Smart watches.
I do not need an additional notification screen. I see 0 benefits
As somebody with adhd those shit is helpful as fuck…
Smartphone rings
i Check it
After checkin (and not replying) i doomscroll…
Smartwatch gooes on
checkin the notification
decides that its (mostly) not important and keep Doing whatever i am doing right now
I sent my bother a text the other day. I got upset that he didn’t immediately respond, because I knew he had a smart watch.
I realized that I was getting upset for a condition neither of us set. I eventually heard from him and his watch didn’t really matter.
I also think the health monitoring is kinda creepy.
I love my smart watch for checking a notification that I can’t pull my phone out to check as my hands are usually wet and gross from my profession so it only makes sense to me.
Also, they work great as fitness trackers these days too, if you’re into that kind of thing otherwise a mechanical watch will work perfectly fine.
I needed to keep track of the time and I don’t always have my phone on me so I got a mechanical watch instead. It’s great! No having to charge it, no chance of it tracking me and I got a new hobby/interest out of it.
overpriced. limited utility. inferior to smartphones.
One solid benefit is heart rate and blood oxygen monitoring
Apple anything
Patiently waiting on Asahi Linux to get more and more features done – the stuff they’ve achieved to reverse-engineer so far already is frankly incredible.
The hardware is quite nice, after all…
I’m forced to use an iphone and ipad for work and I fucking hate it. I honestly don’t understand how people find it “more intuitive”. So y’all hate the ability to go back or easily exit out of things?? And the inconsistency in swiping functions between models and versions is maddening!
Swipe from up on the iPad brings up menu A but on the iphone SE it brings up menu B but on the iphone ## it brings up menu fucking C.
Aaaahhhhh so frustrating!!
Note: I am also ND so… probably something to do with it.
Same. Don’t want to stuck in their ecosystem.
The only thing I like about apple is their apple pen for making illustrations on procreate. For me, nothing is comparable.
Everything else is a nightmare though. Even if the apple pen is awesome, I just can’t recommend anyone to buy such an expensive device considering you can’t really repair it and cannot do anything apple doesn’t want you to.
Wow I’m surprised you didn’t get downvoted into oblivion. Personally I agree with you and I’m guessing most lemmy users are android users judging from this comment.
Same tbh. Maybe because the android crowd is more open to the idea of decentralization, where Apple users don’t mind walled gardens. Of course I’m stereotyping hardcore right now.
There is a LOT of Linux and Open Source advocates on the fediverse.
Yeah, decentralization is the complete opposite of being a closed-garden. Also Apple has done zero contributions to open-source, or helped the greater good at all. I’m typing this from an AOSP rom which would not be possible if the base of Android was not open-source.
Apple does contribute to open source though, for example CUPS and Webkit among contributions to projects like Clang. Granted they aren’t benevolent beings by any means, but they do have open source projects that actually benefit people much like Facebook does with zstd.
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.
Source?
OP is somewhat mistaken, it wasn’t a leaked email since it was revealed in the Epic v. Apple case, but here’s one of many sources you can find on the topic.
That’s interesting, but it’s hardly what I was imagining based on what the user I replied to was saying.
The source linked quoted an Apple exec explaining that the cost/benefit analysis of building a piece of free software on a platform that generates them no revenue doesn’t justify them spending the resources to build the software.
I get it, we all want corporations to be benevolent entities that give us free software out of the kindness of their hearts, but if we’re going to criticize one of them for not doing so, I think it’s more clear-minded to criticize the system as a whole.
Why in the world would anyone expect Apple to spend development resources building iMessage for Android (for free), especially if they’ve determined that it will hurt user retention? Because we want them to? It sucks, but not like “evil mega-corp manipulating users” sucks, more like “corporation making decision that literally every other for-profit corporation would make in that situation” sucks.
I’m not trying to morally justify it, I’m strictly speaking in the context of “use products from x instead of y because y did bad thing”. In that context, that’s a bad argument if it’s true that x is just as anti-user as y is.
And if we’re specifically talking about using Apple products vs using Google products here, you’d have to be taking crazy pills to think that Apple is more anti-user than a company who’s entire business model is the commoditization of vast amounts of personal data gathered for the purpose of more effectively manipulating literally everyone, including non-users of their products, into increasing their consumption.
