I reckon even an iPhone pro is better value than an average android phone. Same with iPad vs Android tablet.
Because they last 3 possibly 4 times longer. A decent Apple laptop purchased 4 years ago is still basically a top notch laptop. Build quality is amazing. Resale value is still very high.
> If you buy Android flagships after 2022, they also last 4-6 years.
The hardware lasts but they usually stop getting software updates after a few years, especially if they're not high-end models.
Last month, Apple released an update for the iPhone 8 and iPhone X [1]. The iPhone 8 was released September 2017. I seriously doubt 9-year old Android phones, even flagship models, are still getting software updates.
> Last month, Apple released an update for the iPhone 8 and iPhone X [1]. The iPhone 8 was released September 2017. I seriously doubt 9-year old Android phones, even flagship models, are still getting software updates.
How usable is an 8-year-old iPhone as a primary phone though? I agree that having 8 years of support is a good thing, but at that point the hardware is so degraded that it's not suitable for its original purpose anymore. At that point I'd rather have android just so I can root it and install Linux. Then again, with improvements to phones slowing down in recent years, this is becoming increasingly untrue.
Samsung's flagship Galaxy series get software support for 7 years. A, M, F mid-range and low end models get 6 years of software support. The worst case today for the most popular mid to low spec phones is twice the "a few years" you claim, which suggests you're out of touch with the changes in the industry over the last few years.
> The worst case today for the most popular mid to low spec phones is twice the "a few years" you claim, which suggests you're out of touch with the changes in the industry over the last few years.
Are you sure about that? Apparently nicer Android phones not getting updates for very long is real.
No Longer Receiving Updates
Google Pixel [2], [3]
| Phone | Released |Updates Ended|
|---------------|----------|-------------|
| Pixel 3 | Oct 2018 | Oct 2021 |
| Pixel 3 XL | Oct 2018 | Oct 2021 |
| Pixel 3a | May 2019 | May 2022 |
| Pixel 3a XL | May 2019 | May 2022 |
| Pixel 4 | Oct 2019 | Oct 2022 |
| Pixel 4 XL | Oct 2019 | Oct 2022 |
| Pixel 4a | Aug 2020 | Aug 2023 |
| Pixel 4a (5G) | Nov 2020 | Nov 2023 |
| Pixel 5 | Oct 2020 | Oct 2023 |
| Pixel 5a | Aug 2021 | Aug 2024 |
As of late 2024, the Pixel 3, 3a, 4, 4a, 5, and 5a series are all fully out of support. The Pixel 5 received Android 14 as its last OS update with a final security patch in October 2023, and the Pixel 5a concluded support in August 2024, also on Android 14.
Samsung Galaxy [1], [4]
| Phone |Released | Updates Ended|
|----------------------|----------|--------------|
| Galaxy S9 | Mar 2018 | ~2022 |
| Galaxy S9+ | Mar 2018 | ~2022 |
| Galaxy Note 9 | Aug 2018 | ~2022 |
| Galaxy S10 | Mar 2019 | ~2023 |
| Galaxy S10+ | Mar 2019 | ~2023 |
| Galaxy S10e | Mar 2019 | ~2023 |
| Galaxy Note 10 | Aug 2019 | ~2023 |
| Galaxy Note 10+ | Aug 2019 | ~2023 |
| Galaxy S20 | Feb 2020 | Early 2025 |
| Galaxy S20+ | Feb 2020 | Early 2025 |
| Galaxy S20 Ultra | Feb 2020 | Early 2025 |
| Galaxy Note 20 | Aug 2020 | ~2024–2025 |
| Galaxy Note 20 Ultra | Aug 2020 | ~2024–2025 |
| Galaxy S20 FE | Oct 2020 | Mid 2025 |
| Galaxy Z Fold 2 | Sep 2020 | ~2024 |
| Galaxy Z Flip | Feb 2020 | ~2023 |
The Galaxy S20, S20+, and S20 Ultra received their final update in the form of the January 2025 security patch. After originally launching in 2020, Samsung had promised four years of software support for the S20 trio — three major OS upgrades (Android 10 to 13) and four years of security updates.
On Their Last Legs (Security Updates Only, No More OS Upgrades)
These are still receiving quarterly security patches but will drop off soon:
- Galaxy S21 / S21+ / S21 Ultra — Final OS was Android 15; now on quarterly security patches only
- Galaxy S21 FE — Will receive Android 16 as its final major upgrade via One UI 8, after which it moves to quarterly patches with no further OS updates
- Pixel 6 / Pixel 6 Pro — Now updated to a 5-year support window, with final updates expected in October 2026
- Pixel 6a — Supported until at least July 2027
---
The main takeaway: if you're on a Samsung S20-era or Pixel 5a-or-older
device, you're fully unprotected. The Galaxy S21 series and Pixel 6/7
families still have some runway left, though they're winding down.
Physical durability will play a major factor here. If schools are expected to provide the Chromebooks then it will all boil down to the level of abuse/neglect the hardware can handle.
