Well yeah, I mean not always but for probably 20 years their laser printers have been terrible, and their inkjets have been not consumer friendly for even longer than that.

For instance, I once had an HP color laser printer that was designed in a way that toner dust would build up on the prism and mirror, causing streaks and splotches to be printed on the page. The official recommendation was to buy a new printer, and the local repair shop said is it even though it’s a known issue and they’re capable of fixing it, getting it apart and putting all the pieces back together is such a time consuming hassle that it would be just as cheap to buy a new one. A $300 color laser printer. If I did it successfully, I would need to do it again in a year or two anyway. I now have a Brother; it’s black and white only but has been rock solid.

I did see on The Other Site a discussion from a year or two ago that Brother isn’t so great anymore, but the consensus seemed to be that they’re still better than anything other than maybe those Epson printers with the ink reservoirs.

I remember that my high school, college, and first couple of jobs had amazing HP laser printers, but sadly those days are gone and the company is a shell of what it used to be. I would not buy an HP printer at this point.

Sorry for your suffering but welcome to the club.

We are talking about a code editor, not a whole operating system!

/s

Wait, what the heck is BeReal? I’ve never heard of it before?

Does that mean I’m old now?

I upvoted you because I don’t award contracts, so I have no idea if that’s common practice but I hope your comment gets some visibility and discussion. It’s quite interesting to think about the value of our time or effort and how maximizing those isn’t a bribe, it’s just common sense.

Huh? AppleTalk was, according to the headline, discontinued in 2009 if that’s the useless feature you mean. It wasn’t useless before that, but eventually TCP/IP overtook it and it was no longer practical to run two networking stacks side by side. It is very similar to Microsoft’s extensive use of IPX/SPX up through Windows XP (IIRC XP was the last to include it).

Apple certainly has its flaws, including a bug I reported many years ago in Photos that makes it useless to me, but them discontinuing an aging network protocol nearly 25 years ago seems like a weird thing for you to be upset about, so maybe I misunderstood your post.

I would argue that the statement “parents who homeschool are often caring parents” does not equal or even imply that “parents who are unable to homeschool due to work do not care about their kids.”

We do have to be careful with our words but in this case, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to reach the implication you brought up.

is Apple Maps finally good?

No. Definitely not “good.” It used to be terrible and maybe isn’t so bad anymore, though.

For instance, around here there are a lot of private driveways; farming roads, dirt paths on private property, things like that. Apple would route me through those, I would mark them as not a road, they would be reviewed, and a month later they would reappear on the map. Why would I trust a map that jeeps trying to route me down a private washed out dirt path?

I was going to a meeting and typed in the address they provided. Apple popped up a location, but it was about an hour away in the wrong direction. It turns out that Apple didn’t know the correct address, so they helpfully corrected it to a different number, street, and city.

I needed to get to sports practice at a community center, so I put in the address. Apple took me to a literal empty field ten minutes away from the actual location.

If that’s the best they can do, why would I ever trust them? Maybe it’s better, but it was so bad for so long that I don’t even want to try it again.

This one?

Several years ago, my credit card number was used to buy airplane tickets on a different continent. No big deal, right? I disputed the transaction with my credit card company and expected that to be the end of it. By the way, I had the card in my possession the whole time.

They wrote back and said they confirmed that the charge was legitimate, made in person, and I was responsible for the total amount.

I asked how they confirmed it (they never answered that) and explained that it was very hard for me to be 1/3 of the way across the planet while also making purchases at home such as gas and groceries. I was at work, made purchases with their card at the same time, and had toll booth records — lots of supporting evidence that I never went there to make the purchase.

It didn’t matter, they stuck to the story that it was made in person and was authentic. One of the letters from them said that they had asked the airline who in turn told them I was there doing it in person, but that was the only hint at the process I got.

I’m upset but busy with life, new baby, work, etc. so about a week goes by and another letter comes from them saying that my dispute was successful and I don’t owe the money. It was short, had very little information, and there was no answers to any of the questions I’d asked (questions about the bank policy for disputes, if the decision is final, how they verified I was in another country, how they know my card was there).

In the end, I got my money back but no closure on what happened. It was six years ago and I still feel frustrated about it.