This is gong to sound nuts, but subscriptions aren’t a problem for me, auto renewals are. I like to be in control of my finances, so whenever I sign up for something I pick a term I can live with, 1,3, 6 or 12 months, I pay, and I immediately go to the account management screen and cancel.
I don’t care if it’s inconvenient to have to think about it every so often, but I’m in control of the spending and to me that’s what matters.
Is paying via credit card with auto renewals the only payment method companies provide you? That’s pretty bad, I’d say.
Because, considering what you are having to do RN, it means that they can simply change a policy and next time you pay, you might find out the “account management screen and cancel” becomes unavailable.
There has to be a way to pay without having to give your credit card details… e.g. The payment gateway sends a request to your bank; your bank asks you for confirmation for one time payment; you confirm payment; the bank sends acceptance to request; payment gateway captures it and gives you your bill.
See, game pass I’m cool with because it’s an up-front transparent deal that you are buying time to access this library, and the library also changes. There is no pretense of “buying a copy” or whatever.
It’s nice for modern games anyway. For classic stuff that I want to have access to forever, I alreadty have access to that stuff forever. It might stink for the kids who are playing their “classics” right now, though.
Dropbox, Spotify, and a VPN are worth it: fight me.
Sure, Spotify doesn’t pay artists enough and I miss having Neil Young available for streaming, but what are the other options that work well in the car? I’m not going to go back to using discs or plugging in MP3 players to the aux port, and I don’t mind paying the bands directly for merch/albums if I’m really a fan. Considering I mostly listen to vinyl at home, I’m not paying Spotify for music; I’m paying Spotify for the convenience of being able to not listen to terrestrial radio and to be able to listen to what I like in the car or at work without the need for Youtube.
And my personal Dropbox account that I also use for work is well worth 15$/mo for 2TB of storage. It’s saved me so much grief to be able to back up phone photos, access my work files from any computer, keep records of my personal documents, etc., and the software is both more cost effective and better designed than Google Drive or OneDrive. PDF’s of my RPG books/characters/maps? Dropbox. Grocery list text file? Dropbox. Place to stash tabs/sheet music that is easily kept organized without the need for a physical copy? Dropbox. Phone number of that parent who saw my partner’s car get tagged in the parking lot at school? Wait, I think I have her phone number in an spreadsheet from when I coached her daughter in tee-ball…gimme a sec…yep, it’s in my Dropbox. In a side note, Dropbox may have turned me into a digital hoarder.
But the rest of this subscription-based garbage can get bent.
Agreed Spotify is totally worth it. I use it a lot to go on like rabbit-hole deep dives into some artist or genre or something, I use it a lot for stuff I will listen once and never again. That would be completely impossible if I was buying individual songs or albums or whatever. Paying for a nearly infinite database of music I can peruse at will following whatever random interests I have that day, that is absolutely worth the subscription fee.
I can’t speak to that as I don’t use any of the recommended playlists. It’s pretty easy to avoid artists you don’t like if you make your own playlists or pick your own music
Pandora is cheaper than Spotify and arguably better at picking new and random content based on your input. But it won’t play specific songs that you request like Spotify does. And Pandora works via Bluetooth, car apps, etc.
I used Pandora a ton a decade ago when there weren’t really any mainstream streaming services to compete with. But as someone who listens to albums and makes my own playlists, Pandora won’t cut it for me. I’m enough of a music snob that when I say I want to listen to The Stones, I want to listen to Let It Bleed front to back.
For some applications, Pandora is great, but it’s not what I need.
I loved and used Pandora for a long time. It was really good at recommending songs. I quit when they started playing ads in my feed despite paying for an ad free experience. These were like voice ads for concerts or similar from artists. I contacted customer support and the response was basically “we don’t think those are ads, they are ‘special messages’ from the artists so they aren’t going to stop.”
The problem is that I mostly use music streaming as background at work. Having a 30 second clip of some guy’s voice saying “Hey I’m Bobby from the Bobbles and we are excited to be touring in your area next month! Come check out our show for a Bobbling-Good-Time!” is very disruptive in the same way an ad for anything else is. They were clear that they weren’t going to stop so I walked away.
I recently switched from Spotify to Deezer. They offer high fidelity audio streaming which is a very noticable difference. Also, they’re a bit cheaper, and you can easily move all your songs/saved playlists to Deezer
You need to be a certain kind of person to perceive audio quality difference. One, you need to be able to detect the difference. Two, you need to be able to appreciate the difference. And Three, which everyone seems to ignore, you need to have bought a sufficiently expensive device that can make the difference.
