Surround sound didn’t work for me with the Jellyfin player and with the native player language selection didn‘t work. If you don’t have to transcode and spare a few quid, Infuse is great. Sadly can’t recommend it to my friends accessing my server from outside my home network because of said lack of transcoding.

I even google on DuckDuckGo. The more we use googling to mean “to search on the web” the more likely it is that Google will lose their trademark at some point.

My point is though, that the vast majority of android users also wouldn’t ever sideload an app. It doesn’t matter to the average user if there’s a door in the wall, if there’s exactly zero reason to go through. Because most people don’t have some obsolete device they need a third party app for. Most people don’t even use a custom launcher.

I‘m not saying no one needs sideloading, nor that it shouldn’t be an option. I‘m very glad the EU forced Apple to allow third party stores. All I’m saying is, that doesn’t matter to the vast majority of users.

Look at it like that: The average person does not need a pickup truck. They usually only carry people or some groceries. A hatchback would suffice, a sedan or wagon would be comfortable. If you gave them a pickup truck, they wouldn’t use the bed ever because they don’t have a need for it. That doesn’t mean no one needs it and that some people who don’t need it still want it, juuust in case. But the average user just doesn’t care because they don’t need to care. And should the day arise where they need a pickup truck, they‘ll get one.

Sure. I wouldn’t buy shoes that need an app in the first place though. I think that’s more of a joke.

Again, when there comes a point where I need to exit the box, I will. I just don’t have to because I’m not buying shoes that require an app to function.

Carrier phones aren’t really a thing here in Germany. You usually just get the exact same as retail. I believe the problem is just with some brands more than others and probably also price point.

To some degree, as apple tries to appear privacy conscious, at least, while Google is very open, that all they want is your data. But that gets enforced by their business models. Google is first and foremost an advertising company. That’s how they make money. Less so with hard and software. Apple is first and foremost a hardware company. They do sell some software and services but it’s not their main business. Advertising even less.

Because it’s more convenient. I trust Google less than Apple and degoogling android is a hassle. Or rather getting all the apps you need with a degoogled android. I do want privacy but I also don’t want to give up useability.

Also, the point is less, that you can’t remove or deactivate bloat apps but that they’re there in the first place. I‘ve got a similar issue with Windows.

And the other factors still play a large roll. If I could have a reasonably sized, speced and priced android phone, I might consider it and maybe will in the future when my iPhone 13 mini gives up the ghost.

That’s a bad analogy because A. iPhones work very well on their own, you don’t need to buy anything else, especially nothing expensive, and B. buying an iPhone is just as well a choice as buying any other phone. I‘m not letting Apple decide for me, I’m deciding to get an Apple device. If I‘d have preferred something else, I‘d have gotten that.

And for most people, it doesn’t matter. All they want is a device with a webbrowser and a chat app. Any phone can provide that. I know a lot of people with android phones. Used some myself over the years. And all but the most techy and tinkerhappy people will ever sideload an app, install a third party launcher, root their device or do anything but stay inside the same box iPhones are. And sure, you can’t exit the box while using an iPhone and you could on the android device but why would you, when you just need your phone to work so you can concentrate on things that actually matter, like preparing for the next election or raising children.

Most people don’t need and thus don’t want to exit the box in their daily lives. They just want something that works and both iOS and Android provide that. It’s not shameful to stay in that box, if all you need or want is a functional box.

1. There is no reasonably sized android phone. They’re either huge (>6“) or tiny (<4“) and the smaller variant usually has ancient and slow specs.
2. I passionately dislike google. Big parts of that is privacy, which Apple might not care about as much as they should but Google isn’t caring about at all. And yes, it’s possible to use Android without Google but it’s quite a hassle.
3. I prefer the UI of most apps on iOS to the equivalent on Android. It’s fairly consistent, usually following certain standards (like the menu bar on the bottom).
4. Most android phones I’ve used over the years have an ungodly amount of bloat. Why would anyone want to use a second, worse app store? Why are facebook and tiktok preinstalled and can’t be uninstalled?
5. I also have a Mac and an AppleTV. The iPhone fits right in.
6. I’m used to it. It works. As long as Apple doesn’t do a major privacy oopsie or someone releases a small android flagship phone again, I have no reason to leave because android offers nothing I desire beyond what I already have.

Edit: structure

Not the closest. Ceres is a dwarf planet inside the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The adblocker that comes with a PIA VPN subscription

The 970 works for encoding h.264 only. My recommendation: If you have a 7th Gen Intel CPU with iGPU or later, use that. Otherwise, sell the 970 and get one of these (in this order):

• Intel Arc A310
• GTX 1650
• GTX 1630
• Quadro P1000
• Quadro T400
• GTX 1050 Ti
• GTX 1050
• Quadro P620
• Quadro P600
• Quadro P400

The Intel Card has the best encoder, followed by Nvidia Turing, then Pascal. I recently sold my 970 and got a 1050 Ti for the same price. Works great with Jellyfin. If you need to tone map HDR, you probably shouldn’t get anything with much lower performance than that. If it’s just some UHD to HD or h.265 to h.264 for compatibility, even the P400 will work well.

A few reasons.

For one, storing multiple versions of the same film takes up a lot of storage, which is more expensive than a cheap 40€ gpu for transcoding. And I definitely wanna keep the highest quality I can. Besides transcoding on the fly is more flexible, ensuring the best possible quality at any time, instead of having to pick between the good and the shit version.

And secondly, usually I only need transcoding when I don’t watch on my home setup (or when some friends watch on my server). My upload isn’t as high as some of my film’s bitrates and some clients do not support h.265 or HDR thus needing transcoding and/or tonemapping.

Tangled up in blue, maybe. Also like All along the Watchtower and It‘s alright, Ma a lot, though

That would suggest even more, that the conscience of a company is the sum of the conscience of every decision making individual affiliated with the company. Companies can have values (and I‘m not talking about the “we‘re family here” values from the company handbook but the values that are actually enforced and acted upon. Those translate into the conscience

As long as we‘re in a capitalist market, which we are and probably will be for a while, any for-profit company, however small or big it is or however private or public it is, is a capitalist company. You have to be in order to make profit. At all. And yes, usually, the bigger they are, the worse they are. But not every for-profit company is evil, thus not every capitalist company is evil.

And businesses do have a conscience. It’s the sum of their owners‘ consciences.

And also, you do not need to be evil to be successful although it is probably easier.

A privately owned enterprise can. Publicly traded ones can’t. A privately owned enterprise also doesn’t need to make more money, if the owner doesn’t want that. A publicly traded company that has to answer to its shareholders has to make more money and to keep growing to appease said shareholders. If you don’t have shareholders you don’t have to do anything like that. That doesn’t mean, of course, that any privately owned company is automatically good – many aren’t – but it does mean that they have the capability to not be evil.

Not every larger company is automatically evil, just because they exist within a capitalist market. A lot of them are, sure. At least to some extent. But there still are privately owned enterprises that do have a conscience.

Also, calling them “capitalist” enterprises seems redundant.

Not all of them. Only the big and successful ones