tojikomori

tojikomori, 10 months ago

I have the 4x4 stock calendar widget on my first Home Screen to quickly scan my day in the morning.

The widget I use most often is probably the dense 4x2 Carrot Weather one: it's split down the middle between hourly and daily forecasts, which is helpful for quick chore & dog-walking decisions, especially when deciding whether to put something off until tomorrow because it's too hot/cold/rainy.

tojikomori, 10 months ago

It was like this for a few months on Mastodon when Twitter did the same. At least spez doesn't have any kind of celebrity status: I was able to go out with some friends last night and not a single person raised this topic. (A couple of them know what Reddit is, but none of them really use it much. And I'm sure no one in the group other than me knows who its CEO is.)

I just hope we have a good network of people here after this story fizzles out of the news. I'd be happy with kbin never becoming as popular as Reddit, so long as there's a healthy bunch of curious people sharing and discussing interesting links.

tojikomori, 10 months ago

Weirdly torn on this: I live a few hours from the nearest Apple store, so it'd be nice if I could replace my phone battery without going through all this, but I also like the fact my phone is a decently robust and waterproof little brick with few moving parts or breakable pieces. It's practically a tank compared to the last battery-replaceable smartphone I had.

If I had to replace my battery as frequently as I did with early smartphones then I'd willingly trade some of the durability for a user-replaceable battery, but I've had an iPhone 12 mini since its launch – about two and a half years – and its battery still gets me through the day just fine. iOS Battery Health says its maximum capacity is 87%. Maybe next year I'll need a battery replacement, and that'll do me fine for another three years. I'll be extremely pleased, but also quite surprised, if the phone lasts long enough to need a second battery replacement after that. Is that a repair we should really be optimizing for?

tojikomori, 10 months ago

A screw-on panel sounds like a good idea to me – a decent balance between replaceability and durability, without overly optimizing for a repair that only happens once or twice in a handset's lifetime.

The S5 looked a lot like my first smartphone, and it goes to the other extreme: a flimsy plastic shell over some sturdier plastic that frames the battery and separates its contacts from the phone's internals. My newer, non-user-replaceable-battery handsets – both Apple and Android – have held together a lot better using fewer materials more judiciously.

A sweet spot between these extremes ("you need 80 lbs of specialized equipment to replace the battery safely" vs. "let's pretend people need to swap out phone batteries like AAs") could be good for me, but I want to know about the trade-offs. Too often legislators and right-to-repair advocates talk as though there are none. Even with a screw-on panel, I'm sure there are trade-offs.

tojikomori, 10 months ago

Why do you find that such an important factor? Is it just about the principle of having a choice, or is there a particular third party app store you consider essential?

tojikomori, 10 months ago

Got it, makes sense. Appreciate the example you gave here – that's a believable use case for something like this.

tojikomori, 10 months ago

Question Of The Week is silly and we shouldn't do it.

tojikomori, 10 months ago

Thanks for checking in – I almost declared my "stop" comment to be the winner by default. 😆

This thread was a follow-up to last week's QOTW thread (where I mentioned that I'd ask for suggestions from the sub) and I was looking for similar ideas: open-ended conversation starters, useful tips and tricks, etc. I posted a new one for this week asking about favorite iOS widgets.

There was a good amount of discussion last week, so I'm not quite ready to pull the plug on the idea. Maybe in a few weeks I'll set up a form for people to submit their own questions and link to it from each QOTW thread.

tojikomori, 10 months ago

When people talk about Zeta's OP, I always have to check whether they mean this one or the original Japanese opening. Replacement international soundtracks usually make me sad, but Saegusa did a great job here. I like them both.

