Is they’re siphoning data that’s worth millions but the product is worth nothing.

Not really, Apple was doing something right at that point they got almost everything from classic to OSX, ppc to Intel, from 32bit to 64bit, x86 to ARM.

I used it through all of that and really at no point was it feeling forced and the only one with real friction was classic mode the rest felt seamless.

They must have just been doing something right with dev relations and community.

Although I will say now a lot of people don’t seem to care with keeping up with far less extreme random iOS hurdles.

I mean it’s not just tech ALL salaries in the US make Europe look a joke.

“Working on GTA 6” is a dream job for many millions of young people and there is only one rockstar north, if you quit the line of people willing to replace you for minimum wage would be thousands long, the number willing to do it for free would be hundreds long.

“Writing react components” “deploying a database” “debugging the Android build” are not dream jobs and you can do it at hundreds of companies

They could use the same data to pay AI posters less and push their content more. Which will get you a promotion at Google.

> over time for non-mainstream users because the some limited number of mainstream modes dominate as most statistically "optimal" across the total user pool

This isn’t true, YouTube recommendations when it chooses music are amazing (no idea if YouTube Music is good I mean the video site).

Spotify recs are intentionally recommending you things cheap to stream or that have been paid for. It’s not a raw rec engine and it’s not bad cos it’s collapsing under normies, YouTube is proof of that.

You're still paying a mortgage if you rent it's just someone else's mortgage.

Someone else's risk. Someone else's liability. I can end my lease and walk away without penalties or obligations. If anything happens to the property, it isn't my problem. I just need <$200/year renter's insurance, and my landlord is literally responsible for everything else, including things like my washer and dryer.

I can move on a whim, and the worst-case costs will be a modest lease termination fee and literal moving costs.

You also never see any of that money ever again, with a mortgage a % of the money spent a money gets converted into the best asset for retaining wealth there is.

Worst possible situation you can get in with a house: not being able to just walk away, difficulty to sell if the area has gone bad, even with all these the worst thing you can do is just walk away from the house and even then you're just back to the same position you'd be in if you had rented, you'd have nothing.

They tend to just keep increasing it until you leave then just dial it back a little and get someone else in. Far worse than individual landlord that if you're a good easy tenant is gonna prefer you to an unknown, corporate don't care about that.

Yep. This was exactly my experience. You have to leave eventually just to keep monthly rent under control.

Sounds exactly like car insurance. If you don't "move around", they keep pricing it higher every year until you wake up...

If sites don’t listen to user preferences why would the cookie banner listen to my consent.

Ultimately there’s no good excuse for the banner solution.

Because the site (or marketing agency in charge of the ads) has plausible deniability for the user opting into marketing and tracking when they show a banner, whereas if it's a browser setting automatically applied then there's no such chance.

Same sort of thing when you log into Wizzair and the check box below the password field is not "remember me" but "subscribe to our marketing emails".