CerebralHawks

As a computer user with ~30 years’ experience with Windows: why? Why does the browser need to open? Since Windows 98, the OS and the browser have shared common elements. Those get preloaded already whether you like it or not. This is how IE got its performance gains and this is how Edge gets them as well. Firefox once had an extension that did a similar thing, it added a system tray icon that would preload parts of the browser. The effects were not that great, but some people kept it around. I suspect Chrome has similar things in Android/ChromeOS.

So generally I say this is fine, especially since you can opt out and it probably won’t touch business/enterprise, government users, and maybe even Windows 11 Pro users who are spared a lot of the bullshit.

As a Mac guy, I don’t think macOS is loading any part of Safari without permission. Safari isn’t part of Finder (the file manager), it’s not part of the OS aside from being included with it. I run Firefox full time on both my Macs.

And of course Linux is less likely to do this. They typically bundle Firefox (some bundle Chrome or something else) and Firefox isn’t really meant to do that out the gate, so I doubt it’s happening at all on Linux.

But even if I had 11 Home to game on, I’d just opt out, but also accept that it’s probably still loading parts of Edge that other parts of the OS use (like the help system, is that still a thing? Haven’t seen it since 98 or 2000 or maybe XP).

But also, my Macs and iPhone convert the Windows company to, let me just type it so I can show you, Microslop . Yeah, I set that up. It was funny for a while. It’s still funny. Maybe if it stops being funny, I’ll disable it.

Well, Valve was running the same business on PC gaming. So how could they not be willing to play by the same rules? Also, I’m betting at that point mobile wasn’t taken seriously for gaming. It still isn’t. Now we have the iPhone 16 Pro (in MacBook Neo form) running Cyberpunk and a lot of people are looking at it like “phones can play AAA games now?” and it’s the astronaut “always has been” meme. The Switch was just a modified Nvidia Shield tablet — the iPhone of the day was more powerful, but it had less RAM. Android caught up to Switch within a year or two. That Tegra chip didn’t do anything special. The Switch was just marketed differently. Internally (hardware AND software) it was more alike to Android tablets than people knew.

Yes, I’ve made that point a few times. ;)

Interesting. The Internet’s been pretty divided, with a lot of people supporting Epic because they ultimately want to see Apple’s control over iOS reduced, and ultimately, so do I. But the fact is, if Apple allowed sideloading like Android did, Epic would still try to force Apple to allow them on the App Store despite breaking the rules because they want Apple to host their app and its updates. Those of us rooting for Epic aren’t rooting for Tim Sweeney per se, we’re rooting for the change he’s bringing.

I never said otherwise about iOS. I said macOS lets you install apps outside the App Store.

The question is, did you misunderstand me, or are you intentionally moving the goalposts?

Hopefully this will get people to stop pretending Epic is the good guys against Google and Apple.

Android and macOS never stopped Fortnite from running on their platform. Only iOS ever did that, because Epic wanted its virtual currency to be sold directly from them and not give Apple their cut. In and of itself, that is not an unreasonable argument, except Apple is entitled to something considering Fortnite has multiple 10GB+ updates, per user, per week. Multiple. They can’t afford that infrastructure, so they have Apple bear the load, but they don’t want to pay for it. That’s what the App Store fees are for.

On macOS you also have the App Store, but you can also go around it entirely. The Epic Games Launcher works on macOS. However, Epic does not distribute Fortnite through it on macOS because they don’t want to pay the server costs of the constant, huge, mandatory updates. They just say it’s unavailable. On Android, the Play Store has never been the exclusive app store. You could always just download an app and install it. Recently they warn you it could be harmful, but they still let you do it. Nothing has ever stopped Epic from releasing Fortnite directly on Android, or via the Epic Games Store. Similar to Apple, they just want Google to bear the load.

Yes, they recently settled with Google. Now Google will carry Fortnite in the Play Store and support the updates, which are getting neither smaller nor less frequent, and Google will take less money from selling the Fortnite “V-Bucks” (even though you could always buy them directly from Epic, either on their website or via gift cards sold in stores).

It was never about the V-bucks. Yes, Fortnite makes money from licensing pop culture stuff and selling it to players, but the game’s true purpose is to advertise the quality and capability of the Unreal Engine it runs on. If you’ve never played Fortnite, do yourself a favour and try it out, preferably on a modern console, or a capable PC. The gameplay is at least as good as old Unreal Tournament (which is what it’s basically the modern incarnation of), and the graphics are outstanding. Yeah, the culture around the game is juvenile, but if you’re good at shooters, you will do okay. I can’t love it, I remember when it was a beta, it was a very different animal to what it is now, and I remember YouTubers I still follow raving about how cool Fortnite was. It still has some of those elements, but it’s not what was originally promised. In many ways it’s more, but I’m not sure all those ways themselves are good.

