Major retail stores have been giving a horrible experience and value proposition for longer than Amazon has existed. The difference is that before Amazon came around, there wasn't really any alternative.
I do shop at some retail stores that actually give value and don't present a terrible experience. They tend to be small, sole proprietorships rather than chains. If they don't have what I need, then I go online.
Interestingly, at least in my neck of the woods, those small shops are doing pretty well. It's the larger retailers that are closing. It seems to me they brought it on themselves.
you're going to sound like someone who laments not having a rotary dial on a keypad phone.
You know that you can still use rotary phones on POTS lines, right? So if that's your thing, nothing stops you from using one.
But I would say the big difference is that touch tone phones were actually an improvement over rotary. Eliminating the headphone jack is irritating because there isn't a wireless solution that is even as good, let alone better, than the jack.
When the day comes that wireless headphones are superior, you'd have a point -- but I'll bet that nobody will complain about the lack of a jack then.
In the meantime, eliminating the jack is an active downgrade and deserving of condemnation.
Maybe, but when you get to their more expensive things, the quality is still far below what a similar amount of money buys you from other manufacturers.
However if the phone company goes out of business. You may loose out on support and updates that may particularly designed for that phone.
True, but realistically you can't rely on the support of any manufacturer because they're going to end the support long before the phone stops working.
My approach is to make sure that any phone I buy is one I can install my own ROM onto and have it work acceptably. That way, I don't need the manufacturer for anything, and if they drop support for the phone (or go out of business), it's not a problem.
On the one hand, it is easy to say "just don't take the job" -- but that can be too much of an ask if someone really needs the work.
On the other hand, years ago I started editing employment contracts I was given to sign, crossing out the sections that I found unacceptable. Most of the time, the employer agreed to the changes. Sometimes not. But I've never lost the job opportunity by doing so.
What I would prefer is more reasonable website designs -- but the trend seems to be going the opposite direction of that. In any case, yes, this can probably be worked around with an addon.
I don't know. Out of the box, the tabs look like they work the same as always. I don't know if there are extensions that change that (it's not something that is important to me, so I didn't look).
Perhaps the way out of the problem is to key the responsiveness to the actual screen size rather than the window size.
Even then, though, it would be nice to have a "full size" option regardless of screen size. Browsing sites on my phone is made painful by sites resizing according to the size of my phone's screen too, but for different reasons.
It seems to me at that point I'd rather side-load a free software app that can do the same thing, so that I can't have the rug pulled out from under me.
100% this. If I have to rely on the whims of a company to continue using a product, I won't use that product for anything that is actually important to me. And yes, I keep copies of the apks I use on my phone, just in case.
As technically interesting as the phone might be, it's difficult to trust a small manufacturer and ecosystem to secure my private information on my devices
It's difficult to trust most manufacturers for this, regardless of size. And, if security is your main concern, you shouldn't trust any of them, even if they're good on that count. Things can change in the future without notice.
What would you base the responsiveness on if not the size available to the website?
I don't know, as this is a technical problem that I'm not interested in solving. All I know is that the way responsive sites work right now are a constant problem for me, because they rearrange (or even worse, remove) page elements when I resize the window on a desktop. It is often the case that I intentionally resize windows to just show a specific part of a page, and responsiveness really interferes with that.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean, can you elaborate with an example?
I'm not sure how I can explain it any more clearly, but here goes: if the page is "locked", then the layout/contents of the page no longer change according to window size. If I make the window too small, I get scrollbars. In other words, I want to be able to turn off the "responsiveness" so that it stops getting in my way.
Even better, since I never really want a site to be "responsive" in the first place, would be some sort of option I can set that would make this persistent over time and the entire website so I don't have to keep hitting a button, but just a toggle button on each page would suffice.
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even giants like BestBuy are struggling
Well, in all fairness, Best Buy is one of the worst and has deserved to go out of business for years.
Major retail stores have been giving a horrible experience and value proposition for longer than Amazon has existed. The difference is that before Amazon came around, there wasn't really any alternative.
I do shop at some retail stores that actually give value and don't present a terrible experience. They tend to be small, sole proprietorships rather than chains. If they don't have what I need, then I go online.
Interestingly, at least in my neck of the woods, those small shops are doing pretty well. It's the larger retailers that are closing. It seems to me they brought it on themselves.
you're going to sound like someone who laments not having a rotary dial on a keypad phone.
