Not sure about the "last true revolution" claim, but the release was a seminal moment in computing. Growing up in the 90s, for me it feels like the milestone achievements or turning points were:
Unfortunately the configuration I need is not available through any of those retailers.
The way I approach these purchases is amortized cost over time. I do not expect prices to be lower in 2 years but if I can keep using my older hardware for longer, I am more open to absorbing the blow of the higher cost down the road.
Was looking at upgrading my M1 Air (16/1TB) to an M5 Air (24/2TB). This price increase changes the time horizon of that upgrade from “now” to “let’s try and get 18-24 more months out of this thing”.
Some people have a much better instinct for when and how to ask for permission than others, including when "asking for no" is the right move. It's a dance with nuance and it's hard to capture it as advice in an article.
I admit to not having yet taken a deep dive on Apple's privacy claims (i.e. on device, private cloud etc) but one thing that Apple is going to be providing in this case is an actual privacy commitment that takes into consideration the level of sensitivity of data being uploaded into these AI chat interfaces.
OpenAI's commitment to privacy is absymal relative to the sensitivity of the data people are dumping onto the platform. The CEO also has a reputation for being untrustworthy.
The biggest threat to ChatGPT's moat may be a brilliant marketing campaign by Apple that really gets people thinking about what platform they want to be upload their secrets to.
I have always had this notion that buying a Mac is the "premium" option, not just in quality, but maybe in price too.
I am in the process of trying to find a business notebook for my spouse who is a Windows user. The goal is to have something that is as close to a Macbook Air as possible in terms of price, weight, performance and durability.
What I am learning is that nothing that like that exists in the PC world. It's a minefield of tradeoffs: plastic chassis', bad screens, weird keyboards, bad trackpads, questionable reliability, etc.
The current contender is a ThinkPad X1 Carbon which even after a bunch of business discounts is still a good $300 more than a Macbook Air and appears to come with a pretty poor trackpad in comparison.
Apple has an incredible strength in distilling what a product or series of products should be down to its essence and selling it. You could argue that there is more "choice" among Windows PCs but the reality seems to be that it is an illogical mess of tradeoffs.
When Dropbox first came out I loved the simplicity of it for years. That rock solid little icon in my system tray that never bothered me, just reliably synced my files. It was excellent.
At a certain point (mid-2010s) things started to go off the rails from a design, marketing and complexity standpoint. Suddenly having a Dropbox account felt a lot more complicated - so I stopped using it.
The change was almost hard to describe, but I think it's encapsulated well if you compare the Dropbox homepage from, say, 2013 to 2019.
I realize that companies that want to become large behemoths naturally seem to have to go down this path - just saying I miss the simplicity of it in its earlier form!
What jobs? The job market is anemic AND these students are literally being told that jobs as we know them are soon to be a thing of the past. At the same time, no one is explaining how they are supposed to pay off debt or put food on the table outside of vague hand waves UBI or AI creating vast prosperity.
I think that AI is less analogous to "traffic jams" and more analogous to "wheel-based transportation". It's an entire category, not a specific problem. The traffic jam is more analogous to excessive energy consumption or workforce disruption.
Many people seem unable to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to AI.
It feels absurd to have seen E2EE fought for and considered table stakes by many users, especially the technically-oriented, now rolled back a short time later by these companies who never really cared about privacy to begin with and clearly don't expect any backlash.
It also feels like the wide-scale desperate adoption of AI has weakened claims about the essential nature of privacy, now that everyone has demonstrated that they are happy to feed their innermost thoughts, secrets, personal conflicts, code, medical records, legal documents, etc. into cloud AI platforms.
> The biggest UX issue Apple has for that persona isn't the wallet, it's the lack of physical home button.
I'm in my 40s and don't have much trouble with reaching Home by swiping up from the bottom. But anecdotally, when I observe a person who is 65+ operate their iPhones, 9 times out of 10 they experience problems swiping up from bottom to reach Home. The swipe up does nothing, presumably because they aren't starting the swipe from low enough on the screen.
>Covid causes a loss of grey matter affecting impulse control and emotional regulation.
It seems this statement is not fully supported by the data. While there have been mixed studies linking COVID with impacts on grey matter, we can't conclude that COVID infections have impacted grey matter to the degree that it has "affected impulse control and emotional regulation".
It seems more likely that collective stress increased since 2020 due to economic gyrations that have inordinately benefitted the wealthy while the poor and middle class suffer. Governments and society have been quick to dismiss those financial and economic stresses, including efforts to minimize the true realities and impacts of high inflation.
Telling people "you're not financially stressed, you're just brain damaged!" seems like further perpetuation of that gaslighting happening to people in society who are legitimately suffering due to structural disadvantages in the economy.
Not to mention the COVID-era destruction of social connections, third spaces, and lockdowns that promoted increased smartphone reliance/addiction, and increased alcohol consumption. (Schools closed, liquor stores open)
Well, my point is that these niches are probably more commonplace than people who live in areas blanketed by multiple 5G providers probably assume. I'm sure there are Starlink customers using it as an option in some interim period while they wait for fiber to be rolled out to their neighbourhood or town, but anecdotally, I don't know any Starlink customers who are in that boat. We exist in locations that will not be served by cheaper, more reliable terrestrial options anytime soon.
Even "cheaper" is quickly becoming a question mark. Starlink is offering 100mbps plans for $50-$70/mo. which in my region makes it cheaper or on par with options from cellular providers (which are capped) or options from cable/fiber providers.
I might be biased because I live in an area where it is fairly easy to find locations that don't have cellular coverage and won't have cellular coverage anytime soon.
Globally, there's a lot of places that are sparsely inhabited but too remote to warrant strong cellular connectivity. There's also a lot of "nooks and crannies" geographically that are not well served by cellular. As an example, I have a property in an area with excellent 5G coverage but my specific property is in a valley removing line of sight between me and the local tower, meaning reception is virtually nil. I can't even make a phone call. Without Starlink my only option would be to rely on a local WISP to set up some kind of repeater system that would have far lower reliability/performance and significantly higher cost.