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Seriously, why are touchpads not a solved problem yet?

Why are so many machines (including some fairly high-end models) shipping with worse touchpads than Apple were shipping over a decade ago?


The actual touch part of the FW touchpad, including tap to click, works just fine. I might be a weirdo for liking mechanical click for dragging (and I dislike the Macbook tactile fakery; it does not fool my finger).

Most flash drives and wired mice/keyboards are still USB-A.

And people have huge piles of charging cables that are USB-A to micro/mini USB or USB-C.


I assume you are talking about legacy devices? I haven't purchased a keyboard in the past ten years with USB-A. Everything is USB-C for charging/data and Bluetooth.

I think new devices are primarily USB-A too? All my keyboards and mice are A, also the one I bought this year: https://perixx.com/products/periboard-535

Wow. A device in 2025 with a non-detachable USB-A cable? That sounds like a horrible design decision from both a repairability and future-proofing standpoint. My keyboard has a USB-C port on the side so you can plug in whatever cable you want, A or C, long, short, curled, braided. It even connects to my phone without dongles.

Yeah I agree a detachable cable would've been better. The keyboard itself is very good though, I'm quite happy with it!

I think I've still got a Compaq iPaq in my collection of obsolete gadgets, but last time I tried it the battery wouldn't hold a charge at all.

More disappointingly, other gadgets of a similar era - such as a Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox and a GP32 handheld are suffering from flash memory losing it's contents (the firmware), bricking the devices :(


> Yeah, the lack of support for off-the-shelf hardware has been the doom of the Amiga revival since day one.

The Amiga was not just an OS. It was all about the custom chips that added such interesting and powerful capabilities to an otherwise unspectacular 68000. When combined with the OS, it created a system that was truly ahead of its time.

But I don't see the appeal of AmigaOS on modern hardware. Most Amiga fans are more interested in the games and demos that didn't use the OS, and used the blitter/copper etc directly.

And if you just want a faster Amiga, the PiStorm is pretty cool.


There have been firebrands attempting a revival of the Amiga since the mid 90's, and back then it was a question of making a new and modern platform -- not watching demos.

Today is a different matter, of course. Personally, emulation is more than enough for me.


And the delivery drivers were probably paid more than they are now…

The food was probably healthier too

A moot point when the air was often so thick (smog) that it could kill you.

LTNs and pedestrianised areas are great for criminals on illegal high-powered e-bikes. Purpose-built getaway routes.

Reminds me of the one bizzare rationalization in California claiming high speed stops will somehow bring burglaries. I am not sure what blend of NIMBYism, racism, classism, or xenophobia came up with that.

I'm not that convinced pedestrianised areas make it easier for them. At least you can spot the thieves if bikes are not supposed to be there.

lol. People will try to paint anything they don’t like as bad because criminals can also use it.

It’s about actively blocking police and other emergency vehicles while allowing a new class of problem vehicles, illegal e-motorbikes, to pass unimpeded.

As a motorist, the war on cars (and milking of motorists for tax revenue) would be less infuriating if we didn’t have the rising broad-daylight lawlessness of illegal e-bikes and scooters doing 30mph+ with no pedaling, no tax, and no insurance. Often with corporate branding in the form of Deliveroo or Just Eat bags. Sometimes balaclava-clad and engaging in dodgier activities.

(Would be in favour of regulating and policing these bikes and scooters rather than outright prohibition, but the UK government chooses to stick to prohibition and very inconsistent policing)


Sorry, this doesn’t make any sense. If the problem were that criminals have high powered e-bikes, the obvious answer would be to give high powered e-bikes to the police.

What you’re actually griping about isn’t criminals using e-bikes as getaway vehicles, but the presence of these unsafe e-bikes at all. You’re basically saying “how come I can’t drive my unsafe machine but they can drive theirs?” And yeah, I don’t want people zipping by at 30mph on scooters either, but the problem isn’t that the cars are gone.


Linux isn’t much use if you can’t get hold of (non-locked-down) hardware to run it on

For now, such hardware is readily available. Every Walmart, for example, will have it. Amazon has it. Pcpartpicker lists numerous other places that you can buy it from.

Can headphones that stick to the spec actually play nicely with multiple devices? - switching quickly between phone and laptop like Airpods do?

Yes, this is called Bluetooth multipoint and has been common on non-Apple devices (for example Bose) for a few years now. Requires no logins and is vendor-agnostic.

It's finnicky though. Sometimes, if I get a call on my phone and hang up, my Bose headphones tell my Mac to start playing music.

I can stop music on my phone and immediately listen to music from my laptop. I have non-apple headphones, a non-apple laptop and an iPhone. There is no apple magic dust that makes this happen.

Can you do that with 7 devices? Can you pair your device with your phone and it automatically pairs with all of your devices?

> switching quickly between phone and laptop like Airpods do?

They do that? Mine can't even switch quickly between my corporate and my own iphone.


Are they on the same iCloud account? I believe that's the magic needed.

Of course not, that's the whole point of having a separate corp phone ;)

But why would switching headphone connections need the cloud... ah... nevermind...


It doesn’t need “the cloud” (switching works offline) but it does need to verify that the device it’s switching to belongs to you, which it does using a keypair associated with your account.

Didn't I previously prove this by completing the pairing process anyway?

A decade in computing used to mean revolutionary improvements:

- from the C64 to the Pentium

- from the Playstation 1 to the Xbox360

- from the Nokia 3310 to the iPhone 4.

Each of these in roughly a decade.

But 2015-2025 in terms of desktop PCs? Some decent (but not revolutionary) steps forward with GPUs, and much more affordable+speedy SSDs. But everything else has been pretty small and incremental.

And when enthusiasts upgrade, the old parts usually find new homes. My old 6th-gen i7 from a decade ago still has more than enough power for my Dad to use as a home PC for basic photo editing, web browsing, and spreadsheets. But Win10 end-of-life wants to turn that machine into e-waste.


I think that is normal across most technologies or fields. Progress is an S curve (or series of curves), and it's easy to be amazed when looking at the steep bit. Early on progress is slow due to not much investment and going down lots of dead ends, while later progress faces increased complexity and no low hanging fruit left.

The middle bit is where the disadvantages of the early phase has gone, but the disadvantages of late phase hasn't kicked in yet.


It not really about kids. It's about reducing online anonymity for adults, isn't it.

Exactly. In order to prove you are not 15 online you have to prove you are >=16, even if you are 63.

And there's no "I'm an adult" proof with leaking exactly who you are.

This is thinly veiled "we want to know exactly who is behind every account" legislation. Expect it to be coupled with the usual "If you've nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" argument.


I am not sure who is going to be interested in the general population amoral interest in a country that is/was OK with well known personal personalities being pedophiles and rags like the mail that will push whatever narratives they feel brings the more dosh.

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