HP printers.
Really HP anything on principle, but their printers take the cake for anti-user bullshit.
Their laptops are good. But the company is shitty.
That being said, they’re still thriving for a reason. I was trying to convince my cousin to get rid of his HP subscription printer and he won’t. He says it is cheap and easy to pay the subscription and his school aged kids can print the colour pictures they want when they remember they had an assignment at midnight. He just gets ink replacement posted to his house before he runs out and he says it works out great for him.
HP laptops are bottom-of-the-barrel trash and have been for at least 15 years at this point. HP will purposely hide screws underneath rubber skid pads and stickers, requiring you, the owner of said laptop, to damage your own laptop in order to open it up. And you will have to open it up, because it is a piece of shit and it will break. But good luck fixing it, because they won’t even be able to sell you the parts you need, presumably because they’re sourced from whatever Chinese factory is the cheapest at any given time. Fuck HP and fuck HP laptops especially.
What a sign of the times. Being subscribed to a fucking printer
Adobe Creative Cloud. It’s really expensive, and once you stop paying, you lose everything.
No wonder why it’s some of the most pirated software in the world.
Losing access to a work I put hours and days, sometimes months of my life was the main reason I now absolutely refuse any non-open source products. My advisor/colleagues sometimes say “university gives it for free”, or “we pay all that money for this softwares”, but I am not going to use them even if they are slightly better than open source.
You’re making great progress.
Any Apple product, mostly the iPhones. If you live in Latin America, those things are more a burden than something useful. They are too expensive, too fragile, and too Eye-catching for burglars.
They eats up your phone plan in hours just by existing, you can’t borrow a charger because everyone around you has Android. The simplest things to do on Android are an ordeal on Iphone.
The only way it can be worth it is if you have all Apple products (iMac, AppleTV, iPad, etc). But for that, you better be prepared to pawn your soul.
The simplest things to do on Android are an ordeal on Iphone.
Can you give us any examples?
- sigh *
Ok, let me see. Again, this is my experience and my opinion, so some things may not be a problem for you at all, for example:
Testing self-developed games or apps. I develop games. To test them on android I just need to create the APK, pass it to the phone, install and done. I may be wrong, but on Apple it’s not that simple.
File management. Many times I use my phone as a Pendrive, others I want to save my music to listen offline. Of the latter I remember that on my old iPod it was a headache to transfer music from my non-Apple PC to the device, transferring other files was just impossible, and it seems to me that that has not changed in Iphone, but I don’t know for sure, since I don’t handle an iPhone.
Going back. All modern Android phones have three on-screen buttons, the order varies, but in general they are: one to see all open apps and close the ones you don’t need or all of them, one to exit the app completely, and one to go back to the previous tab in an app. The iPhones I have been allowed to handle do not have any of the three buttons, the back button is the one I miss the most.
The first paragraph, I can get along with and understand where you’re coming from.
The second paragraph, could you elaborate what you mean by “eat up your phone plan just by existing”? I personally use an iPhone and have had very normal data usage rates that is accurately tracked through both the phone and my carrier’s app.
Also regarding borrowing a charger, they just moved to USB-C so that will be a non-issue a few years down the road when lightning is phased out.
Well, it is necessary to clarify that I speak not so much from my own experience but from those close to me (family and friends who have or have had iPhones, I have only had iPods). With regard to the phone plan, the people I know who have had iPhones always tend to have no data to browse, because the data on their phone runs out surprisingly faster than on Android phones. I don’t know what the technical details would be, I suspect it has to do with processes running in the background that require internet.
With the chargers, on the one hand the thing is that most iPhone phones circulating in Latin America are older, so none have the Type-C port that is now Standard. And for the iPhones that do have it, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think those iPhones have a particularity that only cables manufactured by Apple can effectively charge the iPhone, while any other cable either can not charge it as quickly or can even damage it. I think something similar happens with the Nintendo Switch, that its port is Type-C but only cables made by Nintendo work, but I insist in saying that I could be wrong.
To conclude, I must say that this is just my opinion according to a specific context. I am sure that in more developed countries like the United States, Japan or European countries, the experience of having an iPhone is as normal as with any other phone, or even better.
Gotcha. It could be entirely possible that the anecdotal experiences regarding phone data that you’ve heard could be simply because they’re heavier users or that they purchased a smaller quota. From personal experience, I really have not noticed any background processes that suck up data.
Regarding the type-C cable though, I have actually experienced that problem where cheaper cables do not work for charging. This part is PURE SPECULATION on my end, but I suspect Apple stops cheaper cables from charging on the off chance that it increase the risk of a fire (cheap cables = thinner wires = more resistance = more heat) because when stuff like that makes the news, the headline is typically “iPhone caught fire while charging” and not “Cheap cable caused a fire.” I spent a lil more on a third party USB-C cable that was higher quality and rated to charge up to 65W and have had no problems with it. I’m not sure what the economic situation is in Latin America, but where I am (Malaysia), I spent about RM60 (which is roughly equivalent to $13) on the cable that worked compared to RM20 for the cable that didn’t, just to give you a point of reference.
Should probably point out thatbthey were forced to move to USB-C
Sure, but whether they were forced to move over or did it out of the (non-existent) goodwill of their hearts wasn’t the point of contention in the discussion and results in a similar outcome. The initial commenter pointed out that they couldn’t share a charger and I just mentioned that this should be a non-issue once lightning is phased out.
Considering they made it so that you need apple issued usb-c, and have problems with normal one (probably fixed now because people obviously complained). I’d say avoiding it is a good choice.
