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Comment by yndoendo | Hacker News Reader

You have to pay me to use Apple, Microsoft, and Google products. None of those organizations are good.

Apple and Google both use immutable locked down OSes on their main products that prevents improving device security, such as IP & DNS filtering / blocking.

Microsoft user experience keeps getting worse. Latest version of Teams, as of today, says I'm at the "Calendar" screen and the navigation and content screen both show "Chat". "Calendar" was unpinned because I find Teams to be at interacting with content. No reason it should be a PDF viewer when the desktop application is actually usable allows for viewing chat and content at the same time.

I understand developing for those platforms makes money or is needed for other products. Unless I have to develop products that support those companies, I will never pay with my personal income to support those organizations.

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So you don't use a smartphone?

Me and many people don't.

Just laptop is good enough. Although currently switched back to apple silicon ATM for LLM, price and convince reasons, and as soonest linux on Apple Silicon reach some maturity, will switch over completely.

However not using a smartphone is probably good for one's mental and physical healthy now days. It is understandable if your work require you to have one, but if I'm not getting paid, why would I even get a smartphone?

Back in the 80's there are investment people managing billions dollars and deals over pen paper and a land line!

back in the 1880s, people didn't even need refrigerators!

Hahahahaha, right?

I'm the opposite, I didn't own a personal computer from like 2015 until last year when I built a new gaming PC. I had a MacBook Pro from work of course, but I just got by on my phone / iPad for my personal life.

Laptops are way heavier and more bulky than phones, and phones can do 90% of what a laptop can do across a cross section of most people’s daily tasks. You don’t have to be a genius to see the value in one. The mental health stuff is about social media apps and things, which aren’t mandatory.

If you don’t want one because of some principled stance that’s fine, but don’t pretend there’s no value in them.

Because antitrust enforcement has been so lax, we only have two options.

The DOJ/FTC/EU/ASEAN/etc. need to force a breakup of first party app stores, first party payment, first party web browser, and first party messaging. They also really need to require web installs without hidden menus and scare walls.

We'll see a proliferation of offerings if that happens.

We had three options, but people didn't like the Windows Phone enough to buy them. (I had one.)

And WebOS, and Symbian, and Blackberry, and Tizen. Making an OS that people want to use is hard. Maybe impossible at this point if you want to compete against such large established ecosystems.

Apple and Google directly, No.

I actively invest my personal income to organizations / businesses that are working to provide viable alternative. All are fruitful in reducing the barrier to a viable product. From improving hard-ware design to getting software in a stable state. Currently waiting on a phone from EU from a company on their attempt.

Went with a Farirphone 4 running /e/OS/. Yes, /e/OS/ is based on AOSP. This phone has a high chance of full postmarketos support. It is the closet from being disconnected from Google that I find to be stable. Postmarketos would allow for a quick jump.

In the mean time, still investing in companies and organizations that don't want to help Google in the smartphone market. It is a long-term investment.

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