Google removed “Ok Google with the screen off” (made the toggle disappear, replaced with the option to allow its use in apps) on my Moto Z Play via Play Services updates and later advertised it as a Pixel-exclusive feature. (this was when the Pixel 1 was new)

Their support threads were ended curtly with statements of the phone not supporting the feature which I guess was technically true now that they changed it. (but no, the hardware always supported hotwords)

Never got that feature back and I bailed. For the ups and downs, I’m glad Apple doesn’t do that, instead omitting or handicapping new features for older devices. Of course not the best but yeesh, at least I don’t have to worry about “Hey Siri” being pulled to promote the iPhone 20 yet…

These "breakthroughs" are Toyota "Full-Self Driving next year!" fluff and I'll believe it when it's shipped and performing.

I read in a couple spots earlier that the new battery is physically too big and the OLED panel won’t transfer either.

[cries in seeing how people treat ROM maintainers]

We had petitions for everything, Windows Phone, you name it a decade ago. That won’t do jack shit unless it somehow comes with some large sum of money (how much? who knows) for Microsoft or some bean counter decides “hmm, maybe the environment shouldn’t take another for the team” and gets the company to change course before they are canned.

In the meantime, let’s continue to plot our off-ramps.

My pet theory is that it's to throw a bone to OEMs. They came out saying "oop, 7th-gen and older Intel chips won't work, guess you'll just need to buy a new PC!" until someone over there noticed that their still-for-sale (at the time the requirements went live), few-thousand-dollar PC (the Surface Studio 2) was a 7th-gen chip so they made eventually an exception just for that one. Because "reasons".

Any bets on this Refresh not supporting 8th-gen and below Intel chips except the Surface Studio for “reasons”?

My favorite is that their seeming takeaway from the success of Barbie is to go heads deep into TOY MOVIES.

Netflix’s crackdown affected me (I was the moocher) and I canned Hulu before some price hikes (I was the provider) and put the money towards a VPN.

I spend the computing power converting some media to play on my PS4 (plus finagling with subtitles) but once it’s done it’s done.

Bingo, I saw an ROG Ally(?) on display at Best Buy the other day and it was sitting on the Windows 11 desktop with a couple applications open like any demo laptop out on the floor - what dumbstruck me is that the scaling was set so the interface was absolutely tiny. Of course someone could have messed with DPI settings but it just looked like an interface for ants!

Windows 8 or 10’s tablet mode would have probably gone a ways towards making it more suited for a handheld but that function is gone.

At least the bottom edge swipe opens the start menu which I found by mistake. Maybe Big Picture mode would help.

That’s incredible, happy to see the old hardware still kicking!

On a similar note, sometime a year ago I spotted a guy using a Q10 at a shopping center in LA. Had a quick chat which was fun.

If your car gets stolen it’s probably preferable to not see it again and get insurance since no telling what’s been done to it/in it.