Ertio

Perhaps you're right. People kept buying iPhones when the replaceable battery phone (Samsung) was just around the corner (or on the same store shelves). But I wonder if people would have kept buying iPhones if Apple made the batteries replaceable. I have the impression many people were hooked to the Apple brand (so-called iSheep). Similarly with the audio connector. Until 2016, a phone without it seemed...

Many websites are not feed-based. For example, do you ever need to refresh a YouTube video or a Wikipedia article? No. All it does is waste your battery charge and your data plan (if you are on cellular network). And if you really do need to refresh a page, you can access the refresh button in the submenu in half a second. That's much faster than scrolling all the way to the top. For non-feed websites, all...

Because this is dangerous for the health of the user, where as battery weardown is accepted as a normal occurance in portable devices. Ideally yes. But somehow, smartphones with replaceable batteries and MicroSD card readers have become a rarity. This already happened with non-replaceable batteries, yet users kept buying. Smartphones used to be optional in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but now the...

Indeed. The point is to stop patiently waiting for miracles. Yes. You caught me there. Not exactly. Indeed, I couldn't make the license less permissive if I wanted to, but I made the license more permissive. Everything from the TOS still applies, but on top of that, I granted additional permissions for the text. In Chrome on Android, if you scroll up by swiping down, then hit the top of the page, then swipe down...

I am glad that phone makers have finally added an option to limit the battery charge to extend its life. What formerly required third-party software with root access is now pre-installed. The user no longer has to pay attention to unplug in time, but the phone stops charging by itself at 80% or 85% (depending on vendor). Some laptops (Aptio Setup Utility) had this ability since 2010 or even earlier, even though...

And none of them ever failed? How many years have they lasted so far? Content can also be modified easily on rewritable optical discs (for example BD-RE) using packet writing. Windows and Linux both have it, but the one on Linux (pktcdvd) doesn't work in my experience. On the other hand, the inability to modify content on write-once media (-R) has the benefit that data can not be touched by ramsomware. Not...

Strangely, none of our oldest recordable CDs and DVDs lasted any less than 15 years. They are fully readable. No corrupted files. However, we had two USB flash drives become undetectable, and some had corrupted data (glitched JPEG files for example). So we will store everything in cloud services? That will be more expensive than local storage. Cloud services require monthly payments. Were they...

They probably have already thought about this at some point. If they wanted to do it, they would have already done it. There is also the FairPhone, but it appears it is hardly known and very niche. How does one even advertise such a thing? The masses just care about the next shiny new thing (shiny object syndrome) to show off infront of their friends. They don't care about "will it work in 5 or 10 years?" and only...

It means I give you the permission to repost the text anywhere, but please link back to this thread. (more details) Unfortunately not. You get it, but many people unfortunately don't. Many people wait and hope for a miracle. No, but InkScape already makes users less dependent on greedy Adobe. InkScape can get many tasks done that would usually require Adobe's expensive proprietary software. Yes, I know...

I will have to figure it out. Won't be easy, certainly. But anything is better than begging and hoping lawmakers will listen.

TLDR: We need to build our own stuff. The right-to-repair movement is taking a wrong approach. That approach is begging to lawmakers who couldn't care less. Hoping and begging is a futile strategy. We can't rely on bureaucrats to give a damn. And brands keep spouting that "we listen to our users" crap. Oh, really? Where are the replaceable batteries we have been asking for since 2015, Samsung? Exactly. In...

If you supply an incorrect voltage, it might not run properly at all. It's not like half the voltage means half the speed. Electronic devices are meant to be run at specific voltages.

HD DVDs also used blue lasers, so implementing HD DVD support into a Blu-ray drive would have been trivial for drive vendors. It would probably not have required and hardware changes, only firmware.

Which brand of media and how old are those discs? High quality media should last at least several decades. I have 20 year old recordable CDs and DVDs that are still readable. Disc rot is still better than a HDD head crash because a head crash is a total loss. Optical discs fail slowly, while hard drives and SSDs fail suddenly. This would be a nightmare because it takes away control from the individual. I am not...

Store your film and music archive on a cold storage HDD and you won't have to worry about the SSD failing. HDDs are good for long-term storage if accessed rarely. Optical discs are even more reliable but they have far less capacity per unit, so it becomes more of a hassle. Also, if an SSD or USB stick is worn down, it might refuse further writes. SanDisk and Transcend are known to do this. If you have data that you...

Technically, optical discs are the most reliable archival media since they don't have the points of failure that other storage media has, a head crash or controller failure. Optical discs are separate from the drive, so a defective drive can be replaced. But there is a different risk factor. Not a problem with the discs themselves, but external support. In the mid-2000s, we have seen how quick optical drive vendors can drop a...

Honestly, if it is like that, I'm fine with it. Much better than burst mode, which I pretty much never used. Unwanted burst shot has also been annoying to me. On earlier phones (until Galaxy S5), holding the shutter button was for focusing by default, and burst mode had to be enabled in the settings. Then, for some years, it initiated burst shot and could not be deactivated. But using it as a shortcut for video is far...

Sure. The new cameras are bigger, better, and there are more of them. But the best camera isn't useful if I miss out a moment because I had to switch to video mode before being able to start recording. Also, the upper picture is an S3 mini, which has separate photo and video modes too.

Except that video is in 4:3 and I have to hold the shutter button to keep recording.

Honestly, that doesn't bother me much. The worst offense is that video is a separate camera mode, and the vertical text mode selector. Also, Apple's shutter button is quite small.

Photo (still picture) and video (moving picture) are a fundamental distinction. I don't expect a dedicated button for macro or panorama or slow-motion, but video recording should not be more than one touch away. All camera modes can be categorized into photo and video. Because the iOS-like carousel wheel has only space for at most four modes, you have to scroll to reach a mode that is further away from...

Look at this beautiful camera user interface: screenshot credit: geektech.ie On first glance, you might think "did someone leak the camera user interface of the S25?" - no. Long-term smartphone users may be able to recognize this user interface. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the camera user interface of the Samsung Galaxy S4. Yes, the S four from 2013. Notice how you could access video recording without having...

Perhaps you use shorter strokes than me while scrolling. I use long strokes. I like to race to the top of the page, not walk on eggshells. I'd prefer to use a scrollbar or a "go to top" button, but many apps still don't have those basic features as of 2024. The pull-to-refresh gesture also interferes with zooming. If you try to zoom in while at the top, it might detect that you were trying to pull down to refresh. If there is no...

I am sure most of you are familiar with the "pull-to-refresh" touch screen gesture. You know, that thing that refreshes when you pull against the top. It goes by several names, including "pull-down-to-refresh", "swipe-to-refresh", "pull-to-reload". The pull-to-refresh gesture, has become a de-facto standard in mobile apps. We have accepted it without questioning how useful it actually is, and more importantly...