As someone who owns multiple Apple devices and is generally pretty happy with their hardware and services, I agree. I wish there was at least a third option, if not more competition in this space.
RIP Windows Phone, WebOS, Meego, Firefox OS, et al
Competition is no longer possible these days, as banks, towns, etc. start to require an _unrooted_ Android/iOS device for basic operations (e.g. authorization of credit card operations, paying taxes and fines, COVID stuff, etc.).
Agreed. I tried to get a hardware-based TAN generator from my bank because that's the official alternative, but they indicated as long as I don't do 10k transactions a day I "don't need one". But I did need one, lacking an up-to-date smartphone and a Windows/Mac PC.
They were also baffled that I wanted more than 5 digits as login PIN (without username) for the banking app.
At least here in Germany, there are many banks that work fine on rooted devices. And outside of banking and Google Pay, I haven’t seen anything that won’t work on rooted devices.
Up until a couple weeks ago, my French bank's program worked on rooted devices. No longer. Same thing happened with my previous bank a year or so ago. They removed SMS 2FA as an alternative at the same time.
FfOS would have been a great alternative. I kinda still hope that a similar software setup (boot to browser, sandbox all the things to there) will one day be flashable to any generic handheld device, like older Android phones or the Pinephone.
In fact I use it daily in my 3310, buttons and all, as a replacement for my <model forgotten> FFOs phone from a few years back.
From that experience I can tell you it has nothing in common from the user point of view.
Actually Windows Phone was pretty much killed by Microsoft's lack of marketing, developer incentives and general incompetence, the OSes (7 and 8 mainly, 10 was weird) were incredibly smooth, fast and well designed. For a short while (in between most popular apps gaining WP support and then dropping it) it was IMO the best mobile experience available. You could get a dirt-cheap low-end phone like the Lumia 520 and it just worked. Then there were the AMOLED Lumias (Windows Phone was almost all black!), good cameras, the future looked really promising. Well. Good times were had.
Never forget how MS decided to prop up their WP app store numbers by running classes that ended up in the projects being submitted (and approved) to the store.
The amount of utter shit in the WP store was astounding. It was like if every single 0 star GitHub project had been submitted to a store for everyone to download.
My father wanted a smartphone but didn't want to pay Apple premiums, so I told him to get a Windows Phone because they guaranteed software updates, unlike Android's dismal situation.
He was very happy with it, then it was EOL-ed and WhatsApp stopped working on it (I consider that a feature, not a bug, but for some odd reason he disagrees). So I set him up with a LineageOS Pocophone F1. He still misses the simplicity of the Windows Phone UI, though.
I don't remember any WP8 phones actually being a good experience. The high end Lumias had good cameras...once the camera app eventually launched. The low end Lumias were absolutely terrible in every respect. They were dirt cheap because they were garbage. The App Store was a joke and what little software it had was awful.
The Metro/Modern/Whatever UI looked good in screen shots. In actual use the tiles just ate up a lot of screen real estate and rarely refreshed their content when expected. The UI inside apps was equally brain dead with touch elements often lacking borders. So you'd have to hope you aimed your finger perfectly on an icon. Because the UI could become unresponsive for unexpected reasons, especially on garbage phones, even if you hit an element it wasn't clear if the app was actually responding.
Windows Phone 8 and up was a dumpster fire. The highest end phones were just okay and didn't really hold a candle to the Apple and Android flagships of the time.
And they trashed themselves. Microsoft was late to the party, but Windows Phone 7 was genuinely innovative and good. Unfortunately, when WP7 started to get some traction, they reset the entire ecosystem with Windows Phone 8, which could not be installed on existing Windows Phone devices. And Windows Phone 8 applications could not be installed on Windows Phone 7.
That is still one of the most mind boggling decisions I've seen. You launch a new smartphone platform to compete with two rivals that already have a head start, and then you intentionally wipe away all your progress so you can start even further behind again. Any interest in it evaporated overnight
On the contrary. Starting from the release of the original iPhone SDK in 2008, developers gained more capabilities and app entitlements than they lost.
There are lots of open mobile distros. I'd say postmarketOS is the best option for installing on random devices. Or for devices with preinstalled OSes, PinePhone or Librem 5.
A huge number of developers at Amazon and Google are clapping their hands with glee when the read this…. It’s their jobs to get exactly this outcome. They’ll show your post to the boss to lock in their bonus.
This is the prime purpose of these gigantic companies. Of course it works like that.
The smartest software developers in the world dedicate their working lives to advertising.
Smaller / family-owned farmers detest them [0]. Large / agribusiness farmers tend to think of this sort of equipment as tractor-as-a-service and generally have uptime agreements with service organizations so their problems get fixed first.
I have no idea what company is in the article since it doesn’t say.
But if it’s (likely) John Deere, we avoid them like the plague. Granted, my family’s farm is “hobby farm” scale. I see plenty of Deere’s on actual farms. But for me, it’s not worth it.
I’ve been half a mile into brush at quarter to midnight fixing a Kubota with very basic hand tools. I have a repair manual that shows how to service every part. It’s how it SHOULD be done. Most people who rely on a tractor don’t have time to mess around with John Deer concierge any time they hit a bump the wrong way.
The most toxic device on the internet is the downvote.
It’s nothing more that a “criticize” button, or perhaps “attack”, “belittle”, “devalue”.
Downvotes make people feel hurt belittled and attacked.
Nothing wrong with upvoting - that’s positive.
Downvoting destroys all good will.
And of course so clever and funny here in HN this comment gets downvoted, which proves my point. The downvote is the tool of the drive by vandal. It allows people to behave like a dickhead anonymously and at no cost.
Agreed. It's like, imagine being out in public, in a town square, having a conversation with a group of people while others mill about. Suddenly, you're hit in the face with a rotten tomato. You have no idea where it came from, or who threw it, or why. But you are now covered in the stinky remains of an inedible food, and everyone around you recoils in digust.
Somewhere, retreating into the crowd, is the coward who threw it at you because he didn't like something you said. He doesn't have to argue against you, nor does he have to put his name and face to his position and action. But he's effectively taken you out of the conversation.
Now multiply that by thousands of people and thousands of tomatoes, usually thrown by a certain kind of person on a certain side of controversial issues. Eventually the people on the other side get tired of being hit by rotten tomatoes, so the conversations cease, and the Heckler's Veto has won again.
At least in real life, there's a chance that the troll will be seen lobbing fruit, be confronted, and be discouraged from doing it again. But online, with anonymous downvoting, they operate with impunity, silently sabotaging conversations everywhere.
I agree; it's a tool for censorship. Also, upvote is a tool for propaganda.
If implemented honestly, downvote (and upvote) would be fine, but it's not gonna happen. The downvote functionality will be an excuse to censor content. At the end of the day, it's always about financial interests.
Views which promote the interests of the financial elite and wealth centralization are upvoted, views which promote decentralization or work against the interests of financial elites are downvoted.
Goodness knows there’s plenty of porno training images out there.