Inflation is a thing. Also this is a far more capable phone with a larger screen and battery. The increased cost at least gives you increased benefits. Also I don't think Apple really wants to go too in pricing to meet the low end. That's not and never has been their niche.

Let's not teach kids how to use these wonderful supercomputers we all carry around to enhance their education or their knowledge. That's crazy! Let's force them back to the stone ages and cut off their entire social life and access to information. That won't be distracting at all. Especially as we try to force feed them knowledge in school they probably could not give two shits about. Teachers need to learn how to teach using these devices as tools. Instead of trying to police it all the time. Schools are way behind the times technically and they need to adapt to the new world - not force kids to learn like we're still in the 1800s. And yes I have dealt with this. Our son was just fine having a phone in school and he's doing well in college now.

LOL. Reading this makes me wonder where you've been working the past decade. What you describe as idle chit chat happens now on Slack, Teams or . Need to bounce an idea off someone or request a fix? 5 seconds on chat. Boom done. That's collaboration and that's how efficient it can be. Companies are claiming that random chance interactions by the coffee pot or water cooler are going to be better than chat somehow are delusional. Let me ask another way - when you need to tell/ask someone something quickly, do you: a) Go to their house office and ask in person b) Call them c) Text them 95-99% of interactions will be (c) because its the most efficient. That DOES NOT change when you're forced to be in an office vs working from home.

Yep 100%. Though I'd argue that ActiveX browser components were almost never a good idea in the first place.

How so? Batteries can be replaced and get cheaper as the years go by. There are plenty of 10+ year old Hybrids around with new replacement battery packs.

I fully expect there will be replacement Tesla, Leaf, Volt, etc battery packs readily available when their batteries poop out. In all likelihood they will be cheaper than they are now due to economies of scale, and through improvements in energy density, higher in capacity.

Leaf owner here. Yes, you can set a schedule for the car to charge.

We currently don't because we are charging off the slower 110v charger. (Long story.) Once we get into our new house we'll use the 220v wall unit.

Not directly in reply to parent, but I figure I'll comment as a current Leaf owner -

As far as range, more is definitely better. So, would I want the 150 mile version? Hell yeah! However, we get by just fine with what we have. It is currently our only car. We live in the somewhat sprawling Tampa area. As long as we stay within Tampa / Clearwater / St. Pete for our destination, we're fine without worry or need to charge while we're out.

But, for trips to Orlando, or anything really outside 40 miles from home, we typically rent a gas car and use that. Eventually we plan to get a cheap used SUV as our second car for longer trips, but for now this has worked well enough. We've only really needed longer range about 1 time per month since we owned the Leaf, which is about 3 months now. That has basically been 2 trips to Orlando, and 1 trip to Melbourne. Rental cars are cheap here, and I don't mind spending $100 for a 3 or 4 day rental - at least until I can pay cash for a second vehicle.

The only thing that needs to change here IMO is the commenting system. Remove the score limits. +/- 5 is too limiting. Embrace reddit's commenting scoring with unlimited up and down scores. The look and feel of the site is fine and iconic. Changing it to the Wordpress look-a-like abomination you have for a beta is a travesty. It screams of New Coke marketing thinking to me. Content is what brings people here and has brought me here for what 15+ years now? Focus on adding good content to the site.