You know that you can still use rotary phones on POTS lines, right? So if that's your thing, nothing stops you from using one.
But I would say the big difference is that touch tone phones were actually an improvement over rotary. Eliminating the headphone jack is irritating because there isn't a wireless solution that is even as good, let alone better, than the jack.
When the day comes that wireless headphones are superior, you'd have a point -- but I'll bet that nobody will complain about the lack of a jack then.
In the meantime, eliminating the jack is an active downgrade and deserving of condemnation.
Maybe, but when you get to their more expensive things, the quality is still far below what a similar amount of money buys you from other manufacturers.
However if the phone company goes out of business. You may loose out on support and updates that may particularly designed for that phone.
True, but realistically you can't rely on the support of any manufacturer because they're going to end the support long before the phone stops working.
My approach is to make sure that any phone I buy is one I can install my own ROM onto and have it work acceptably. That way, I don't need the manufacturer for anything, and if they drop support for the phone (or go out of business), it's not a problem.
And even the best of them suck a whole lot more than having a cord plugged into the phone.
I think you may have confused your reply. The comment was a reply to mine, and did not quote anybody.
I agree with this.
On the one hand, it is easy to say "just don't take the job" -- but that can be too much of an ask if someone really needs the work.
On the other hand, years ago I started editing employment contracts I was given to sign, crossing out the sections that I found unacceptable. Most of the time, the employer agreed to the changes. Sometimes not. But I've never lost the job opportunity by doing so.
What I would prefer is more reasonable website designs -- but the trend seems to be going the opposite direction of that. In any case, yes, this can probably be worked around with an addon.
Arbitration is a scourge designed to deny you your legal rights. It only works properly when there isn't already a power imbalance.
I don't think that you understood my comment. I wasn't making a grand overall judgement between the two. I was talking about surveillance.
I don't know. Out of the box, the tabs look like they work the same as always. I don't know if there are extensions that change that (it's not something that is important to me, so I didn't look).
Perhaps the way out of the problem is to key the responsiveness to the actual screen size rather than the window size.
Even then, though, it would be nice to have a "full size" option regardless of screen size. Browsing sites on my phone is made painful by sites resizing according to the size of my phone's screen too, but for different reasons.
How the fuck does "flat design" effect productivity?
Flat design makes it difficult to spot the things on the screen that I need to spot.
Oh, hell, in Windows I'd just be happy to get my window borders back.
The biggest problem isn't that things resize or move around. It's when things are hidden on smaller screens.
I agree, although on the desktop (where we're talking about a window rather than a screen), things moving around is an equally large problem.
I thought that being easy to assemble was one of the primary selling points of Ikea stuff.
I don't. I do use bluetooth beacons to accomplish a rather similar thing (but not for things that require security).
Does Bluetooth LE obsolete NFC?
It doesn't, really. The two technologies have rather different use cases.
It seems to me at that point I'd rather side-load a free software app that can do the same thing, so that I can't have the rug pulled out from under me.
100% this. If I have to rely on the whims of a company to continue using a product, I won't use that product for anything that is actually important to me. And yes, I keep copies of the apks I use on my phone, just in case.
I'm not sure what you're claiming here -- are you saying that the US spies less on its citizens that Russia does on theirs?
I think he meant a Gnu/Linux phone.
As technically interesting as the phone might be, it's difficult to trust a small manufacturer and ecosystem to secure my private information on my devices
It's difficult to trust most manufacturers for this, regardless of size. And, if security is your main concern, you shouldn't trust any of them, even if they're good on that count. Things can change in the future without notice.
You can buy unlocked versions of the phone.
What would you base the responsiveness on if not the size available to the website?
I don't know, as this is a technical problem that I'm not interested in solving. All I know is that the way responsive sites work right now are a constant problem for me, because they rearrange (or even worse, remove) page elements when I resize the window on a desktop. It is often the case that I intentionally resize windows to just show a specific part of a page, and responsiveness really interferes with that.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean, can you elaborate with an example?
I'm not sure how I can explain it any more clearly, but here goes: if the page is "locked", then the layout/contents of the page no longer change according to window size. If I make the window too small, I get scrollbars. In other words, I want to be able to turn off the "responsiveness" so that it stops getting in my way.
Even better, since I never really want a site to be "responsive" in the first place, would be some sort of option I can set that would make this persistent over time and the entire website so I don't have to keep hitting a button, but just a toggle button on each page would suffice.