But are those notifications and pop ups directly saying something like “from now on we will start to train ai on your information”?

Or is is one of the hundredth change of terms and conditions that people usually just skip, which mentions the major change in some fine print. Or a pop up designed with dark patterns to influence people into just accepting without actual informed consent?

You are right, Apple also has some legit professional staff. And if the person using it gets paid a lot, then a one time hardware purchase becomes negligible.

Accurate fine motor control and even basic stuff like typing does seem not quite fleshed out, so that is indeed an issue. But I don’t think it’s a deal breaker that you can’t do long shifts with it, since you’d probably only use it for certain tasks.

Even more of a niche, but I could see it for something like architects. Both for work and to maybe even present to clients.

Performance and bettery is good, but they’re barely better than what Intel and AMD offer.

And both AMD and Intel have pretty exciting new architectures coming soon with zen5 and lunar lake.

Meanwhile, on Vive, you could stand up, walk around, and manipulate the world with two tracked remotes.

Issue is that if I remember correctly the vive was an outside-in concept that required base stations to be setup. So you lose the cable, but are still bound by location. And importantly also needs a pc aswell. So still far away from standalone.

I think the core issue is that every piece of new technology so far has helped us get lazier. People used to walk around an office, then they sat at a computer, now they carry their computer with them and do things from the couch.

Nobody wants to get up to do things if they can avoid it, and that’s the only real benefit VR/AR provides

But I think VR/AR could make us lazier:

For VR the promise is immersion. You get to experience a concert, sport event, unique experience or exotic place from your own living room. And for many of that it is just fine to sit on a couch and still have a benefit from the technology.

For AR i think it’s a bit more productivity focused. For example less need to train personel, if you can project every instruction into their field of view.

Ordinarily, Apple is good at throwing its weight (money) around to make things like this happen, but it seems like there weren’t many takers this go-round, so we just got an overpriced, beautiful and fascinating paperweight.

Yeah normally Apple is maybe the only company that has the scale and control over their ecosystem to force rapid adoption. But this was clearly not a consumer product aimed at capturing the masses, but more or less a dev kit sold to anyone willing to shell out the price.

The PS VR2 sounds nice, but feels like it is only aimed at the gaming market and even there sony only captures a fraction.

The Quest as a standalone device imo really would have the best shot at mass market adoption, but Facebook rightfully has an image problem. And despite spending so much on development doesn’t seem to create any content or incentivize others to do so.

but it’s utterly useless.

That imo has been the issue with VR/AR for a while now. The Hardware as you said is pretty good by now and looking at something like the quest even afforable. What’s lacking is content and use cases.

Smartphones had an easier time being adopted, since it was just moving from a larger to a smaller screen. But VR/AR actually needs a new type of content to make use of it’s capabilities. And there you run into a chicken/egg problem, where no one is putting in the effort (and vr content is harder to produce) without a large user base.

Just games and some office stuff (that you can do just as well on a regular pc) aren’t cutting it. You’d need stuff like every major sport event being broadcast with unique content, e.g. formula one with the ability to put yourself into the driver seat of any car.

Also I don’t think we’ve really run out of suitable space to install new panels. If that ever happens it might be worthwhile to replace them, but as you said we can otherwise just run them alongside new installations until they break or maintenance costs surpass their profits

with 85% of the promised functionality no longer functional

To be fair 85% of threads retracting doesn’t seem to translate to an equal amount of functional loss. The article mentions

Neuralink was quick to note that it was able to adjust the algorithm used for decoding those neuronal signals to compensate for the lost electrode data. The adjustments were effective enough to regain and then exceed performance on at least one metric—the bits-per-second (BPS) rate used to measure how quickly and accurately a patient with an implant can control a computer cursor.

I think it will be impossible for us to asses how much it actually impacts function in real world use case.

It seems clear that this is a case of learning by trial and error, which considering the stakes doesn’t seem like the right approach.

The question that this article doesn’t answer is, whether they have learned anything at all or if they are just proceeding to do the same thing again. And if they have learned something, is there something preventing it to be applied to the first patient.

people find a lot of value in the products and services they offer

This is definitely true to some degree, but there imo is also another side to this.

