> The ARM Neoverse is a group of 64-bit ARM processor cores licensed by Arm Holdings. The cores are intended for datacenter, edge computing, and high-performance computing use. The group consists of ARM Neoverse V-Series, ARM Neoverse N-Series, and ARM Neoverse E-Series.
What makes you think a competitor that "plays fair" can compete with a competitor that takes advantage of the system and extracts as much value as they can?
> I think the only way this gets better for consumers is if customer response more often insisted further roll backs than just the last straw if a company crosses the line.
I think consumers have little power here. Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behaviour. Until we change that, the power will always be with these kind of companies.
Perhaps governments could levy punative fines in such situations. But that seems like a bandaid (and ripe for corruption). Ideally we'd have structural change that prevents this behaviour in the first place. Perhaps worker representation on company boards. Or progressive corporation taxation that more strongly encourages smaller companies and more competition.
"Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behavior". This is true, but what people seem to fail to grasp is that rewarding such behavior == buying the product. If people simply didn't buy it, they wouldn't do it. It's really that simple. It may be hard to not buy, of course. The alternatives may be worse, there may be downsides to not buying, etc. But nothing else will really be effective.
Sure, but there's a power disparity here. I think the clearest example is smart TVs where there have been examples of consumers buying a TV, and then having ads retroactively added to the product a year later. There's not much a consumer could to avoid that. It's our regulatory environment allowing that.
And this is even worse than with computers where you can, with some training, remove Windows and install a less user-hostile operating system. With a TV, while sometimes possible, most people are not sufficiently proficient in tge dark arts required to get rid of the native OS or to subvert it to your will against the wishes of its corporate master.
On top of that, the TV manufacturers subsidize the cost of their own TVs by shoving as much adware as possible and having it pay for the cost of the hardware. "Smart" TVs will almost always be cheaper than equivalent dumb TVs because of this reason, which forces many consumers' hands. I don't think there's any way to avoid this other than regulation, which likely won't happen because the system moves too slow to keep up.
Yeah that is definitely the kind of thing we need regulation to address. In the market, the only power you have is to purchase or not. It ruins the free market's ability to function if the company you buy something from can remotely vandalize it after your purchase.
You don't need a TV. If there are only smart TVs then simply don't purchase one.
Most consumers are unwilling to take an option that they perceive as inconveniencing them more than getting screwed by the company inconveniences them.
Telling people to just go without a TV is a little more than a “perceived” inconvenience.
The reality is that companies know they can get away with crap because they all get away with crap. And because they all do it, consumers are powerless.
This is why regulation isn’t a bad the thing that many HNers seem to recoil at. The real problem with regulation is when it’s defined by lobbyists rather than consumer groups. But even then, it’s really no different to the status quo where businesses are never held accountable.
If somebody "needs" a TV then they might "need" some hobbies.
A disturbing proportion of my family spend more than half of their free time watching television (typically while doom scrolling tiktok). They don't "need" TVs - they need to find interests.
What people don’t need is someone dictating to them how they should relax after work.
Besides, it’s not like TVs are the only industry where consumer choice is an illusion. You see the same problem in a lot of sports (I used to fence and there was a great deal of pressure to buy equipment from one specific manufacturer which charged literally 4x the price for their gear).
And it’s not just hobbies either. I need a car for family duties and there are plenty of parts on it that can only be replaced by an authorised dealer.
> What people don’t need is someone dictating to them how they should relax after work.
Nobody dictates that. What we do is to suggest there might be more rewarding things to do with their time off than watching TV between the dopamine hits from TikTok
Sure, but you're just choosing hobbies for people. TVs are just one example here. If your hobby is 3D printing, you might've gotten screwed by Autodesk's subscription changes.
> Telling people to just go without a TV is a little more than a “perceived” inconvenience.
From personal experience, it really really is barely even an inconvenience. Especially in a world where YouTube exists and is accessible for free from a desktop computer. There's barely been anything good on TV for decades, and the older stuff probably only seemed good because of the difficulty of publishing any competition.
It really depends on the individual. I barely watch any TV and have been like this for the 30+ years that I’ve been old enough to own a display. For a while, I did go fully in with media centres. Even running XBMC on an original Xbox. But I honestly just don’t really care for video content all that much regardless of how it’s delivered.
