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iOS 14

I don’t have a Apple Pencil though, and I suspect a lot of the new fun is there.

I couldn’t justify the cost of an Apple Pencil so bought one of these for £29...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B089NCNJ2N/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21

It’s missing some of the functionality of the Apple version, no pressure sensitivity, no double tap to go into erase mode and doesn’t charge wirelessly. However it does connect magnetically and charges via USB C. I’ve found it very accurate with no noticeable lag - far, far better than anything I’ve tried in the past.

With iPad OS 14 you use it to write freehand in text boxes and your scribbles are converted to text.
 
This site contains affiliate links for which pink fish media may be compensated.
Well, its attempt to render ‘Temba, his arms wide’ into German definitely wasn’t quite right.

But then that’s not necessarily surprising.

English to German automatic translations are always difficult. Probably due to the differences in sentence structure.
 
IPhone and iPad working fine for me, though I don’t hammer anything. Disappointed that Translate and the App Library are only on iPhone not iPad, can’t understand why, guess it’s the downside of having an iPadOS distinct from iOS. Pleased about more privacy, especially as it has evidently annoyed Facebook. Seems a bit nippier. Can’t get as excited as Tim Cook about widgets on Home Screen, let alone all the emoji stuff, but hey each to his own. My wife will probably get the new iPad Air, will be a big step up from her iPad2. Am relying on my Watch more and more for phone calls and voice based stuff.
 
Pleased about more privacy, especially as it has evidently annoyed Facebook.

Do bare in mind that cross-site tracking of outlinks etc is how many independent sites such as this one make their living. Same with a lot of quality journalism etc too. If the tag that identifies an affiliate link to Amazon, eBay etc is removed when you click it we don’t get paid anything at all. This is actually something that annoys me hugely as by blocking a site’s income stream means you are effectively stealing content and functionality from them. It is shoplifting, running from a restaurant without paying, fiddling your taxes or whatever. If I could physically prevent site access to people running ad-blockers etc I absolutely would! I’d just serve up a black screen saying ‘please remove your ad blocker to view this site’ if I could figure out how to!

I’m sure no one here would tolerate doing their job unpaid, so I think it is a bit much for multi-$trillion corporations such as Apple to facilitate content theft devices to deny independent websites their only revenue stream. Basically if I don’t like a site’s financial model then I just don’t use it. If a site is rammed with ads and provides a thoroughly unpleasant user experience I won’t ever visit it again. I certainly don’t use tools to steal from it. I use no ad-blocking at all. It is just Napster all over again really as far as I’m concerned.
 
I don't miss Android at all. I tried a note nine for 6 months, hated it. Hated how flaky everything was, hated how options were all over the place, hated the flaky fingerprint recognition. It certainly looked nice though. Most of all I hated how, according to PiHole the note nine had the most by almost 5 times ad blocking compared to anything else on the network.

I've recently moved back to iOS after being on a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge for a few years. I liked the phone and Android was generally okay, but I hated the Samsung bloatware and the fact that I could not easily remove it. On top of this, the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge failed twice and would not reboot. The 1st time it was covered under Samsung warranty and they sorted it in a few days - a new motherboard. To fail again in a similar fashion is poor reliability to me, so I will now be avoiding Samsung whenever I can.
 
Facebook is different tony. If I thought for one minute you were tracking where I was even when PFM was not loaded, and my contacts, accessing my bluetooth, etc well that would not be good.

The new occulus headset cannot be used without a facebook account.
 
Facebook is different tony.

I absolutely agree. It just annoys me hugely that everyone just sees the word ‘privacy’ and doesn’t realise that by turning these measures on at a system-wide level would likely drive sites like pfm, the Guardian, Independent etc out of business. Obviously not everyone does this and I make a reasonable living at present, but the concept and woeful lack of education is highly worrying.
 
Companies like facebook and google brought that on Tony, not end users. If google had stuck to its mantra of doing no evil, perhaps things would have been different.
 
I’ve been on beta versions on my 11 Max Pro and series 5 watch and they still haven’t fixed the auto opening of the watch passcode when you open the phone, nor are the watch ECGs being recorded on the phone health app.
Apart from that, a very underwhelming iOS upgrade.
 
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Do bare in mind that cross-site tracking of outlinks etc is how many independent sites such as this one make their living. Same with a lot of quality journalism etc too. If the tag that identifies an affiliate link to Amazon, eBay etc is removed when you click it we don’t get paid anything at all. This is actually something that annoys me hugely as by blocking a site’s income stream means you are effectively stealing content and functionality from them. It is shoplifting, running from a restaurant without paying, fiddling your taxes or whatever. If I could physically prevent site access to people running ad-blockers etc I absolutely would! I’d just serve up a black screen saying ‘please remove your ad blocker to view this site’ if I could figure out how to!

I’m sure no one here would tolerate doing their job unpaid, so I think it is a bit much for multi-$trillion corporations such as Apple to facilitate content theft devices to deny independent websites their only revenue stream. Basically if I don’t like a site’s financial model then I just don’t use it. If a site is rammed with ads and provides a thoroughly unpleasant user experience I won’t ever visit it again. I certainly don’t use tools to steal from it. I use no ad-blocking at all. It is just Napster all over again really as far as I’m concerned.
I have a right to know and to control how information about me is used. Surely you can’t argue that you or Mark Zuckerberg or Donald Trump should be able to profit from using information about my behaviour that I am not aware of giving you or that I have not consented to you using. If this threatens your commercial model, then change your model. Happy to pay a reasonable subscription if that’s what it needs. But as it happens I don’t ad block because I choose not to.
 
It wasn’t my intention to have a go at anyone in particular, my aim was just to make a general point. The fact pfm uses affiliate advertising and cookies is clear in the AUP and every member has had to click a cookies acceptance notification as is required under GDPR. There is nothing even remotely covert here; the privacy policy can be found in a link at the bottom of every single page along with the site’s terms and rules.
 
It wasn’t my intention to have a go at anyone in particular, my aim was just to make a general point. The fact pfm uses affiliate advertising and cookies is clear in the AUP and every member has had to click a cookies acceptance notification as is required under GDPR. There is nothing even remotely covert here; the privacy policy can be found in a link at the bottom of every single page along with the site’s terms and rules.
Zuckerberg could probably say the same.
 
I absolutely agree. It just annoys me hugely that everyone just sees the word ‘privacy’ and doesn’t realise that by turning these measures on at a system-wide level would likely drive sites like pfm, the Guardian, Independent etc out of business. Obviously not everyone does this and I make a reasonable living at present, but the concept and woeful lack of education is highly worrying.
What will drive the Guardian out of business is being a second rate newspaper with third rate journalists.
 
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This site contains affiliate links for which pink fish media may be compensated.
In which case it’s just as well neither of those apply.

The real problem here is it turns what was once widely read mainstream news services into unaccountable echo chambers behind paywalls. The Times, Telegraph etc no longer face any criticism or peer review beyond people so far of their mindset they are prepared to pay to read what they place on their website. The Guardian does amazingly well to buck this trend and along with whatever is left of the Independent is the only surviving UK newspaper aside from the far-right gutter tabloids. I’m disappointed the FT has failed to find an open model that works for it as it is the best of the bunch in most respects. It did make much of its superb covid 19 reporting free to read, but everything else is hidden behind a paywall. I view advertising as hugely preferable to this closed model.

PS In most respects it could be argued a huge benefit that the Telegraph keeps its toxic bile off the wider internet!
 


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