You may want to reevaluate your views. For the price there always were much better sounding options. Their main selling point is supposed to be convenience, but with all the software glitches it does not seem like they have it anymore.

It may not be too bad for users: a lot of people are simply always logged on, so they’ll not see any difference. What is the current share of Chrome?

Then you really are the target audience for all these “go active” advice, which is actually great! The thing is, exercises are great for most relatively healthy people (the ones who do not require professional mental help), as they strengthen your body in the same way as savings strengthen your financials. You just can do a little more of anything with it. So - you are not a lost cause, congrats! ) That said, you do not need a gym to stay fit. Not sure where you live, but there are normally public spaces with fitness equipment available in many urban areas. Or you can google some fitness sets that only need a flat surface for you to do. Something like this would be a good start. And remember, that too shall pass.

Two things, actually. “You are fired”, and “You are hired”. Also, does “I do” count?

I am afraid you are right. Am driving a non-connected old car, and intend to buy a new one without that crap.

I do struggle to understand why the general population is so untroubled with this constant privacy breaching creep (a bit less worried with subs as when it comes to monies, people are a bit more alert). I have a lot of smart friends who click the “agree to everything you want from me” button everywhere, and they see no issue with it.

The definition of rip off may vary. Still, that would be a saner marketing approach, in my view.

As I understand, all the businesses are trying to replicate the IT-born business model of subscription for features. It should not be a thing in the real world, and I hope these managers come to sense, the sooner the better.

The benefit of unified hardware and not having subscriptions can be easily combined: just replace subscriptions with a one-off charge for any feature. Warranty void if enabled not in a dealer shop. I think that would create much less noise than offering a monthly sub. Yes, I know, not great for the quarterly results, but then - so much less hate from your customers. And yes, touch screens in a car should wait until there is a full, proper self-driving capability in place.

Lets be frank, the main reason is that only like 1% of the market has an articulated preference towards free software and privacy. No money to be made equals no product in our cruel world. And of course FOSS, even if it is free to a user (as in you do not have to pay to use it. You do need to spend your time and resources to learn it though, and that is not free already), is by no means free to develop. The time spent on it by devs has to be compensated somehow, enthusiasm is unfortunately not the only fuel our bodies need. And then, for phones, the hardware required is not free as well. And then we need a manufacturer, who would be much more interested in making a billion Android phones than a million of a niche product.

Does Google actively try to stop development of the alternatives? Unlikely, because they don’t have to. They do not make it easier of course, why would they. And they do buy out everything they can, because they can use it to improve their products.

I do not see a good way out of this loop for now. Do you?

Sorry, does it mean that you can use NFC payments with your card anywhere, as it is with G pay/wallet?

Hm, not sure if I can agree here. There may be a handful of people like that - but that is not the market worth developing as far as I can see. You would normally either travel, or spend your time in front of 3 screens full of text. Also, having anything on your head for a long time (if you are coding, for example) is tiring. Even simple sunglasses are, not talking about a bulky headset. And, as someone also mentioned, there really must be an excellent screen for your eyes not to bleed after a long session of reading. Never tried this headset, but have serious doubts. Watching a movie is different, but at this price point you are likely getting a royally good home set up, so yet again, travel only. Again, a niche thing.

Then there is some CAD stuff, but cannot comment there. How many people in the world need that, anyway?

This leaves games as a real (though still relatively niche) market, yet to see what Apple has to offer there.

So, as I can see, if Apple wants a new big thing, we are still waiting for a killer app. And a breakthrough in tech, of course.

What kind of people that travel a lot you think may benefit? Genuinely curious. All the guys who do travel can mostly do everything with their phone because they have other guys working for them in the office doing the actual multiple screens stuff. Or maybe these are the only ones I saw in my life on the road )

Oh, but it will not be GOOGLE’s next step. I dont think it is the goal anyway. They only need to help site owners to sign up to their WEI thing, and there will be oh so many incentives. Google will be happy to license it out, or even make the toolkit fully opensource, to whoever wants to implement it in their browser, regardless of the engine used. Their obvious ultimate goal is to show the ads with no interruptions, which also happens to be the desire of most of the websites. And many websites will willingly implement it on their side, they do not really need too much encouragement.

Ok. You are right. It does sound crazy.

But,… but!.. oh, fuck them.

For clarity: Google is THE for-profit behaviour manipulator selling the manipulation to whoever is having the budget for it. YT, search and all the other products are there to enable that manipulation. No more, no less.

From what I know, none of the apps in the play store is the real thing, for obvious reasons: how do you think Google would allow it? Hence the ratings.

https://newpipe.net/

And no permissions required at all.