But I also know a hell of a lot of people who still massively prefer watching content the traditional way. As in, not just TV shows, but on a TV too. And I have no more right to tell them how to consume video content as they do to tell me how I should consume the stuff I want to read.
But that’s not the same thing as saying “people shouldn’t own a TV and instead find themselves a hobby”. Which is the original comment that people objected to.
> Telling people to just go without a TV is a little more than a “perceived” inconvenience.
The TV I have has never had an antenna cable plugged, or an internet connection. It’s, from day one, been a large HDMI monitor to an Apple TV, a Nintendo Switch and a C64 Maxi with some other devices plugged in from time to time.
It IS possible to ignore the TV’s software most of the time (mine, luckily, isn’t intrusive at all) and use it as a conduit for a much cheaper and easily replaced (or hacked) device.
I remember how surprised the engineers at [manufacturer redacted] were when I told them they had everything needed to turn their TVs into thin clients and meeting room monitors right into the Linux firmware just a compile away. I’d totally love a 35” X terminal in 2008 with Ethernet and a couple USB ports.
Yes, we’ve all done that. I mentioned earlier about how I used XBMC on an original Xbox.
But we aren’t normal people. Normal people wouldn’t even know how to set up a media centre. And the Nintendo Switch famously has next to no video streaming platforms on it.
I remember some brand was caught connecting to nearby TVs of the same brand to send telemetry to their corporate masters through the neighbour’s internet connected TV. Not sure how far they went with downloading new firmware.
Please make a list of things you don't need so that in case of any issues with the company or system that allows access to them you will know to just stop using them.
The list is longer than you'd probably think. Keeping a principled stance might involve taking on some inconvenience, which could be a problem for some people.
I've dropped many things in the past because of issues with the company/service. Amazon Prime, every single streaming service, I've been car free for over 3 years, and there are more.
Are there some things I would struggle with if suddenly there were issues? Sure. I had to significantly increase my internet spend because of the (much) cheaper option going to complete shit. I require the internet for my career but unless the entire world collapses I doubt I'll run into any true blocker that would prevent me from using it for work.
Most people are just afraid to change their lives substantively. I am too, but I'm also willing to do it for causes I believe in.
I think you underestimate the meaning of the word 'inconvenience'. Hot water is a convenience.
My point is that your list is one list which you are making, but someone else could look at your life and make a different list. Your argument only goes so far you can extend into your own life. If you really cared about something's place in your life, you wouldn't classify it as a convenience, so you are conveniently applying your own classifications to other people's lives, which you don't have a right to do.
This is why we have democratic institutions and authority -- to make these limits about what is tolerable and intolerable -- not what people's conveniences are.
Do people really have a choice though? Many people don't choose what OS they use for work, and even when one can pick, the environment we exist in is one where being less productive is often hard to afford.
Another instance where companies can have more leverage than consumers is gaming. Console exclusives are a thing because they work; not giving consumers the option to play Pokemon on anything but the Nintendo Switch drives switch sales. Microsoft is better off working with other gaming companies to ensure Windows keeps being dominant, than building an OS to gamer's preferences.
I think time has proven many times that consumers aren't always good regulators for the market. The market is best regulated by organized entities.
Not even companies have a choice, for the most part. Their choice of operating system is dictated by the applications they need to run, and only the smallest and most unsophisticated businesses can generally get away with nothing but a web browser.
There is a whole ecosystem that needs to move before they can move.
> Many people don't choose what OS they use for work, and even when one can pick, the environment we exist in is one where being less productive is often hard to afford.
Sure, but I also think that a lot of the issues with Windows 11 don't really matter much if its just used as a work OS. For example, I refuse to upgrade my home PC to 11, because I don't want Microsoft to spy on me; however, when I am using my work computer, I know that I am already being spied upon, so that's not a concern for me.
“Just don’t buy it” sounds simple, but switching OS or ecosystem has a real cost for most people – time, skills, and sometimes their job tools. That’s exactly why companies can keep pushing the line.
