Their way of providing for the low end of the market are older and/or used models. Particularly true for iPhones. But Macs have terrific longevity - my Air was still a decent main machine from 2013-2020, and while its retina replacement gave way to a larger screen 16" after a year, I expect this one will last me a long, long time.

Mac is a Unix-base (unlike Windows) with good first party support.
(I've been fooled trying to get used to the linux desktop before - MacOS has its quirks but Linux has a lot more rough edges)

Being able to seamlessly share a clipboard w/ my phone, iPad, and computer, or using an iPad as an extra screen or pen-on-screen tablet? It feels amazing, and a true reward for living within this walled garden.

It may not be the end all be all of OS but it has a good feel, good design, and a proper terminal shell.

(to be fair Apple probably gets a boost in perception for avoiding the "race to the bottom" of cheap ass PCs. Just the thought of trying to live with the trackpad of one of those $400-wonders makes me curl up! Like, I'm sure there are great quality hardware PCs out there but they're about as expensive as the Macs)

I had a 2013 or so MacbookAir, then grabbed the still Intel retina and usb-c port refresh when it came out (easier for docking stations), but then last fall I bought the 16" Macbook Pro. On a less-technical level, that size of screen is WONDERFUL and for me worth the price of admission - it really allows apps to fit side by side, so now even couch time can be more productive.

I hope and suspect the 16" will last me closer to the original Macbook Air than that 1 year of the retina Air - my dev work isn't THAT challenging even for older chips.... it's just nice to have the screen.

I feel like the scrollwheel made the difference though! that really was a great way to get through piles of music that AFAIK its contemporaries couldn't match.

What is the point of a "verified" checkmark if you can change your display name without losing it? I know everyone has fun changing their names to something spooky in October, but security and information integrity is more important.

Ideally there should be a simple and timely procedure for changing the display name in a way that is also verified. Like, fill out a form with "new name" and "reason", and within 24 hours someone can verify that the new name is indeed an iteration of the old name, and matches the reason given, maybe ask for a source if there's any doubt. That may be too much to ask, since tech companies pride themselves on hiring as few humans as possible to do human tasks.

"Not a god-botherer myself, but isn't the whole shebang supposed to surpass mere mortal understanding?"

I feel like one of the interesting things about modern AI is you get emergent behaviors that do transcend our ability to rationalize them! Algorithms often learn to do things and we can't really follow the work that got them there...

I always thought Spaceballs' "atmosphere stealing" thing was just a gag!

Time to bust out the Perri-Air indeed!

I believe Shirley has it right. Vendor lockdown wearing Sheep's Clothing of individual privacy concerns, with hypothetical future data dumps providing info for domestic abusers or something like that.

Similar for web development? At least everywhere I look in Boston.

Although the cloud service is pretty good, I do hope they have an easy path to saying "back up this device"

Also that the concept of local itunes libraries, with smart playlists, survives :-/

if they really screw the pooch on this one, they will loosen the lockin they have for some people who have been reasonably happy with music stuff since the iPod days -- I always knew there were some android-y things to manage my playlists but nothing I knew I'd be able to trust...

https://gizmodo.com/the-surpri...
and
https://tatham.blog/2008/10/13...
go into how people with astigmatism - a rather large % of the population - are less likely to love light text on dark backgrounds.

There doesn't have to be one true color arrangement for everyone (though, as with many accessibility features, there's a tension between letting designers have complete control and letting users adjust things that make their lives easier

For my usage, having to jam a finger hard slows me down just as much as the tap-and-hold... but with more "did it work? did it work?"

I don't think sensors for 3D touch (measuring how much the screen was flexing because of the finger jammed into it) would have much to do with reading a fingerprint anywhere on the screen.

Yeah, gestures are so easy to trigger accidentally, it really can violate the dao of programming that a program should do that which startles the user the least :-D

Analog controls in a binary world are often a bit off- I mean, do you really want to jam your finger harder into a pane of glass? Between that and the idea that as a generally optional feature, it usually activated secondary / non-critical modes, you're left with the "press harder for a less important thing" - bad UX all around.

I had an idea that next year, on New Year's Day, we could turn our hackerspace into a public domain printing press for all the new freed works. We might even be able to do it on New Year's Eve, as we're well-situated in a downtown location that might have some slightly tipsy foot traffic after midnight.

of course, we'll need to plan ahead. Will it be important to get them from a clean source, or will pirated works magically become legal? If not, do we just refresh the Gutenberg Project website until it all shows up? Will we be able to print and bind books cheaply enough to give them away? Are our printers fast enough to print on demand, or should we print a few copies of the most important works in advance? And of course we'll have to secure volunteers and fix up donated printers.