LOL any blog is going to have clickbait. Even most mainstream news is largely made up of clickbait.

Are you looking for Apple news, Apple rumors, or some website constantly trying to sell you something via affiliate links?

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/

https://slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=apple

https://arstechnica.com/apple/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/search-results?q=apple

https://www.reuters.com/site-search/?query=apple

I just searched for “submit short stories” and this was the first three results.

https://thewritelife.com/where-to-submit-short-stories/

https://blog.reedsy.com/guide/short-story/where-to-submit-short-stories/

https://writers.com/short-story-submissions

I can imagine people being so distraught and apathetic that their addiction feels like the only thing that gives them purpose in life. I think that’s why a lot of people find addiction - to make up for what they don’t have. Or, in the context of younger people with phones, they just don’t know a world without it.

If you live alone, have no kids or pets, and all you do after work is play video games or doom scroll or watch porn; as long as your bills are being paid, is this an “addiction”? Are these the kinds of people you’ve met?

I think we’re only just beginning to see the ramifications of phone / social media addiction and our disinterest or fear in engaging with others in real life. Our devices are giving us all this unnatural dopamine drip we otherwise can’t find in the wild. Is this an addiction and if so, is their reliance on screens going to become a problem as these young people face adulthood? Or is adulthood going to change for them? Not to mention how my 70+ year old mother is 100% addicted to the dings from her phone.

“Addicted” means: exhibiting a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity.

If something is chronically prohibiting you from living a normal healthy life, that would be considered an addiction. If you have set times or you have the ability to responsibly engage with something without it interfering with other tasks or obligations, it likely is not an addiction. If you continue to do something which is more often detrimental to your well being yet you feel you’re getting a rush by doing it, that is likely an addiction.

No. No one is asking if talking to friends or reading the news is an addiction. However, if you find that you are engaging in these activities as a way to absolve or distract yourself from other obligations, you may fit the definition of being addicted.

This really raises the moral question of what are people supposed to do with their time. If you have the means to care for yourself, who’s to judge you for what you do with your time? If you choose to not have a family or not participate in your community or give back to the world in any way, is an addiction really a problem? If you’re choosing to not have a healthy productive life, is an addiction to drugs or gambling or sex or social media detrimental to anything?

Have you considered Apple’s Support site?

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/get-started-with-your-mac-mchl3a2c2cb0/15.0/mac/15.0

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/switched-from-windows-to-mac-mchlbc684e49/15.0/mac/15.0

There’s also https://www.youtube.com/applesupport

Generally, I’d be cautious with what you share for this sort of guidance. The majority of content related to “Using A Mac” is going to be created by people who are already entrenched in the ecosystem. They can sometimes speak over or around the heads of people just getting started.

Axios
Drop Site (Substack)
Poynter
The Intercept
Truthout

My decision to leave was due to the prevalence of misinformation and / or entirely unrelated comments being upvoted to the top. Fuck that place. It’s just an alternate to Facebook now.

You can get free Priority Mail boxes from the US Post office. https://store.usps.com/store/results/shipping-supplies-boxes/_/N-u9qwm0

I was actually being dead serious.

Given the context of your post, I would suggest starting with the basics. Taking the time to learn how to write properly may give you some ability to speak properly.

I have a really pacific issue

I don’t know if this is typo or if you think your issue is as big as the ocean.

Dude.

Dude.

DUDE.

The penises carved into desk and walls because the sewer backed up? What the fuck??

Wouldn’t be too bad if they did the model of showing you a persistent banner ad with the option to pay $35 a year to get rid of it. I’d be down with that.

Pft. Ain’t that the truth. Gotcha journalism has been around for over a hundred years and we still suck it up.

Yeah - it feels more organic to me. Bluesky feels like a more well thought out Twitter. Mastodon feels like something built from Google Wave scraps.

I’m not sure how much of Dorsey’s DNA is left but it’s hard to imagine someone who has had so much success wouldn’t know what they’re doing. The board could certainly screw it up, just as Twitter’s did by selling, but it seems like they’re growing slowly and doing things in a productive way. Slow and intentionally growth seems to be the growing trend in tech.

With that said, I’m aware of the funding concerns and I’m trying to pay attention. Where will their money come from is still a question. Will they use ads or subscriptions? I’d prefer the option for either and not both. Is it actually an issue that someone tied to blockchain is involved? I’m not sure but I’m open to a plausible argument.

I don’t know what this is supposed to mean. I’m making a correction to the claim that more than one person is doing this and saying it’s possible other companies could start manufacturing these parts.

I fully agree. This is why it won’t work. I dunno - maybe Gen Alpha or Gen Beta will care about this, assuming there’s a pendulum swing?

