Apple anything
And why?
Leaked emails indicate, they use iMessage to actively lock down users in their walled garden. This is area with literally zero innovation (or even regression) for past decade. At least.
Giving money to Apple basically equals to strangling innovation in exchange for getting (sometimes or even rarely) marginally better UX in boring, well explored areas.
Also once you are bought into their ecosystem you are stuck with some mediocre products like iPhone, because if you want alternative, you have to throw away watch, tv and speakers and then redo entire home automation due to lack of elementary interoperability.
That’s some real salt there buddy.
You are definitely entitled to your opinion, but ‘apple hardware and software is objectively inferior’ isn’t much of one.
It’s especially disingenuous to present those opinions like they’re established fact, when they definitely aren’t. You may not think that Apple is particularly innovative or that their UX is particularly good, but I think you’d definitely be in the minority there, especially outside of niche online communities filled with people with an axe to grind.
I’m pretty close to being as much of a power user as someone can be within the use case that I have for general purpose computing. I also feel like I probably know the mobile/desktop software space better than the average person on the street, I’m a SWE by trade.
I honestly think that the gap between the UI/UX design on Apple software and the UI/UX design on windows in particular, but android to a lesser extent, is the most compelling reason to use apple. And I also think it’s ridiculously out of touch to claim that Apple’s innovation’s (especially in hardware) aren’t significantly better executed and consistent than the competition. Sure, they don’t throw every half-baked idea into every new product they release, only to abandon that idea in 18 months for a new batch of experiments. I think that’s one of the reasons Apple users like Apple products. Personally, I’m not buying a phone because I want to spend two weeks trying out a bunch of gimmicks and then never using them again unless I’m showing my friends the cool thing my phone can do.
But, of course those are my subjective opinions and I’m not faulting you for disagreeing. There are people out there who thing Outlook is good UX, and they’re entitled to that opinion lol. But I do think it’s a little silly to disagree in a way that makes it obvious that you think that anyone who disagrees with you has no idea what they’re talking about.
I never wrote they are objectively inferior. I even admitted they can be marginally better in some areas. My point is they’ll vendor lock the hell out of you and the trade off isn’t worth it.
Meanwhile you wrote two walls of text to defend company that uses your children and technology worse than ICQ (released in 1996) to make you buy their products. You’re free to do so, but I’m not sure which one of us is salty :-)
Probably my fault you didn’t see this because it was buried deep in the wall of text, but I clarified that I’m definitely not trying to morally exculpate Apple.
In the context of which of two companies you choose to do business with, you shouldn’t criticize one while ignoring the immoral actions of the other. If we’re just talking about the things apple does wrong, I’m right there with you. But if we’re talking about which mobile phone ecosystem is less predatory than the other… at least my relationship with apple is a voluntary business arrangement with exactly two parties. That’s actually the reason I moved all of my stuff out of the android ecosystem in ‘21 after >10 years. Seeing ads across a dozen websites related to a private medical diagnosis made me realize Google just knows too much about me, and I do care about my privacy after all.
That’s obviously just my personal opinion but my point is that if you’re looking for an ethical tech company, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
I don’t believe in ethical companies. Microsoft was cool once, then Google was cool, now some people seem to think that Apple is cool.
Best way to not get burnt is not to get vendor locked with one of them. Android allows me to install Firefox(real one, not Safari re-skin), replace launcher or even entire OS with Graphene. Google sucks in many ways, but if I’m not happy with them I just install software from another vendor. With ios I have to throw away half of the hardware I own.
I don’t believe in ethical for-profit companies either.
The open nature of Android was the single biggest reason I used it for the decade that I did. If I were to switch back, I’d buy a pixel.
But android isn’t as open as it used to be. Yes, you can still unlock your bootloader, root, and install custom roms, but Google is now actively fighting against users who want to do so. On my pixel 3, it became a never-ending battle to keep apps like my banking portal working while rooted, and to keep rooting working through updates. At least once a month, I’d be out of the house and have my phone fundamentally break in some way.
Eventually, I reached the point where I needed a smartphone as a tool more than I needed one as a toy to tinker with, so I left it stock. But stock android sucks from a privacy perspective. I realized that I wasn’t using 3rd party App Stores and I wasn’t rooting my phone, so the largest benefits of avoiding an iPhone weren’t really a factor to me anymore.
