So, unsurprisingly, I’ve seen variants of this discussion in several places, now. And in one of them, a fairly computer-savvy friend dropped this link:
And highlighted this post:
They say they don’t read the content of your posts, and just use metadata, like how long you’ve had the account, what servers you post on, that kind of thing. Also, i gather the age verification algorithms aren’t very good. On the other hand, if you don’t mind being moderated as if you were a teen, it probably won’t affect you.
Yep. Several years ago I was investing too much time and profanity trying to get around YouTube ads, then one day it dawned on me: I watch a ton of YouTube, so it’s worth the low cost of removing ads. I have never looked back.
And they did us a solid: Creators have live read ads, and I am of the opinion that “I am paying for ad-free video, so why am I seeing an ad?”, and YouTube is also of that opinion to a certain extent. Now, if you have a paid subscription, they give you a cool feature where you can jump over a “frequently skipped section”, based on user activity metrics. And that’s almost always the ad. An example of YouTube doing the right thing!
Now all I need to do is notice the sudden stilted language as the YouTuber tries to cleverly segue from content into garbage (“All of this seems pretty complicated, doesn’t it? You know what shouldn’t be complicated is setting up your own website!” or “You know the other day I got a phone call and it was from a number I didn’t recognize…blah blah blah” or “All of this sounds like a lot of work done by the Allies to maintain secrecy…but if you want to keep your life secret…blah…blah…blah”)
And once they start rambling on with their tripe I hit the “skip” button and it goes to “Use this code to get 20% off your first purchase…and now back to our video”
The only one I can stand listening to is Drew Gooden’s ads. Because he always makes them ridiculous and funny.
My husband calls Drew Gooden my YouTube boyfriend, which is just absurd. Hank Green is my YouTube boyfriend.
And here’s an example of political enshittification: Garry Tan launches dark-money group to influence CA politics
Rich techbros using their money to fund right-wing agendas to impact local and state elections using ads, astroturfing, candidate training, etc.
Garry Tan is the CEO of YCombinator. YCombinator is the startup incubator that launched Airbnb, Coinbase, Doordash, Dropbox, Instacart, Reddit, Stripe, Twitch, Humble Bundle, Zapier, Quora, Scribd, Weebly, PagerDuty, and many others.
So I guess some portion of all that money flows back into this PAC that works to make San Francisco and California better for the rich and arguably worse for everyone else (teachers, unions, etc.)
Discussion on Hackernews, which is itself a part of YCombinator: Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches group to influence CA politics | Hacker News
+1 for Apple. I’ve never bought a new iPhone though I have bought several iPads new. Nonetheless I’ve taken more than one 2nd hand older gen iPhone I bought on eBay or similar to a local Apple Store when I had an issue with it and they’ve always cheerfully helped my fix the issue, with never a charge for the service. I think that is amazing, honestly. They stand nothing to gain by doing this other than my continuous use of some of their products, and my always giving the company a shout out when asked. I wish other companies had this incredible level of service. That’s not all that keeps me using their products though. Imo they design - from a consumer point of view - the easiest to use tech products. No small feat in today’s world where lot’s of electronics are poorly designed and developed and cause user frustration and annoyance. You can use an iPhone or iPad right out of the box with little knowledge of computers or modern devices, which is really a nice thing to me. I can’t say I love everything Apple has done, but some things they do better than anyone else, imo.
I don’t know how true this is anymore. Maybe in the beginning, the iDevices were easy to use, but these days they require so many hidden secret gestures that aren’t really intuitive. Something like seeing a list of your apps requires multiple different directions of swiping, depending on the current home page you’re on, with no instructions or visual indicators at all. And on a Mac, there are various magical finger combinations on your touchpad that do strange things depending on how many fingers move in which direction. Usually it’s triggered by accident and there’s no clear way to undo it. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve seen first time Apple users struggle with it and yell in frustration and give up.
I think if you’ve used them for a while these things become second nature, but Windows and Android are a lot more explicit upfront.
Apple’s support is also not great if you don’t have an Apple Store nearby. Their online forums are worthless, and they have a habit of denying hardware issues exist until enough users complain and threaten class action suits.
And I say all that as someone who uses and loves my Mac and iPad and Airpods, while simultaneously using an Android phone and Windows gaming PC.
I don’t think Apple has kept up with usability and especially affordances (in the user interface sense, not pricing) in recent times, unfortunately. Their hardware has gotten a lot better but their software is stagnating. Liquid Glass makes a lot of things even harder to see and use.
I’m sorry to hear that. All those frustrating things you mentioned are definitely things that would really annoy me, too. I haven’t used anything very current from Apple I have to admit, all my stuff is a few years old. Which of course in the way tech constantly changes is ancient. I suppose I’m fortunate in that my interests with computers and phones - same thing I know, lol - is pretty limited. And I have little interest in the latest and greatest. That’s definitely disappointing for me to me hear about Apple though.
This happened with the butterfly keyboards. I had to have my MacBook keyboard replaced, on my dime, twice before they acknowledged a problem. I was so mad I actually did get a Windows laptop, but that turned out to be a mistake. They finally fixed the issue, but only after years of complaints. The only thing I use my MacBook for is writing, so kind of a big deal.
Yeah, that generation was not great, and Apple’s arrogant dismissal was so typical for them 
I don’t think they’ve gotten any better on that front. Listening to their users just isn’t something they do.
At least the newer Apple Silicon Macs thankfully have “normal” keyboards again, but they are still nowhere as good as a ThinkPad’s or a proper, full-size external ergonomic keyboard. As a coder, I can type maybe 100wpm on a laptop keyboard, but it gets uncomfortable after an hour or two. I can get up to 130ish and last all day with an ergo keyboard.
They have, or at least they did. After they changed the keyboard, they axed the useless Touch Bar no one had asked for and brought back MagSafe, HDMI and SD card ports, the lack of which ports customers had been complaining about for years.
They also reintroduced iTunes Wishlists a few years ago after complaints when they removed that feature, which must have been nice for the 17 people who still purchase digital media and use wishlists. Wishlists are still on track to be removed, but Apple gave it a 2 year reprieve.
Apple added a dedicated camera button to the iPhone about 2 years ago which was something a lot of people had been asking for.
More recently, they’ve added settings to tone down Liquid Glass.
Apple might be arrogant and shit at fixing bugs these days, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t listening to customers.