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 want to use my things how I want to use them. Apple does not let me do that. They actually get in the way of how I want to use my things.
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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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.
“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.
Preach it bb
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 confess to having an iPhone and other apple products, but they will Always have that “finish setting up” message forever because I will NEVER turn Siri on. Ever.
I mean I’m
openly a hypocritenot a purist either when it comes to these companies, especially Google and Amazon. Like my phone is an Android and I posted an Amazon link the other day. But, I’m still trying to find ways to get them out of every possible aspect of my life. I’m just done with their particular brand of bullshit.
I’ve dabbled in the virtual assistants because I wanted to see what they can do. Siri (it’s been years so I don’t know if it improved), Alexa, Google, are all horse shit. Every time I try to use them it works like garbage. They either trigger incorrectly or try to implement something I don’t want. The few times they do work correctly I don’t trust them because of all the other garbage experiences so I have to double check what they did. That negates the entire point from a time and convenience standpoint.
Google really wants to refer me to a garage door company instead of closing the damn thing.
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.
I know people who worked on Bixby and the one thing they have in common is they all hate Bixby and think it’s garbage.
Voice commands. I get the utility if you’re disabled or elderly, but it seems like a hassle to anyone else.
Any smart home tech that isn’t fully self-hosted. I’m far from a privacy hardliner, but that’s one line I won’t let the corpos cross.
Walking about in public “OK GOOGLE, ORDER A JUG OF LUBE ON AMAZON”
Sometimes I’m taking a shower in the morning before work, and I want to enjoy it but I know I can also lose track of time. So I just yell, ‘hey Siri, what time?’. Also when cooking, hands dirty, ‘hey Siri, thirteen minutes’ and she sets the timer
Almost all smart things, except a smartphone, which sadly I can’t avoid. Maybe I just don’t want to be connected 24/7.
Before you can disconnect you need to see this ad…
Wrong post.
Most social media.
I used to use reddit, I have moved all my presence over here. That’s about it.
I have a FB Messenger account because that is how a lot of my family keeps in touch with me, and I have this. I had a proper FB account back when I was in uni and Facebook was still only for uni students, but I think I dropped it shortly after that.It’s not some grand principled stance, I just don’t get most of them because I am apparently an old man. Like Instagram, why do I want to share pictures with just random people? How am I networking with anybody by doing so? I honestly don’t get why it is so popular.
Same. Except I still occasionally use reddit, just not as much as I used to.
I only use FB messenger as it’s big here for communication and FB to post photos of my kids for my family to see which has only been recently, since I had kids. Before that I didn’t even touch FB.
Other than that, social media doesn’t interest me at all.
Home smart devices in general. I’m avoiding Alexa, Siri or any other thing like that. Besides the obvious privacy issues I see about them, I can only imagine being alone at home, Alexa thinking something talked to her and responding in a distorted voice. No, thanks.
I’m considering a home assistant at some point, by setting up a proper network for the smart devices alone, but that’s as far as I’ll go.
Look for devices that support Zigbee or Z-wave, as they’re guaranteed to be local-only and not depend on any cloud service. Pair them with Home Assistant and you’ll have a smart home that doesn’t require anything in “the cloud”.
Voice commands on anything. It just feels silly.
Voice typing long messages is IMO faster than using a phone keyboard, even with gesture typing.
Voice typing is a game changer if you break a hand. I did a semester of college writing several essays a week with 99% voice typing.
I have only very recently come around on that. When voice commands first came out, they were absolute garbage. I am still conditioned to never expect them to work, and am always pleasantly surprised when they do.
To be fair, I largely only use them for things like setting my alarm, because I still have an engrained expectation that they won’t work otherwise.
Genuine question, so they actually work better now?
I mostly use it to set timers and alarms, but once in a while i set reminders but they often come out like i need to buy “dead foot”, when I’m out of cat food for example
Things I use it for with almost 100% accuracy: Timers, Alarms, Lights, Pausing/Playing TV.
