I'm guessing the broader demographic of users simply don't think the software is crap. My buddy working in water transportation was just raving about Teams to me the other day. His praise basically boiled down to being integrated with his organization, providing him easy access to his department-resources. I suppose it does serve my buddy well.
Could be because I use a Mac, and I do most of my work chatting in Slack, but I don't hate Teams. It has my calendar, it has chat that is shitty but good enough during meetings (although finding which room you have unread messages in can be confusing), and it has video meetings with transcripts and great Exchange integration.
Ditto. The more interesting part is how many people will defend it. Presumably some mix of post-purchase rationalisation and inherited assumptions about what's "standard" even when those assumptions stopped being true ages ago.
I find it infuriating, but that's how the system's supposed to work. It's the definition of a monopoly and they're in the extraction phase. When there's no competition (and eventually there's always going to be a winner) you don't need to make good products anymore.
They've successfully indoctrinated whole generations to use Windows/Office. Here in Brazil using a computer was (probably still is) synonymous to using Windows/Office. Everyone had their pirated version of Windows and many don't even know that alternatives exist. When those people open companies they'll use what they know.
Software companies have to build for the most popular OSes and most can't justify anything else. Which then means most software only works on Windows and people can't leave it even if there are better alternatives (see Adobe). Finally, any non-closed computer comes with Windows so the cycle continues forever.
My theory is that they deliberately make Windows so shit to filter out anyone with taste. Once you have a userbase of people who don't know better, you can sell them any old crap. Like Teams.
Reminds of an research article from Microsoft!. It detailed on why scam emails about `Nigerian prince` are so obviously dumb. The reasoning being it specifically need to target only those who can fall for it. Anything more sophisticated and they would get people who wouldn't fall for scam in subsequent communication.
Except it makes no sense because as a scammer your goal is to get as many people as possible in contact with you so that you can scam them. You can only score on the goals you attempt so cutting out any person, no matter the reason, is illogical.
You’re assuming that there’s no cost involved in moving a potential victim through the pipeline. I’m sure AI has changed the game, but the general idea was that beyond the initial blast of spam you would have someone actually responding to those who fell for it. Putting in signals that it was a scam filtered out individuals who would waste scammer time because they would eventually figure it out before falling victim. By selecting for people who literally can’t pick up on obvious signs of a scam, you save yourself a lot of time and energy.
Keep following through the logic... You manage to hook someone who absolutely knows you're a scammer, and they keep responding to you taking up precious time you could be spending with someone who is actually likely to give you money. So, what is the upside to getting a response from someone who is never ever going to give you anything?
Occam's razor says they are just bad at English grammar because it isn't their native language/dialect and their education probably wasn't that great.
This is easily demonstrable by conversing with the scammers and noting that their actual English ability is the same as exists in the initial letter. Even when they have no chance of the scam succeeding and have been outed they write the same way. You can see plenty of evidence here:
Occam's razor says the sun orbits the earth, everybody dies from Sudden Unexplained Death Syndrome, and the correct way to spell Occam's razor is Okams Raza (in all languages, because lavishes other than English are difficult).
It's literally a platitude. It's like the saying 'when the going gets tough, the tough get going': it's reallyemorable and descriptive and is maybe a good guideline in many situations.
But using it to evaluate the tensile strength of various metals according to their velocity would be wild, because it had never pretended to be anything like a rule. It's not like theory of gravity or 'I before e except after c', which are based on actual analysis and results.
Legit assuming that everything is as simple as it can be, that the most obvious idea to occur to any untrained observer is the most accurate, is literally a guaranteed way to go though life without understanding anything, at all. Using it to argue with people who appear to obvious what they're talking about (and there are so, so many undisputed studies on the exact reasons scammers do what they do: it's too filter people or. There is no debate, academically) is a pretty slippery slope to 'anybody who doesn't think and act exactly like me is lying, because no reasons or facts exist unless I personally hold or after with them', and it's definitely a thought process worth challenging.
Although to be fair, its best application might be re. online arguments that you don't really care that much about. So if you just meant that the previous poster had given a reason and you were going with that because it's easier, my bad.
> Legit assuming that everything is as simple as it can be, that the most obvious idea to occur to any untrained observer is the most accurate, is literally a guaranteed way to go though life without understanding anything, at all.
That's a misunderstanding of Occam's razor. Occam's razor says that if you don't know the answer then when you have a choice between competing explanations, pick the one that requires fewer assumptions.
