I have owned an iPhone since the very first one. Never have I used a case. I should not need to purchase an accessory to use my phone. The option should be to add things to the phone to increase functionality, not to resolve a bug.
No color filters. No screen protector. It’s brand new out of the box. It’s blue. Honestly, I’m shocked this hasn’t been reported. Maybe I got a dud.
I would like to see more investment in informative media. Social media has been one of the best sources to get information about local events, news, and alerts.
Speaking from an American’s perspective, I would like to see federated networks organized similarly to the United States. There should be one main federal instance, then a sub instance for states, eventually down to micro instances for neighborhoods or zip codes.
My complaint about “corporate social media” has been its need to make money from advertising driven by engagement. This means I miss tons of posted information by family, friends, businesses, bands, restaurants, record shops, farmers markets, city council members, police departments, reporters, etc.
I still want to connect with these users but getting them on board with the fediverse is an uphill battle if they’re only in it for the memes. Creating a platform that makes some tangible sense to people, I think, would drive more adoption. If you want to connect with your city, join cityname.state.US.verse. This wouldn’t exclude the creation of other networks like I dunno… nestle.corp.verse or tiktok.social.verse.
I genuinely can not find a single thing to like about it. It feels like development was stopped shortly after they finished the wire framing. Plex and QuMagie are significantly better (and they suck).
I’m not blaming my hardware or Elestio for the archaic user interface. It looks like it was developed in the 90s and never made it out of alpha.
Thanks again! I just moved a publicly shared photo album from Google Drive to Ente and it’s great. Just the fact that you can sort images properly is a relief. I can’t believe how horrible photos sites are in the 2020s. Ente certainly has a lot of missing features but I’ll be using it for stuff like sharing (less than 5GB) photo albums with friends and family.
As I said, I already tried that. Immich is a hard no.
Frankly, it’s shocking so many people recommend such a really bad photo application.
Ente
Thanks!
Appreciate that. Archaic, no?
Mastodon seems like it could work relatively well.
The other side of the issue though is for social media to feel “social” now, people, consciously or not, want to feel connected to brands and advertising and popular culture. Social media, now more than television or magazines used to, generates our water-cooler moments. It generates the content we sit right here and discuss - it generates memes. These fringe alternatives aren’t popular because the they lack gravity. Gravity comes from investment. Investment comes from potential; typically, potential to make money.
But yeah, group ware, et al, could work for smaller groups. The friction there is getting people to install, and give a crap about, another app on their phone.
What used to be apps for catching up with your friends and family are now algorithmic nightmares that constantly interrupt you with suggested content and advertisements that consistently outweigh the content of people that you choose to follow.
In the case of Facebook, the decline is either reflected in — or directly facilitated by — two specific features: People You May Know and the News Feed.
Yep. I was screaming to bring back the chronological timeline when they pushed out the “beta testing”. I actually stopped using social media regularly because I was missing events that were happening in my neighborhood. There was no point once they chose what to show me. But, I’m not the target demographic for their platform.
Someone who wants to interact with their community and keep in touch with their friends and family is not what social media is for. It’s for selling ads. It’s for maintaining your attention. It’s for engagement and making you feel a way they’ve determined will keep you scrolling.
And honestly, it’s tough to complain. The more successful a platform becomes, the more content is uploaded and viewed. This doesn’t cost them nothing. Without charging to use or upload to the platform, they have to sell ads. The more engaging the ads are, the more successful business are with posting those ads. So they double down and post more ads - they engage more with the audience the platform has directed towards them. It just keeps snowballing from there until the platform no longer represents what it did initially.
The actual problem is that no one is willing to pay for “social media”. They’ll pay out the butt for streaming services and two-day delivery but connecting with real people and getting unbiased investigative news, not so much.
Fair enough. Plex may not have the bells and whistles but it’s simple and intuitive to use. I’ve also tried the QuMagie app on my QNAP which does have all those features but found it to be a bit more cumbersome than it was worth.
I tried Google Photos briefly as well and was very shocked at how bad it is, compared to Apple Photos. It took me several days just to figure out how to delete more than one picture at a time. I have to assume it’s much more robust on an Android than on an iPhone but even their web interface was horrible.
I don’t know why people recommend Immich. I found it to be the most bare-bone photo app I’ve ever used. It feels ten+ years old. I tried really hard to make it work but Plex photos is about 20% better and it still sucks.
Second sentence:
It has a 4.4mm headphone jack to go with the more conventional 3.5mm type.
4.4mm is for balanced audio output. This audience for this device is audiophiles.
301 terabits = 37 terabytes… PER SECOND.
I don’t want buttons to do anything. In previous generations, the volume up and down buttons were somewhat useful and the power button would just turn the screen on and off. Now these buttons are open in apps, taking pictures, turning on lights, doing things. In your pocket. I’m very happy they’ve added the option to disable them entirely. I’d be happier if it were the old toggle mute button which made sense.