Not true. Check my other comment on this thread where I talked about my experience with 3rd party USB-C cables
A phone plan with a phone. You pay more over time and you get stuck with a contract.
Buy a phone and get a plan from a MVNO. Your monthly plan will be better and cheaper. Also since you own the phone when a better plan appears you can just switch.
Kids
Any Google smartwatch. I bought 2 at one point. A sport and a dress watch. Both only lasted about a year before the software rendered them useless. I’m now back on analogue watches.
I absolutely loved my LG Android watch from a couple years ago. Used it constantly
But then a major update for Android Wear was released, and it completely changed the UX and UI. It was absolutely annoying to use suddenly
Stopped using it a week after the release. Never had an android wear watch since
I have a pixel watch I bought around its launch (IIRC) and it’s still going fine today. The only issue I’ve had is, since starting farming, the little dial can gum up a bit, but it can be cleaned.
Roku anything
I have a tv from them and one day the PBS kids app just stopped working. I contacted customer support and they just told me it was the app developer’s fault, nothing to be done. Waited months thinking it would eventually resolve but never did.
And recently where they:
- Blocked people from using their tvs until they accepted a new agreement and
- Filed for a patent that defines how they can start overlaying ads on top of other connected devices over hdmi
Glad I shut off wifi to my tv years ago and plugged in a separate smart tv hdmi dongle. And not getting anywhere near anything that says Roku on the packaging again.
I’ve never had a Roku TV, but I’ve been using two of their HDMI connected devices for years.
I’ve never had an issue, but one is too old and needs replacing. What alternatives would you suggest I have a look at?
We’ve used the Amazon firestick before and it worked well. Currently we use the google chromecast/tv dongle for both ours tvs.
Nice thing about the google one is that it makes any Google movie/tv show purchases available, and Amazon movie purchases are still available through the Amazon video app.
But they’re pretty comparable. Depends mostly on what ecosystem you’re in or would prefer to be in.
Tile countertops. Our house came with them and they are terrible. Who the fuck thought of these?
Counterpoint: granite countertops. You can’t see when or where they’re dirty.
I do also hate granite countertops. They are ugly! I do keep one granite slab top cart because the cool surface is great for working pastry or chocolate.
Best countertop we ever encountered in a rental was that Corian stuff, I’m sure it terrible for the environment but it was seamless and wonderful. Second place the old old old Formica counters in my old house. Those I could clean with bleach and they survived more than 70 years, so tough.
Can you elaborate on what about them sucks so bad? I don’t know that I’ve ever seen them in real life.
The little grout space between the tiles…can’t clean the fucking things well enough and shit always gets in there
Don’t ever buy Sony wireless buds. They stop working right around the one year mark. Customer service is horrible.
Frank’s cancer pills. They gave you cancer.
I don’t get how he’s made them for so long.
That guy is such a wiener; the wurst kind of shit sack.
A real jerk.
Any purism product, overpriced, outdated and their hardware basically breaks when connecting it to external devices.
Huawei, Xiaomi and Samsung phones
- main reason: anti user freedom, and locking you in to their system, it’s extremely hard to wipe out your phone in order to sell it if you have a Samsung account linked to your phone, and they make it hard to flash a custom ROM, imagine buying a phone with your own money and you still need the manufacturer consent to do what you want with it…
- confusing and slow UI
- Ads everywhere on the UI
- bloated with games and useless apps
- they don’t take security seriously at all ( slow updates )
- short update period
- they lie in their marketing by giving big numbers ( battery capacity and camera quality for example )
And last but not least, they kill your apps
Well, I have lineageos on my XM phones (rmx4x and mi11lite5g) and they’re great except for the reliability of the 11 lite. And before you ask about it, yes the mi unlock is terrible, but after you sell your soul to Xiaomi, you can unlock it and have a good enough phone.
I’m still waiting for a viable competitor to the Galaxy Tab S line. Literally no one makes a flagship tablet that can compete with Samsung’s build quality on those, they’re pretty much the only ~11in OLED game in town too.
Mi pad-s exist, which are near flagship, but of course mi unlock and no oled.
Cloud and “serverless” solutions
I gotta disagree on this one. I cut my workload in half by shifting our infrastructure to the cloud, and now I can spend my time focusing on more worthwhile endeavors.
Care to elaborate? Every cloud “solution” I’ve been pitched is just a super expensive way to bottleck everything at the router.
Anything made by Razer, any Google hardware
Any Skullcandy headphones. Shit quality. They just break
Any AmazFit smartwatches. They look okay and have good battery life (for smartwatches). They’re shit in every other way.
Any Skullcandy Headphones… they just break
I’ve had 3 pairs of them so far. First one held up really well (I think it was their cheapest model), until the connection got a bit shitty. Second pair, the Casette, lasted for about 2-3 years, until it broke around the side. (y’know, the weakpoint of any pair of headphones?). I’m on a Hesh Evo rn and have no complaints currently. That is subject to change, however, as I’ve only had them for less than a year.
What headphones would you recommend? From what I’ve seen, they all have a weakpoint, making them susceptible to breakage pretty easily.
Sennheiser makes sturdy, and good sounding (IMO) headphones. You can buy anything too if it breaks or wears out to fix it when needed.
This means there are lots on the second hand market too.
Agreed. I have a pair of Sennheisers and I love that the cables disconnect from the headphones themselves-- that way if the cable ever gets pinched, I don’t have to replace the whole unit. The ear cups and head band are also replaceable and have a large 3rd party market.