In short, if you have an $18 desktop speaker, get the FLAC outta here.
Not really. It’s noticeable over Bluetooth as well, if your device supports codecs with a high enough bitrate. Obviously Bluetooth is still lossy, but listening experience is way better. The headphones I’m wearing now use aptxHD, with a bitrate of 576kbps. Spotify only offers AAC, with a bitrate of 256kbps.
As far as who can appreciate the difference, I guess? But you don’t need to be a concert pianist to appreciate audio. That said, I play many instruments, so maybe I’m biased.
It also has an absolutely terrible algorithm for recommending music in my experience. I’ve tried Apple Music several times over the past few years as I’m heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem. My experience never changes. I put in a random artist like Green Day or Hans Zimmer or Gregory Alan Isakov and within 4-5 songs the station is playing hip hop or rap. No matter what genre I start with the stream always turns into hip hop or rap and it’s mostly nobody artists that aren’t good. I have some songs in those genres in my library but the majority are not. (Also if I’m starting a station with an orchestral film score it stands to reason I probably want to hear more film scores not rap.)
All I can say is I’m glad I haven’t had the same experience. Not huge into rap or hip-hop and have never had them come up. It seems pretty good at recommending new songs to me. Not sure if it uses my current library or my searches but I’ve been happy with it.
It is a little pricey, but when I tried hosting my own server, it was way too much hassle (for me). Frankly, I don’t mind paying Dropbox because they make the experience so fool-proof and borderline invisible.
Dropbox runs in the background and just acts like just a local folder in your Documents folder (or wherever you put it). When you save anything there, it’s automatically backed up online in real-time and added to any other computers you use that have Dropbox installed. If you have too much online for some of your devices, it will use a a “shadow file” that is just a link to the online file so it takes up zero space on your other local devices while acting just like the file is already local (in terms of being able to right-click, access properties, open it from other programs, etc.). Plus, it has built in functionality for sharing files or entire folders by giving you a quick download link with just two clicks, which is great for sharing files that are too large to send via email.
Could I get all that functionality cheaper? Almost certainly. Could I find something cheaper that is also just as user-friendly? I’m open to it, but I haven’t found anything yet that is close to competitive.
Have you checked out OneDrive (Microsoft)? It’s what I use for school. I don’t store pictures or anything, strictly school documents and random odds and ends.
I have a OneDrive account through my work, so I’ve used it a bit, but it doesn’t seem like it handles downloads and uploads as quickly, nor keeping the right files local intuitively the way Dropbox does.
Plus, it’s almost as expensive as Dropbox per TB with a personal plan, and Microsoft doesn’t need any more of my money or information.
There is always that one dude who walks into a bathroom, sees a row of 20 urinals with only one person using them, and goes to the one right next to him. That guy also has a tendency to turn his head to look at you and try to strike up a conversation.
Perhaps it 'tis a silly thing. But I just want to thank whoever did the art work for drawing the stick figure guy with the shotgun as being left handed and holding a left hand shotgun.
My mental status thanks you and as another member of the Bar Sinister, I also thank you.
Funnily enough I used this gun as an asset in a scratch game. I think it’s more likely they found a picture of a gun from that angle and decided to draw the person like that afterwards, I’m not a gun owner though so I don’t really know what I’m talking about😜.
Unfortunately, there isn’t really an exit plan. Buying the music outright is not worth it because of how many different artists I listen to so I will probably always be paying for Apple Music or Tidal.
It’s only 4 dollars more a month and I will have a real job to pay for it.
who is downvoting this? 😂 maybe they live in a poor country, or maybe they’re making an obscure joke. Why would people go past this comment and be like “nope, fuck this person”
Having worked in the industry at that time, there were 2 main reasons they did it like that
batteries were quite unreliable and failed often
mfgrs couldn’t afford to have one year warranties and send out field replacement units for a battery
And the reasons they stopped doing it…
batteries got better
battery contact failure was higher than battery failure.
replaceable batteries compromise waterproofing
I think they should still be replacible, but they should have better connectors that are sealed off from the rest of the device. It costs a tiny bit more to do that engineering though.
battery contact failure was higher than battery failure.
quite a feat, only doable if you try to make it fail
replaceable batteries compromise waterproofing
this is in no way true, and is a bold face industry lie. There is no shortage of water PROOF and not just resistant electronic equipment that feature replaceable batteries.
the reason replaceable batteries were removed is entirely due to planned obsolescence.
not really, the phones we have are basically all water-resistant, so they definitely aren’t waterproof (makes you wonder just why this argument is repeated so much)
and it doesn’t require something to be bulkier to make it waterproof, unless you are deep sea diving, but I think at the point where you require over $100,000 in gear to reach said point, I don’t think a deep sea diving case is out of the budget.
the most common failure on a Bosh SPS drill is the actuator arm for the pounding motion, and this is commonly shared among several power tool brands with SPS drills.
you could make the argument that these parts just fail more often, and if you go by what broke, that would make you think it’s a reasonable conclusion.
