Today after reading this I’m sure I’m taking crazy pills…

I’ve been a user since Dos 5.0 and Windows 3.0.

Today I mostly use Linux Mint on my dual boot laptops and need to convert my main PC over to dual boot Mint next. I rarely boot into windows at home and if it wasn’t for proprietary software at work running only on Windows I would have been done sooner.

I was mostly able to go from XP to 7 and avoided Vista and 8 altogether. Windows 10 was sort of ok with the ability to go back to a Windows 7 control panel when needed but it always felt half baked and unfinished to me.

I’ve just not been interested in 11 at all and the tidbits I’m hearing about Co-pilot reminds me of not only Clipit but the forcing of IE/ Edge constantly on user’s especially after every larger update but to mention resetting the default PDF reader to edge. In a work environment of 20 plus shop PC’s I was managing for low tech skill employees it was a pain in the ass chasing down the changes that were not made on my behalf.

What will be the Co-pilot’s flavor of this new round of BS from Microsoft? The forcing of a cloud account is another headache I don’t want to deal with either.

I will say Mint just mostly does what I need for my web browsing and general productivity needs without the constant game of trying to keep it the way I want it versus what MS wants for me with every update.

I’m at the stage of get off my lawn and screaming at a cloud in the sky next. That cloud is MS these days when adding in the annoyances of their Android keyboard *Swiftkey injecting Co-pilot and Bing into my searches. I’ve not played in Office 365 for a bit now but I can only imagine it’s just as bad now.

I’ve been becoming irritated lately with search in other apps being taken over by their flavor of AI. I use the Microsoft Swift keyboard on my phone and it’s now trying to inject their AI search results over my Google searches in Firefox and the results take me to Bing.

Then today I was watching a video on Instagram and the screen went off. I lost of the video as the app refreshed when I turned on the screen again. I tried to search for it but now IG search has been turned into a Meta AI search. It offers AI answers instead of the videos I was looking and it seems like it’s the only option.

WTF are they messing up search across the platforms? Get off my lawn!

I’m impressed. It speaks to the strength of the Apple brand. Meta should benefit if this becomes the next thing despite the differences.

Sure seems like a great way to avoid severance in those places it’s required.

Amazing how the companies that “care about employees” don’t care so much these days…

That’s pretty cool.

It’s been awhile since I last used a iPhone 13 Pro Max for work but I do recall the constant announcements there with previous models when Apple would announce yet another great “new” feature for iPhone that Android users already had for a year or two at that stage.

Samsung also made some good media campaigns on the announcements and used the lineups for new iPhones fairly well in their advertising.

I will say I thought the iPhone 13 camera was pretty goof, the battery life was too, and within the Apple walled garden the texting of videos was nice. The overall user experience for me wasn’t a good fit. I like to browse the web without ads and watch videos without them too. Some of that can be done with a iPhone but it’s clunky and the web browsers are just safari.

There’s other customizable options I prefer that I can do with Android that isn’t an option yet for Apple but I do know they will be able to at some stage.

Overall the whole apple vs android has been great for consumers. If it wasn’t for the competition between Apple and the Android products neither group would be as far along.

I think this was the stock that the eventual “he ducks” crowd came from

I recall the early days of PC chat services like ICQ, MSN, AOL and the clients like Pigeon and Trillian to try to have them all in one place. It didn’t always seem to work the best for long.

It’s too bad BBM took way too long to open up to others beyond BB devices. They had some of my favorite emojis and they had for a time a big user base that they could have kept in their services.

I recall some pretty bold statements being made that Apple couldn’t stop this reverse engineering from working ever in the early days of tech reporting on this.

Even as a Android user I thought this was pretty bold claims to make as this whole walled garden is a big part of the Apple brand and they will need to protect this as they really don’t have leading software inovation and they are no longer ahead on tech advances or specs that made the first couple of iPhones ground breaking.

Since they are a couple to a few years behind the Android features and specs, they need to protect the special brand identity above all else so I expected them to tweak things to break anything they don’t want to have happen to their systems.

I can’t blame them at all from a business prospective. While I don’t like or enjoy their products, they had built a great brand that sells itself for those that “want to be different” but actually the same as all of their friends.

I feel like an outsider on these debates. I totally agree we should be able to own forever.

In my case I find there is so much new TV and movies I rarely go back to re-watch shows or movies so owning them isn’t on my radar. It’s a challenge just to watch a whole series I find.

I’m wondering how often do people beyond kids re-watch movies and TV shows? Kids seem to be able to rewatch the same movies several times a day…

The real truth!

But I’m told by the right that’s the best way to get every last drop of adrenochrome out of them!

What do you mean? They used the best Saran wrap film they could find for this one…

That pan should would look a lot better with American Freedum!

Most here will recommend Linux Mint and it’s what I use now after trying many different versions over the years. There’s a simplicity to Mint that just works especially well for those just surfing and doing office tasks. I’ve given away old work laptops with just mint installed as most people just need a web browser and it works great for that.

MS office can be used in your web browser or you can switch to Libre Office which should open most of your office files.

If you have a old laptop or computer I recommend trying to install Mint there first to try it out. It’s pretty easy to start out there first before trying dual boot. You might be surprised at how quick your older laptop works with Mint in the process.

I use dual boot on my machines but most of the use these days is to get to a web browser so I find I rarely boot into windows now.

You will find Firefox is the default web browser but you can add Chrome to Mint if that’s your browser of choice.

Many will say what about the privacy issues with Chrome but many still use it. I’ve switched back to Firefox myself and I like it better for my Android phone.

Good luck on your journey!

I recall at one point Windows 10 was going to be the last version of the OS and they would just maintain that. I’m wondering if they said that to get the last of the Windows 7 and XP users to finally move to 10?

Coming up to 16 years since I cut the cord and hardly anyone I know that is younger has cable. It’s internet and then streaming.

My father when he passed in 2013 was paying $160/mth for old HD cable for his old 35" RCA tube set before I bought him a LCD TV that required a upgrade to modern HD channels. He didn’t have internet with that either. So while they were scamming him for this old 480p HD packages he wasn’t alone I’m sure.

I will say at new year’s I was at someone’s place that only had internet and for the group of us he brought out a HD Amazon antenna to watch the ball drop at midnight on local broadcast TV.

The amount of commercials was jarring. I’m not looking forward to when they bring those to streaming services that are currently hemorrhaging billions.

In some ways it makes sense for someone so full of shit he must be overflowing with it.

I seen a bit of this interview yesterday. The article doesn’t cover it all. As soon as these 2 knuckleheads started spewing airports and it was Biden that said this I was confused as this was something Trump said a few years back. Didn’t they know? They ride the media for skewing things and they weren’t even aware of how Trump was called out in the same media for this some time back.

Below this fellow breaks down the double standard in more detail than the article does. It covers how Rogan and his Guest said no one should listen to Biden and how he is unfit for office due to this airport thing. Then when the producer points out to Rogan that Biden is referring to what Trump previously said, it wasn’t a big deal all of a sudden to Rogan and the guest.

Trump gets a “whoopsie doodle” pass and Trump is still the better choice in his mind I’m sure. Not saying Biden is a gem of a rose but with how hard the right are trying to pin anything on Biden and failing, Trump is still a rotten to the core choice for endless reasons.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1LANk2O4oh/?igsh=MWYwMDF5YXk0ZjJnNw==

My first thought was:

“he’s quoting Hitler almost daily now, this isn’t setting off any red flags?”