If it’s the size of an Apple TV it will definitely only have a few ports. I can’t speak for anyone else but I’m personally fine with that, 1-2 USB-C, 1 USB-A, Ethernet, Power and HDMI would be fine IMO.

I think this was more of an issue when USB-C docks were less compatible and more expensive. Now you can get all the ports you need for $20. Just doesn’t seem like much of a big deal to me, when 90% of them are going to be connected to a monitor, wireless KB & mouse and WiFi and the occasional USB key or printer.

I can only assume they see it as a double edged sword. Rights-holders (read: publishers, labels & studios) would have the power to sue here, not creators (read: artists, musicians and filmmakers).

These rights-holders also want to use AI so they don’t have to pay or deal with creators, so while they don’t love that other companies are making money off their content, they’re more just mad that someone else did it first before they could exploit their own content in the same way.

Sue and set precedent, and they might accidentally make it impossible for them to turn around and do the exact same thing once they have the technical know-how.

Entirely speculation, but it’s the only thing that makes sense to me.

EDIT - As another commenter mentioned, I broke my own rule and commented without reading and this was discovery as part of an ongoing lawsuit. I did say it was entirely speculation though, and I still think this is why you don’t see so many AI related lawsuits in all the areas there is just tons of content generation. I also still think this is a “mad they couldn’t get there first” situation.

I actually think this is because they don’t have infrastructure there yet, in addition to it not being GDPR friendly.

I’d probably wait for a wider release than one country & language in beta before assuming the worst.

Also, you’re not missing much. The beta is limited to pretty much just the on-device model for local tasks, and it can barely do those.

Sonos. Recent app troubles aside (it’s really not that bad, just kind of clunky for certain tasks), the longevity alone make them so worth it. Despite being essentially computers/smart home devices, they support 10+ year old devices in their latest app, older devices in their S1 Controller app, and the sound quality & setup ease is amazing.

Plus, they have pretty good Black Friday sales and make it easy to build piece by piece if pricing is too high. You can also used replaced pieces to build a sound system in another room.

Over ~3 years I started with a Beam, then bought a Sub and two Play:1s as rears. Bought an Arc, moved the Beam to the bedroom. Just recently I bought 2 Arc 300s as rears/upward firing Atmos speakers, and moved the Play:1s to the bedroom. Resale value stays high so if you have no use for a piece, you can sell it and get 50%-75% of what you paid out of it easily.

There are cheaper devices with better sound quality out there, but nobody else can compete on the whole package with Sonos.

No it’s usually just the the dev beta but staggered by a day or two so they can catch any showstoppers. It typically starts around DB2 or 3 so have a solid build to push wide.

Most people get their oil changed at a shop, and drive through a car wash. I wouldn’t really consider those additional skills.

It never ceases to amaze me how out of touch tech enthusiasts are. How much does your average person know about their car? That’s how little they know about their computer.

They might not know what an OS even is, or how to identify where “Windows” ends and applications begin. They do what they bought it for, and if that doesn’t work, they take it to someone who knows how to get it working again. They know how to charge it, and to plug in a headset or USB key or something. If that functionality doesn’t work automatically or they encounter any issue, it might as well have exploded in their hands.

There are people who have been using Windows for 30 years that know literally nothing about it. Putting a “years of experience” metric on it is hilarious. It’s like assuming that if someone has been driving for 50 years that they know anything about cars besides how to drive it and where to put the gas.

WARNING - After I did this, everything worked fine. However when I woke up the next day all the HomePods were showing “No Response”. Rebooting them and rebooting my Unifi UDR did nothing, they just refused to reconnect.

I was also messing around with Wifi to get some other older HomeKit devices to reconnect including deleting the saved WiFi network from my phone so they may have lost access because of that? However just a warning.

I was able to get them all readded but it required a full factory reset from the HomePods themselves because they couldn’t be controlled from the home app. Easy to do but annoying.

What IPAs do you want to install? This is a real question, I know there are a handful of apps that you need to install from outside the App Store but over the years as restrictions have loosened that has dropped to almost nothing for me.

I used to install nzbUnity which has been fully replaced by LunaSea at this point, and with the rule change allowing emulators they really took a ton of wind out of the sails of the 3rd party App Store push.