If people stopped buying cigarettes there would be no tobacco industry. But the true cost of smoking is not something that the smoker realizes until it's already too late. That's why we had to have huge public health campaigns to deter people from smoking, because the long-term effects aren't obvious when you're just stopping in at the corner store. We all live in our own little bubbles and it's often difficult to see how our actions, individual and collective, shape the world around us.
Consumers can make choices only if it is clear what the options are. In many cases, Microsoft hides behind weasel or made up words. And it takes a security researcher to peel back the layers of their bullshit.
The reason we are in such a position is because government contracts and government involvement with companies like Microsoft Amazon. They don't have to care about consumers when they have multi billion dollar Gov contracts.
Anti trust laws do not generally apply to these situations. The government has had an appetite for antitrust, but the cases are far from a slam dunk. We need modern laws for modern problems.
Idk. Our antitrust laws present a high burden of proof and so much subjectivity. The question “Are customers really being hurt?” has to be argued in court (and then argued on appeal at like 3 levels). I think it harms our whole market system, and arguably even harms the capitalist system, to have players with so much power, and the antitrust laws are focused narrowly on proving specific harm mainly in the area of pricing, which isn’t the whole picture.
Too many markets are utterly dominated by one or two big players. I know it’s a tricky problem because market share is hard to define (Does Amazon have 80% share of e-commerce? Or 30% share of all retail?) but I think we would be better off if there were a more aggressive set of rules about anti-competitive behavior that automatically applied to these huge firms, which didn’t rely so much on subjective judgment.
Which requires voting in politicians that would do that. Of course we're much more likely to elect politicians that get the support of billionaires in general so this shit ain't never happ'ning
By friends we mean IT leadership in organizations which really needs to be making the case for MacOS, Linux, ChromeOS, or whatever instead of (but more likely in addition to) Windows.
Yeah exactly. But I don't think my local state university, my wife's accounting firm, or my clients are going to ever switch from Windows, no matter how user hostile it becomes. One could dream.
You can even keep that Office365 subscription going on Linux via the web apps these days. They are buggy as hell, but no more buggy than the Mac versions in my experience (haven't used the Windows versions enough to compare...)
I used to do a lot of document and Office work. If you had told me that 20 years in the future MS would still be around, automagic piracy enabled coding bots were a thing, and people were having problems because the buttons in Office don’t work, I would’ve flagged the third as unbelievable.
It’s absolutely adorable to include macOS in that list, as though good ol’ Tim Apple is the White Knight standing up for consumers and always doing the right thing. MacOS and Windows are working from the same playbook. The specifics vary, but leaving one for the other is like running from an abusive boyfriend to his slightly-richer and slightly-better-looking best friend who acts just like him.
I'd love if everyone switched to Linux and the walled gardens just died, but the most realistic outcome would be Microsoft and Apple having to up their game and improve their respective products. Right now they're driving hellbent for leather into OSaaS monthly computer subscriptions, eliminating use agency to the greatest degree possible, and exploiting every possible intrusion and usurpation of consumer privacy, vacuuming up every last bit of data and monetizing it to the greatest degree possible, without any concurrent return in value to the consumer.
The only way that stops is by having enough people leave that they change their behavior, and it's not sufficient to switch to the competition that is operating under the same perverted incentives under the same system with the same failure modes. No Windows, no Mac, no Chromebooks, no enshittified corporate quagmire of awfulness and despair.
The solution is simple - use Linux. Set your family up with Linux.
It's the year of the Linux desktop; it's never been easier or better, and it's never been more important to make the leap.
Mac OS comes with the purchase of the hardware. For mobile and tablets, yes, there is a strict walled garden. But I've been programming on Mac OS for longer than the age of this HN account, and even longer on Linux. In practice there's not much beyond the window manager and containerization that are impractical on Mac for every day programming compared to mainstream Linux distros.
The family computer is set up to boot into Ubuntu; booting into Windows 11 is the exception (games, iTunes).
Not giving Apple money means no Apple hardware. I've gone decades doing it and haven't regretted it once. I've turned down work because it involved having to work with Apple devices and software. It's really, really easy to not give them money.
Pirate everything if you have to, but stop feeding the companies that are making everything awful.
Your are suffering from a fundamental misidentification. There are only people. There is no system doing anything. There are people doing things. Consumers have as much control as they want.
