djdarren

ouch!

As a recovering Apple user, the hardware really is very, very good.

I have an M2 MacBook Air that is, quite frankly, the fastest computer I’ve ever used. Running Window in a VM within it gave me the fastest Windows computer I’ve ever used. I’ve had it two years and still get all day out of the battery. It can export a two hour AIFF recording of my radio show from Reaper in around 10 seconds. In the two years I’ve had it there have been perhaps three occasions where I wished I’d opted for a Pro instead.

I also have an iPad mini which is a ridiculously useful little tablet, when used in conjunction with my MacBook.

However, over the past year I’ve been drawing further away from their ecosystem, to the point that I mostly only use the MacBook to present my radio show because it’s fanless so doesn’t cause any noise issues when my mic’s open. And that’s as a direct result of Apple being a trash company run by corporate fuckheads who would sooner capitulate to fascists than actually fucking stand for something.

So yeah, very few of us do actually support them.

Very nice!

You can already run Graphene entirely without Play Services. You have to install them yourself after you set up. It’s just that if you do install them, they’re sandboxed.

I’m not an expert by any means, I moved directly to Graphene after 15 years of iPhones without really touching Android in between, so I mostly scrabboed about, found a path that worked and stuck to it.

But the way I use it is with Aurora to install apps from the Play Store. You can use it anonymously, or you can log in to your own Google account.

In terms of other Google services, you can install then, whereby Graphene will run them in a sandbox. You have control over how much data they can have. For me it strikes a happy balance between knowing that I have some semblance of control, but also having the convenience of things like Maps. And Google’s camera app is much much better than any of the others I’ve tried. Which is annoying.

You don’t have to run any Google stuff at all, if you don’t want to.

I bought a Pixel 9 with the sole intention of putting Graphene on it. I wasn’t massively down with giving Google money, but my provider offered it to me for £30, then £30 a month on contract. Can’t argue with that.

If you have a Pixel, then GrapheneOS is the sensible choice. Not least because it currently only works with Pixels anyway.

It’s mad that I have to search for how to turn my iPad off every bloody time.

Also, Apple don’t seem to have an appetite for supporting gaming on macOS, beyond a few big name titles announced once a year to reig ite interest.

I tried to go with Bazzite on my wife’s old PC. Fuck knows what happened, but I could not get it to recognise that I’d downloaded the image with the Nvidia drivers built in.

Ended up giving up and rolling Kubuntu. I know Kubuntu and like it. And it works beautifully. Back in the world of RDR2 now, and loving it.

Its become abundantly clear to me over the past few years that Linux is in place where, to get significant share it needs to have a major figurehead. Imagine if all ThinkPads suddenly were only available with Lenovo’s own fork. That kind of thing.

Unfortunateoy, that’s kinda the opposite of Linux ethos, and not necessarily likely to make Lenovo much money.

So the best we can really hope for at this point is a company with the brand awareness of Valve pushing SteamOS into the mainstream. People who play games know and generally trust Valve, so people (like my wife) who are on the fence, or who just need their computer to work without needing too much faffing, could likely trust SteamOS in a way they wouldn’t necessarily trust Bazzite or CachyOS.

I can’t afford shares on account of the aforementioned grossly inflated bills.

Besides, I shouldn’t have to be a shareholder to not be treated like shit.

Perhaps, but they can’t lock the bootloader on my Pixel 9 that’s not running Google’s version of Android.

chuckles in GrapheneOS

This is my problem with fining the companies: ultimately it’s us that pays the fines through grossly inflated bills, while the shareholders make out like bandits.

Surprised no one’s mentioned Thank Goodness You’re Here yet.

That game had me rolling from start to finish.

I was merrily listening to Apple Music via WinApps the other day, when the Windows guest threw up a notification that it hadn’t found any malware. Literally no way to dismiss it without quitting out of any WinApps I had open.

Good old Windows.

I have WinApps running on the little Dell PC I have at work. It’s only an i3 with 8Gb RAM, but it’s ok with Apple Music and MS Office apps. I wouldn’t want to seriously run any games through it, mind.

Get a Kobo. Read the book, click the buttons that take you to another book.