I've considered the Light Phone before but there are just some things I think it goes too far with such as lack of email and texted images. I consider these to be basic communication fundamentals and should be standard on dumbphones. It's not like they're closed-source software tied to specific companies.
A lot of lists for private alternative email services start and and with Proton, seemingly. Services like Posteo, Mailbox, Hushmail, Fastmail, etc are frequently overlooked. It's a shame because many of these other services are great and Proton is one of the most expensive and not suitable for everyone. I've been with Posteo for years and I have nothing but praise for it.
Base model 15 is $1130 here. Base model 14 (last gen) is $1000. Both before tax. At a time when millions are struggling to put food on their tables. And even assuming you could afford a new iPhone, it will be almost indistinguishable from older generations excluding a few software differences. Even the camera output is almost exactly the same among recent generations.
This. I have dabbled with various Linux distros over the past 15+ years out of curiosity. I have, without fail, had to spend days troubleshooting and fixing various problems of all kinds. Sometimes it was WiFi drivers, sometimes it was GPU drivers, sometimes it was power management issues, and most recently it's soundcard drivers and poor audio control/quality issues. I always installed Linux as dual-boot so I had my normal Windows install to fall back on but I just couldn't see myself able to fully switch primary OS over.
Nowadays I couldn't switch over even if I wanted to because numerous programs I use for my work are not supported properly or at all. Linux has indeed come a long way over the years in terms of UX and software compatibility, but not everyone uses their computer just for games. There is a lot of creative and productivity software (and devices!) that have limited or zero Linux support and many FOSS alternatives are not sufficient. I hate Adobe as much as the next person and Photoshop is a bloated pile of trash, but part of my soul dies whenever a Linux fan tells me I can just replace Photoshop with GIMP. GIMP is clownware.
Another major issue I had was the community itself. When troubleshooting the issues I've had over the years, one big problem that kept popping back up was how toxic and condescending the Linux community can be. On more than a few occasions my requests for help on forums were met with passive aggressiveness and hostility because I "should have known better" or something along those lines. The most recent example I can think of was someone asking me to post a debug log to troubleshoot an issue I had and I had to ask him where to find the log. He told me the folder it would be in but not the folder path to get there. When I asked again where to find the log, he just told me that "maybe Linux isn't for you".
You know what? Maybe it isn't. It sure isn't for most people and I can't see that changing soon.
I run Windows 11 on my workstation rig out of necessity and it's serviceable as an OS... as long as Microsoft keeps their greedy fingers out of it - which they do not. W11's lack of uptake is entirely their fault and they have done nothing to grow any good will amongst their customers and, in fact, constantly treat them like money pinatas to beat repeatedly.
My phone knows my age, my account(s) know my age, the phone maker knows my age, so please for the love of the gods stop removing my cusses. It should damn well know that I have almost never intentionally typed "ducking" and yet I often correct words to "fucking"enough to be able to learn some basic usage patterns. I'm 30 years old, stop "correcting" my text like I'm 5.
Also some really obvious words are constantly "corrected". My phone will not let me start a sentence with "We'll". It will, without fail, change it to "Well" and I have to fix it.
I'll believe it when I see it. Despite there being plenty of options in my area, the parking lots of Loblaw's stores are still overflowing with cars. I was driving around the city yesterday taking care of some errands and I drove past several stores and they were absolutely packed. One even had a lineup of cars to enter the parking lot that was overflowing out onto the road.
I've been largely unaware of a lot of these things going on with Asus but the other day I was reading up on Armoury Crate, which Asus integrates as a hardware-level rootkit on many of their motherboards. That is absolutely goddamn absurd. Bloatware baked right into the hardware itself? I cannot express how scummy and disrespectful to your customers that is.
I'm very glad I picked no Asus parts for my latest build.
I live in an area with numerous grocery stores around and it always amazes me how often the Loblaw's parking lot is PACKED despite their absurd prices and the security measures treating customers like escaped convicts.
Like when tech companies forced "Cloud" everything upon us in the early 2010's, and then the digital home assistant craze that followed after.
These things are not meant for us. Sure some people will enjoy or benefit from them in some way, but their primary function is to appease shareholders and investors and drum up cash. It's why seemingly every company is desperately looking for ways to shoehorn "AI" into their products even if it's completely nonsensical.
I've repeatedly seen people claim that the latter generations of the Vision Pro will be what launches it into success but like... how? The Vision Pro is incredibly expensive, limited in functionality, and has an ultra locked-down ecosystem not because it's a first-gen product but because that is how Apple operates. All of their products follow that trend. In fact, additional Vision Pro generations are likely to be more expensive just like how new iPhones and Macbooks are going up in price and staying there.
The majority of people are simply not interested in VR/AR and Apple's pricey take on it isn't going to change that.
I stopped watching his content after his ableist campaign with NEXT For Autism (another shitty autism "charity" like Autism Speaks) and his subsequent removal of comments and banning of users who criticised his campaign or attempted to inform him of the dangers of the organisation.
It's good to see that his morals and ethics are still, to this day, not exactly heartwarming. /s
I've considered the Light Phone before but there are just some things I think it goes too far with such as lack of email and texted images. I consider these to be basic communication fundamentals and should be standard on dumbphones. It's not like they're closed-source software tied to specific companies.