When you insist that the people comprising the system have no agency, you're the one perpetuating it
> I think consumers have little power here. Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behaviour.
Consumers have the final say, our economic system fundamentally is consumer spending. (Ok, save for most recent year(s) of mag7 AI buildout. But generally that's the case for USA economy).
We have to stop taking out our wallet and just accepting things like sheep. (nearly) Every one of the "scrapped" computers could have run a *nix OS and been a middle finger to microsoft.
I think consumers largely have stopped taking out their wallet for Microsoft, at least enough of them to cause Microsoft to start walking back a little bit.
Nearly 1 billion PCs have stayed on Windows 10, 42% of the global desktop marketshare is still on 10 despite EOL. Linux has been showing consistent growth on the steam hardware survey as well, and time will tell but I have a feeling the MacBook Neo is going to put another nail in Microsoft's consumer coffin.
The problem for us is that's such a tiny margin of Microsoft's customer base. They aren't a consumer company anymore. For Microsoft to feel the pain, we need the big legacy enterprises to start ripping out Windows (and by extension, rip out Windows Server, Azure, M365).
Us here on HN are in a unique position to help, with many of us having influence on or even the authority to make technical decisions for the companies we work for. Its not enough to stop buying Microsoft at home, we all need to stop buying Microsoft at work.
> I think consumers largely have stopped taking out their wallet for Microsoft, at least enough of them to cause Microsoft to start walking back a little bit.
Microsoft has largely stopped asking consumers for money. The last paid upgrade was Windows 8, IIRC. Since then, Microsoft wants consumers to upgrade, so it's free, with full screen prompts at login, and sometimes the 'no thanks' button just does it anyway.
Microsoft sells consumer OSes to OEMs. I haven't been looking, but I assume they don't allow OEMs to install Windows 10 Home anymore; and maybe not even Windows 10 Pro. So when consumers buy a new PC, they're getting Windows 11. The only Linux option at most stores is Chrome OS, which Google is shutting down, and is just a browser for most users (it's a useful product! a lot of users just need a browser; but it's not a platform of empowerment)
Sort of related, I think this is why big tech loves “free, ad-supported” so much. Using Google search or YouTube or ChatGPT or Fortnite doesn’t seem like an action that is “supporting a company.” When none of the money comes from your pocket, you don’t really feel like you’re making an important choice to patronize one business or another.
It seems like another tragedy of the commons. Consumers ultimately have the final say in climate impacts by above companies. That isn’t to say consumers are guilt free, but the power of an individual is pretty small
You can do that, but the companies and institutions built on Windows will still keep paying whatever it costs for Active Directory, and thus all the bundled software that comes with it.
Individual consumer action does not a monopoly break.
> But out here on this miserable old Earth I happen to think that Rust’s errors are pretty great. They’re usually catching things I didn’t actually intend to do, rather than preventing me from doing those things.
As it happens, you are replying to the person who made Rust's errors great! (it wasn't just them of course, but they did a lot of it)
In some parts of the world perhaps? They're not an essential part of life in urban areas designed to work well without them. As in, many people can live their lives never using one, let alone owning one.
> Offshoring white collar jobs is a different kind of risk
Isn't this risk also present with offshorting blue collar jobs? I agree that both are bad ideas, but the capitalist class didn't care before and isn't exactly well known for it's long-term thinking.
Microsoft could probably put Windows on the M series macs if they wanted to. Windows for ARM exists, and Apple very specifically made the bootloader unlockable on the Apple Silicon laptops.
I guess they might have to write a lot of the device drivers (including the GPU driver) themselves though, and there probably isn't much incentive for them to do that.
You used to be able to put it on Macs yourself, i.e. just install it the way you would on any computer, or equivalently put Linux on it. Now, see (all the work that has to be done by the team of) Asahi, except there's no Windows equivalent.
If MS did 'Asahi-Windows'... I don't know whether I'd expect Apple to sue or to make ads making fun of it, but it would be a wild time.
Microsoft Surface laptops are the closest you can get to a "Mac with Windows" in quality/thought (that I've found) and the ARM CPU not being able to use x86 printer drivers is infuriating.
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