So basically something similar to Pascal’s wager?
Why do you want a Mac? The only valid choices are aesthetics, brand loyalty or ignorance.
I feel like something got lost in the discussion here. I don’t want a Mac, that’s the whole point.
I want a device that is like the Macbook air, but without the crap Apple pulls. So with easily expandable storage, ideally expandable RAM and an easy way to run another OS than MacOS on it (i am aware that in theory Ashai Linux is an option for Aplle silicon macs).
Because i do think in this case there are more valid reasons than “aesthetics, brand loyalty or ignorance”, simply because the Macbook air to me in many ways seems like a very well rounded, nice package (with the caveat of Apple doing Apple things) and the rest of the market doesn’t offer an equivalent. With the Macbook Air M1 being 4 years old by now and options like Intels Lunar Lake existing, it really would be possible to make.
I didn’t specify “non technical” as I’d actually like one like it myself and would consider myself at least moderately tech-savvy. I meant average in what many people actually end up doing on their laptop, which is browsing, writing, watching videos and maybe doing some very minor productivity tasks.
That said i would say that yes, even non technical users would appreciate a high quality screen. They admittedly probably wouldn’t know to look out for it at purchase or what to look out for on a spec sheet, but in my opinion they would appreciate it during use (more so than some extra unneeded performance)
The demographic that is just Apple fanboys and they weren’t giving up their overpriced garbage no matter what.
Yes, apple fanboys will be fanboys, but the M-series Macbook Airs are imo are just a really great piece of hardware. Particularly the M1 when it came out and even nowadays imo is even priced decently for what it offers.
So far i don’t know a good non-Apple alternative that manages to fully match the M1 Macbook Air features (sans the non-upgradable storage that Apple charges way to much for and that destroys most of the value proposition).
As someone else already answered it is of course not ideal for movie consumption, since it gives you black bars top/bottom, but for productivity it is really nice. Everything from writing, spreadsheets or reading on the Internet benefits from it. Reading long horizontal sentences isn’t that comfortable and often times task bars at the top and/or bottom take away some extra space. So a typical 16:9 display ends up offering very little useful working space. The taller aspect ratio isn’t a massive shift, but a nice quality of life improvement.
It also means that you have slightly more space for the keyboard or a larger track pad.
If you are ever in a retail shop that carries Microsoft 's surface laptops you could check them out, as they are one of the few laptops that use a 3:2 aspect ratio display.
Haven’t looked at Chromebooks in a while, but you are right that the use case would be similar.
However I was under the impression that they are mostly competing at a lower price point. So I assume you wouldn’t find nice build quality or screens.
Beyond that I am not really familiar with how chromeOS stacks up nowadays or if it would be trivial to install Linux/windows on them. Especially if they still have EOL dates after which they aren’t updated with software anymore.
A quick search tells me that Google seems to work on a laptop and plans to merge (?) android and chromeOS more.
So overall again products that share some aspects of what the MacBook Air makes attractive, but doesn’t offer the full package.
Sadly doesn’t seem to be fanless, which imo is a really nice feature when you dont care about high performance. Not sure if in the real world you can find good deals on the snapdragon laptops, but list price is also quite high and that keyboard with touch function keys doesn’t seem great either.
So in my book that’s still no match for what a macbook air m1/2 offers, which by now are a few years old and can be found for decent prices. They might be aiming at the same market, but aren’t equal.
A proper non-Apple Macbook Air equivalent. Because imo for the average user that just browses the internet and does some light office work it seems perfect. And with that I mean:
- fanless
- good screen preferably 3:2 or 16:10
- long battery life
- unlike the air expandable storage and ideally non soldered ram
- solid build quality
- priced at maybe 600-800€?
- doesn’t have to have the greatest performance
Tbh i thought we would get it with Intels lunar lake processors, but so far no luck.
I would say yes, because as is the real niche communities dont have the size for larger discussions.
Mainstream communities e.g. about global news already have a decent size. And in many ways it doesn’t make much of a qualitative difference if there are 500 or 10.000 predictable comments. But many smaller communities are still mostly propped up by a few power users providing the majority of content which is not ideal for many reasons.
Glad it was at least somewhat helpful. This is such a vast topic that it simply can’t all fit into a discussion like this and there’ll always be inaccuracies or mistakes. So there are certainly plenty of those in my reasoning. You are also making a good point about discrimination being a root issue in some of my examples.
Why is people’s first instinct here to hide instead of work to fight discrimination?
I see advocating for privacy not as “hiding”, but in fact as one way to fight. And in many ways as one of the most effective. How can you discriminate against something you have no information about? To me it seems unrealistic to eliminate biases as a whole. Especially because many (arguably most) decisions are so complex that filtering out individual aspects is more or less impossible, and we can’t know a persons thoughts (some they might not even be conscious about themself).
I believe we’ve come a long way, and only because people’s weaknesses were laid out in the open and they fought to be able to live the way they are
And i would argue that to do so privacy was needed. A whistleblower or journalist needs privacy as a form of protection. And those movements fighting for a good cause most of the time will not have started in the open. Instead there will likely have been a phase where people met in private to organize, discuss and share. A lack of privacy here would have probably benefited the stronger oppresive side.
As for the AfD scenario: what good does having privacy now have, if their first move can be to just forbid privacy?