I was also extremely disappointed in the hardware, quality control and longevity of new android phones, especially compared to the iPhones being released. So I switched. And was amazed at how glad I was.
No police showed up to my door to force me to trade my Sony headphones in for AirPods or my Dell laptop for a MacBook. I already had an iPad because at the time, it was the only serious tablet of you care about using a stylus, but that had been working beautifully for me without any other apple products.
I think it’s silly to list the fact that an OEM has a ton of products that work well together as a reason not to buy any of that company’s products. If you don’t want to get locked in, don’t buy an Apple Watch. As far as I know, nothing else requires an iPad. And anyway, the resale value on apple products is so solid that if you did totally buy in, selling all your apple hardware would get you more than enough to buy matching hardware of a similar age from other manufacturers. Sell your two year old iPad and you can probably get 3 two year old Samsung tablets, assuming you can find any that still work.
The web browser thing also hardly locks you in. If you really don’t want to use safari, that’s a decent reason not to want to use iOS. For me at least, safari is the browser I would choose to use, so I don’t really care that I can’t use Firefox.
Oculus Rift. Would love a VR headset and the Rift is at a great cost point for it’s level of function. No way that I’m locking myself to Facebook with a piece of hardware though.
Apple Ecosystem. Since I learned that iTunes changes mp3 files when “sync” to iTunes I stopped using apple products. That was back when iPhone 5 was released.
@mayflower
Anything that has something to do with Meta.
I trying to ditch all non open source software, it’s hard but I’m hopeful.Smart Watches.
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I don’t want to take care of charging for yet another device. Plus, analog watches are beautiful!
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Already trying to limit my screen time, no reason to check notifications the instant they pop.
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Don’t want to be conscious of my heart rate and sleep schedule all the time. Also have some privacy concerns about real time data associated with me making its way into big tech’s servers.
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Virtual assistants, e.g. Alexa, Cortana, Siri
I don’t want to interact with the companies they represent basically at all, let alone give them nearly unfettered access to my electronics and their data.
I have never used Bixby, I’ve used the Google assistant a few times but other than that, no thanks
I use Google assistant to set timers and alarms, and check the weather. Besides that, nothing. The times I tried, I wrestled with it for a few minutes until I did it myself.
Everything that need a pay subscription to work.
Whatsapp and all the other Zuckware shit.
“The cloud”.
In the end “the cloud” is just someone else’s hard drive. Call me old fashioned, but I’ll keep my data on my own hard drives.
Anything that has the word “smart” in it.
Where do you find a non-smart TV these days? Seems like nobody makes them anymore
Any good TV will be a smart TV. Just don’t connect it to the internet and it’ll effectively be another basic TV.
Actually worse than a basic TV, because almost every button on the screen or on the remote will try to do some action involving internet or smthg, giving you an error message after 15s freeze time trying to fetch data from that unplugged cable
Basic TV have no netflix button, no personal folder, no data management settings, not trying to anticipate what button you will want to push and push it in advance for you.
Even if you don’t use them, if these options are not here, it makes the TV simpler, better, faster, stronger
Generative AI. Dall-E just produces dumb images. ChatGPT is absolutely useless, nothing more than some kind of novelty toy. The fact that people are asking it questions and believing it is just so plain stupid. And if i need to do research to be able if it just talks bullshit again - why bother asking it in the first place?
IMO the use case for ChatGPT is stuff that’s not important but still tedious to write. For example, I’m applying for engineering work and my resumé “looks” like shit, so I’m going to need to write a shitload of cover letters. I don’t want to write them, like literally at all. It’s boring and stupid. But ChatGPT will happily write them. Sure there might be factual errors, but I’ll read the output and correct errors by hand. I still save time not having to write boilerplate or structure sentences.
Also, ChatGPT can work with programming languages. For example, I had ChatGPT write me a matrix algebra class in C++ just for fun. The first iteration didn’t compile, but it had the jist of how to represent a matrix and matrix multiplication. The second iteration compiled and worked on what I tried it on. Would I use it in production? Probably not while Boost exists. However, I probably could have used it to start writing a matrix algebra library if I really wanted to.
The fact that people are asking it questions and believing it is just so plain stupid.