Anyway, while you can say that Apple and Google are “rent seeking,” Epic has always been after free high-demand high uptime web serving. Maybe Apple and Google should have charged less, but Epic was always trying to get something for nothing, and that should be frowned upon as well.

Yeah, I mean I figured you weren’t trying to help, you didn’t really need to confirm it.

The question is, is this you at your best, or are you just having a bad day?

Well, if you can get mine to let me type it, that would be helpful. Anecdotes are interesting, but they don’t help.

Keep in mind that computers used to be the size of a room (or larger). Now, the device on my wrist — an Apple Watch, series 10 — doesn’t seem very powerful, but it’s running Apple’s watchOS, which is a derivative of macOS, itself based upon UNIX, once upon a time. The chip in my watch is more powerful than the first couple computers I built, for sure — not sure about the last one I built (4th generation Intel Xeon with 16GB RAM and a 3GB Radeon 280 GPU). It can probably do a few things better than that computer could, and it lived in a massive tower.

Medical technology is not the same as consumer computers, but it also gets smaller as technology iterates and improves.

How big does a uterus get, with a human baby inside at 9 months? Bit smaller than a beach ball? You also have the placenta in there, providing nutrients to the baby. You wouldn’t be able to provide that with just a uterus. You’d need something else to convert some kind of food energy for the placenta to feed the baby. That’s going to take more machinery, which can also get smaller.

I’m not saying they should. Just that they will probably be able to.

The problem is really going to be when they only use eggs from white donors and start up a eugenics program. But science forges ahead without fear of politics, for better or, as is more often the case, worse.

Disabled on mine. It still changes what I put. Apparently “and” is a bad word now. I can get it capitalised, I can get sand, I can get Andy, but “and” in lowercase, Apple says no-can-do. (Typing on my Mac now, on a mechanical keyboard. Odd that the Mac doesn’t have this problem. Probably because it has an actual keyboard. Mac does have predictive text, which is kind of annoying… I see the appeal, but I’m never gonna reach over and strike Tab to complete a sentence or word.

Apple doesn’t really promise device update time frames. They basically support a device as long as it’s feasible because they are still, at their core, a computer company, though they are more focused on the iPhone and related accessories than the Mac lately. They are transitioning to a services company. But still, updates are based on what they conservatively think the device can handle. Even phones that aren’t getting the latest iOS still get security updates. iOS 18 and older versions are still getting updated, but they get no new features.

With Android, it’s more about getting people to buy new phones, which isn’t a dumb idea from a business perspective. Back when US carriers were giving phones away a lot more (like 15 years ago), it was actually a game to piss off customers so they go and buy a phone from a competitor sooner. They all benefited from churn. These days, Google and Samsung are offering 5+ years of promised updates, but they don’t support them beyond that, because a customer who won’t upgrade has no value to them.

iOS is a bit more polished than Apple, though that’s largely down to the developer. It’s easier to support iPhones because there are fewer of them. But plenty of apps are just fine on Android.

Agree with you about a janky Linux phone. I kinda want it to be janky! I miss when phones were kinda rough and you had to know how they worked. I loved messing with custom firmware around 2012-ish. Android Jellybean was awesome for tinkering.

Go then. There are other worlds than these… (that’s from the Dark Tower books by Stephen King).

Honestly… I have both. I have a 2024 iPhone Pro Max (16) and a 2019 Galaxy S (10). The iPhone is my main device. The Android phone is WiFi only, but if I have WiFi, I’d rather browse Lemmy on that, because iOS has this controversial feature where it will change what you type after you’ve typed it. So you’re constantly proofreading. Android doesn’t do that shit, or at least Samsung’s fork doesn’t do it. There are a few things I like about Android. My Android phone is basically a NookPhone — the phone you get in Animal Crossing. The case, the background, the icons… of course they’re just icons for actual apps. I don’t have the NookPhone apps. “Pro Camera” just opens the Samsung camera. “Passport” just opens my Animal Crossing item tracker. “Chat” just opens Telegram, which I just use for cross-platform media-rich chat with my wife. You can’t do that with iPhone — certainly not the 3x3 app grid the NookPhone has.