Mastodon emerges as the clear winner. It’s free from investor influence, ad-free, and controlled by a community that values user autonomy over profit.

That’s a gross assumption that people care about any of this. The tech-abled and tech-writers are in as much of a bubble as the Democrats were this past election.

The vast majority of people using social media do so for entertainment and passive news consumption and a ton of rage bait. Who owns or controls it is entirely irrelevant - ex., TikTok.

Ads? You think people in 2024 still care about ads? I think a lot of them enjoy it. Moreover, if you’re a small or local business, you want a platform that allows you to promote your goods and services. This kind of opportunity is what made social media explode. If you were a community business, would you prefer to operate on a platform that was strictly chronological or one that allowed you to pay to get noticed? What if you were an “influencer”? While normal people may dislike this stuff, it’s this stuff that generates revenue for the platform and, like it or not, increases engagement.

This lack of openness confines users to BlueSky alone, making it difficult to connect with friends on other platforms without creating a separate account.

How has this prevented Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube from succeeding?

You’re trying to force a platform to do what you want it to do. You’re not objectively looking at what the majority of social media users want. When I tell people about interconnected platforms, they have no clue what that means or why they would want that. They just want one platform.

You and I recognize the benefits of the Fediverse meaning one application to access many platforms. That may be a reality we observe one day but for now, nothing is fully developed. You’re trying to convince people that robotaxies will replace vehicle ownership today when they’re not done deploying them.

Mastodon’s structure, lacking an algorithm to push specific content, gives users freedom to create a feed that genuinely reflects their interests. For those who are politically inclined, Mastodon has communities and accounts covering all sides, but there’s no algorithm driving you toward any specific viewpoint.

If Bluesky has an algorithm, I haven’t seen it. I get chronological posts from the accounts I follow with an occasional and subtle suggestion to follow other similar accounts. Many of the accounts I follow are news outlets, journalists, civic leaders, etc. Some of the accounts I followed on Twitter are finally joining Bluesky while less than a fraction of those are on Mastodon.

I’ve been using Mastodon more than Bluesky. I like the instance I’m a member of which is operated by people in my physical community. Today I saw that more and more members of my community have joined Bluesky, including my local paper. I can not express the joy I’ve felt this afternoon seeing a platform blossom like the Twitter of old.

Betamax was superior to VHS. DVD Audio was superior to SACD. You may think the flexibility of Windows or Android makes them superior to MacOS or iOS. Ultimately, it comes down to marketing and convenience.

How do you make Mastodon better? You have to get brands over there. You have to get journalists and news outlets over there. When CNN reports that someone said something on Twitter, that’s marketing for that platform. When [the news] starts reporting that [celebrity] or [president] posted on Mastodon - then maybe you’ll start getting some traction. But why would that person post something so important on a platform with so few users?

“People” = literally one guy who has the tools and skills to disassemble an SSD board. Sure, it does leave the door open to third parties doing this as a service. Kinda jumping the gun on this though.

Mastodon has been around since 2016 and has 804k MAU.

The platform has 57 third party apps.

The platform is decentralized and has community ran servers.

Are you asking about “people” or “nerds”? People prefer Bluesky due to its simplicity and momentum. There are more popular outlets using it. If you’re assuming that People would prefer the complexity of the Fediverse and instances, if you think People know what a decentralized community run server is, you’re a “nerd” (for lack of a better term, I’m sorry).

The battle has always been the same: Windows v. Apple, Android v. iOS, SMS Twitter v. App Twitter. Some people prefer flexibility and investing time in making things work the way they want (Nerds). Some people want an out of the box product that’s well designed and efficient (People).

Fifty Seven Third Party Apps is not a selling point - that’s called anxiety inducing fragmentation. Some people want to walk down the grocery store aisle and choose between 57 options for toilet paper and some people just want “good”, “better”, “best”. The reality is that most people just want to be told what to do. They have too much shit going on in their lives to care about “decentralization”.

Mastodon will never challenge well financed closed or semi-open platforms. As it’s designed, it’s apparent it never intended to. It will continue to grow at a slow rate as an alternative. Hopefully, the fediverse is realized and you can choose to host your own server and gain access to other social platforms.

The reality is that this stuff costs money. In the near future, you’ll have the same three choices with social media as we do with other services: ad-subsidized, subscription, self-hosted. Anything with ads is going to have an algorithm. Anything with a subscription is going to have a board of directors. Selfhosting comes with a steep learning curve.

“Honestly, most people almost never use the power button a Mac,” one executive remarked.

Ford: Most people never open their hood so we put the lever under the back seat.