. . .

And the sad part is that anyone could have come to this exact conclusion the moment the product was unveiled. We all kinda assumed it was more of an early-adopter demonstrator at that point, and not something that Apple would quickly give up on the moment reality set in.

Those CPU/TPM requirements being the main reason this is even a problem in the first place. By putting in those requirements, Microsoft has made Win11 incompatible with a huge number of older computers that would otherwise be perfectly capable of running it with completely acceptable performance.

Faster hardware won the race against slower software a long time ago now, so relatively "old" computers are nowhere near as slow as they used to be. Thus the motivation to actually upgrade also isn't what it used to be.

Um, a USB-C port *is* today's equivalent of that standard barrel connector. Except it actually is a standard connector, with standardized specs about what it can and cannot do.

Those barrel jacks have none of that. They come in a variety of sizes, a variety of configurations (both center-positive and center negative), both AC and DC, a variety of voltages, and a variety of current ratings.

Meanwhile, ICE cars keep getting quieter, and aren't subject to such rules. So in a modern parking lot, new EVs are actually becoming the loudest vehicles.
They really should have made the rules based on some sort of decibel spec, not based on propulsion technology.

I'm using a 4k 30" display on Linux, with 125% fractional scaling. No matter what I do, including all of the tips out there, all of the icons and UI controls in GIMP 2.x are microscopic. In other Gtk2 apps (e.g. HexChat), icons and controls are also microscopic but the UI is mostly text which renders fine.

In legacy Qt4 and Java apps, things are also microscopic. But sometimes text is comically huge, depending on how they decide to size elements. Regardless its a mess all around.

Meanwhile, anything built in a more modern toolkit (Gtk3+, Qt5+, etc) looks perfectly fine.

As someone who has a HiDPI display, I find GTK2 apps to be nearly unusable now. So the GTK3 update alone is enormously welcome.

Fortunately, most GTK2 apps are semi-abandonware at this point, but they still tend to have no obvious drop-in replacements.

Unfortunately, there's also long tail of niche commercial Qt4 apps with similar issues, which the vendors have zero incentive to ever update unless Microsoft horribly breaks their DPI compatibility hacks on Windows.

And yet I seem to know a bunch of people who obsessively share links to BlueSky, which doesn't seem to get much media attention at all.

Given how Threads is basically something anyone on Facebook/Instagram automatically has an account with, and how there are obsessive notifications pushing people to open it (whether or not they actually care to), I have a hard time believing any such high-level usage statistics. Simply tapping those notifications by accident, then leaving two seconds later, is likely enough to increase the counter those monthly user stats are based on.

In other words, Threads is the only social network people are likely to use by accident (rather than intentionally), as a consequence if it being pushed by a much larger social network they're already a part of.

That being said, I think a lot of the Model M rage came before the mechanical keyboard market exploded. So for a while, you pretty much had to dig up an old Model M to get an type of experience that Kailh, Gateron, and Cherry (and a ton of boutique downstream brands) will now happily help you get in on.

And because they're basically lawnmower engines, the fumes are actually significantly worse than car exhausts.

There's nothing inherently EV-specific about that gripe.
You'll be pleased to know that even some modern ICE cars now have gigantic electronic displays on the dash these days. I only expect more of that in the future.

Which means that when you do launch the app, your mobile OS has revoked all its permissions and the servers have canceled your auth tokens.
Thus you need to set it up and sign into it all over again, which is where the failure points lie.

The whole way you'd handle this "at home" would be to plug the car in overnight.
But unfortunately, the hotel you're planning to stay at during the trip is highly unlikely to actually have any usable charging infrastructure whatsoever.

Sure, some hotels do have chargers. But never enough to actually be able to depend upon.

That kinda reminds me of how the tech press used to report smartphone marketshare statistics. You could scope your data any which way to basically tell any story you want. Just get creative in what time periods you're looking at, and how you define the market.

Especially since the Win11 requirements are all about TPM 2.0, and have nothing to do with whether the machine is actually powerful enough to run the OS otherwise.
There are likely countless machines that are plenty powerful for everyday use, but have CPUs that pre-date the cutoff.

Meanwhile, I still don't think I've upgraded to Wi-Fi 6 yet... I think my current APs go up to 802.11ac, whatever consumer-oriented name that corresponds to. Still seems to work fine, but I guess I should upgrade one of these years.