rikonium

I’m being a non-article-reading heathen here but of those three bullets I don’t think any is new to the smartphone industry - albeit Apple is cagey with support timelines (and probably slows down on what’s fixed versus the current iOS version) but the 5s technically got a iOS 12 patch this year.

I get that it technically is true but it’s dismissive and misses the issue that a device you drop several hundred dollars on, made by a massive company, and with successful competitors to benchmark against doesn’t have a cohesive UI option out of the box and I expect that it shouldn’t be up to the customer to need to figure out how to fix such a glaring omission out of the box.

(I haven’t heard of Playnite until that comment mentioned it so I can’t comment on its effectiveness)

I totally get that it’s a glass half full/empty difference though. (“why should I need to compensate for a massive company’s lack of care?” vs. “oh this fix is quick and good enough for me!”)

See things in-person, if I am in need of a specific item today, check out what clearance items they have.

So at least one trader, that’s sure informative!

Bingo, I saw an ROG Ally(?) on display at Best Buy the other day and it was sitting on the Windows 11 desktop with a couple applications open like any demo laptop out on the floor - what dumbstruck me is that the scaling was set so the interface was absolutely tiny. Of course someone could have messed with DPI settings but it just looked like an interface for ants!

Windows 8 or 10’s tablet mode would have probably gone a ways towards making it more suited for a handheld but that function is gone.

At least the bottom edge swipe opens the start menu which I found by mistake. Maybe Big Picture mode would help.

Oh he should’ve just watched this 10-minute tutorial on how to open the door on YouTube after crawling to either the front seat or trunk!

Sometimes I dream of a flip phone or regressing to using a Treo but the core services like Facetime, etc. are quite handy. I’m thinking when I get much older it’ll be easier. Still got a Palm PDA that runs on AAA’s sitting in a box waiting… but of course the year 2038(?) problem is a thing and there’s a capacitor I’ll have to replace on the board eventually. But syncing things locally sounds neat since I’m back down to one phone and one computer now.

Well… I guess it beats their treatment of Windows Phone 7 models.

It'll vary, there's a lot of forums out there from the car-model-specific (Piloteers) to makes (Kia-Forums) to more general ones like Bob is the Oil Guy. But there's a lot of tech ones with cobwebs all over (Windows Central) and many that have disappeared entirely. (1src, webOS Nation/Precentral)

"Up yours woke moralists!"

Reminiscing how Google Now and Cortana were in their prime breaks my heart. Siri on the other hand hasn’t gotten worse from what I can tell, but where’s the improvement?

Honestly in the Age of Enshittification I’ll settle for not getting worse, but I rather not.

In recent memory the two that have stood out to me are Risk of Rain 2 and Halo 4. I thought some 3rd-person action in the former would be fun but I found the core loop and overall shooting boring after a couple run attempts so I guess it just didn't click for me.

Now Halo 4... I think gameplay in that title is an exercise in tedium. Add on (what is in my opinion as:) poor AI, a bit too much melodrama, dumb retcons, "do X three times!" a bit much and I got a campaign that felt like a chore and haven't touched it since I left off at the level with the Mammoth. The Prometheans are a pain to fight and I felt funneled into making do with Forerunner weapons to take ranged potshots at Watchers above all other targets and then rushing to kill the one Knight I was targeting before it regenerates, also above all other targets. Yuck. (Update: Coming back here since it occurred to me that I could sum it up as: my ability to make mid-combat decisions and play in the sandbox was kneecapped by poor enemy and maaaybe level design respectively.)

Good music though.