It's not even as complex as that... Apple are paying Ford to foist this on their customers.

There's a couple of huge differences between PC and Playstation... the first and foremost that any console is a monopoly, everything you do on a Playstation, everything you're allowed to own is done via Sony and entirely under Sony's good graces. Sony says "No" and you're screwed. PC isn't a monopoly, even with Steam being the 362.87 KG gorilla in the room they are not the only game in town. Sure they're one of the best which is what keeps them the top dog but you've options for days (GOG may not be a 362.87 KG Gorilla, but it definitely is a weighty Orangutang in it's own right).

The second thing is, Steam and Gog are making money without shafting their customers so they have no need to.

The third difference is, both GOG and Valve are entirely private corporations. No shareholders to please means no drive for constant increases in profit which means there's no need to make customers suffer just to make the quarterly balance sheet a tiny bit larger.

Also as a side note, you can download the offline installers from GOG and Valve's Gabe Newell has said they have a contingency in place in case they ever have to shut down Steam.

Of course the long term solution for every platform is for sales and ownership laws to be updated to stop this "we're calling it owned, but you're really just renting because we can change the terms whenever we like". This is unlikely to occur in the US until it's forced to by the rest of the world.

Whoa, whoa, whoa there Tiger... Firstly you're suggesting people live within their means... are you some kind of Commulinst or something? Why do you hate 'Murica?

Most people are already so far beyond their means that $10 a month being saved would be a huge improvement. When I was a lad (I'm only just over 40) saying you were living "payday to payday" was a sign you had money troubles, now it's a sign you're doing well as most people are living debt repayment to debt repayment. They got into debt to get a shiny car, then the banks suckered them into putting their daily expenses on the card too, so when the money enters their account it immediately leaves to service their debts leaving them with nothing so next months expenses have to be financed on credit too...

It's hard to put $10 away per month when you're $3000 in the black to begin with before you get to your mortgage... And they thing is, they'll call you and I stupid for not paying for everything through credit.

BTW, I save enough each month that I could afford to buy a new phone from that alone. I never fell into the credit trap as a young fella so I'm not stuck in that trap in mid-life.

With our high end products becoming overpriced, oversized phones the computing will be very basic indeed... and you'll still pay hundreds per month for it.

That is blatantly untrue...

You'll own the debt, that you won't escape.

The problem is, it'll work.

Same as most people don't own their cars any more. They just lease it and pay the monthlies.

Most people already lease their phone, especially in the US, they just do it via the phone company. $100 per month for the IphoneDoublePlusGoodUUUBerValue plan + $10 per month handset rental fee + $20 per month service fee + $4.99 Fee fee + $2.99 Fee calculation fee. People now lease everything

At least over here in Europe there are more people like me who buy their handset outright (Motorola Edge 60 Neo for £300) and get a cheap no contract monthly plan (£5 per month). I can get a new phone each year and still be ahead of the iSheep.... and I don't upgrade that frequently any more, I'm not a "use it until it dies" person but phones last at least 2 years these days.

Given the kind of people who buy Apple products favour brand and image over everything else... It'll work, I suspect a lot of them already put things like this on some kind of finance, whether a third party lease agreement or the dodgy credit card shuffle (keep moving that debt between interest free deals... until they can't any more and get hit with a massive amount of interest because they haven't paid much of it off).

And they're failing to remember that they're GM, not Porsche who might be able to get away with this shit because they make good cars and have a legion of fanboys (and they already do it, you're not even allowed to order the really high end Porkers unless you've previously bought several).

The problem the consumer faces is that they don't buy cars any more, so they don't own them... Meaning that all these subscriptions just get rolled into the monthly payments. This isn't so much of an issue for the person who leases the car initially, the problem comes when the lessor has to sell the car and either sell it sans subscriptions or take the hit themselves and pay for them... we both know it won't be the latter.

At this point I'm glad that GM has really become a US only company these days, sold off their European brands to Peugeot years ago and not selling anything in Oz either, I'm sure they would have sold off the Holden brand too but no-one wants it.

True.

That was me fat fingering. I meant to put in the LNP but accidentally put in ALP.... TLA Failure on my part good sir.

I will literally be Visa/Mastercard as the card will be their product via an existing bank with a Samsung branding on it. Same as your Amazon card or any of the airline cards. Middlemen as powerful as Visa/MC won't be cut out of the loop, especially in a place like the Corporate States of America.

There, fixed that for you.

Australia and the UK are trying this... the Whacko's are making more noise than ever whilst the original party (ALP in Australia and Conservatives in the UK) are being slowly eaten from the inside out. The fact is we put up with the rot and corruption for far too long because some precious little souls didn't like the other party. It's those precious little souls who supported them that need to be held accountable, sadly they're all running to Hanson/Farage because they are so thick and thin skinned that they just don't ever want to accept that what they vote for always fails.

There's a group of people who consistently buy products that fail, in Sales and Marketing they're known as Harbingers of Failure and are considered an accurate predictor of whether a product will not succeed. I believe the same is true for politics, voted for Brexit, then for Johnson, then supported Truss and spent the last two years hating on anything Labour does... Heh, you're one of them, you voted for a failed Brexit, a corrupt Boris, an incompetent Truss and believed the total lies about Labour... you're a predictor of failure and guess what will happen with Farage too.

What you've got to rememeber is that the Imperial system was first codified in 1824 in the Weights and Measures Act of 1824. This is some 50 years after their little rebellion. So it's accurate to say that the Americans are not even as advanced as the Imperial system.

The US uses US Customary Units and most of them are completely arbitrary.

The Imperial system was not just an attempt to standardise units for trade (I.E. someone couldn't shaft you by deciding to use a different gallon) it was also an effort to make measurements scientifically accurate and interchangeable, I.E. a gallon was defined as 10 pounds of water at room temperature (17C). It was an effort to move away from the kind of "this is a gallon, copy this" kind of arbitrary measurements.

No, you misunderstand, those signs are for serious shit like when someone had a pronoun or there are minorities somewhere in the tri-county area. This government overreach is simply not important enough to warrant their attention.

No, you misunderstand, those signs are for serious shit like when someone had a pronoun or there are minorities somewhere in the tri-county area. This government overreach is simply not important enough to warrant their attention.