The collective confusion and mental gymnastics to twist it when Republicans heard about the Hunter Biden conviction cost the US billions in lost productivity.

Bless your heart

Ok, so you were saying you prefer a privacy focused OS but settle for iOS because it’s simpler. Fair point.

As far as data collection goes, Google isn’t selling it either. Apple and Google are both collecting your data to assign you to certain demographics. They then sell ad space, and the people that purchase those ads can select the demographic they want it to go to. It’s not ideal, but it’s certainly better than them selling your actual personal data to third parties.

Right, because Apple doesn’t collect your data, even though it says they do right in the terms of service you agreed to without reading.

3x as much is “marginally better.” What world do you Apple zealots live in?

Why would you only use a privacy focused ROM and not stock Android, when you use a stock iPhone? Do you think that Apple doesn’t collect just as much data on you as Android does? It’s literally in the Apple terms of service. They’ve just conned you into believing their marketing BS.

The DRM and licensing built into HDMI is a massive con either way. Not to mention DP connectors are far more robust than HDMI - I’ve had quite a few HDMI cables and ports just bend/break with minimal use. Fiddled with just as many DP cables and never had a port or connector get loose or break. I’d probably choose DP even if its standards were lagging behind HDMI’s.

Likely, but DP is still superior to even the latest HDMI standards, so I’d choose it over HDMI whenever that’s an option.

They’re not cheap if you get them first hand but they’re not insane considering who we’re talking about. Bands like The Eagles, Rolling Stones,etc were commanding $150+ tickets two decades ago. But good luck getting a non-resale ticket, between bots and the companies themselves buying the tickets solely to mark up for resale it’s nearly impossible to get a ticket at face value.

IP67 in reality won’t last 30 minutes submerged in most cases. I’ve had flagship level IP67 devices get damaged by water ingress by being splashed or dunked a couple inches into a pool for less than a second. My Pixel 8 Pro goes into the shower, bath, pool, hot tub, and rain with me and it’s never skipped a beat.

Thanks for the anecdotal evidence, but in general those buds ended up in the trash in months, if not weeks. Out of all the people I know, pretty sure my wife is the only one that likes the wired buds that came with phones, but she went through a pair every few months. She switched to Pixel Buds a while back and only uses the wired ones when she runs, but still has to buy new ones twice a year.

The limitation is not tech, it’s the cost to include those features in an IP68+ device. The XR21 is a $650USD phone, that’s near flagship prices, and very far from a budget phone.

Is it possible to create a device that has a jack, SD slot, and removable battery that’s also IP68+ certified? Absolutely, but doing that is quite a bit more expensive than the same features on an IP67 or lower device.

It’s not that it’s impossible, but the device will be both more expensive, and considerably thicker. Most people do not care about a headphone jack anymore, and even less so SD card slots and removable batteries. They want thinner, cheaper, waterproof phones. These features aren’t in high demand, and aren’t profitable for companies to produce.

Yet lasted 1/10th as long.

Oh, sorry. Did you enjoy fishing them out of your pocket only to have everything else you happened to have in your pocket fall to the ground. Then once you picked up all your stuff, you still had to spend a couple minutes untangling and removing all the random knots that had appeared in your headphone cords since you put them in.

It was IP67 not IP68, which is what I stated. While it’s possible to have a headphone jack and IP68 resistance, it’s not cheap and you likely won’t find it on anything but niche flagship phones like the Asus Zenphone.

IP67 and IP68 are considerably different. It’s basically the difference between water-resistant and water proof. IP67 could handle splashes of water and, at least on paper, brief submersion. In reality, most. IP67 phones did not handle any level of immersion well.

IP68 on the other hand allows phones to be submerged deeper in water and for much longer. You can have IP67 with those features, but IP68 is a different beast.

Do you really consider the $5 wired earbuds that came with the phone, the ones most people used, were repairable? Nah, they were way more disposable than even cheap wireless buds are these days.

I used to feel this way until I realized that a large percentage of phone users rarely used earbuds or headphones, including myself. Wired earbuds were a pain in the ass, nobody wanted to carry a coiled up cable in their pocket all day. But a little clamshell with a couple small buds in it fits pretty well into a jeans pocket. Once wireless earbuds hit the market, everyone started using them for a reason.

The only real argument for an analog headphone jack at this point is audio fidelity, and if you care about that you’re 1, not using your phone with a cheap DAC to do it and 2, your headphones probably use a 1/4" jack not a 3.5mm one. Wireless protocols are also catching up to analog as far as audio quality as well, and most people expect IP68 from a good phone these days, and you’re not getting that with a 3.5mm audio jack or removable battery.

The consumers who care about an audio jack on phones these days are a very vocal minority.

Most streaming content is licensed, not owned by the streaming platform. Anyone could start their own streaming service and get licenses for existing content, assuming they had the capital to do so.

When MTV still played music videos.