It’s an awesome looking machine even if it’s a bit dated for some people’s tastes. Any way the wind blows, it’s massively preferable to today’s largely soulless designs.

Their strategy is more in-depth than that, and they’re more accurately looking for sharps. Somebody working minimum wage in a trailer betting for “their guy” isn’t a problem, even if they’re not going to make the book much money. Somebody working minimum wage in a trailer smurfing for a sharp can be a huge problem. You can read first hand info from professional bettors, books don’t like to reveal their risk management methodology for obvious reasons.

Seller protections on eBay are effectively non-existent. I’ve sold $50,000+ of stuff on the site and their compulsory Money Back Guarantee that they make on your behalf will make your blood boil when you get bullshit INAD shakedowns because the buyer didn’t feel like reading or didn’t know how properly use the item. Even if you have written communication from the buyer sent on eBay outright saying they’re abusing the system, eBay doesn’t care. Normally it wouldn’t be a big deal, but the extra 7% FVF they take on top of their base 13.5% is offensive.

At this point I just lie and cheat the system as much as I can. I’ve had a significantly better experience since I started carefully massaging every metric, threatening INAD abusers with mail fraud reports, coaching buyers through returns to keep my metrics up, etc. I always have and always will do right by honest customers, but I’m done just grabbing my ankles when it comes to dealing with eBay and their policies.

Yup, it's time to let go. The forces that eat away at quality software are running an indoctrination campaign with budgets in the billions of dollars to ensure that people don't remember what quality software is. You can do right in your own work and with your own people but most peoples' experiences are going to suck for the foreseeable future.

Even if they fix the keyboard, iOS as a whole can't really be fixed. This is a single symptom of a much larger problem. So much is broken, poorly implemented, or so laughably tasteless that it hurts my head to think about how it's positioned and accepted as a "premium" product. I understand that most people notice so little about the design of their surroundings that it's basically impossible for them to understand that this junk is inflicting thousands of tiny psychological cuts daily, but it makes me so very very sad that this is acceptable to so many people.

- As mentioned, keyboard input is offensively broken. Whiffed inputs, the entire text selection/cursor manipulation model sucks (not being able to select in the middle of a word is inexcusable unless you have Stockholm syndrome for the bandaids), the cursor manipulation is broken, keyboard gets stuck open or closed, etc. etc. I'm convinced the input design for this phone is a CIA psyop designed to drive you to madness so they can recruit you as a sleeper cell.

- Passcode inputs are also broken. Trying to enter your passcode at easily achievable speeds results in dropped inputs.

- Above point wouldn't be a big deal if it weren't for fingerprint scanning being given up for Face ID, which is complete dogshit that constantly fails-to-passcode trying and failing to scan my ceiling, or my face when it's against a pillow in the morning. It's also completely worthless when I'm unable to fully point my face at the phone (working on vehicles or in some other enclosed area) or am trying to use the phone completely off of muscle memory.

- The gesture navigation system is a fundamentally bad idea. I'm an average-sized man and reaching over to the left hand side of the screen to make back inputs requires me to shift my fingers on the back of the phone just to make the reach for the input. This is on a base-model iPhone 16, which is already a touch too large for many hands to deal with this input system. The hitboxes for navigation inputs are too small and many of the inputs are often shared with actions in apps, resulting in taking all sorts of actions you didn't want to. Android style 3-button navigation at the bottom of the screen solved this many years ago. As an aside, the 60 FPS screen on an $800 phone as a "fuck you" push to upgrade to an even fatter pig of a phone that suffers even more from the bad navigation is funny.

- The GPS is fucked up, at least on the iPhone 16. It takes forever to find its bearing, after which it usually holds onto it until losing its mind again at the most inconvenient time. The only phone I've seen with a worse GPS is a Unihertz Jelly. Being in the same league as a $150 niche night market special is shameful.

- I have a frustrating number of calls get dropped. I don't know exactly where this issue comes from but it's noticeable, I run into it a couple times a week. My previous S24 on the same carrier never dropped calls under the same circumstances, so I know not having this issue is possible.

