I’d use it, if it were legal and wouldn’t threaten my job. I have no interest in getting high.

Wouldn’t have anything to do with the massive price increases, would it?

On iPhone, I can set it to an email alias and deactivate the alias. If they say they need to email me, I can reactivate it.

Not sure how easy email aliases are on other platforms. I don’t imagine it’s a big challenge for anybody.

Adobe? Kobo? I just drop epubs on Books.app and they show up on my iPhone. Never had an issue. /shrug

Good point, I missed the nuances of international sanctions. Sorry. Good luck in your hunt.

I honestly can’t recommend any one forum platform. I didn’t mean to recommend Invision and I’m glad you didn’t read it that way. Nothing against them, it’s just my information is way out of date whether I liked them or not. The software was good. I was on their host/demo board and interacted with other customers and some people on the team. Nothing bad to say. I’ve never heard of humhub and Flarum, but again, my information is out of date.

I don’t know much about blogging, micro or otherwise.

I think what you want is a private forum. Someone will have to pony up some light server costs, but as long as you aren’t using a lot of bandwidth — you could disable image uploads, and make your users upload to Imgur and the like instead — it shouldn’t be much.

I remember seeing a private forum. It was for the movie Boys Don’t Cry — or rather, the trans man the movie was about. He was a real guy, and he was murdered for being trans. There’s a forum out there (or, there was 20 years ago) and all you can see is the name. You need a password to see anything else. Don’t have that? You’re probably not getting in. It’s a place for his friends and family, and probably some trusted friends they’ve made along the way.

I ran a forum once, about 15 years ago. I think I paid $10 or $20 a year for the dot-com, the URL. And I was paying a company called Invision something like $10 a month for them to host their forum on their server. I had admin access, I could do anything I wanted with it, but I had bandwidth limitations, and I had space limitations. It was fun for a bit. I ran it for almost two years. I wanted out, and a guy on the forum wanted to take it over. I said he could even keep the name, but I wasn’t going to keep paying for the address. I didn’t sell it, I just transferred ownership over. I never got charged again. I didn’t keep visiting it. I heard he shut it down a few months later. It’s not for everyone. If you’re not passionate about running a forum, get someone else to do it for you, and just have them maintain it. You don’t even have to be a mod. You let people apply and you tell your guy who you want to be a mod. He runs it from the shadows, only there to do upgrades. Maybe he posts the rules, too. But doesn’t participate in conversations. Maybe once in a blue moon you see him, but he’s not what you’d call a forum regular. Or he’s a snarky arsehole, I’ve seen admins like that.

You really can’t have a super private Lemmy comm. Not sure about instance. With the comm, you can make it so only approved people can post, but I don’t think you can hide it from everyone by default. That’s not what Lemmy is for, and we’re too small anyway (though, I don’t mean to speak for the people in charge). I think the forum thing might be your best bet.

That’s gonna be a hard no.

Unfortunately, for many people that hard no will become a soft no, which will become a maybe, which will become sometimes, and then it’ll be commonplace.

I’m pushing 50. I’m starting to wish I’d been born like 30 years prior. To still witness peak technology, but to dip before the big fall. Rather than having to survive it. I just hope we will.

Yes… I was able to disable the subscription-oriented tools from Numbers (Excel) but not Pages (Word). Maybe I didn’t try hard enough. They’re marked so you can just not click on them, but there’s a way to hide them. I did it on one, I can probably do it on the others.

They’re completely free with a subscription for GenAI stuff that wasn’t there before. They didn’t take anything away from the free product.

As far as I can tell, yes — and so is LibreOffice, since people are talking about that one, too. And I suspect they both have the same limitation — encrypted Office files. So yes, I can read .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx files. I can’t read Publisher (.pubx) files, but neither can Mac Office users — Microsoft never released Publisher for Mac. I can then write them to the iWork formats. I can also take an iWork document and export to Office. I suspect Office can import iWork files. Office interoperability is mostly a solved problem, though I think there are a few outlier cases.

Not sure why OP is sitting here tanking these hits, but I don’t think OP meant to call people who bought perpetual licenses to Office idiots. I think they’re saying that Microsoft thinks they’re idiots. Still, OP should have clarified that or at least answered at least one person who asked.