Things I use it for with like 70% accuracy: Weather and anything interfacing with maps. To be entirely fair to it though, I live in a non-English speaking country and use voice assistants in English usually, so city/place names REALLY throw it. If I change the voice assistant to my local language and use it, it works a lot better.
I have honestly never tried setting a reminder because my brain is still rooted in early voice control tech where something like that would never conceivably work.
Depends…
Patent of a Baby?
Voice command is ya friend
Having a smart home?
Voice command is awesome for being lazy (unfrotunatally i love my privacy so i cannot use Stuff like that right now…)
Cooking something and both Hands are gross as f***?
Hell Yeah Voice command to Set a Timer :D
I think it’s the one area I’m a Luddite. I really should use voice commands on my smart home stuff because the apps are trash. But it still feels weird. Silly mental block.
I’m fine with voice command if it can be done locally. The only pipe dream is that some day, maybe some of them will support my near extinct native language. So I don’t have to speak foreign languages at home.
for all the people saying smart devices/homes, you all should check out rhasspy/piper on github. It by itself is a TTS system but it’s integrated into an offline smart-home system and a few other projects in the same vein. The links are on their git page and its pretty damn interesting. I personally use it for audiobooks after training my own voice but a lot of people want an amazon/google alternative. I may or may not have just trained a model on the same voice that amzn uses lol.
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
^ this
“Smart” anything is something of a misnomer as the “smarts” are on some “cloudy” server far away. One can only hope that without the “cloudy” connection the thing will continue to function on a “dumb” level.
“Smart” “phones” are even more of a misnomer since they’re basically pocket computers that happen to have a phone in them. I’ll use them because they can be useful if they do what you want, but I don’t install any proprietary apps.
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My phone can’t even show pictures… and that’s the way I prefer it.
Kinda makes me miss the days when I had an ipod touch and a flip phone.
One can only hope that without the “cloudy” connection the thing will continue to function on a “dumb” level.
I actually like smart products, but this is a requirement for me. It needs to be a functional “dumb” product if internet connections/servers fail, I usually won’t buy anything I can’t verify that for (or will return it if I find out that is not the case when I test it). I never want to be stuck in a situation where I can’t turn my house lights on because the router went down, or the blinds become inoperable.
Smart features should always be on top of basic functionality, they shouldn’t be a requirement just to remove a couple physical buttons.
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.
I persisted with my wired earbuds until only very recently picked up some wireless ones and can say they’re better in every way. Unless you only ever use them while sitting still. Exercising, gardening, mowing the lawn, working on the car or in the garage, anything where you’re moving about really. Not having the stupid wire getting caught on anything or accidentally pulling your phone out is a godsend.
Audio quality is fine for 99.9% of people. I think some people are stuck on views from 5 or 6 years ago. The tech has come a long way.
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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.
Until it can stream hi-res lossless without compression I’m sticking to wired. For a long time I’ve been eyeing the AirPods Pro and I finally tried them out at the Apple Store; they sound like trash. I don’t know how people put up with it.
I’ve got the Audio-Technica ATH-M50 (Bluetooth version, can’t think of the specific model number) and it’s just terrible unless I use the cord with a nice DAC.
I love wireless headphones because I’m the specific flavor of clumsy that was catching my headphone cable on drawer pulls and doorknobs like 3x a week. I still have good wired headphones I use for serious music listening, but for most day to day stuff I went wireless and they honestly have lasted longer than a lot of my wired earbuds because I am such a shambling disaster.
So much this
No smart speakers
It’s a mic sitting there waiting for your commands and everything it does I can do myself easier
I have good wired headphones (10 years old) and good earbuds (5 years old) and use both. There’s a place for each.
You mean, you don’t want a 1984-esque always-on listening device in your 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 tend to avoid any wireless peripherals, I still have a wired mouse because I don’t need to think about charging my mouse and whether it’s going to run out of charge.
Wireless mice are such a weird one to me. Like your mouse will never move more then a foot away from it’s normal spot so why do you need wireless?
Wires get in the way of the rest of the clutter on my desk.
Everything that need a pay subscription to work.
For me it’s anything I have to download an app to operate.
Except for public transport :-D