- The flashlight implementation sucks. Being able to tap it off with screen input is incredibly frustrating when I'm fumbling around trying to do something in the dark. And of course, it turns the screen on so you can make this accidental input every time you turn the flashlight on with the assignable side button. Being able to adjust the brightness is something I've never found any use for and mostly just serves to annoy me when I accidentally turn it down with another unintended input, but maybe somebody somewhere gives a shit about this, I guess.

- The split notification/settings menu is incredibly annoying. The settings menu is already a reach on the smallest mainline models, the notifications menu basically requires whole-hand movement. 20% of the space in the notifications menu is taken up by a fuckoff huge clock that you can't configure the size of. The lack of notification icons results in me having to actually unlock the phone and check things instead of just being able to know at a glance (I know they wanted to distance themselves from the roached Android notification tray look but I don't care).

- Liquid Glass looks like shit. So does a lot of the rest of the phone but I don't really hold some moron designer's bad visual taste against a product unless it affects the usability of the product. And of course, it affects the usability of the product. I actually laughed out loud having a literally unreadable lockscreen clock after the iOS 26 update, with the factory-provided moon background to add a little more salt to the wound. It reads poorly and is tacky to boot.

- This is pretty minor but the constant nags about iCloud are very funny. These assholes just couldn't resist hounding you for 99 cents more after you bought their $800 fuckup. It's like getting nagged about a Sirius XM subscription in a Lamborghini.

Individual points may be taken care of, but the disease is terminal. The iPhone's success at this point is driven by network effects, marketing, and its posturing as a premium product. Grown adults have an emotional attachment to the brand and the lifestyle statement. Android vendors are aping this stuff now. The memories of quality software and the ability to recognize it is being actively erased from the collective memory. Hoping that any of this is going to change at this point is just pissing in the wind.

I've been using an iPhone for the first time in 10 years, and it confuses me as to how Apple has somehow managed to make them as opaque and arcane as they are today. Most interactions with the phone are noticeably and negatively affected by bizarre UI decisions. With how much it frustrates me, I can't imagine what it would be like trying to learn it as an elderly person.

50mg/ml disposable vape liquid tasting better than the freebase stuff is a crazy take. I haven't met a single person who was there before the modern disposable trash that doesn't think it's markedly worse. It tastes like gas station vape juice circa 2012.

Good reusable systems have been around for 10 years now. Disposables sell well because people like to think that they can quit whenever they want without having to abandon an investment (never mind that the investment in a refillable system is literally cheaper than a single disposable vape in many cases).

gas station vape juice circa 2012 seems like a touch exaggerated. ive extensively researched making my permanent vape setup taste as good, and its down to the amount and type of sweetener used which doesnt seem to be available.

ive even bought the brand of liquid owned by the disposable company with the same branding. it's just not quite there.

you also have to accept the market for them, according to what you have said above shouldnt exist, but it does

Enthusiasts want small trucks. Americans don't want small trucks. They don't want a single-cab S10. They wouldn't even want a double cab S10. What they actually want is a minivan but they're too far into not-cool territory to be a consideration so they look to the mid/full-size SUV and/or truck segment. It is true that you can't really make a small truck in the US any more, and that automakers do like it that way, but it wouldn't change anything even if you changed the CAFE requirements.

It's not 3.5 tons, it's the footprint (track width * wheelbase).

The emissions standards reward larger vehicles that generally start around $35k-$40k. Americans just love going immediately underwater on a $100k Grand Wagoneer.

I think you are referring to the CAFE standards which are part of what I am referring to. However, there is also a weight-based rule for tax write-offs: https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/section-179-tax-break-suvs-tr...

>But rarely is the answer that young men have a crisis of self-selecting bad role models, putting less (or no) effort into their appearance and education, holding gross sociopolitical beliefs, and not developing the emotional and household maturity an adult woman expects. And they simply aren't willing to change that. What is anyone supposed to do about that, exactly?