Until I tell you that said actuator arm is made of injection mold plastic and all other parts of this assembly are made of steel. So in reality, this part that just happens to break more often is doing so because it was meant to, we are more than capable of creating contact terminals that don’t break as easily
Ubisoft should get comfortable with the idea of going out of business. I refuse to buy anything of theirs or interact with their shit launcher. Bad practices and bad products combined mean bankruptcy and i hope it happens soon so decent companies can get ahold of their IPs and make some good games out of them because Ubisoft is clearly not interested in doing so
It doesn’t make a difference. He still wants you to get comfortable with that. It doesn’t matter how he dresses up his sentences his thought process is the same, thats how he got to CEO.
The point of the dishonest article is to make you believe the CEO feels entitled to gamers becoming OK with subscription models. What he actually feels is a hope that subscription models will take off. It’s rage-bait. Did it work?
…you believe the CEO feels entitled to gamers becoming OK with subscription models. What he actually feels is a hope that subscription models will take off
That sounds like a distinction without a difference to me.
People keep pointing this out like it’s some kind of misinformation.
The Ubisoft executive is saying gamers need to get comfortable not owning their games before subscription services will take off.
The Ubisoft executive would also very much like subscription services to take off.
QED the Ubisoft executive is saying “I’d really like gamers to get used to idea of not owning their games so our subscription service can take off”.
It comes back to the same thing: Ubisoft is saying aloud what they want the future of gaming to be.
And please don’t tell me you’re giving them the benefit of the doubt, here.
The problem is people apparently haven’t figured out yet how to read what the CEO of a for-profit company means when they say shit publicly about their services. Learn to read between the lines.
There’s a mile of difference between saying “consumers need to get comfortable not owning their games” and “we want consumers to get comfortable not owning their games (but using subscription services instead)”.
The former statement is extremely arrogant. The latter is just obvious. And it’s reasonable even if you or I personally don’t want to get our games on a subscription model - millions of people get their music through Spotify and it suits them just fine even though other people don’t want that. So it’s a way of straw-manning the people pushing subscriptions so you can hate them.
The saying comes from an opinion piece that was sponsored by the WEF. You can read more about it on the Wikipedia page. The article presented a future where the climate problem was fixed because the entire economy was based on services instead of the production of goods. It certainly has some elements that could work, but also has relied heavily on the neoliberal “the market will fix it” mentality.
Are streaming services that different from cable TV? You’re paying for access to new content. If you want specific content to own, don’t they all let you buy them? I know I was able to buy GoT discs when I wasn’t willing to pay for an HBO subscription. Has that changed?
Difference is that most games made anymore are online access dependent even if they aren’t dedicated multiplayer only games. What happens when subscriptions get so low that upkeep is unprofitable? You lose access to a game that you’ve paid a lot of money for, for no good reason as online isn’t necessary but the studios rarely patch it out at game sunset
yup, the very popular stuff you can usually (but not always) buy on disk. the less popular stuff you can sometimes (but not often) buy on disk if the creator really pushes for it
The only sub I use is Spotify. I share it across my friends and family and like their vast catalog. They also don’t charge for their API so I can integrate it with Home Assistant.
My friends and family agree downloading songs manually sucks.
Piracy is a service issue. I have no problems with subscriptions as long as the price and service outpace piracy.
If the price gets to a point it doesn’t make sense, I go back to piracy.
Ubisoft seems like one of the shittiest game companies. They were one of the earliest companies that implemented Always-on DRM, requiring an app to open chests, trying to put ads when you paused the game, refusing to put games on Steam because they want more money, sexual assault/harassment allegations etc.
It was some special kind of exclusive bonus chest thingy, it wasn’t as bad as he points it, it was like a bonus thingy you could ignore them. I honestly didn’t care for it at all.
I think it was similar to the mini game ships thing on Black Flag, but on your phone and sending assassins instead of ships and maybe solving some puzzles, can’t remember.
It made more sense as a phone app, because it was like on Black Flag you sent stuff and that would take x time and then you would get the results, so in a phone you would easily check the progress and maybe get a notification, instead of having to enter the game to check just that.
EDIT: It seems Black Flag also used an app, I played later and now it’s a thing in-game I guessed that was the original version honestly.
