Inspired by the news of the new 13" MacBook Pro and Surface Book 3, I was thinking about just how much I hate not being able to replace the RAM, SSD or even battery in newer MacBook models. It seems like such an extreme decision and I wonder why.

The obvious answer is to make the devices less repairable thus forcing people to upgrade sooner.

But Apple isn't really dependent on devices breaking. Hardware is vastly improving every year and their customer base happily upgrades just for that. Also it could be argued that their most profitable product line – iPhones – have, despite all of that, some of the healthiest life cycles in the smartphone marketed with people happily using 5+ year old devices which still are supported in the latest releases of iOS. Few other devices hold their value in resale like Apple products, their sturdiness is quite remarkable and clearly factored into pricing and consumer decisions. They pride themselves with a reliable repair program and I have to imagine their repair geniuses (their term, not my sarcasm) don't like messing with glue.

So, all things considered, is there an argument for fucking gluing in batteries other than petty greed? Like, is it cheaper? That doesn't seem a motivation behind any other major design decision on their part. Is it it lighter? Easier to cool? Does it make for a slimmer chassis?

I tried searching the question but couldn't find anything (in fact, I wouldn't even know what terms to search for). Is there any good analysis or reasoned speculation? It somehow makes less sense the more I think of it and it would give me some head peace to at least know of some arguments for it other than Apple being assholes.

I've been wanting to buy some music recently from some artists that are only available through places like Amazon, iTunes, Google Play... However, I have specifically stayed away from most of these platforms for various reasons, the primary one being that I prefer Bandcamp over all of them (and up to now I never had the need to go anywhere else anyway).

So my question is, have you bought any music from these types of platforms online and what was the experience like?

Some specifics for what I'm personally looking to get out of this topic (you don't have to answer these if you don't want to, general experiences are fine too):

• Can I buy music through my browser alone? This one's primarily aimed at iTunes, because when I go to Apple Music and click on the "Also available in the iTunes Store" button for a particular song or album, nothing happens. So I'm assuming it's trying to launch iTunes which I don't have installed.
• Is the music available in multiple audio formats and can I pick whichever one I want after purchase? This is what I like a lot about Bandcamp, you buy the music once and it gives you a bunch of different audio formats to choose from.
• Did the audio files come with metadata and cover art attached (and were they accurate)? This one's not a big deal overall since stuff like Picard exists, but it's just a nice thing to not need to worry about.

Hi all -- I have had a Moto G5+ for the last two years, and have been largely happy with it. However, it's recently developed some serious issues w/ charging -- it tends to not ever get past ~45%, and the battery indicator seems to be ... disconnected from how long the phone actually lasts. I have attempted cleaning out the charging port (there was a lot of caked-in dust), changing the charging cable and port, to no avail. It works ok-ish for the moment, but I have largely been limiting it to emergency usage and I suspect it's on it's way out.

So, I find myself in the market for a new phone. In the past I have typically gone with whatever the cheapest reasonable Android phone has been (hence, the G5+ which I really do like quite a bit besides the poor camera). I am not a heavy phone user, and I really don't care about having the latest and greatest, my priorities are:

• long battery life (my Moto G5 lasts two days fully charged)
• cheap (say 200-300$, the SE on this thread is probably the upper bound of what I'd want to spend)
• reasonably performant
• preferably reasonable privacy protections (probably a pipe-dream)

The Moto G series have checked all boxes (apart from privacy) in the past, but I am considering whether I can take this opportunity to rid myself of another Google device in my life. I was thinking potentially going for a refurbished iPhone, but I really have no idea what to be looking for there. I haven't used an Apple device since my iPod (iTunes on Windows PTSD is real, and I don't even want to think about Linux support), and I am more than a bit hesitant to tie myself into their ecosystem, but it's hard to deny their superiority from a privacy standpoint.

I had also considered a Librem 5 at one point, and would be willing to spend a bit more for something so privacy oriented. But the 6-month order window, and other things I read about Purisms' roll-out have left me a bit wary there.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

My mother is 65+ years old and loves everything Apple, but whenever I need to touch her computer I find myself questioning that choice.

The degree to which Apple abstract things from the user enables the most absurd behaviors. macOS gives little indication about which programs are open, and the red x on the top left corner just closes windows, not apps. Because the session persistence is so robust, the consequence is that my mother's Macbook Air keeps 12+ programs and their states open at all times literally for months. Every time she comes over from another continent, I close a bunch of stuff and get her an instant performance boost. Plus, she's never really sure if a program is open or not.

