@kkarhan@thesixdave I was thinking the modern user interfaces that adorn the current crop of operating systems.
Microsoft's fake-Windows-1.01 interface they jokingly call "Modern" (because "Metro" was taken)…
Gnome's attempt to pretend to be a mash up of old-world MacOS and a smart phone…
Plasma desktop pretending to be modern Windows…
I guess I'm the strange one running a desktop that looks like it came from the early 90s with an almost modal UI.
@stuartl@thesixdave actually, modern Windows steals from Plasma and yes I am still mad at #Canonical for dropping #Unity because @ubuntu 12.04 looked & felt really nice...
Ahh okay, they did a poor imitation of Plasma then… frustrated me the other day when someone managed to create a file in the WSL2 environment named ^D (as in code point 0x04)…
You think I could get their castrated terminal to let me send rm ^V^D to bash so that I could remove that file? Not a chance! "Ohh noo, this is Windows buddy… we only understand ^V to mean PASTE and refuse to accept it any other way!"
Damn toy OS IMO. OpenPGP smart-cards are another head-desk situation, but I digress…
Re-Unity Desktop (not to be confused with the game engine), I remember that being very divisive when it launched. Ubuntu had been vanilla "Gnome 2" up until that point (by default; Kubuntu and co were there too).
Unity tried to be like Gnome, but also different… and I think that irritated a lot of people in much the way that Microsoft's poor choices drive this Linux user of ~27 years up the wall.
I think the lesson here being, if you're going to copy something, do it properly. Don't half-arse it, otherwise you'll just alienate the users you intend to attract, and your existing user base you intended to keep… all in one hit.
That being said I can understand several people that would be able and willing to pay $500 p.a. if Apple were to charge that for #macOS on 3rd party devices because it's a good OS...
I bought a second-hand 2008-era Apple MacBook back in 2011… and used it for 2 years until the total lack of ports annoyed me (magsafe power, Ethernet, headphone/line-out, line-in and 2×USB 2.0). I had to replace the battery after a year or so of use, then about 3 years later, it cooked that battery too.
I still have said spicy pillow to this day.
I've never had a laptop do that to me before, or since. Normally the battery just quits working, it doesn't do puffer fish impersonations.
The current crop of MacBooks have glued-in batteries, as do the iPads/iPhones.
Consequently, I refuse to trust my house and my livelihood to one of those devices.
Only reason I keep my current phone (which also has a glued-in battery that's now almost dead after 8 years) is there's a socket on the back which accepts a coax pigtail for an external LTE antenna. Android 4.1 is not great, but at least it won't burn a hole in my pocket with dodgy cell management.
I'll wait for a replacement with removable battery and LTE antenna socket, or make my own.
Whilst I dislike the fact that my @Fairphone#FP3plus battery was bulging into a #DangerPillow, being able to tool-free remove it and just get a replacement from #iFixit for less than the cost of labout to get it done by an #AASP on an #iPhone is a godsend.
@kkarhan@stuartl@thesixdave@Fairphone No question they do shady antirepair stuff. And they used to be very stingy on storage in order to basically force you to buy iCloud storage.
But I just disagree that they artificially shorten device lifespans.
That iPhone 7 which just stopped receiving patches was a perfectly serviceable phone right up until the end. Slow compared to newer phones, but it worked just fine.
@tcb@stuartl@thesixdave@Fairphone I do disagree because devices could last longer - it's just against the legally defined mission of a public corporation to be sustainable or envoirmentally.
It just feels insulting when Apple claims to be envoirmentally friendly but then goes out of their way to make devices unrepairable even if you used 100% original Apple parts whereas other manufacturers just let you get the parts you want from them.
@kkarhan@stuartl@thesixdave@Fairphone Yeah their anti-repair stance really cuts against their other environmental claims. If they truly want to be climate neutral for all their products this is probably one of the biggest things they can do.
And you're probably right about the timeline. Ubuntu LTS lasts for 10 years. Similarly Apple could make LTS versions of iOS that last that long.
The iPhone 7 I keep talking about made it 7 years. It would probably be pretty doable to do 6 years of features and 4 of security. It's not that different than their current 6 years of features and 1 of security.
@stuartl@kkarhan@thesixdave@ubuntu I hope you don’t have anything important on that Android 4.1 phone and that you never use the web with it. Running such an old OS is a security nightmare.
You really shouldn’t use any phone or computer that’s not actively receiving security updates.
You can see it's old because it still has a #FrontSideBus and used a dedicaded #Chipset (or rather #PCH known as #US15W - but could also be married with other Chipsets like #nVidia#Ion - and only a single core and #HyperThreading...
@thesixdave@patrick_h_lauke AI image description for anyone else that may need it: The picture shows a humorous combination of food items. There is a whole roasted chicken placed on top of a large pizza. The pizza itself is divided into two halves with different toppings. One half of the pizza has traditional toppings like cheese and pepperoni, while the other half is covered with chocolate sprinkles and colorful candy. Below the image, there is a text that reads, "Thanks everyone for your PRs. CI tests passed. Here's the new UI."
Not a bad description by AI. The "traditional" half looks to have some oven-roasted tomatoes, an olive… and consuming most of the space… a whole roast chicken (legs and all).
How that'd go with chocolate sprinkles and M&Ms, I can't imagine!
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