Just last week I cancelled my Spotify Premium and tried to move over to Youtube Music.

It lasted less than a day, and it was entirely due to the user interface, which Spotify seems to have nailed to perfection.

When I'm at home, I 'm playing Music over one of my two Sonos Amps, or my older Yamaha Receiver (two Sonos in the house, Yamaha the garage, in ceiling speakers all around). When I'm on the road it's my headphones, or the car stereo. When I'm at work it's the Sonos Roam that sits at my desk. From anywhere in the world, I can pull my phone out of my pocket and choose any of these outputs via the Spotify app. It just works.

With YT Music, if' I'm at home or work, I have to go through the Sonos App on my phone. I have to go through the YT Music app if I want it on my headphones or in the car, and if I want it on the Yamaha in the Garage I have to go through Bluetooth. Three different methods for doing the same thing, and I can only send to my Sonos kit if I am on the same WiFI network.

I loathe Spotify, but they have nailed the user experience.

I'm as typical of a desktop user as you are likely to find.

Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Web Browsing, and the occasional touching up and printing of a photo of my kid that was taken on my iPhone.

I've been a Debian user since 2002. I have a single Windows Machine in the house, and that's the one work provides that sits headless in the closet and gets accessed via remote desktop.

Those that say it can't be done simply haven't been able to do it, for whatever excuse they use at that moment in time.

Iâ(TM)m in Canada, B&N shipping to here is a mess.

Indigo (Chapters, Coles) has an effective monopoly on books here, and isnâ(TM)t price competitive at all, and seems to be actively closing stores. I used to have at least 5 locations in NE Calgary, and now there is a single used book store at Marlborough Mall, but I donâ(TM)t really feel like getting stabbed in the Mall parking lot.

Two Examples, from this weekend.

First:

I've recently decided that I want a copy of Unfinished Tales, as well as The Silmarillion. I haven't read either book in years, and would like to read them again.

The closest book store to where I live is an hour away, because all of the book stores in my quadrant of the city have been closed. So, I went to the store. They don't have in it stock, but they can special order for me and it'll take 2-3 weeks, and the books are $24 CDN each, and I'll have to go back to the store to pick them up when they show up, they won't deliver to my home.

Or, Amazon will deliver to my home tomorrow for $10 CDN each.

I don't really care about the extra cash, but I do care about the convenience.

Second:

I'm a cyclist (part of the reason it's an hours trip to the book store) and I want some small panniers for my bike, just big enough to carry my lock, phone, glasses case, a paperback book, and a powerbank for my phone. Simple stuff. I've found the bags I'm going to convert locally for a reasonable price, and I've spend most of the day searching for suitable j-hooks that I can attach to the bags, to hang them off the existing rack. Nothing local. Nothing at all. I've tried craft stores, art stores, hardware stores, Cabelas, Canadian Tire, other outdoor stores, nothing. Everyone premade bags that I can buy, but they're two to three times the size of what I want. Amazon had exactly what I needed for $8, to be delivered tomorrow.

I fucking HATE Amazon, but local retailers have really shit the bed and stopped carrying a lot of products because they feel like they can't be bothered to compete.

Are they sure it's not just Threads users and bots C&P'ing the same thing, over, and over, and over in a desperate quest for engagement?

That seems to have been the business model for Threads since Day 1.

Slack is equally 8k times worse than Discord. At least Discord notifications work consistently. At my last job we used Slack instead of Discord (irony: we were a game store) and I would only get Notifications on slack if I was directly tagged in a message. No homescreen notifications at all, and then you open the app to find out there are 700 unread messages in 40 different channels, all of which had no real value.

Cheap junk loaded with malware. Should I be surprised?

It's not fucking meat.

what the fuck is this work from home nonsense?

See above. I've been Windows free since. My newish laptop is dual booted Win 10 (work needs) and Ubuntu, and I find 10 far less irksome than anything else they've ever put out, but it's still kludgy.

One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison?

This is idiotic, speculative click bait "journalism" at it's worst. 5 years ago it was "Apple is still working on their own TV" and that turned out to be Airplay built into Samsung, LG and Sony TV's. This'll be an extension of Carplay, at best.

Have you ever used Windows Phone 7 or higher?

I bought an HTC HD7 ages ago, my only intention was to learn how to use it, in order to sell it, and then flip it a month later. Greedy commission salesman, and such.

I used it for 2 years, and replaced it with a Lumia 1020 when it died through no fault of it's own, gravity is a cruel mistress.

I cannot stress this enough, I *loathe* Microsoft, I have been a Debian user since 2001, until I bought a Mac in 2012, and I am still using that 1020, daily, because it just works.

No, there aren't as many "apps" for it, but the apps that I give a shit about are all there, web browsing, messaging, maps, email, twitter, facebook. And they just work, easily.

Microsoft got Windows Phone right.

Is a privilege, not a God given right. Find a better way to make money than trying to hijack my screen.