Semiofftopic but somehow I took offense at the Vista comparison. Aero Glass was peak UI design to me, and I'd certainly prefer it to modern paradigms like flat controls, or to stretch it even further, Corporate Memphis etc.
Curse you, Apple and Jony Ive. You only needed to tone skeuomorphism down not kill it.
Never thought of the fake variant as gasoline-like but it sure has that strange, very heavy 'chemical' aftertaste that lingers in your palate. Also never tried the real thing, I wonder if i'd like it or not.
> Every time a manufacturer says vague descriptions like "security" or "performance" fixes, be wary - they probably removing perfectly working functionality for "reasons"
I have a pair of WF-1000XM3s and this is painfully true. ANC was brilliant on these until I naively updated, and whoosh - instantly and grossly degraded ANC, to the point I previously almost didn't hear people talking at distance, keyboard chatter, city traffic etc. and now I do, no matter the app settings.
I wanted to upgrade to the in-ear XM4s, but after this? NEVER again Sony. At least for portable audio. I got instead a pair of cheap QCY HT07s (then $28, now ~$20) and got quite surprised with ANC performance on these: easily beats the crap of the XM3s-on-latest-firmware, and gets close to the previous one in audio quality. Which is a lot to say about Sony "updates".
Not to defend Google, but they end up saying much the same:
> The next challenge for the field is to demonstrate a first "useful, beyond-classical" computation on today's quantum chips that is relevant to a real-world application. We’re optimistic that the Willow generation of chips can help us achieve this goal. So far, there have been two separate types of experiments. On the one hand, we’ve run the RCS benchmark, which measures performance against classical computers but has no known real-world applications. On the other hand, we’ve done scientifically interesting simulations of quantum systems, which have led to new scientific discoveries but are still within the reach of classical computers. Our goal is to do both at the same time — to step into the realm of algorithms that are beyond the reach of classical computers and that are useful for real-world, commercially relevant problems.
Up to that point, most Windows iterations didn't require (for the time) big upgrades to run fine. Many PCs designed for a given version could run the next, maybe with a little elbow grease, but the bottom line is: the out-of-the-box experience on new AND upgraded PCs was mostly okay.
Then it came Vista. An OS designed for at least 1Gb RAM, preinstalled on machines who stubbornly refused to sell with more than 512Mb (even 384Mb, the horror!) for a looong time. I remember that, at least where I live, RAM prices sky rocketed just months afther Vista came out, because almost all people irremediably needed the upgrade.
It also didn't help that vendors were happy to fill new systems with their auto-installing crapware. While this wasn't Microsoft fault, it certainly helped to cement Vista's reputation as a very heavy-weight OS.
Having said that. I concede the point that Vista was pretty alright, provided your PC had the grunt to run it.
Curse you, Apple and Jony Ive. You only needed to tone skeuomorphism down not kill it.