Thanks for your comprehensive reply.
First off, I am not an Apple hater. I see merit in their products, especially for non-techie users. But I don’t see myself using any of them.
Yes, customizability is a trade-off, one which I am not willing to make :) For me personally it justifies the choice of a different product. I’m not only including launchers and icon packs in this, it’s for example much easier to install e.g. an alternative YouTube frontend on an Android than on iOS, or to use an alternative app store (I’m assuming Android doesn’t have anything like F-Droid or Obtainium, both of which I use to get free and mostly open-source Android apps). You could say that’s a trade-off again, which it is, but I believe I should have the freedom to make that choice. It’s not like I couldn’t stay in the confines of Google’s ecosystem and have a largely similar experience to a closed off Apple-like system, it’s just that I don’t want to. But perhaps I’ve strayed from customizability back into the openness territory with this argument.
If I understood your example about fine-grained and extensive customization, I think you’ve identified these possible challenges:
I think both of these can be solved by the manufacturer of the OS. Google has been streamlining their settings menu with every new version of Android and extensive developer guidelines about how to make 3rd party applications consistent with the rest of the system are now the standard. In other words, I believe ease of use and consistency don’t have to be at odds with customizability, in fact they can reinforce and improve each other (example: setting a system-wide color tint that is then applied in all supported applications).
Slight tangent here, talking about consistency makes me think of another thing. I don’t know how it is today, but when I last tried using an iPhone, there was no consistent way in apps to go “Back” from an activity. Most of them had a top-left arrow that took you back, but definitely not all, and the experience was all over the place. Sometimes you had to swipe right, sometimes press an arrow in the bottom left for some reason… For all the talk about iOS’s consistency, it was not a consistent experience at all, and I believe Android had it figured out much better (not to mention that having a Back button on the bottom makes much more sense, esp. with larger screens).
And lastly to the marketing point. Look, I know the reality of selling a product is paying a lot for marketing so that you can actually sell it. I understand that. I am just psychologically resistant to ads (I am less likely to buy something I see an ad for), and I hate giving into trends. I think it’s part of my particular flavor of neurodivergence. And since having an iPhone is promoted as trendy and a status symbol or whatever, and seeing people give into that hype, that just makes me unlikely to ever buy one, and psychologically resistant to supporting these marketing practices with my money. Plus, the larger the corporation in general, the less likely it is to get a lot of my money if I have other choices.
who on earth is listening to hi-res wireless audio and not a song off of Spotify, YouTube, etc?
The decision not to include hi-res audio support out of the box is more baffling when you learn that Apple Music in its basic package offers high-quality lossless audio for streaming. Why have this, and make your users jump through extra hoops to take advantage of it?
To answer your overall question, I am one of the Apple dislikers and with me it comes down to openness and customizability (I like to tinker with my electronics and computing devices, and I can do that much better with an Android device), and not wanting most of my money that I spend for the product I’m buying to go to marketing.
It’s a different joke tho
Ouch! (Great song tho)
I think the average Joe doesn’t really understand or care about the security risk of such a feature, because they assume that there are competent people at the company who have considered the security risk and took sufficient steps to address it. It’s not by accident that there’s a meme about some guy having a smart fridge and watch and everything, and his friend the IT expert, who doesn’t have a single piece of smart tech and keeps a gun in the kitchen in case the toaster makes a wrong move…
I think you mean Crtl+R in bash
Even assuming that they themselves knew where to go, that only works if it’s a guy
You spelled TempleOS wrong
Try installing and running a game on GOG through Epic Launcher on a Steam Deck. I have done this in the past haha (it was Witcher 1)
I’ve been wanting to get into OPM myself. What would you recommend to watch first to understand at least 80 % of the references?
That’s fair but you can also use Alt + right/left arrow keys to move forward and back in the page history
I love the name haha
I’m a sucker for clever Pratchett references
Why should I use this over Immich?
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Some part of that is that a lot of the mech keyboards are DIY projects, and smaller keyboards are cheaper and simpler to put together.
I personally am a split ergonomic keyboard enjoyer. I use a Keebio Iris at work and a Unikeyboard Diverge TM2 at home, which are a 50% and 40% respectively, both split.
The thing that I like the most about small form factor keebs is that compared to a full keeb, I don’t have to move my hands so much to do basic and oft-repeated tasks. I don’t think about it as removing keys as much as bringing them closer to my fingers. For example, on a 40% keeb, all keys are within 1u away from your fingers’ home position.
I am totally in love with programmable layers. I programmed both of my keebs similarly. Examples:
A key, usually the Caps Lock key, is a dual-role key on my keebs. When you press it, it acts as Esc, and when you hold it, it acts as Ctrl.Ctrl + Tab, Ctrl + Shift + Tab) is a very often used pair of shortcuts for me, and they’re relatively uncomfortable to press on a full keyboard. I moved them to a much more comfortable position - I hold a key with my thumb and switch tabs with two of my other fingers without having to move any fingers from their home position.Ctrl + Win + arrow keys) to a similarly accessible/comfortable position, same with some others like Alt + F4.F1-F12) are quite frequently used in IDEs, especially in combination with modifiers (Ctrl, Shift, Alt). With a full keeb you often need to move both of your hands quite far from the home positions to press those combinations. With a small keeb, I use one of my hands to press the modifiers (which I mapped to the home row in most of my layers) and a finger from the other hand moves just 1u up from the home row.Of course it takes a bit of trial and error, changing the way you think about how the keyboard works, and retraining your muscle memory, but as a person who spends 8+ days working with computers, I think it’s ultimately worth the investment of time, money and effort to make my weapon of choice as ergonomic and comfortable to use as possible.
For when I can’t sit at my desk and use an ergonomic keeb, I also made myself an AutoHotkey script that makes the CapsLock of a regular keyboard more useful. It would be for another writeup, but as an example, it makes it act as Esc when you press it and when you hold it, it activates an extra layer – as an example, it turns the keys HJKL into arrow keys (left, down, up, right) and the keys YUIO into Home, PgDn, PgUp and End, and turns the numeric keys into function keys. I can still work with a full-sized keyboard, but whenever I am forced to, I am reminded how clunky it is and I long for my keeb or at least my AHK script.
In summary, small keebs are cheaper and easier to make, and they bring all the keys closer to your fingertips, making it more efficient and comfortable than full keebs, with the small cost of retraining your muscle memory.
The joke does not specify the number of threads the programmer used, only the number of problems he now has