100% this. I paid the increasingly common "privacy and control premium" for a Valve Index (which I'm very happy with) to avoid the entanglements of borrowing a headset from Meta for a large, up front, non-refundable fee.
Valve makes great unlocked hardware. I don't see the same argument working with Apple, however. Can't even upgrade an SSD in a recent mac not to mention individually cryptographically signed components like cameras and touch pads which can't be replaced without a visit to an Apple-certified repair person. Renting hardware indeed.
I bought an iPod Mini in '04 that I used for a summer photography course as an external hard drive. An actual external hard drive would have been cheaper, but after my summer trip was over and I no longer needed the additional storage space — hey, I had an iPod Mini! I copied photos onto it from a CF card via USB. It was literally drag and drop. There was no iTunes gating. You're just... wrong here.
1. "A does the same thing as B. Don't you see how wrong you are?" How does this make B better than A? Your position literally makes no sense, and I am super duper not an Apple apologist.
> It's hard to really gauge the size of something from just measurements.
I know some folks already hinted at this in the comments, but it's beyond bizarre to me to read this quote on HN. The size of something is literally the measurements. If the measurements are wrong, that's one thing... I'll sometimes cut out cardboard or mask things off in painters tape if I want to know how they fit in a space. Accurately reported measurements should never be hard to "really gauge."
My pet rant of late is a lament that companies seem incapable of having a conversation about achieving profit versus maximizing profit. In the ideal, companies that achieving profit can treat their employees and customers well; however, companies that maximize profit shit on everyone in their blast radius for that almighty dollar. How sweetly bitter is the teat of capitalism...
While visiting my parents a month ago, they had a scale sitting out in the bathroom. My five year old daughter exclaimed, "Daddy, look how much I weigh! ... How much do you weigh?"
If you had asked me without a scale for reference, I would have said 160 pounds.
It was 172.
172 isn't a crazy weight, but not realizing I'd made it into the 170s (which I'd never been before) while simultaneously believing I was 12 pounds lighter was definitely a "moment".
After a month of very low carb diet, exercise, and other lifestyle changes, I'm down to 153 and feel much better too. :)
