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
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 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.
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 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.
I have an Amazfit Bip 5 with Gadgetbridge and for the most part it works just fine. It even accurately recognizes my bicycle workouts, something my Apple Watch Series 5 could never manage to do. For $80, I am very satisfied.
On the flip side, the Sleep and Do Not Disturb modes let through calendar notifications and sounds no matter what, which is mildly infuriating.
I also deleted the Zepp app after the initial pairing, so maybe that’s part of why my experience is different?
United “Polaris” Business Class. Flew it over the pacific and my seat area had trim falling off, the food was only okay, the lay-down seat was okay. It’s supposed to be “the best,” but all other airlines have caught up, at 2/3 to 1/2 the price.
Paper drinking straws
Silly, but I like those because I can eat bits of it after using them :3
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
HP printers.
Really HP anything on principle, but their printers take the cake for anti-user bullshit.
I have never had a good time with Asus anything and their customer service is abysmal.
Tile countertops. Our house came with them and they are terrible. Who the fuck thought of these?
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
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.
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.
Anything from any company large enough that the obvious business decision is the screw over the end user to generate additional profit. That excludes basically everything, so instead it’s easier to give recommendations for what I would buy/use instead:
- Open hardware products
- Framework laptop with RISC-V hardware
- not released yet
- Purism
- Maybe not fully open, but at least they have schematics
- Pine64
- Caveat emptor, software controlled charging circuits, be wary of bomb
- RaptorCS
- Wikipedia has an okay list
- Framework laptop with RISC-V hardware
- Open source software
- Operating systems
- *BSD
- Some Linux distributions
- Plan9, Haiku, Illumos, etc
- Web browsers
- qtwebkit based
- qutebrowser
- gtkwebkit based
- luakit
- Textmode/Terminal browsers
- w3m
- lynx
- links
- Other graphical browsers
- netsurf
- links graphical mode
- ladybird
- Apparently the developer is an asshole
- qtwebkit based
- Other userspace software
- Video
- ffmpeg
- Graphics
- Krita
- Blender
- GraphicsMagick/ImageMagick
- ffmpeg
- Audio
- LMMS
- ffmpeg
- PDF
- xpdf
- mupdf
- IRC
- Hexchat
- Feature Complete ( dead :'( )
- EPIC5
- Hexchat
- This list could go on forever, consult your repository instead of me
- Video
- Operating systems
Everything sucks, avoid car brands that sell your driving data (AKA buy an old car or figure out how to permanently disconnect your car from the internet), and avoid smart home and llm garbage.
- Open hardware products
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.
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.
