This rant has nothing of value in it. Don't waste your time reading it. It tries to claim the only smartwatch that's any good is the Apple Watch. When the author tries to address the obvious counter of Garmin's smart watch products the only product discussed is a strawman version of the large and expensive Fenix 8, which leads me to believe they are ignorant of the broad smart watch lineup which includes things like the Vivoactive and Venu, which are absolutely smart watches first and fitness devices second (so is the Fenix 8, in reality).
And of course the Apple watch only syncs with Apple devices. So also implied is iPhone or don't bother.
I wouldn't judge it so harshly. The Garmin side is indeed a wide gaping hole in the story, and I consider them actually well worth bothering with - but a lot of the considerations are interesting and resonate with me. The condemnation of google, how they betrayed the trust of consumers and partners, their fleeting, unstable attention, the damage it caused to companies and to trust in the product, is spot on.
I would have maybe added a mention of the extremely cheap watches (like an Amazfit I got for 49 EUR before I received an AW Ultra as a gift - but Xiaomi/Redmi, Huawei, even Samsung have stuff in that range) as they fit the described "What a Smartwatch Actually Does" use case perfectly at an amazing bargain price. If I really don't need much beyond telling time, showing notifications and maybe counting my steps, anything above 30EUR is going to be a really hard sell. We can add 20 EUR extra budget for a decent tracking of sports and fitness functionality. And the point is that, despite not admitting it even to themselves, really few people actually truly need something beyond these core functions which have stayed the same for a decade. As others observed in the past, the target user of an Apple Watch is someone who imagines themselves active and needing all the fancy stuff, but in reality doesn't.
I really do like my Ultra, and actually use the payment and scuba diving (as a backup) which go beyond the bare basics and set it aside from most competitors, whether cheap or not, but the reality is that I'd never have bought it myself. And I have no idea how the battery life is found acceptable by anyone - it's a joke. I can't leave 3 days without bringing its dedicated charger. One night out of every 3, my sleep quality isn't tracked as it's charging on the nightstand. Anything with less than 10 days (and I'm being generous) is - or should be - ashaming IMHO. Especially as a charging cycle every max 3 days means the nonremovable battery will turn them into e-waste within 6 years. Disgraceful.
My gripe was with the closed eco-system argument against Garmin, but then mentioned about how Apple's also closed eco-system was a good thing because of xyz.
But yet you'll get the same watch experience with Garmin regardless of whether you have an iPhone or a Samsung or Google phone.
Additionally, I agree you can't talk about the obvious merits of another watch brand and simply package it up as a different product that can't be compared to Apple because Apple doesn't have a comparable feature set.
Even if there were no other smartwatches in existence and it was iPhone + Apple Watch or Android + a Casio F91w, I would still take the Casio.
The iPhone experience is simply too inferior [for me / my uses] that even if I did encounter the flaws in Samsung watches (it tells me I have a notification and tracks my exercise), it's an accessory compared to a whole platform I don't care for.
"Google has had a decade, which is an eternity in consumer technology and roughly nine years longer than Google has ever sustained attention on anything that didn't directly monetise your search history"
This is unacceptable behavior, and terrible that anyone would think this way. You're telling me that if Tim Cook wasn't getting on his knees every couple of weeks Apple would end? That's farcical.
And it IS farcical! I mean, look at the FIFA “peace prize.” They literally invented it to give to Trump because he was threatening US World Cup matches. What’s farcical is that this behavior actually apparently works on the president.
Well, he is a demented nitwit with a giant ego who loves ostentatiously tacky gold-plated objects. You wouldn't be surprised if a crow traded you something for a bottlecap. The crow is smarter.
I use Collabora online all the time (via Nextcloud) but I don't quite understand why I'd use this over LibreOffice on the desktop, which feels significantly more powerful than the online tool.
The few screenshots they show make this look similar to the existing online tool, which is fine for a lot of work, but like Word Online hits a wall with more complex documents.
Yes. As you say it maps to a key sequence, not a scancode. Additionally, it maps as a rapid key-down sequence followed immediately by key-up, so it cannot be remapped to a modifier key, such as right control (which it often takes over from on laptops).
There are ways, which involve using a software trap to capture it and then emit right control for a set period of time, but that's a workaround rather than a real fix.
It depends on what you're looking for. I have a Pixel 9a with Graphene on it and wanted to customize my icons which I don't think the stock launcher allows. Went with Lawnchair and set it up mostly the same as the stock Pixel launcher otherwise.
One of the most memorable things I did recently was explore an old Catholic cemetery above Central City, Colorado with my cousin. It was quiet, cool and sunny. Most of the aspens had dropped their leaves but a few stands were still thick with gold. We wandered through rows of headstones and markers in the fall sun and read the stories they told. Some headstones were more than 100 years old; others were quite new. Some were elaborately carved, while many were nothing more than markers with a name and date. Some were simply carved of wood, not likely to last. A few graves had fresh flowers.
The cemetery told stories of humanity. Most were universal. One headstone was for 5 children under 10, all who died in 1918 or 1919. It seemed likely to be the influenza pandemic, though we couldn't be certain. Another had a short lament from a father for his lost son which led to me opening up to my cousin about a friend I had just lost, who had previously lost his son. Something I needed to talk about but struggled to.
Cemeteries are very human. There is nothing offensive about a memorial for the dead. And in my experience children don't find them scary or morbid at all. And as others have said if they bother you personally then don't go to them.
You can sort of remap it on windows, but it's somewhat limited in my experience. It shows up as a keyboard chord rather than a simple button press. I think it's LWin+LShift+F23. I ended up simply disabling it entirely on my gaming laptop. I've been meaning to see if it's easier to make it useful on KDE Plasma desktop but haven't yet (though I did remap the HP Omen button to pull down Yakuake instead).
And of course the Apple watch only syncs with Apple devices. So also implied is iPhone or don't bother.
Don't bother with this blog post.
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