Comparing a phone to a plunger is silly, and makes me question the cognitive abilities of the person making the analogy.
Everything is a trade off. My car is so complex I can't begin to figure out how to fix it, but I do have a diagnostic tool on my iPad that I could not possible afford 10 years ago. My watch, and iPod Mini, is obsolete but it still tells me the time. As long as that is all I want it do it is fine. I used my 3GS over the summer as a roaming phone. Slip a sim card in it and I was good to go. As long as I wanted it as a phone, I was good to go.
Yes, you can't take stuff apart. OTOH I was one of the few people I knew that actually soldered computers to repair them, rather than just plug and play with a new board. Yes, some phones are not upgradable to current software, but many consumers seen to happy to make that choice to have a cheaper phone or a phone with other features. I can even see the current situation where you pay per page for ink is an option that many people would prefer.
Certainly there is a loss when we do not have a choice, but I think in many cases we still have a choice, it is just that we do not want to pay the real or opportunity costs for that choice.
Again, nothing against Tesla or electric cars, just saying they are not a knight in shining armor that is going to save us from the politicians and climate change. They are just another company trying to maximize profit and take whatever welfare they can get.
In any case, the incumbents are clearly show massive inefficiencies. In locations where electricity is sold competitively, prices can vary by 25% or more. This indicates that there is quite a bit of wiggle room in pricing. However, what we are really talking about here is volume. Without volume the incumbents firms that sell power, not produce it, are going to get squeezed out. Producers will shut down plants, and that may have long term effects in energy security.
What is really an issue is the grid. There is at some point going to have to be a charge for hooking up to the grid. Already people on low cost plans that do not use enough electricity pay an extra fee for administrative and grid costs. This is where legislation will come in. Are we going to require a house that is self sufficient to be connected to the grid? Are we going to allow houses in more expensive locations, be it rural or more prone to damage, to be charged more to be connected to the grid?
I don't think we can just assume something is fact because it fits with what we know right now. Modern physics was built on quashing the assumptions that infinities and infinitesimals exist. We cannot go arbitrarily fast, and we cannot chop things up infinitesimally small, or measure to an arbitrary accuracy. These ideas were built in to classical mechanics as deeply as black holes.
To be clear I am not saying that black holes do not exist and what we observe and call black holes are not black holes. Just that when we are dealing with artifacts of mathematical models, time could identify them more as artifacts of the model rather than the most useful representation of the observable universe.
For instance, in high school the parts of the Canterbury Tales that could be taught were in fact limited. I might consider this a banned book situation, but my teacher was free to suggest we read all of the tales, even if we could not discuss them in class. OTOH, Ulysses was banned at the US federal level. Now there is a banned book.
The week still serves a useful purpose by tricking kids into thinking they are going to read some naughty bits. The one book that this is valid, and also banned on the US federal level, is Lady Chatterly's Lover. "Some very useful tips; Oh, gardening tips. Mellors was a game keeper. Very good at hedge control; I thought the sex was jolly good fun as well!"
Then there is the rise of very small dwelling, basically just beds, which are becoming popular in some parts, as predicted by the cyberpunk novels.
The real problem with most prediction in science fiction is that is misses a critical development aspect of the technology, or more often the limitation of the applications of the technology. For instance, at this time everyone expected housecleaning to be done by robots, but astronavigation to still be done by hand.
In fact I am sure that when people post such things about the danger of Tylenol on boards, those people are considered trolls and maybe even modded down or kicked off.This is the problem with complaining and trying to ban trolls. Trolls are often simply people you disagree with, or simply people who bring up facts you don't want to deal with.
Trolls may in fact make the discourse of the internet less enjoyable, but it also has a built in bullshit detector called everyone else. And each of us adults has a responsibility to think critically about statements that are made.
For instance, when I first heard this I immediately asked how could a software update effect the charging hardware. How could a software update effect the ability of the hardware to handle hard radiation. And by what mechanism could the battery be charged.
Of course some of these questions come from a hard science background, not something everyone has. But still isn't the problem that so many in the population just believe and repeat whatever they are told by authority figures. Is the problem really trolls, or that a certain subgroup of people just want to believe in the magical solutions promoted by their revered charlatans.
About the only reason that the smartboard is useful is because administrators like teachers to stand in front of the class and pretend to teach. Although writing on a slate or ipad and having it show up on the board can be better, the teacher standing in front of the room is still seen as the old fashion as the better solution.
If I am honest, though the smartboard software is bloated, there are some things it does very well, although it is still better to not use the smartboard. There was a time when the board itself was interesting to kids, but now they all have smartphones.
So to answer the question, if there is not something in the software that you absolutely have to use, like the math symbols, then don't use it. Download mobile mouse or something like it to control the computer. There are many drawing apps that will allow you, or any student, to write. I have a slate.
As far as the updates, most applications seem to update when a new iOS comes out. I have not seen an inordinate number of updates. As the Apps have to not only deal with a new OS but also new screen sizes, Apps that are not written to run on many screen sizes will obviously have to be updated.
My problem is that Apple is reintroducing the cloud disk service, a la iDisk, but it is not going to available on mac until the next MacOS, which is not going to be available for at least a month. Those who upgrade when they upgrade their phone will lose access to data on the Mac. There does seem to be some feature bloat at the expense of efficiency.
We see this in other industries. The F150 is now aluminum, which required not only the entire production line to be redone, but also supplied of aluminum to be created. This is only profitable because Ford sells about 10,000 of these trucks a week, and that is a number that has been falling since a high in about 10 years ago, though in recent years the sales have increased.
Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to work.