The fact of the matter is that people are more gullible than they think. People have been encouraged to blindly trust authority figures since the dawn of civilization. We are simply reaping the consequences of our continued complacency.
It’s not unreasonable to ask ChatGPT (or anyone/thing) else questions. The issue is when they are treated as all-seeing oracles. ChatGPT in particular makes for a poor search engine because it is particularly likely to output convincing-sounding lies, because it is designed to optimize the convincing-sounding-ness of outputted text.
And if i need to do research to be able if it just talks bullshit again - why bother asking it in the first place?
Well, it can point you in a direction to begin your own research. However, the main use case is really when you don’t want to do the work and you don’t care about the quality of the work. I don’t think people fully realize that workers generally don’t want to do their work (would you do your job for free?), because that would contradict the assumption that work under capitalism is natural, voluntary, and not imposed upon the world.
Smart speakers with personal assistants like Amazon Echo etc. Not remotely useful enough to be worth placing spying Equipment all over my home.
Wireless headphones. So now I’m supposed to recharge my headphones and get worse sound quality for it? In a few years they become e-waste, while good wired headphones can last decades. No thanks.
I agree with everything you’ve said, but you have to admit that wireless headphones are convenient if you’re on the phone with someone and cooking dinner, or doing laundry, for example.
They certainly have their place but they can’t/don’t check all the boxes to replace wired headphones. It’s not like having a thin cord running from your ears to your pocket is a big enough issue that having to charge another device before eventually throwing it in the garbage after a couple years is a worth tradeoff.
Bluetooth and nfc audio codecs have gotten so good that unless you’re running high impedance headphones with an amp/dac, wireless is effectively indistinguishable from wired, at least for most applications, and especially if using a mobile device.
Audio quality wasn’t even on my radar since I’m not an audiophile, but them being at parity doesn’t sway the argument one way or the other. Good technology typically outpaces the thing it replaces in all aspects. In this case, BT is effectively neutral or worse in many cases which is why I don’t feel like it should replace the old method (headphone jack removal) but rather coexist alongside of it. I feel like we’re going backwards wheh dongles enter the picture. It gives me flashbacks to the very early days of mainstream cellphones/smartphones and all the proprietary connectors that came with it.
Does Facebook count because I was once in trouble with the police here for something completely unrelated to the Internet and they asked me several times for my Facebook account which didn’t exist anyway
Made me think they were fishing for anything and anything they read on there would have likely ended up twisted against me.
So yeah I refuse to use it.
Smart watches.
I do not need an additional notification screen. I see 0 benefits
overpriced. limited utility. inferior to smartphones.
One solid benefit is heart rate and blood oxygen monitoring
Smart watches.
Couple of reasons:
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I like my mechanical watches. They aren’t the expensive flashy ones, but I like the way they look and especially like the mechanical engineering. It’s one of the (maybe only?) Item I can think of that I use daily and ‘does something’ without electricity. Smart watches are nothing like that.
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When I want to be offline I can just ignore my phone or flip it upside down. Having notifications on my wrist all day long wouldn’t be good for my mental health. It annoys me so much when I see people looking at and using their smartwatch mid conversation because they are so addicted to it. And I know I would be the same once I start using it.
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It’s expensive and e-waste after a few years.
Most smart watches go too far but I love my Garmin Instinct. It feels like a modern digital. Just enough cool tools and features but still black and white. With the o2 sensor on it lasts nearly two weeks, a month with it off, before it needs charging. I can track hikes and bikes. Gives me exact coordinates with a push of a button and no subscription or additional monthly fees to use it. If I could afford a mechanical watch for the price I paid for my Garmin ($130 used) maybe I’d own one.
I love my Instinct Solar. I have never connected it to my phone though — I don’t want notifications or anything. I can manually take the workout results and plug them into my phone.
The solar part is really nice. I did a three hour hike in Colorado a few weeks ago (GPS off) and added like eight days of estimated battery.
Solar sounds great. I have a Garmin FR55 and linked it to an old phone with no sim and a throw away email account, so it just syncs each time I get back from a run. Lasts a week even with gps during runs. Also turned off all notifications as I hate that. I stopped wearing a watch about 20 years ago but this (after a bit of getting used to) is actually quite useful.
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