Cost, and having something dedicated to the space. Maybe also that it controls your smart home stuff so you want it to stay in place and not be taken out of the home. I can see something comparable to an Apple TV with a built in display/speakers/camera. Don’t need much power, but something that can run your streaming services, YouTube for cooking videos, and a FaceTime camera for calls would be neat.

Yep, lots of things like cars, home appliances, home theatre components, etc. get regular, if not yearly, updates even when some of those things have a 10+ year lifecycle for the average consumer. It’s not like Apple stops supporting devices after a couple years. With things like the Apple TV that aren’t updated as often I end up putting off buying something that I want because, like you said, it might already be 2+ years old and I wouldn’t want to feel behind when the new one comes out less than a year later. I’d rather see smaller updates more often so there’s always something recent when I’m looking to buy.

I might argue that moving to just USB-C for the 2016 era MacBook pros was a little premature. In 2018 I opted for a refurbished 2015 largely because I wanted the variety of ports, and it seems they’ve stepped back a bit on the latest releases. Now though, if they didn’t move to USB-C I’d say they’re waiting too long. The issue with adopting new ports is most customers already have a plethora of devices with the existing standard, so many tend to carry on with that momentum rather than adopt the new thing and it’s growing pains. At some point though we need to rip off the bandaid and standardize on the best option. EU regulations are a big step to making this happen, and Apple is the kind of company that’s able to push the market based on what they support in their devices.

Remember the benefits of USB-C are that you can have one(or a few cables) that scale between 5 W and 240 W charging, USB 2 to Thunderbolt 4 data rates(plus things like audio/video, etc.), and even if you’re limited by the cable or the device at each end, there’s still some backwards compatibility that provides some base functionality rather than being completely worthless because the ports don’t match. You’re better off being able to connect a USB-C product at USB-2 speeds than have a micro-USB Super Speed cable/product that doesn’t connect at all.

Either way, people are going to complain. Some that there’s little innovation and things are too much the same as they were years ago. Others that the new innovation breaks compatibility and they need to replace cables/accessories to stay up to date.

Maybe, though it’s shitty that we got two years, then four more. I held out since the iPhone 7 for the 12 mini, but I feel like 4 years is a good run and I’d like to upgrade this year. I also feel like if they keep the S.E. line going then every other year is better. 4 years feels rough for people looking to purchase in the second half of that cycle.

I think there’s a middle ground there, though it depends on the kind of game. Something like a first person shooter is a non-starter on iPhone to me due to the smaller display and touchscreen controls. Something like a turn based strategy I like better on mobile because being able to tap through commands and menus is nicer than a controller to me. Maybe also a stronger push for some of the games to have cross platform saves, like being able to play on my Apple TV at home, but also do some grinding a few minutes at a time while I’m out.

Really, I think Apple TV is where the real gaming potential is. It might not match consoles in power, but it’s also in a lot of households that might not have bought a console but will buy a couple good games on Apple TV.

My wife wanted to upgrade so we both got new Series 9 this year. Her Series 3 went to her mom as an upgrade to a Fitbit, and I figure I’ll keep wearing mine at work until it gets smashed or otherwise dies. All of our Macs are well past macOS support, but no real plans to upgrade until an old one actually dies, or some killer feature prompts an upgrade.

This is what I was going to say. It’s good to know if a message chain is going over Apples E2E encryption or regular SMS that’s completely transparent to the carrier. There’s also a fundamental technological difference that allows group messages over iMessage, but not over SMS. iOS 18 supporting RCS helps a lot, but I still think it’s a good idea to have an easy way to differentiate iMessages vs RCS vs SMS due to security and functional differences.

On the other hand, console generations often provide a hard cut-off for compatibility. You can’t always use previous gen accessories with a new console, and those accessories are usually only comparable with that console. I can’t play my Wii games on my switch, nor use the controllers and other accessories. This is kind of inherent to consoles in that they’re meant to be a consistent platform that allows developers to maximize performance by knowing that each console is going to be pretty much the same. With iOS though the software evolved from the idea of desktop software that runs on a variety of devices. Developers develop with the idea that their software will be used on devices with differing hardware and performance. It’s a completely different paradigm. With computers, people expect that the one they buy this year will be better than the one available last year, but they also don’t feel the need to buy every revision(aside specific performance heavy use cases), they decide on their own replacement schedule. That’s the paradigm that the iPhone came from, regular iterations, occasional major revisions, and long term support/backwards compatibility with previous models and accessories.

