat code' like this for until recently.
Semaglutide was patented only in 2018. The previous medication was liraglutide.
It behaved similarly but had a half-life of only a few hours. It required daily injections, and you could feel its effects wax and wane throughout the day.
Weight loss is extremely simple. The human body has two mutually-exclusive metabolic modes: burning sugar, and burning fat. Mode switching is automatic: if you eat sugar, your body runs sugar-burning mode and any fat you eat at the same time is stored. To lose weight, simply don't eat sugar; your body auto-switches to ketosis and burns fat reserves.
Foods with both sugar and fat make you gain weight, e.g. ice cream is 50% sugar 50% fat. Eat ice cream every day and you'll only gain weight.
The only "social problem" we now have is that women are on a power-trip rebelling against the men who used to keep them honest about eating. Hence "body positivity" from feminists.
I use Firefox with (non-lite) uBlock Origin, and occasionally fire up Chrome (with uBO Lite) for testing. The main issue that I run into is that uBO lite filters can't vary per-domain, so in order to rule out an ad-blocking-false-positive on something I'm developing, I have to turn it off for _all_ sites, not just localhost. (Actual false positives are rare, but needing to check is not so rare.)
I have not really had any issues with ads using uBlock Origin Lite. It's like the complainers live in an alternate reality or just listened to some influencer and never actually checked.
I do miss the rules that let me remove stuff based like CSS like selectors. The strange thing is, even though uBlock Origin Lite doesn't support that feature it's still totally possible to make an extension that does that. Maybe the specific thing uBlock Origin was doing is not possible but making an extension that follows rules and hides/deletes elements with different rules per site is still fully possible under manifest v3
But you can do this with uBOL? I’m not sure what you mean. I have multiple rules to hide elements on various sites. With HN I hide elements and can give it a custom CSS dark mode through uBOL. Works on both desktop and iOS.
My experience using uBlock Origin Lite on iOS is that some particularly intrusive ads will figure out a way to load, like local news sites from the US, and many sites will be fully broken (missing entire content portions, content doesn’t scroll, entire page can’t be interacted with). These issues simply don’t occur on uBlock Origin but only exist as an artifact of aggressively blocking elements without applying fixes to unbreak sites.
This guy is the Regular Car Reviews of botany - no punches pulled, heart of gold. I love his work, especially his parody of the depraved landscapers of today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be5ZnQiZslE&t=74s
We have certifications to keep which are pretty important for the business model (data security, ethical disposal and recycling)[0]. The auditors keep tabs on our retail channels.
Disclaimer: I am an employee, I did not found the company.
I am curious what is considered a grey market license here? I would guess legal departments only see 2 colors for their licenses, so what makes it a middle-state?
The law is more grey than either black or white. People get in trouble when they think they know something is cut & dried when in fact it's always arguable.
Some other commenter recently said "the law is not autistic".
In this case of course, there is an ocean of valid keys that were purchased or otherwise obtained legally, but under terms that said "you can't resell them or use thim for this or that purpose" but those terms may just be wishful thinking. Just because you write down a demand, even in a contract, even in a contract that both parties agreed to, doesn't garantee you actually ever had a right to that demand or that the other party is obligated to honor it. It might be, or it might be only in some juristictions and not others, or anything else could happen if you put it to the test, and whatever result might even not be final even if you do get your way.
Even if the act of selling or using the key was able to be squarely established illegal, that does not necessarily matter to any downstream recipients. Maybe the key itself is still invalid and MS can detect it and invalidate it any time they want, but that doesn't necessarily mean the end user in in any legal risk since a lawyer might be able to argue that they didn't knowingly do anything wrong (they just bought a computer). Even the recycler might be able to say the same thing, that they just bought keys from someone else. Their legal obligation and cuplability would have to be proven, not just assumed.
The world, including legal departments, has almost no black or white anywhere in it. Merely people with interests in trying to convince you that there is black & white, and they know which is which, and you better give them everything they want with no questions or contest.
There are websites which will sell you a license key which is real and valid but is not sold directly by Microsoft or an authorized OEM. These keys could be volume license keys that are being "misued" by reselling them, they could be keys from another country being used in the US (for example), or in rare cases they could be keys that were 'stolen' from someone else (e. g. copied and used).
That's a 'gray market' key. It's 'gray' because you don't know the provenance, and so in the worst case, you might end up with the key being deactivated, theoretically.
But I've sold computers with gray market keys on them for years and never once has a key been deactivated. I have had keys come up as not usable, in which case I typically ask for my money back.
Most of the time, from what I've seen, it's the first case - a volume key being resold.
I assume the people who would buy something like this have enough money not to care, and also would not care about the second part of my comment, because they want New Thing or use their phones enough for it to be useful.
I guess it might be the case that the only way to make the folding screen thing even remotely work is a very, very expensive manufacturing process. But as is often the case, I don't see how it's worth it?
I want my phones smaller and with Touch ID, not enormous and wrinkly.
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