Hello, I’m a dedicated Apple user who came across this post on the “all” feed while scrolling. I know that I’m not really the intended audience of this community so if I’m not welcome to discuss here, feel free to tell me to get lost. I don’t want to impose.

I thought it might interest you a bit for me to share my two cents - just for context, I’m very technically competent, much more than the average smartphone user. Feel free to ask me anything. I am not a fanboy of anything in particular except Star Wars, so I’m not particularly inclined to get defensive - I’ll try my best to stay objective and I’m very happy to talk about Apple’s flaws as well.

Anyways, with all that out of the way - my reason for continuing to to use iPhone isn’t because of marketing. I don’t buy it because I think it’s cool/trendy/whatever. I get it because I prefer the experience of iOS over Android. When I tried Android, I found it a lot harder to get things the way that I liked them, it generally felt like it needed a lot more hand-holding from me.

I definitely don’t feel scammed. I’ve been using iPhone since 2011 or so and I’ve been a Mac user since 2016 - most recently I feel like the Apple Silicon MacBooks are genuinely good value, but prior to that I would definitely say that Macs were relatively overpriced compared to Windows PCs. I feel like iPhone is priced maybe (~20% or so?) higher than a comparable Android device, but personally, to me, the price is absolutely worth the improved experience.

I think that would be an example of a wildly unpopular change, yeah.

Not sure what you mean - I don’t think most of the people still using Firefox are going to switch to a Chromium based browser any time soon, I can’t speak for everyone of course but it feels like Firefox users tend to have an ideological objection to Google having a monopoly on web browsers.

It’s always worth trying a different browser when you have issues on websites - there are a lot of things that can be different beyond the layout and javascript engines - cookies, configuration, addons, etc. Yesterday I noticed a big difference between Chromium and Firefox in that even if you hard-refresh on a HTTP/2 connection, Chromium reuses a kept-alive connection, and firefox doesn’t — I would totally argue that Firefox’s implementation is more correct, but Chrome’s implementation will lead to a better experience for users hard-refreshing.

The moment that Firefox goes too far, it’ll immediately be forked and 75% of the user base would leave within a few months. Their user base is almost entirely privacy-conscious, technologically savvy people.

This is the same argument used in the UK to justify school uniforms. That kids would get bullied over their clothes, so let’s just make everyone wear the same thing. I’m wondering how you feel about that

This is ahistorical. The original Lemmy instance is lemmy.ml, and it was hugely tankie literally from the beginning - the .ml referring to marxist-leninism, years before Reddit’s API changes. It’s nothing to do with people being banned from Reddit, it’s just that the concept of a federated message board platform was appealing to communist software developers, who created and guided the project. If anything, the anti-tankie sentiment which is popular on instances like lemmy.world is what came to lemmy after the Reddit exodus.

Tankies have never really been regularly banned on Reddit in any real extent.

Some people have an ethical objection to advertisements.

Video hosting is one of those things which can probably never be done profitably. But that’s okay, lots of things can’t be done profitably but still exist.

The internet used to be almost entirely run by passionate individuals with no thought towards how they’re going to make any money.

The long-term solution is probably something like inter-connected peertube instances provided by some of the big video creators with lots of patrons, and if someone gets big and starts making patreon money, they can make their own instance and start hosting their own videos.

sorry to ruin the chain but it’s loch, not lach. no irn bru for you!

That isn’t an accessible menu, no - black text on light yellow would be fine, for example, though.

I’m disabled and a wheelchair user living in the UK.

There is almost no way to know, ahead of time, how accessible a venue will be. There are some resources available but they’re almost always created by other disabled people and might be outdated or they may not share your disability, so they might see things slightly differently than you do. It also takes a lot of work to figure it out - how will I get there? How will I get around once I’m there? Are there any stairs? Are there accessible bathrooms? Will there be enough space for me to move around, to turn, to get through a door?

She got there on the day and assumed that a ceremony for a disability campaigner would be accessible. Now that it turns out it wasn’t, she has taken the opportunity to spread awareness about it, making this event probably some of the most successful disability activism she has ever done, ironically.

The UK is absolutely awful for accessibility. It’s a massive, unbelievable heavy burden to be disabled, and as a wheelchair user it’s very hard to get around. There are so many things that businesses, employers, schools and public services do not consider which just makes our lives so much harder. It’s such a deep-running systemic issue.

If you’re in any position to impact decision making anywhere in your life, I’d encourage you to bring accessibility into those decisions. Whether that’s making sure that a website you’re designing is considering the needs of disabled people, or encouraging your employer to install ramps instead of stairs, or as simple as getting your office to consider using sans-serif fonts and light coloured backgrounds for black text instead of white. It’s something that all of us can help with.

You wrote:

I find AI a HUGE productivity boost, in search

Then when pushed, you walk it back:

search isn’t benefitting from the use of AI

Why make your initial comment of support if you just walk back on it? Got some money riding on it or something?