Since the OP specifies Mac users, as a Mac user, I find iWork perfectly serviceable. I think it’s a bit controversial with its “Ribbon” on the right rather than the top, though it kind of makes sense. I don’t love iWork (Writer, Numbers, and Keynote), but they are good and they come with Macs (or at the very least are free in the App Store).

I have tried LibreOffice recently, and I didn’t care for it. But I am glad that such a robust free office suite is available on Windows. I believe some Linux distros ship with it, too. If I didn’t have iWork, I’d probably just use LibreOffice. It’s not terrible, I just have a better choice.

Cool. I don’t have a camera hooked up to my Mac desktop. I specify Mac because Macs have a cool feature where you can use your iPhone (if you have one) as a camera. So basically I just prop my iPhone up against the monitor, screen away from me, and I now have the best webcam. Except, you have to manually do it, some website isn’t just gonna initiate the connection. It’s gonna ask the computer for camera permission. The computer handles all that on the back end. It’s the same on Windows. If you’re using Firefox, specifically, and you deny a website camera access, it doesn’t see a computer with a camera. Then what? I guess it just falls back on the old one?

Same with my MacBook. It does have a camera, but I don’t have to give any website permission to access it.

Just say no to this kind of shit. You might not be able to with Android, though I’m fairly certain you can. You might not be able to with Chrome, though I know now you can. But the way Chrome killed ad blocking for the most part? Yeah, they can do that with other privacy protections. Don’t use Chrome.

Well, if you assume that going back in time means you also go back along the position of the earth, then sure. But to simply go back in time doesn’t imply that. You’re right in that it’s all fantasy, I’m just saying it’s two different movements, and us understanding one (movement in space, like walking) and not the other (time) tells me they aren’t necessarily connected.

I self-hosted Plex and Jellyfin on Windows. It’s fine. But as others have said, Windows machines tend to be too power-hungry. Honestly I think that’s more a symptom of x86-64. Changing the OS from Windows to Linux does not magically change the power needs of the hardware. (However, Linux tends to demand less of the hardware, especially if there’s no GUI.)

I now self-host Plex on a Mac mini (M2 Pro, 16GB RAM/512GB SSD). M2 Pro in Intel speak is like i5 as in, it’s the “next one up” and “good enough for most people” but not the low entry into the platform (M# base or i3), though I’d say M4/M5 base is better than M2 Pro. Just like going 2-3 generations newer, the i3 gets closer to and may surpass an older i5.

There’s a reason self-hosters prefer Linux, but I’d think it would be more about the hardware than the software. Windows is problematic because you’re opening ports and Windows is a target due to its massive market share. Mac is kinda (/sorta /not really) UNIX based, and Linux is, well, it’s Linux; neither is bulletproof, but both are better than Windows because they’re not really being targeted. That said, the MacBook Neo and Mac Mini going for $500 if you’re a student, $600 otherwise is getting a lot of people sick of Microslop’s BS to switch, and the Neo in particular is forcing the PC market to get competitive as macOS market share is rising — this also makes it more of a target. You’re always at some risk online and a little common sense goes a long way.

In short, time travel means nothing without space travel. Earth is rotating around the Sun (Sol star), Sol rotates around the galaxy and the galaxy is also moving. So say you want to prevent the assassination of JFK, you’re not just talking about going back 66-67 years, but say you don’t even care where on Earth you end up, where was Earth then? What’s your point of reference? Your point of reference moved.

I saw an Audi driver on the road the other day. I thought, that’s a nice car, it probably cost as much as my home.

Then I realised he hadn’t opted for the turn signal subscription. Shame, that. Guess he’s really not as affluent as he’d have you believe.

/s if it wasn’t obvious.

That said, I’ve been following smartphones for over 20 years and I’ve never heard of Audi making one. But maybe you know something I don’t. Because I’m curious as to why in a conversation about Apple (and by extension other phone makers) and you bring up Audi. Do they make a phone? Educate me.

I’m not going to argue the point. I will say however, that I am eagerly awaiting the smartphone from the EU. I don’t recall if Finland is in the EU or not. I think they joined at the start of the Ukrainian crisis. Or maybe not. I’m not sure. I know they have Nokia and Nokia has done some interesting things. There’s also Jolla, I think out of Sweden. I’m not ignorant to what currently exists, at least not completely. And I generally like the things the EU does. But if they can’t produce a tech company that can exist under their bureaucracy, I think that says a lot about how much they should extend to American companies.