The only valid reason is waterproofing. If the phone isn’t waterproof, it’s only to limit repairability… Also one factor in that was, I believe, the thinness war, but that’s pretty much over now as they all got to the practical limit I guess.
My casio watch is waterproof. [100M Water Resistant] And it has a user replacable battery. With a gasket inside and cool looking screws. (yes, I consider screws to be cool) Also, it costs less than $20
Screws are an incredible wonder. Itty bits of metal with fine threading to attach two things? And we just produce like billions of the things? Truly amazing.
I’d love to have a phone with 8 screws and a gasket in the back cover instead of the fixed plastic latches that the Fairphone and others have. Easily more water tolerant and love the industrial feel.
When I opened up my pixel to replace its screen I was able to replace the lining with a fresh one. Seems like that should be possible with a removable battery as well, no?
Unfortunately we still see too many people push the “but my IP rating” narrative without realising that engineers are perfectly able to design gaskets for all kinds of applications.
Some phones with removable batteries even had them and were (to a certain degree) waterproof.
The ONLY reason phones are no longer servicable is profits. Why extend a product’s lifespan if you can just frustrate the consumer to the point where they will just buy another one?
I want to know what all these people are doing with their phones… I’ve needed a phone to be waterproof exactly one time. 20 years ago when I got chucked into a pool with my flip phone in my pocket. I’ve had about a dozen batteries stop charging properly and needed replacement since then.
I have this habit where I try to squeeze every bit of use out of a device until something forces me to get a new one.
My latest two phones have both lasted for 7 years, and I’m still not planning on upgrading until someting breaks.
In all those years I have never encountered a situation where I would have benefited from my phone being more waterproof than just basic ingress protection. Higher IP ratings are only helpful for those who don’t want to be conscious of their possessions and want insurance in case of accidents instead of preventing the situations outright.
If we truly want to reduce our impact on the use of natural resources, we should start with eradicating the mindset that things being disposable is somehow fine.
Nuclear powered- or nuclear capable submarines? Though I guess in nuclear powered submarines the “batteries” are actively unglueing themselves, which is what powers them in the first place.
I’m not even sure thinness was something consumers ever would have demanded (at the sacrifice of battery life) if the mfrs hadn’t pushed it as a selling point.
In the flipphone days I didn’t know many people who didn’t have at least one spare battery, so they could swap to a fresh one on the go without having to charge, or bought extra thick batteries with higher capacity, extending the back of the phone.
Then when smartphones had removable batteries, lots of people still did those things. And all during that time I remember many reviewers and consumers reacting to many of the “thinness” claims with “I’d really like a bigger battery instead.”
I also remember it being proven that apple’s removal of the headphone jack impacted neither waterproofing nor thinness, despite their claims. (But then of course one by one others started following suit.)
I think it’s better for mfrs and that’s the only reason. It saves them money on mfr, or gets phones tossed in the bin faster. Possibly both.
I’d still take 2 or 3 more mm of thickness for an amazing battery.
Well, there’s another change that made it more viable - back then people had spare batteries cause they needed them. Now most devices will last a full day of normal use, so the ‘average user’ doesn’t care much about swapping batteries.
My gripe was physical keyboards. Until they basically disappeared entirely, I tried to buy exclusively devices with physical keyboards. I liked my T-Mobile Sidekick except it could stand to be thinner.
I’m not even sure thinness was something consumers ever would have demanded
I am entirely convinced that most “features” on modern devices are not “something consumers would have demanded”. Sure, different lenses is nice if you’re a hobbyist photographer, but do most people really need more than a single back-facing camera? Do most people want to have wireless earbuds at the cost of not having a headphone jack? Do most people want glass backs and other such gimmicks that make their device more fragile? I’ve been told for decades that the modern economic system is great because competition forces manufacturers to prioritize what is best for the consumers. But in the context of smartphones, it feels like the roles are completely reversed. Manufacturers come up with some bullshit and then mount psy-ops (ad campaigns, online astroturfing) to convince the population that it’s worth their money
About thinness: I also like my phones bendy and snappy (iPhone 6), as well as exploding batteries (Galaxy Note 7 or 10, I don’t remember the exact model tbh).
Or you have to ‘hold it right’ (OG iPhone).
These were all huge issues that could be fixed without sacrificing the thinness.
Thinness shouldn’t be used as an excuse for otherwise shitty phones, since it’s clearly a non-sequitur.
I’m not even sure thinness was something consumers ever would have demanded
Something popular back in the removable battery days was to replace them with thicker extended capacity batteries. So no, battery life was more important to a lot of comsumers.
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