He’s just found gold, so he’s going through a range of emotions.

My mate Gary who puts them on his enormous Plex server. He’s a good lad.

Non-American here.

I don’t dislike America. I was a teenager in the ‘90s, when the culture was peaking in influence here in the UK, so I have great nostalgia for American things (which really helps when playing the daily NYT games). I’ve visited a few times, and always enjoyed my time there.

But I am real fucking tired of the American influence on the internet, on politics, and on attitudes around the world.

I’m tired of the American view being the default on social media, because the majority of social media sites are American, populated by Americans.

I’m tired of saying something that would completely uncontroversial outside the US that attracts a rash of people bitching at you because it’s not normal over there. Like letting our cats outside. I once said something on Reddit about my cat getting killed by a car, and got a bunch of replies from people telling me how irresponsible I am for letting her go outside.

I don’t use TikTok, but my wife does, and part of her kinda wants the US ban to go ahead, so that her feed is a bit more balanced towards Europe. And I get that.

:edit: I accept that this isn’t the fault of individual Americans, and hold no ill-will towards them. It’s down to the vast majority of global tech wealth being held in the US, giving the illusion that the whole internet is an American thing.

I also accept that this is rank hypocrisy coming from a Brit. If we’d had the internet 250 years ago, the whole world would be speaking English now, as opposed to most of it.

Folks ITT

Yes, obviously, but that thing has been everywhere over the past month or so. I’m just surprised that they were completely unaware.

I mean, today’s 10,000 and all that, but you’re on a technology forum and haven’t heard of the Rabbit R1?

Until last week it was running Sonoma. Then I put Mint on it, which somehow buggered up the macOS partition.

Long story short, it’s not run High Sierra for a couple of years now, not since I discovered OCLP.

Speaking personally, I don’t think they’re dumbed down. They’re pretty straightforward to use, sure, but they do what I need them to.

In terms of the hardware; I have a 2011 MacBook Pro at home that’s still just about as solid as the day I bought it. The battery’s dead, but that’s to be expected for its age. I’m typing this on a 2014 Mac mini that’s running the latest macOS perfectly through OCLP. My main computer is a 15" M2 MacBook Air that is a genuinely impressive machine. If anything, Apple have kinda shot themselves in the foot, making devices that last far longer than their software support allows.

I quite believe this.

Was looking on /r/Apple last week and was shocked by the number of people who are apparently full on free market champions or Apple shareholders or both. That place has always had it’s fair share of them, but they seem to have been ramped up to the max now.

I’ve been a user of Apple devices since I got my first MacBook in 2007. I now have an iPhone, iPad, a selection of Macs of various ages, and a couple of Apple TVs. As much as I’d like to switch to Linux, I don’t really see it happening because I like Apple’s hardware too much.

With all that in mind, I think the EU are doing sterling work. Shame my country voted to leave it…

Landlords are vermin, AI is peddled by vermin, and spambots are vermin.

I don’t think the cost is too high at all. But I also don’t think it’s a consumer device right now. It’s a dev kit with none of the cost savings of production at scale.

To be fair, they have a similar problem with iPad, but they can flog those at a price point where many people are happy to grab one to see how they can make it fit.

The overarching opinion of iPads is that they’re just big iPhones, and because they can share apps, it took a long time to get to where we are now, where most iPad apps are actually developed for it. But ultimately, they’re still iPhone apps, just rejigged to take advantage of the bigger screen. As someone with an iPad and a MacBook, who’s had a really good go at making an iPad my main computer, the platform just isn’t there. So if I do use it, it’s always in the knowledge that what I’m doing is probably easier on my Mac.

VisionPro feels the same to me. Sure, I could surround myself with work, but pinching and tapping nothing in the air has zero tactility and is far less satisfying than clicking a mouse and typing on a keyboard. And comes with having to wear a headset. So in the end, most people will just do the work on their Mac.

Like many others who no longer use Twitter or Facebook, one of the biggest impacts to me is suddenly not having a reasonably proactive way to contact companies for support. It’s amazing how many companies have offloaded their support staff to half a dozen overworked social media operators. Try phoning and you’ll get “busier than usual” phone lines, and if you can even find an email address it’ll auto-reply to say that it’s no longer monitored.

It’s a shit show.

I use Opencore Legacy Patcher to run unsupported macOS on my older Macs. They used to have an excellent Reddit group that was easily searchable and rammed full of really good advice on how to fix common issues.

A couple of years ago they shuttered the group and moved everything over to Discord, and it’s been hell ever since trying to figure out how to fix something if it goes wrong.

You search for your issue, find someone talking about it, then have to pick through the dozens of replies either side to try and figure out if there’s anything useful. There are dedicated support threads now, but hardly anyone uses them, so they’re not helpful.

I really, really hate Discord as a support medium, and can’t for the life of me work out why the OCLP mods chose it over Reddit.

I won’t hold my breath on Apple using this. It’d destroy their upsell from 8gb process in one fell swoop.

The trouble with YT Premium is how much they’re charging for it.

We used a VPN to get Ukrainian family YTP for a fraction of the price they charge here in the UK. We pay something like £4 a month now for both of our accounts. That would be the better part of £20 a month if we’d done it legit. Fuck that noise.

Sure, it comes with YT Music, but I’ve literally never used that. I have Apple Music and an iPod. So £20 a month JUST TO REMOVE ADS.

Nah, fuck ‘em.

Stronks go up

Froot, actually, my good man.

I’ve given UTM a go, and it looks really promising for the kind of things I need it to do. Thanks!