When ‘next gen’ (eg. PS5) becomes the new ‘current gen’, then the old ‘last gen’ becomes retro.

Probably safe to assume that the streaming app on your phone is collecting the same data about your viewing habits, whether or not you Chromecast it to another device.

Or literally never, ever connect your TV directly to the Internet (seriously, don’t do it).

My Apple TV does an infinitely better job than the half-assed built-in native apps; more services are supported and for longer, features are properly integrated, and the additional smart phone functionality (AirPlay, AirPods sync etc.) is a godsend in a busy household.

Plus the added bonus of not risking my network getting compromised, and one less company collecting and selling data about me to unscrupulous marketers and shady middle-men.

Well, at least you can expect it to be a long supported, overpriced accessory! 🤣

If/when it happens, so be it - I’ll eat crow. But for the time being, Apple at least has long set/surpassed the standard for support lifetimes.

At some point, you just have to have a little bit of faith that not every company is going to immediately screw you over the first chance they get; otherwise you’ll never end up buying anything (new or otherwise), with the fear that the moment you do - they’ll drop support.

I mean, some companies do deserve that level of scepticism - but honestly, for all their other faults Apple is not one of them.

There are a lot of legitimate reasons to hate on Apple, but not supporting their products long-term is not one of them.

Eventually they stop providing new OS updates, but they don’t brick/abandon devices.

Hell, I turned on my old iPhone 5 recently for the first time in over a decade and it happily connected to Apple’s servers and updated to the last supported OS version.

Even now that my Apple Watch isn’t receiving any more major OS updates, it can still interact with my up-to-date iPhone 14 without any issues.

I’m still using an Apple Watch 3 that I got in a bundle with my iPhone X from my telco.

I need to charge it twice a day for ~30 minutes each, but it’s still chugging along.

I think I’ll finally upgrade to the new generation this year, but at that point it will be 7 years old - which is commendable for tech.

Wait, isn’t this just the plot of that Sam* Rockwell movie - Moon?

In general, I would love for any OEM to step in and provide similar build quality to a Mac… doesn’t even have to be Lenovo (who IMO are a pale imitation of IBM’s line of laptops).

RTS are inherently limited to PC.

I agree with everything else you said, bar this. I first got into RTS’s on the PS1.

To me, RTS’s peaked around Red Alert 2 (pre-Yuri’s Revenge); I just wish I could find more voxel-based 2d RTS’s with that same ‘arcade-y’ feel.

You likely just need to enable TPM through the BIOS (each manufacturer calls it something different).

I’m in a similar boat, but am going to use W10 EOL to probably jump ship to Linux - if not at the very least switch to Windows 10 LTSC.

It’s because most game devs are owned by publicly traded companies; shareholders searching for constantly improved earnings man’s that games are rushed out the door, incomplete and packed to the gills with monetisation.

Balder’s Gate 3 is a perfect counter-point to this mindset; games can only launch once - so launch it properly.

As an aside; I do wish that there was a millennial billionaire who grew up playing some Konami classic titles, and were in a position to take over the company, take it private and focus on restoring it to its former glory. But there is no such thing as a benevolent billionaire, so it’s just a pipe dream.

Yes, over 2.5 years of heavy use; Including ~8hrs of spreadsheets and SQL (Mon - Fri), in addition to waaay too many hours of WOW (fixed HUD) than I’d care to admit.

Consider also then, that Wulff Den ran an OLED Switch for 18,000 hours (two years straight) at max brightness, on a relatively “cheap-quality” (his words) panel: YT link

Additional point: My iPhone Xs was my daily driver until 18 months ago, and now has been relegated to a baby monitor duty (static video for ~18hrs a day) and also does not have any burn-in visible. The brightness on it isn’t cranked all the way to 100%, but neither I would your desktop.

LG and Samsung (the key W-OLED & QD-OLED manufacturers) have implemented firmware-level optimisations to ensure that burn-in is minimised, if not outright eliminated in real-world situations. Again, refer to the Wulff Den video for the amount of effort he had to go to in order to cause the burn-in he did.

All I’m advocating for is not taking “the Internet says” as gospel, as a LOT of the OLED information is either outdated or irrelevant (cheaper/seconds OLED panels from tertiary manufacturers who omit maintenance cycles from their firmware).

It’s a C1; I got it in November ‘21.

This year they’re releasing the C4s, and the C3s are going on heavy discount.

I’m using an LG C1 48in OLED as my primary work/play display (8+ hours use per day), and it has no sign of burn-in.

The general fear over burn-in is over-exaggerated, and the technology has improved leaps and bounds over those early generations.

Switch emulation is not going anywhere, and will likely continue to be built off the foundations laid by Yuzu.

The biggest takeaway from this is I imagine Nintendo had the devs dead to rights on promoting piracy directly, rather than focusing on only communicating how to play legitimate back-ups only.

So going forward any smart dev-team would make sure to wait for a game to launch before producing an updated version to support it, as well as being vigilant that all communication through official channels avoids any discussion that enables piracy or directly links to a secondary source that does so.

To steal a term bandied about when talking about AI; this is the worst it’ll ever be again.

Yes, it’s an absolute mess - but with a passionate enough community, someone will develop a front-end to automate and streamline this process.

Getting the data was the biggest challenge.

Probably because BYD recently overtook Tesla as the world’s largest EV manufacturer.

If/when that realisation hits Wall Street, Tesla shares are going to take a massive hit.

Do yourself a favour and switch to using a video game console, Apple TV or if you’re more technical my inclined - a HTPC.

Manufacturers have been getting increasingly nosey with their data collection policies, as well as inserting additional adds after the fact.

And can guarantee that in all circumstances, both the software and hardware will be infinitely better built, supported and more reliable.

Arrested July ‘91, sentenced February ‘92, murdered November ‘94…

So ~21 months.