Yes, they there are underlying problems/demands that they solve, but they definitely also create and shape those since psychology sadly works extremely effective. And they really try their hardest to manipulate customers.

Another aspect is that they might have originally created that value and given the users what they wanted, which got them in the position they are in now. Sometimes even operating at a loss to bully competition out of the market. But once they achieved this dominant position enshittification commences. Which wouldn’t be that much of an issue, if they wouldn’t also often prevent competition from growing enough to be able to compete.

Example Google search: The demand for a way to navigate the web is real and google fulfilled it best, which made them huge. Timejump to the present: the demand is still the same, but now google shows you what they want you to see and pay billions to be the default search engine to hinder any competition from gaining any traction.

For the US maybe, but I don’t think it is profitabel for Europe.

Refugees aren’t cheap (even though ukrainian people might integrate easier than others and later add value), a good part of money for weapon purchases flows towards America since they have more immediate capacities, and long term we do want to integrate Ukraine, which means Europe will ultimately bear a significant chunk of rebuilding costs.

Agreed. As you said it’s a similar situation as with reddit, where I decided to delete my comments.

My reasoning is that those contributions were given under the premise that everybody was sharing to help each other.

Now that premise has changed: the large tech companies are only taking and the platform providers are changing the rules aswell to profit from it.

So as a result I packed my things and left, in case of reddit to here.

That said I think both views are valid and I wouldn’t fault those that think differently.

Bloat and bad performance aside, you don’t see a benefit in having a all-in-one solution that in a way acts as a drop in replacement for people wanting to switch away from the likes of Google/Apple? I certainly do.

Yes, having a dedicated app selected for each use case will likely give better results. But it also means more management. And many users don’t actually need more than basic functionality.

But yes looking at the complaints, they should look at polishing existing features first.

Yeah, I’ve seen variations of this headline a million times. Tbh while I certainly approve of not giving Elon money, at this point I can only think moves like this as performative actions to get some free good PR.

And that automatically means that the larger military will win? Looking at Vietnam and Afghanistan …

Exactly my point. Not sure if there is a better term, but in some way it is a bait-and-switch tactic.

With the “starting at” sticker price of the lowest configuration they get you into the mindset of wanting (and being able to afford) a their premium device. And then once you are mentally commited they it’s the choice between spending even more or compromising on a premium device (where you really should have to).

Honestly imo 200€ phones are allright, but you do get what you pay. And the A14 at least here in Germany starts at like 120€, which is substantially below 200€. So if you get it and end up comparing it to an iphone, then it most certainly will look lackluster.

I would say that the sweet spot is probably in the 300-350€ range. There you have a decent amount of selection and get some really solid phones that are good for daily drivers. Like the already mentioned pixel A series that gets you clean software and shoots some of the best pictures. Or the samsung a54/55 that gets you a nice allrounder, which still includes a headphone jack and sd-card slot.

I think it’s mostly to have a price tag that doesn’t immediately turn off people.

Yes, Apple is expensive in general, however people are generally fine with paying a premium. But if they’d come at you immediately with the full price for a reasonably specced machine, it would still turn many people off.

Instead they fix you on with a high, but still somewhat reasonable price and then upsell you in steps for everything. Like sure you could buy the 128gb iPhone pro, but then the storage will fill up fast with photos and videos. A great camera system being the huge selling point of the device.

On a side note I actually find the 256gb non upgradeable/replaceable ssd much more egregious, than the 8gb RAM.

As you say, for people with basic needs (and that is actually a quite large group), it is enough for daily use. Those people just browse the Web, view photos and write short documents in word. However especially if they have an iPhone and take lots of picture/videos, they will still fill up that storage fast. And then it gets really frustrating, unless you maybe pay even more to outsource everything to the icloud and pay monthly.

Downside might be that this requires a good internet connection, which depending on where OP travels might not always be available.

This seems a bit impractical. 2 phones to keep charged and manage.

Depending in your use case can’t you just get some external USB storage?

Your first point is definitely a big trend. Studios either target a niche audience (like horror or art house maybe), which don’t have the size to support larger budgets. Or they go after the larger more casual crowd, but then they compete against the blockbusters. Not only on the production budget side, but importantly also in marketing.

I guess the question is if these kinds of comedies could somehow be done on a lower budget.