The explanation that they are using incorrect grammar on purpose to screen out intelligent people is logically questionable, unproven by any evidence, and relies on a bunch of assumptions: sophistication, time is worth more than leads, good enough education and experience in English to write it well, and coordination between scammers.
The 'being bad at speaking a language or dialect they are not native in and having poor access to education' explanation is logically complete and requires far fewer assumptions.
I have a MacBook from work so I do compare them. It’s a worse user experience. No touchscreen, screen is lower and further from my eyes. It’s physically less pleasant to use. There are also some use-cases I can’t even do with the MacBook form factor - eg. on planes, I mount the iPad on the seat in front of me so I watch movies at eye level. Sometimes I hold the iPad in my hands when in pure reading consumption mode.
>I have a MacBook from work so I do compare them. It’s a worse user experience. No touchscreen
And that matters for coding work because?
>screen is lower and further from my eyes.
The iPad screen doesn't have any fixed position, so what are you comparing it to? iPad propped on an Apple iPad keyboard (which would be even lower)? iPad handheld which would be unusable? iPad set flat on a table? iPad on a stand (if so, what prevents you putting the MacBook on a stand?)
MacBook works great at work! Based on my experience with my work device, it’s as pleasant for casual media consumption.
The Magic Keyboard actually lifts the iPad above the keyboard, which puts it in a better viewing position in laptop-mode than an actual laptop. Every little bit helps when you have creaky tendons and joints.
I'm curious what makes you think the MBA is a more "full experience?"
The MBA is permanently affixed to its keyboard: so it can't easily be used for consumption (in bed, on the couch, etc.) The MBA also has no touch screen, and no stylus. The iPad can also ship with a built-in cellular radio. Now I'm carrying an extra tablet, plus an extra hotspot.
That sure sounds like a lot of compromises to me. If I needed more performance I'd be stepping up to a MBP for the active cooling, which pushes us into a different price bracket anyways. If I needed more disk/memory bandwidth I wouldn't even be considering a portable in the first place. (More realistically: I would be using my portable to shell into a more powerful box, and an iPad Pro or even an iPad Air would do that just as well as any MacBook.)
If you need more external I/O, well, I'm not sure I buy that the iPad Pro is a serious compromise over the MBA. It has 40Gb/s of bandwidth and that's _a lot_ for the vast majority of use-cases. My main MBP already sits docked all day via a single thunderbolt cable.
The only reason I would actually choose an MBA over an iPad is that I'm a developer. I place strangely disproportionate value on things like an untrusted boot-chain, kernel extensions, and freedom.[1] I like having the flexibility to be able to bless and enroll my own bootable volumes. I want to be able to tinker with the system partition. I want to introspect the system when things go wrong. The iPad challenges these things by design.
I cannot emphasize this enough: _all of my friends would be lost trying to follow along with the preceding paragraph._ They would look at me like I had two heads. _The above desiderata are not at all representative of the average computer user today._ For most of what I do (media consumption and some content creation) the iPad Pro would do an excellent job, I'd argue better than the MBA. For everything else I do: "iPad Pro vs. MBA" is a false dichotomy, I would not be choosing either of those machines. I would buy a workstation-class device at a minimum.
>I'm curious what makes you think the MBA is a more "full experience?"
The MBA is permanently affixed to its keyboard: so it can't easily be used for consumption (in bed, on the couch, etc.)
News to me, as it never prevented me from doing exactly that. Like hundreds of millions who don't own a tablet (and I do own some).
Oh man, these looked so awesome. I miss these phones sometimes. There was something cool about seeing what features different phones had. Nowadays, it's basically iOS vs Android, where both OSes do pretty much the same things, and it's all about the apps.
Sony had these on their Clié (Palm OS) devices as well.
I’ve only ever had first-party Palm handhelds, but the scroll wheel (Sony had some nifty name which is eluding me) always seemed very appealing for single-handed use.
I had a SonyEricsson P800 (the first of that series) and it had the same wheel, but IIRC was plastic made (just like the rest of the phone). Oh man I was barely 20yo back then and I feel bad for the hype I had while waiting the phone to actually come out and buy it. I also remember I paid an insane amount of money for it, which then became standard a few years later thanks to Apple.
I thought this too initially, however by now I would expect one of those to 'break rank' and actually demonstrate some impressive use case, I've not seen anything in terms of 'fire and forget' agents actually achieving a task of any complexity. I had some success using AutoGPT to do some web scraping and it's ability to use powershell was impressive and powerful, and with no safeguarding somewhat hazardous, however it's unpredictability was intolerable.