Wing is still my favorite Gundam OP, though. It's just so catchy.

tojikomori, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

If someone sets up a Kbin/Lemmy community for iOS/macOS beta discussions let me know and I'll add it to the sidebar and pin a sticky for the beta period!

tojikomori, 10 months ago

Thanks! Added to the sidebar, but this made me realize how easy it is to overlook communities in the threadiverse today so I've pinned a generalized thread to collect suggestions for the sidebar.

tojikomori, 10 months ago

I don't think it's meant to seem concerning, just interesting, and a different perspective on Apple decisions that affect device transfer and repairability. These days I really don't worry about Apple making ends meet.

This bit could become a problem:

Since 2012, the Indian government has mostly blocked imports of used iPhones over concerns about e-waste and domestic production. Apple repeatedly pushed to overturn the policy in the years that followed, according to reports, but the government held firm. With no old iPhones coming into the country and few new models being sold, there's a limited number of phones that can be refurbished.

It's easy to imagine scarcity further incentivizing iPhone thefts and expanding illegal import markets. Those are problems that would exist anyway of course, but it could make them worse.

tojikomori, 11 months ago

I guess that clinches it. I'm AFK right now but later today I'll be checking out PowerDeleteSuite (thanks to @solidgrue for mentioning it in this thread).

tojikomori, 11 months ago

iFixIt gives it a "3" for repairability:

• Excessive use of strong adhesive makes it very difficult to remove the rear panel, hindering access to every internal component.
• Without a service manual, it is difficult to open the trackpad without damaging internal components such as the battery and Taptic Engine.

I'd leave the ant be, and maybe get one of these stickers for your Mac.

tojikomori, 11 months ago

Blockchain technology hasn't contributed anything of lasting value, and too much money, energy, and good will has been burned by people trying.

Its most popular applications are cryptocurrencies, which are used for gambling, money laundering, and for collecting payments from ransomware victims. Someone once bought a pizza with them, but since that time their transactions have become too slow and their value too volatile to exchange them for anything so concrete.

Various attempts have been made to use blockchain technology for public or shared databases, but it turns out to be worse than all the other faster and much simpler existing solutions in that space.

Others have attempted to bolt it on to various business and social systems, but it hasn't provided any practical benefit there either. It remains a slow and cumbersome alternative to every problem.

Its unique superpower is that it can be used to make contracts between parties that have no trust in one another and no social or legal system of enforcement, so long as your definition of a contract is sufficiently narrow, can be reduced to terms understood by the world's slowest logic engine, and is perfectly encoded the first time around and doesn't require any adjustment thereafter. If one or more of those conditions fail, you'll find yourself turning to the social and legal systems of enforcement you thought you didn't have.

tojikomori, 11 months ago

It's interesting: Vision Pro is the first headset with so many features intended to reduce isolation – EyeSight, Breakthrough, AudioPods – but it seems to get this criticism much more than others. (It's not just you: a lot of people feel this way, and Apple's attempts to address the issue don't invalidate the viewpoint.)

I wonder if it's because Apple's marketing is the closest most people have come to seeing a headset used in actual public spaces or in everyday life, as opposed to seeing it in the isolated rooms and workspaces of Meta, Microsoft, and Sony's marketing. By drawing attention to their workarounds, Apple's also drawing attention to the issue.

It reminds me of the increase in public concern about stalking after Apple released AirTags – the first keychain tracking device with features intended to combat stalking. Tile had been on the market for years at that point, but it was Apple that received the criticism because they'd drawn awareness to the issue.

I'm also old enough that I remember these same concerns being raised about personal stereos, and it was certainly true: earphones are still my favorite way to shut out my surrounding environment, especially somewhere noisy like a bus or train. But it's not as though the older generation complaining about them were engaged in empathy-expanding conversation with each other: they'd bury themselves in books and newspapers in the surrounding seats.

tojikomori, 10 months ago

This comment thread is behaving very strangely right now: comments with the same ID are showing up multiple times in different places, and I just received a notification about a reply that I don't see in the thread.

tojikomori, 10 months ago

Looks like this has sorted itself out now!

tojikomori, 10 months ago

Yep, it's fixed. Thank you!