“Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people”
Perhaps its an overgeneralization, but I like the concept behind it and at least it keeps me from gossiping / talking about people behind their backs. I am mostly an average mind though, by this definition.
I wear them only if I have a cold or a cough myself now, or if I am traveling on a plane. I still carry a mask with me at all times though.
I don’t want to get sucked into an ecosystem where my choice of what product to buy is so limited.
This isn’t actually the case in my experience, because non-Apple products work just fine with the iPhone unless it’s some Android-specific accessory. No one wants to ignore the iPhone market so they make sure that their product is well-supported on iPhones. For instance, I use a bunch of headphones from various manufacturers, apart from AirPods, and they all work great too.
The actual issue is that if you want to move from iPhone to Android later you may have issues getting some Apple devices you have to work with Android, e.g. I don’t think the Apple Watch works at all with Android.
why do you use iPhone?
In my case, because I had a bad experience with Android phones in their early years. Each model I used had one or the other issues, either battery life, camera issues, screen issues or something else. Around the Samsung S3 days I finally moved to iPhone and “everything just worked”.
I am sure things are better now in the Android world hardware-wise (and software-wise Android has always been able to do more), but over the years I have become firmly entrenched in the Apple ecosystem with the Apple Watch, Airpods, Macbooks, Apple TV etc so it doesn’t make sense for me to switch again because there isn’t a compelling reason for me to do so.
My first experience with the internet was using a Unix shell account that I used to dial into using “Telix for DOS”. For browsing I had Lynx, for mail PINE, and for IRC it was some client called “irc” and so on. This was in the early 90s, maybe 1991 or 92.
Everything was text only, dial-up with 9600 baud, and it was glorious because before that all we had was BBSes (which were even more glorious in some ways actually).
Over the years I have visited the usual suspects as a tourist and sometimes for work: Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Madrid, Zurich, Berlin etc and some other cities in the same countries.
Mulling over it, I think Paris remains a place I always love to revisit. It’s not exactly warm and inviting from a people perspective, but the architecture, food, and general feeling of being there makes up for it. I am a history buff so Rome comes in second for me. People-wise I found Barcelona to be most friendly, though I have not been there in a decade now.
What I love most about European cities is that they are all so walk-able, which is in stark contrast to US cities (which I therefore rarely visit as a tourist, only go for work).
Interestingly this may piss off more people than the real issues. Most people didn’t seem to care at all about the API / 3rd party app support issues as long as they got their Reddit doom-scroll fix. But I bet whole bunch of these will be upset at having an ugly pixelated icon on their phone, muhawhaw.