And there are a couple things iOS does better. Apple Health doesn’t sell your data. A couple years ago, my wife’s Galaxy phone told her she’d have to agree to let Samsung sell her health data, or she’d have to delete it and opt out of the app. No one’s been able to point us to a health data tracking app that is free, private, and good on Android. Everyone agrees (or refuses to speak up and disagree) that Apple Health is the de facto winner here. So it’s worth having an iPhone for that, at the least. Plus, AirPods are at least marginally better than the Android equivalents.

So yeah… at some point, I’m gonna upgrade the Android phone. Might even switch to Android, as in, move my cell service from the iPhone to the Android phone. And still keep the iPhone for health tracking, music, and whatever else I want it for. At least until the Mac can do all that stuff. As of now, it actually can’t. Music yes, health no. As I am also a Mac user. I would have no problem going Mac + Android, if my Mac did Apple Health (as opposed to just mirroring the notifications). I tried to make a Shortcut where my Mac could log Health data. It wouldn’t even log the data and pass it to the iPhone over iCloud. It straight up said “no” to that. So the iPhone has me for Health data.

But I’m not gonna sit there and pretend Apple gives a shit if I buy an Android phone. That’s just stupid. And Google gives less of a shit if you buy an iPhone, because they figure chances are good you’ll just put Chrome and other Google apps on it and hand them your data that way. No, I buy what I want because it’s the best for me and what I’m doing. IDGAF what the corpos think about it.

Places have been doing this for years but not with screens. Just like a bulletin board with ads. Even on your table.

Places like that, you don’t go back to unless you have to. In laws couldn’t understand why I didn’t like their favorite pizza place.

I see where you’re coming from. It’s not really illogical though — it logically follows that if one did the same thing as the other but worse (use AI to seduce kids vs use AI to generate CSAM), then if the weaker one is found illegal, the stronger one should be found more illegal.

It might be a non sequitur though (“it does not follow”) because, as you say, Twitter wasn’t involved in that case.

Still worth mentioning.

My local news is full of people who were found to be looking at CSAM and the years of prison time they’re getting. Basically they were found to have naked pictures of kids, or pictures/video of people abusing kids on their phone or computer. But they haven’t actually harmed any real kids, IRL. Meanwhile, western politicians are actually doing the thing and not being punished. I don’t know if Trump has any CSAM on his phone (probably not), but he’s gone to a private island to abuse minors, and so have a bunch of other people. One in the UK got stripped of his titles, but still lives a life of luxury. I wanna say “make it make sense” but it seems to me that it’s not doing the thing that is punishable by prison, it’s having the proof someone else did the thing. And that’s sick. But that’s the world we live in.

Gen X need not apply? Fine.

…But not X/Grok for actually creating CSAM?

I’ll take the win against Zuck, maybe the Elongated Muskrat should be worried?

Yeah, I think most new PCs are also Copilot PCs with the branding and the button, if that’s what you mean. I don’t really mind that. I only use Windows at work, and we can’t use Copilot because it requires a personal Microslop account now, and we’re not allowed to sign in with one (only the corporate Intranet account). I think some people do anyway; to me, it’s as bad as using Facebook/whatever social at work, because IT can see everything you do. And I have enough history with Microslop (Xbox as well) I don’t want to associate with my job. I leave my job at the door when I leave and I leave my personal/social life at the door when I go there.

What’s the one mistake? Telegram? Or Signal?

The way I see it, the goalposts keep moving because Telegram was the private alternative to FB Messenger and WhatsApp. Then Signal was the private alternative to those, and Telegram. Now people are saying Signal is a problem (I’m guessing because of the cock up the US government had last year?). The goalposts keep moving, but Telegram is still fine for what I need. I keep both as alternatives to texting for people who want to reach me however they’re comfortable doing. I also have one called Session. I don’t use Twitter/X, Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp, or Reddit. I have a Discord because I have a couple things that are only available up there, but it’s not a good way to reach me as I have notifications disabled on it.

Meanwhile, TVDB doesn’t have an app, and IMDb and Wikipedia have shitty apps, so I’ve installed all three as web apps. You can do a lot with web apps these days. It’s not all inclusive, but it is something. And that’s on iPhone. On Android I actually prefer to use the browser (Firefox with uBlock Origin).

It’s not logically sound, but at this point the burden of proof needs to be on Big Tech if they want to claim they’re not spying. Otherwise we’d have to prove it for each individual model, and that isn’t feasible, and only supports the opposition.