100% agree. Buy a brother laser printer and be happy. I would NEVER buy anything else.

That’s how I use it as well. Plain old brave browser gets the job done on iOS.

I’m literally arguing in another thread now about how weird corporations are about this. And here’s a prime example. The company shares their content on the internet freely. A medium where its inherent design is to consume the bits and pieces of the giant mass of data that you are interested in (and ignore the rest).

But because we choose to not watch the ads, and only the interesting parts (that they published freely) - THAT’S a reason to go after BPC with govt. action? Give me a break. If your content is so good, grow some balls, put it behind a hard paywall, ask me to pay for it, and stop leaving it laying around on the ground for all to view.

Right! I use the flatpak myself - works great.

There’s a native Linux version! No need for wine :)

I use makemkv. Works every time. Once in a while you have to open the disk “manually” and select the right track but ya, makemkv does it all.

Free if you want to update the beta trial key every few months. After years of use I bought a lifetime license for like $20. Probably the best value I’ve ever gotten.

I’ve been trying to do the same thing for years. Mostly just for fun / is it possible. I’ve come to the conclusion that “it depends”.

Things that really help:

• Keyboard & trackpad
• Cloud storage that works across all your devices (synology NAS, o365, dropbox, etc)
• O365 subscription / Google docs environment for working with office
• Cell phone connection
• A good note taking application that supports templates

Things that used to suck but Apple has improved:

• File manager
• Zip file support

Things that are actually easier:

• Writing on documents digitally (some professions still do a lot of manual writing on paper - this digitizes all that automatically, but you can still work with paper processes)
• Smallest size (great for travel)
• Engineering sketches / paper math / (maybe drawing I dunno not an artist)
• “Grandma computer” all she does is facebook anyway - but she can’t click on stuff and get viruses
• Media consumption-books, reading docs, audiobooks, etc.

Things that suck:

• iOS applications are neutered versions of desktop programs (think iOS word/excel - they work, but they can’t do the big boy tasks)
• File management is still clunky if you have a format iOS doesn’t recognize. Have fun with that tarball or 7zip file. It’s possible, but clunky.
• Small screen eliminates many professional tasks (coding, drafting, admin with multi monitors)
• No ability to use corporate programs like a specific vpn
• No ability to run virtual machines/real programs - (although that changed a couple of days ago - Google UTM SE)
• Good luck keeping your files synced unless you’re running some kind of cloud storage. Synology NAS works really good for me - but not everyone has that option.
• $$$
• Gaming? LOL

Summary: Student who takes a lot of notes and writes a lot of papers? It’s actually a pretty good option.

Old person computer? 100% check. It’s really the best option if you don’t want to forever be family tech support.

Secondary travel pc for work? Works great here too and small for plane trips. Battery life rules.

Real work? Coding, engineering programs, etc - hard pass. Writing and artists? - maybe…. General office worker who interfaces with everything via webpage? - yes if you can deal with the small screen and lack of mouse support.

Gamer? Come on now, you already knew the answer to that ;)

*puts on his flame retardant suit

For android or pc, it’s Firefox and ublock origin all day long.

For iOS it’s trickier. Generally the ad blockers don’t work like you expect, and many aren’t free.

But I have found a solution that’s worked for years, but people are going to flame me.

Brave browser for iOS. It just works. Even for YouTube videos. You hear how they are a shady company-they are probably selling my firstborn son right from under my nose. But I’ll be damned if I’ve ever seen an ad come through.

Pathetic.

For my 75 year old mother who doesn’t do anything besides Facebook. Ya an iPad is perfect! ;)

She thinks it’s a full blown computer and it’s impossible to break or install a virus on it. iPads can be surprisingly good for that purpose…

This is honestly such a pile of shit from Microsoft. Right…. Grandma is going to resize her partitions with those ridiculously cryptic instructions. She’s totally going to figure out which partition we’re talking about, she’s totally going to open a command line interface as admin, heck she totally even knows to find those instructions. Its hard enough for people to distinguish between “ya that’s windows update, click that button” vs “no that’s a phishing attack, never click that button”

Now the rest of us who know what we’re doing have to fix everyone’s PCs in the family. Keep pushing everyone to iPads and Linux Microsoft…

I agree. I’m the guy who picks, buys, assembles, and installs the OS and programs for like everyone around me. I enjoy doing it, they enjoy getting awesome PCs for good prices.

My next build for them will absolutely not be Microsoft. The average person can get away with an iPad running iOS for their computing needs. So it’ll be a user friendly Linux distro going forward.

Glassdoor and all other businesses that operate on the “holding companies hostage” model are trash, always have been, and people who use them should know better / expect this type of behavior. They are imo even lower than the Facebooks and twitters of the world.

Not surprising.

Pretty sure there were cars around 15 years ago with remote start, heated seats, and fancy ways to lock and unlock. No there weren’t phone apps, but nobody wanted that - key fobs worked just fine.

My 2021 jeep’s key fob has an unbelievable range and works fine. My wife’s ford does have a phone app, but it’s completely free.

This is nothing more than a money grab.

Interesting - I haven’t had this issue with the gui. Thanks for the heads up!

I literally did this on a new pc two weekends ago. Downloaded win11 iso, installed, typed in the key off my win 7 cd rom retail packaging that’s god knows how old, done.

I’ve long since moved to linux and just dual boot win11 for games that don’t run well in linux. I won’t buy a key at this point just for that.

I don’t know if it’s the best, but proton vpn exists in a flatpak that works without issue. That’s what I use.

I’m older, and remember the days when the internet was “hard” (pre web). And because you had to work a little bit to find information, you tended to stick with, and contribute to the groups you found. Better engagement, better discussion, more inside jokes, better community. Reddit has just turned into an echo chamber of the lowest common denominator. Lemmy feels a bit more like the old days - a community with actual content.

I vote: do whatever you want with it (kill it, hand it over, whatever). Let’s leave it behind and concentrate on making this place awesome.