I feel like that’s a bad example as consoles tend to be household items rather than individual ones. Regular releases mean that people can choose their upgrade schedule and always have a recently released product available. Good example is cars, manufacturers release a new version of each model every year, but the differences are fairly minor. Then every 5-10 years they do a major revision to the model that’s a significant change. This way most people don’t feel put off when they buy a 2-3 year old model and a revision come out the following year, but a person can buy a new model after 5-10 years and feel like they got a significant upgrade from the previous one.

Apple does have a setting for regular, automatic, local backups. Though I wish they could do that while also automatically backing up to iCloud. My iCloud backup is under 5 but that’s partly because lots of stuff is already stored in iCloud. I think the real issue for a lot of people is when they have multiple devices, like work and personal phones and/or iPad or two, that all want to backup to that 5 GB. I always thought a compromise like the first 5 GB of a devices iCloud backup doesn’t count towards the iCloud storage. This solves the multiple device backups issue and still keeps a modest base amount of storage so people with just one device still have an incentive to purchase additional storage.

I use the iCloud Photo Library, and seems worthwhile to me, though my photo library isn’t huge and has lots of stupid work pics. Frees up my phone storage, still have access anywhere I’ve got internet access. Big thing to me though is backups, iCloud is my really essential data, e-mails, contacts, family photos. That gets automatically synced up to iCloud, back down to my iMac, and that iMac gets backed up to my UnRaid server and a Time Capsule. So without any input from me, all my photos get backed up independently, with redundancy and versioning as well as to the cloud. That’s a pretty neat system to me.

I’ve heard part of the issue is Qualcomm’s licensing is a percentage of the devices selling cost, so putting the same cellular chip in a MacBoom Pro costs a lot more than putting it in an iPhone. If Apple can make their own chips and doesn’t have to pay that fee it becomes a lot more affordable.

Canadian here, I guess offer directions to the airport so they can get a flight to British Columbia?

Even better would be if more devices used the lithium ion cylindrical cells. Higher power and energy density, while also being a standardized form factor that can be switched out as needed.

This is entirely regional though. The further you are from the equator, the more seasonal variation there is in sunlight levels, and heating/cooling loads. Around here our solar production is minimized during the season when our energy needs are maximized. We also don’t have variable rate billing, though we only get partial credit for excess generation, so battery storage will never pay for itself until something changes.

My utility gives a 50% credit on excess generation. Thing there is the utility is still the one taking responsibility for having the capacity and scalability to respond to variation in demand and production. When I was getting quotes, adding storage would have doubled the cost of the system for a day or two worth of storage. Probably would cost double again to have a system that would keep up through the winter.

Eclecticlight has some of the best articles I’ve seen in terms of how Apple’s “it just works” actually does or doesn’t work under the hood. MacRumors forums are one of the better places I’ve found to interact with the community for those niche issues/use cases that only come up for a handful of people. The Mac Geek Gab podcast is another place where enthusiasts can come together to share tips tricks and cool stuff found.

I’d be technically impractical, but I’ve always thought there should be a system for weighing of individual users feedback. I follow a lot of trade related communities and 100% see a lot of issues where bad, wrong, and sometimes just plain dangerous advice gets a flood of upvotes from the amateur community while the handful of downvotes from qualified individuals gets drowned out. I think OP’s idea of making upvotes easy and downvotes difficult exacerbates this kind of issue.

I can also see the issue where a mod team simply blesses the users that they agree with and it just reinforces the echo chamber effect that is already an issue in some communities.

Canada recently stopped charging interest on their student loans, that goes a long way to affordability. The other thing though is just plain cost of education. It can be cheaper to get a 4-year degree from a Canadian University than take one year of a comparable program in the US.

Something kind of unique about UnRaid is the JBOD plus parity array. With this you can keep most disks spun down while only the actively read/written disks need to be spun up. Combine with an SSD cache for your dockers/databases/recent data and UnRaid will put a lot less hours(heat, vibration) on your disks than any raid equivalent system that requires the whole array to be spun up for any disk activity. Performance won’t be as high as comparably sized RAID type arrays, but as bulk network storage for backups, media libraries, etc. it’s still plenty fast enough.