If you mean MacRumors commenters, I think a lot of them are Apple shareholders, and/or long-time Mac users.

If they’re not shareholders, I only really have a guess. I remember back in the day, there were like four computer platforms. Apple, Atari, Amiga, and IBM/Compatibles. Of those, only Apple remains. IBM/Compatible is now “Windows” and Linux isn’t really a category — that is to say, free Linux software exists, but when it comes to paid software, it’s basically Windows… and occasionally Mac. Microsoft didn’t get huge by magic or accidentally. They were good once. IBM folded a long time ago, at least in the consumer space. They do still exist. But for a while, they were making Macs. IBM made the PowerPC chip that powered Macs in the late 90s, early 00s. The same architecture also powered the Xbox 360, and maybe one other console (GameCube? Not sure). Anyway, Apple is basically the only old school computer company left that still makes its own software. On the Windows side, you have Dell, HP, Lenovo, and more, but they don’t make the software that runs on their hardware. It’s all super generic stuff with their logo on it, but it runs Windows. Macs still run macOS by Apple. So the loyalty is understandable. Doubly so on phones, because you either have the iPhone, which is like a handheld Mac, it runs macOS but with a different desktop environment (and it’s called iOS)… and then you have what amounts to spyware sold by an advertising company (Google) and licensed like Windows, to people making generic phones and badging them like PCs. Android phones are weaker than iPhones as far as raw compute power, they cost about the same, and Google makes more than the base iPhone costs, on average, per person for the personal data they collect and sell.

So to sum it, loyalty to Apple is because they’ve been around for 50 years, they’re primarily a computer company, and you are the customer and not the product. AND anyone who invested in them early on is rich now. If YOU hate Apple, but somehow you went back in time to 1997 or 2007 (before the iMac unveiling, or before the iPhone unveiling), dollars to donuts you invest your whole life savings in Apple. Why TF wouldn’t you take that free money?

That said, raw compute power is not 100% of a phone’s experience. My 7 year old Galaxy S10 has a better keyboard than my 1.5 year old iPhone 16 Pro Max does, and the S10’s keyboard doesn’t hallucinate shit after I’ve typed it. iOS has been known to do that. I also wanted to turn that old Android phone into a cosplay prop. I did a few things you can’t do on an iPhone. Case, that’s easy, both of them can do that. But changing the grid and the icons? The latter is possible on iOS, but a huge pain in the arse. The former isn’t. Having a 3x3 grid of 200% scaled icons to turn a modern smartphone into the NookPhone from Animal Crossing: New Horizons is simply not possible on iOS. So, there are valid reasons people use Android, and I don’t just assume they’re up Google’s arse because they chose an advertising company over a computer company. Though, some of them are. Just like some iPhone users are insufferable twats about having the superior phone that anyone can buy. It’s not like that one Ferrari you can only buy via invitation from the company because you’ve owned so many of their previous models.

Everyone here sucks, or whatever the term is in the “Am I the asshole?” threads when everyone is in the wrong.

Apple knows what the EU regulations are and as a company that wants to do business in the bloc, they have to abide by their rules. Also, China and the Middle East are stricter and Apple happily kowtows to them. And of course Apple bends over for the US regime as well. So what’s different about doing it for the EU?

On the other hand, there’s a reason there are no major companies operating out of the EU. The EU is where innovation goes to die. Like the US, it’s tech rules made by people who neither understand nor love tech. EU does fight for their citizens, but the fact remains that the EU is also hurting its citizens here. Apple doesn’t have to play ball, they can take their ball and go home, and still sell a lesser product to the EU for the same money. Apple is not going to take a loss here. Only people losing will be those living in the EU.

Apple says the EU wanted too much of your personal data. The EU didn’t respond to that. All they really said was “Apple wanted a blanket exception and that is not an option.” Apple still gets to wear its privacy hat, and the EU look like arseholes.

Also, I didn’t read Apple’s message as “blaming the EU.” It was more that they just said due to the way things are over there, Siri AI will not be available there. Sure, they chose their words carefully, but my read on it was “it is what it is,” not “it’s all their fault.” More of an “agree to disagree” kind of thing. Like “they want X, we want Z, we tried Y for a while but they won’t budge and honestly we don’t want to either, so this is what happens next.” Now the citizens of the EU can just roll over and take it, or they can contact the EU leadership and whatnot and tell them they want less regulation. Who knows.