- bad influences - slob - not disciplined enough for education - insane politics - emotionally stunted - slob again

This imagined incel reprobate comes up every time this discussion happens, which is fairly often now that the whiffed messaging and slipping numbers among 18-29yo men (including young black and Latino men) in 2024 somehow has the DNC and progressives scratching their heads. The fuckup you are describing is fairly rare. People imagine that man to feel better about how ineffective the current progressive messaging towards that demographic is. Log off of Discord and 4chan and you'll find plenty of young men that don't listen to manosphere shit, do take care of themselves, went through higher education, held fairly progressive political beliefs until quite recently, handle themselves emotionally exactly the way society has asked, and take care of their living situation just fine, but still feel like their three options are work, work, and blow their head smoove off.

While you're busy swinging at the air, a significantly more dangerous cohort of crypto-deathcultists is forming. They don't not have a girlfriend because they're a freak that says and thinks awful things about women. They don't have a girlfriend because they can't really afford it, can't imagine anybody would want them, and even if they did, in a hyper-atomized post-social-media world that experienced a massive overcorrection in regards to what is appropriate courtship behavior, have no idea how to get started. They just don't really think much about them at all, positive or negative, not because they hate them and want to actively disregard their needs and wants, but because it's effectively like worrying about what an astronaut in space is thinking about right now. And for them, that's all good, maybe even great! They got the little they were owed and Good Men make do with what they have, which is often a reaffirming "yeah dude this life shit sucks lmao" from their buddies, and a generous serving of either infinite distraction if they want to stick around for a bit or self-destructive risk-taking if they don't. The only delusion required is that despite society's massive investment in them that was made in hopes that they would continue society, they in particular don't strictly need to continue society because it would be a good thing that could possibly make them happy, and they're obviously not OWED good things. Nobody is.

To be clear, in some perfectly equal world, this same thing could be happening to women, or men could handle the current situation the way women do. This is not one of those worlds. With the way people in the US are currently socialized, men don't like dealing with dead weight (this unfortunately often includes displaying perfectly reasonable emotions) and women don't like dealing with overly emotional manchildren (this unfortunately often includes displaying perfectly reasonable emotions). Men nut up, women have a lot of platonic friendships that they're emotionally intimate in. Shifting this will take generations, you and your children and their children will be long dead before this ever happens.

Men who are alone and running on fumes can't be lightly brushed aside just because boogeymen like Andrew Tate exist. If you don't let off the throttle on that idea we're just going to keep getting husks of men that are entirely indifferent towards tearing at the fabric of society with a net-negative contribution.

The few academics that actually tried to characterize incel reprobates found astonishing rates of autism. This observation was broadly dismissed because their study designs (necessarily) relied on self reporting and any proposed solutions split along various ideological lines. I am not surprised to hear a broader population may be reporting similar problems 5 years after a global pandemic cancelled socially normative adolescent experiences and economic opportunities for an entire cohort.

The structural problems that contributed to the current situation are not improving. I am approaching the conclusion that they will not be addressed until the position of one or more broad socioeconomic brackets becomes entirely intolerable.

>and any proposed solutions split along various ideological lines

To massively oversimplify for the sake of brevity, the actual solution is create an economic and social environment that's conducive to the greatest number of people being able and encouraged to engage socially and in-person, instead of the endless scrolling on Instagram or having their social activity consist almost entirely of talking over Discord that became mandated during COVID. That shouldn't be controversial unless you presuppose that those who are struggling are all maladjusted incels who deserve what they got, and not generally normal people in a soulsucking environment. It's why I find comments like the one I initially responded to so gross. The reality of this situation is so obvious and so dangerous that I have to assume that those participating in the mudslinging are writing off an entire demographic for the sake of not having to back down on participating in a moralizing political trend that is losing steam.

Sadly, presupposing that everyone who struggles socially somehow deserves it has been common for all of recorded history. People who struggle for extended periods axiomatically cease to be considered “normal” at some point.

It is better to understand than let frustration give way to despair.