The concept of (work)Spaces, as well as the launchpad, spotlight, or even how Finder really works is beyond her. Because of her over-reliance on the dock, she never enabled autohiding, so her screen real state is always crowded.

Folders are entirely immaterial for her. Everything goes to "Downloads" with no organization whatsoever, and she's always looking for stuff "manually" by reading the filenames.

Her machine is running Mojave, and right now I can only see that finder displays two "Libraries": Documents and Downloads. Linux and Windows have Videos, Downloads, Music, etc. Those are easy to make sense of. What's the supposed Mac alternative? Buy stuff on iTunes. Well, if something is not on Amazon Video or Netflix my mother is a pirate like me (hehe), so she never made sense of it and I truly despise using iTunes for doing anything at all. She also downloads a bunch of media related to her job.

I'm not saying macOS is bad, I'm just asking: is it really the best choice for non-technical older people?

Hi Tilderinos!

As the title says, I have used Android almost my entire life. Many parts of the internet (especially reddit) really look down on Apple for many reasons (may of them valid). Starting about 3 weeks ago, I started to wonder if the grass really was greener on the other side. I would like to share my experience.

My first smart device was an iPod tough 4th generation. Back then, iOS was really bad. Notifications took over the screen. If you didn't want to deal with a notification right then, you had to dismiss it permanently. Multitasking did not exist (until a few updates later) Android was miles better then. Switching was the obvious choice. Flash forward to now, through many different android devices. I had a Samsung Galaxy S10e, Galaxy Watch LTE, and Galaxy Buds. I had the best ecosystem of devices that Android has to offer (Tizen vs WearOS is arguable, but I have not used WearOS).

I wanted to get back into mountain biking, and I wanted to bring only my buds and watch. This should be an obvious use case for an LTE watch and bluetooth earbuds. Unfortunately, transferring music to the watch is a difficult prospect. You must have the files downloaded onto your phone, but I use Spotify or Google Play Music. Spotify does have a Tizen app, but it is pretty terrible. Also, I wanted to have audiobooks and podcasts downloaded to listen to. I could not find any apps for audiobooks or podcasts for my Galaxy Watch. All my google-fu got me to the answer: Just transfer the files and play them in the watch music app. This was a pretty bad solution for a few reasons. First, listening times did not sync with the phone. Second, I don't think that the watch music app would save the timestamp when you closed it. Finally, the Galaxy Watch has 4gb storage, and only leaves around 2gb usable. Game of Thrones book 5 weighs in at about 1.3gb. If I wanted my book and even a single episode from most of my podcasts, that would not be enough storage.

Because of this experience, I started looking into the Apple Watch. My grandfather gave me his old iPhone 6s+ and I got an Apple Watch series 3 LTE for a great deal on craigslist. I thought the phone would be a downgrade from an s10e. In a few ways it is, such as the screen, battery life, and camera. But for everything else about this phone, it is just as good as my s10e, which is 4 years newer. I still have my s10e, and I keep it charged. There are very few times where I want to use my s10e over my 6s+. This was not what I was expecting when I switched. I expected to use the 6s+ to see if I could handle a new iPhone, just so I could use an Apple Watch. Since then, I borrowed my dad's old MacBook Pro mid 2012 non-retina, to see if I liked OS X. I am currently typing this in that MacBook. I also bought the AirPods Pro.

Almost every single interaction between these devices is quick, intuitive, and seamless. OS X is way better than windows. Parallels makes running windows software a dream. When I bought parallels, I was able to pay with my watch through Apple Pay. I have not heard of any software doing anything like that with google/samsung pay and windows. Overcast is able to automatically sync podcasts and playback times to the watch, and easily switch which device is playing. Audible is a bit more clunky (and I am still looking for an alternative for books), but it is possible to get books on the watch, and the playback time syncs without issue. The AirPods Pro seamlessly switch between the phone and watch. They are already paired with the MBP through iCloud, although they do not seamlessly switch. I think this is because the bluetooth chip in the computer is too old. CarPlay is miles better than android auto. Siri is just as good for most thing as google assistant, and is more consistent.

This is a pretty long post already, but the bottom line is every single apple device I am trying out is better than the corresponding android/windows device that is 2-4 years newer. After many years of shunning apple, I am back on the apple bandwagon. I am currently planning on replacing all of my devices with something from apple (except my gaming desktop, unfortunately). I would like to hear about your experiences with switching to or from either ecosystem.

(Mods: I wasn't sure if this should be in ~talk or ~tech. Please move it if necessary)