COASTER1921

I personally had no problem with them charging for API access, the rate was my bigger issue. I suspect they were basing it off of the money and hype behind the large language models that were previously training using their data for free rather than the relatively few 3rd party app users. I don't get how there weren't more people using them considering how bad the official Android app is, but there's no way it was substantially impacting their bottom line.

Charging comparable rates or even 2-3x what they would get from users of the official app seeing ads also wouldn't be an issue to me, paying to support software is generally good as it aligns user and developer interests. But with 20x higher rates than they'd get from the user using the official app that couldn't genuinely be the case.

+1 for VPS, the ionos ones are $2/mo and have unlimited bandwidth at 400mbps. That's basically the cost of electricity for a home server with orders of magnitude better reliability.

External batteries are not the same as there is substantial loss in transmitting the power to the phone, particularly with the many "magsafe" compatible wireless ones. The wired ones add substantially more bulk for similar battery size and although the standard for battery life is much better now, for many otherwise great phones it's still not amazing (aka every pixel prior to this year's).

Being able to quickly swap a battery or simply replace it with a 10000mAh cell for only a few mm more thickness (my preferred method) simply isn't an option now.

By far replaceable batteries. You used to be able to purchase physically larger and higher capacity batteries to get insane battery life, but because they would include a larger rear plastic for the phone it would still look normal. Now we have to waste space and lose efficiency with external power banks.

Yep. Like $1.99 or $2.99 I can easily justify but $5/mo for only 300 searches feels too steep to me reguardless of result quality. I'll just go through the other pages of results from any other search engine.

I visit China frequently for work and feel that the impression most older Americans have of China is incredibly out of touch. The traditional media portrayal of the country is definitely a part of this. Yes, it's certainly an authoritarian state, but this doesn't change whether the people are nice or what they want in life.

Although they're nowhere near marketshare of Apple they definitely haven't had failure in the Pixels. Every generation I notice more and more people using them rather than the previous niche audience. They're probably the best all-around Android phones out there for average people, and with the standard pixel 8 being $550 reasonably good value compared to their competition for all but heavy mobile gamers.

Ironically the best thing we have to counter it is immigration, but of course they're against that.

Seriously this is crazy. Apple somehow winning is way worse as there is simply no way to install third party apps on IOS. Android makes the risks clear but it's still at least possible if you click install anyway.

In terms of being a monopoly, in the US ios has more market share anyway. Google's lawyers must have really made some big mistake.

The home bought 15 years ago definitley helps. With higher interest and pricing explosions in growing Metro areas like DFW, I'd expect the housing payment to be well over 3x if you were to buy now. DFW median home price alone is up 2.63x over the last 15yr alone before considering interest rates.

If EU imessage usage were as widespread as in US it would definitely be subject to regulation. Such a shame.

NVME only. I suspect caching just isn't enabled based on previous comment. If it's not by default then I didn't change it.