The benefit is that they can (at least partially) only have access moving forward, privacy now is a shield against change in circumstances. And as mentioned once privacy on certain things is lost it can not be restored. Right now it might not be an issue to be associated with a certain person or ideology, but things can change (and we might not know how in advance).
In short, I think a lack of privacy is only bad in combination with the evil intent of people wanting to abuse others’ weaknesses. We should try to fight the evil instead of clinging to privacy in the digital era (which I believe will be impossible within the next decade or so anyway)
I think this is a very idealisitc view and i disagree with your view that keeping at least some form of privacy is impossible. I do think there is an inherent value to privacy, but at least it is a valid tool to fight those malicious actors. And while it certainly cuts both ways and can also be abused, i wouldn’t want to give it up because of that.
[…] so we can have the advantages of more data-driven tech advancements while minimizing the negative consequences of a loss of privacy. I think we can have our cake and eat it too.
That i agree with, but in the exact opposite way. I believe that we can have digitalisation AND keep privacy as a default.
Yes in some areas we might weigh up the pros and cons, and decide that something else takes priority. But the important part for me here is the direction and the hieracy of those arguments. Because there are many benefits privacy provides (some of which i’ve tried to explain), i want that there to be good arguments if we decide to remove it. So convenience for example should not trump privacy.
As a side note and another example:
Anonymity (such as we have here in on this forum) can help with freedom of thought and growth. If everything i do can be directly tied to me, i might be much more conservative and careful about what i write. This ofc is something that cuts both ways and leads to harrassment, but it can also lead to safely exploring new things and growth. I don’t know about you, but for me there is value in having such a space as this to discuss things. If we were e.g. on Facebook it would definitely influence me.
I’ll try to make a case for why you should care about privacy aswell:
First of all there are some aspects where privacy is simply a requirement for things to work. For example there is a lot of talk about banning end-to-end encryption, but things like banking or remote work rely on this. Even if you wouldn’t care about someone else having the opportunity to read your personal messages, if those aren’t encrypted you are opening the gates for malicious actors.
I care about consent and freedom of choice
For me in a lot of aspects you simply can’t have “freedom of choice” or “consent” without the default being privacy.
Take for example medical records: those aren’t just relevant for you, but also anyone you are related to. At somepoint insurance might factor in medical history in their rates. You might not care about your record being public, but if you e.g. carry some genetic predisposition for a disease that will also have consequences for your child or sibling.
If the default for privacy is “opt-in”, then in many cases this will have a negative affect on people who do want it. Want to rent an appartment and the finances of most people are public? Well tough luck. Guess you have to decide, if you give up that privacy or keep searching. Because surely you have something terrible to hide otherwise you wouldn’t want privacy. Not much of a fair choice.
For a lot of things once the genie is out of the bottle you can’t reverse it. Extreme case: a far right party like the AfD comes into power. Suddenly you might get targeted for certain information that is available about you. And you can’t also easily hide it for future things, because that sudden shift might make you suspicious.
I think there are a lot of cases where most people might not care about their privacy. But those that do need it are reliant on the default being privacy and most people having it. Because otherwise it does not work. Then you just have “those that have nothing to hide” and “those that clearly have that particular thing to hide, because otherwise they wouldn’t chose privacy”.
Another aspect is targeted advertisement. Despite whatever you think, even if you know how it works, it’ll have an affect on you. Whether you like it or not. Human beings can’t be perfectly rational and psychology will have an affect.
Besides that a lot of efforts to dismantle privacy will just lead to average people losing it, while e.g. criminals will still use it. Privacy is also highly important for things like journalism or whistleblowers, something you are also profiting from.
I’m saying this because it feels like Germany is 10y behind other countries in digitization solely because regulators think I’m too stupid to give me the agency to opt in to sell my soul to our digital overlords.
This i disagree with, we certainly aren’t SOLELY behind in digitalization because of privacy concerns. Most of the time it’s just incompetence or bad implementations (often time coupled with some corruption and lobbying).
These are just some random thoughts and far from exhaustive (probably also not perfect arguments)
There definitely are growing pains, but in think all things considered it is moving in the right direction. As much as I wish it were different, expecting lemmy to instantly match and replace reddit (that had a ton of time to organically grow) is wishful thinking.
Have you tried signing up on other instances? That determines a lot of the performance you are getting. Personally lemmy.world at the time I signed up was having issues (might be better now), which made me try out lemm.ee . So far it has treated me very well performance wise.
As far as apps are concerned I am on android so I can comment for its, but connect has been my choice this far. Works fairly well, although not perfect. However in all apps I’ve tried the speed of progress has been very encouraging.
Lastly concerning submissions without comments, lemmy simply still doesn’t have a user base to rival reddit. So in some way we have to be the change we want to see, otherwise things will never change.
Personally I have given up on reddit, but I wouldn’t fault you for using it alongside lemmy for a while. I’d just hate to see people like you stop using lemmy completely just because it can’t instantly replace a platform that had such a massive head start.
Agreed. The prequels have flawed execution, but imo a good base. It’s the reverse with the sequels that are mostly style over substance, chasing some pretty shots regardless whether it makes for a good movie. And I take the former over the latter any day. Especially if we remember that Lucas asked other directors to make them.