I know it’s really low hanging fruit, but a couple of weeks back, on a whim, I decided to play Candy Crush for the first time in probably ten years. For the first time since I was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago, in fact.

And boy oh boy, is that shit eye-opening when you’re playing with a greater understanding of what makes an ADHD brain tick.

The speed at which you can tick through the screens to get to playing, the satisfying way the haptics tap when you make a match, the constancy of advertising power ups. The game is a masterpiece in addictive design, working just on the right side of being compulsive to play.

Fortunately for me, being aware of this stuff means I’m not tempted to spend any money on it. As soon as I’m out of lives I shut it down. But I’m still susceptible to its charms all the same, and it’s kinda scary how easy it is.

Oh aye, I wasn’t suggesting that they have to know ALL of the tech to be able to post on a tech forum, I’m just surprised that they’re completely unaware of it, given it’s ubiquity on the tech forum over the past month or so.

Yes, obviously, but that thing has been everywhere over the past month or so. I’m just surprised that they were completely unaware.

I mean, today’s 10,000 and all that, but you’re on a technology forum and haven’t heard of the Rabbit R1?

Not everything. By default the contents of your desktop and documents folder, both of which are easy to switch off if you want.

They are not, but they do sell products over here, so are subject to British law.

I’m in the UK, where the law may be less mental over things like this.

IANAL and could be wrong, but it is not the case that the T’s&C’s we all have to agree to aren’t necessarily legally binding, because people can’t be expected to read and understand them all.

With that in mind, it doesn’t matter what the user agrees to if they have no practical alternative available to them.

When I bought my first MacBook in ‘07 I asked the guy in the store about upgrading the RAM. He told me that what Apple charged was outrageous and pointed me to a website where I’d get what I needed for much less.

I feel that if Apple could have soldered the RAM back then, they would have.

I’m not gonna stand up and declare that 8gb is absolutely fine, because in very short order it won’t be. But yeah, currently for an average use case, it is.

My work Mac mini has 8gb. It’s a 2014 so can’t be upgraded, but for the tasks I ask of it it’s ok. Sure, it gets sluggish if I’m using the Win11 VM I sometimes need, but generally I don’t really have any issues doing regular office tasks.

That said, I sometimes gets a bee in my bonnet about it, so open Activity Monitor to see what’s it’s doing, and am shocked by how much RAM some websites consume in open tabs in Safari.

8gb is generally ok on low end gear, but devs are working very hard to ensure that it’s not.

Until last week it was running Sonoma. Then I put Mint on it, which somehow buggered up the macOS partition.

Long story short, it’s not run High Sierra for a couple of years now, not since I discovered OCLP.

Speaking personally, I don’t think they’re dumbed down. They’re pretty straightforward to use, sure, but they do what I need them to.

In terms of the hardware; I have a 2011 MacBook Pro at home that’s still just about as solid as the day I bought it. The battery’s dead, but that’s to be expected for its age. I’m typing this on a 2014 Mac mini that’s running the latest macOS perfectly through OCLP. My main computer is a 15" M2 MacBook Air that is a genuinely impressive machine. If anything, Apple have kinda shot themselves in the foot, making devices that last far longer than their software support allows.

I quite believe this.

Was looking on /r/Apple last week and was shocked by the number of people who are apparently full on free market champions or Apple shareholders or both. That place has always had it’s fair share of them, but they seem to have been ramped up to the max now.

I’ve been a user of Apple devices since I got my first MacBook in 2007. I now have an iPhone, iPad, a selection of Macs of various ages, and a couple of Apple TVs. As much as I’d like to switch to Linux, I don’t really see it happening because I like Apple’s hardware too much.

With all that in mind, I think the EU are doing sterling work. Shame my country voted to leave it…

Landlords are vermin, AI is peddled by vermin, and spambots are vermin.

As a Mac user who enjoys trying to get games working, I’ve played Talos Principle II recently, and am able to play Fallout 4 (to some degree) when I get a chance.

On the one hand there are graphical glitches and things aren’t perfect. But on the other, I’m playing games that have had literally no optimisation for macOS, on a fanless M2 Air.

If nothing else, it’s a useful example of the direction things could take if devs had the impetus to do so.

Download the Alexa app and have at it.

cries in iPhone

I’ve had a few Alexas over the past five years or so, and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever used any of them to actually buy anything. They’re all glorified Bluetooth speakers for my phone.