Replacing a low-resale value $250 Chromebook that is equally sensitive to being dropped, exposed to liquids, or having debris get into hinges and keyboards will be heavily favored over a $500 MB Neo. The Neo’s processor and storage may have better lifetime but it doesn’t mean anything if the equipment ends up bricked.
Schools in affluent areas may favor these for reasons you state. Judging on how students treat textbooks though should demonstrate how short the lifespan would turn out to be.
Framework might be appealing as well. Being able to have parts on hand that can easily be swapped out sounds a lot better/easier than dealing Apple repair practices. The Framework Laptop 12[0] starts at $549 and has touchscreen/pen options. But that price goes up to $799 to have it pre-built with an OS on it, which schools would want, unless building your laptop and installing the OS is part of the curriculum. I wonder if having the kids do this would make them take better care of it, because they had a hand it making it?
Unfortunately it won’t be long til we’re all forced up to Tahoe anyway. Well, ee iOS developers will be anyway once they make the latest Xcode only work with it…
Future Trump rally: "And I hear Anthropic monkeyed with their dishonest chatbot Claude. They turned it Democrat! They trained it to say we lost the election against Sleepy Joe!"
Not really. China only seems good because there is a war in Europe and the US is shooting themself in the foot. They're polluting and strip mining their country, suppressing wages and funneling the profit into companies all while increasing surveillance and decreasing freedom of opinion. Oh but they put down a few solar panels and then paid for people to write articles about it.
the few solar panels in question are a united kingdom worth of green energy each year, about a royal navy worth of marine tonnage every two and they lifted more people out of poverty over the span of two generations than most of the rest of the world combined. Shenzhen produces about 70% of the entire world's consumer drones, now the primary weapon on both sides of the largest military conflict in the world. Xiaomi, a company founded in 2010 15 years ago decided to make electric cars in 2021 and is now successfully selling them.
As Adam Tooze has pointed out it's the single most transformative place in the world, if you're not trying to learn from it you're choosing to ignore the most important place in the 21st century for ideological reasons
> Their economy lifted a bunch of people out of poverty
This is fallacious as every economy that started at extreme poverty lifted a bunch of people out of poverty.
Unless we invent a time machine and do an A|B test we can't really attribute the success to policy when _any_ policy would have clearly lifted out a bunch of people out of poverty (basically almost impossible to not go up from extreme deficit). The closest we can do is look at similar scenarios like Taiwan which also lifted a bunch of people from poverty while retaining more human rights.
But only half as much per dollar, so the lower pollution per capita is just poverty, which is likely to decline over the next few decades as it has been (assuming we have decades left).
They're also speedrunning a world class power distribution system and deploying a massive amount of renewable power amoung a whole mess of other infrastructure. They've got the ability to focus an entire nation into achieving technical goals and they're rapidly improving quality of life in average while maintaining an industrial base that the US can only remember fondly. They might not meet western standards for individual freedoms and rule of law, but they're undoubtedly a rising world power.
I used to pretend China wasn't absolutely smashing the USA, but it looks like it is. They basically make everything modern civilization relies on, that's an insane amount of leverage over the rest of the world. That combined with renewables and nuclear and their diminishing need for foreign oil because of that is pretty incredible.
This doesn't make much sense. Since the late 19th century, every country that got rich also heavily polluted the environment, though increasingly less over time. As it stands, fossil fuel demand in China has plateaued. The "wage suppression" thing also doesn't track; their citizens got much, much richer since Nixon's visit, despite being on average poorer than Westerners. Their GDP per capita is low because there's like a billion of them in the country.
The only thing to say is that it's still authoritarian. Once that gets a hold of a country, it's very difficult to shed off. Interestingly, both South Korea and Singapore shifted away from being dictatorships and were not ideologically socialist. Countries taken over by Communists remain authoritarian. The true believers will never give that up.
Agree with much of this. However: plenty of Central/Eastern European countries seem like they have pretty definitively shaken off communism in favor of pretty standard European style capitalism/social democracy.
I’m so glad I’m not going insane. I don’t see any examples on that site that I agree are ‘one word’. Sure they’re singular concepts but so what? Are we going to have singular words to describe all adjective noun pairs now?
I do see your point on that one, but phrases have an origin.
Of course is like an abbreviation of something like ‘in the natural course of things’. Which has become more like just ‘yes’ over time. In the usage of ‘yes’ it’s easier to argue it could be one word.
Words also have origins and evolving meanings. Why should the preservation of the space be especially significant and load bearing? Why should "milkshake" be a word but "ice cream" isn't? Milkshakes were, after all, literally just milk shaken with ice. They had no resemblance to what we now call a milkshake, so at the time there would have been no particularly good reason to omit the space. Other than it just happened that way for milk shake, but didn't for icecream.
I reckon even an iPhone pro is better value than an average android phone. Same with iPad vs Android tablet.
Because they last 3 possibly 4 times longer. A decent Apple laptop purchased 4 years ago is still basically a top notch laptop. Build quality is amazing. Resale value is still very high.
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