Fuck AI

Their business and enterprise lineup has been solid however though, e.g. Latitude, PowerEdge, etc.

Yes. The phone is the real kicker. They're gonna cut you off from modern life unless you buy into the Google ecosystem. More and more apps are required to do mundane things, ride a bus or train, book a ticket to an event, charge your car, split expenses with your friends or handle money in general. Gadgets and appliances have companion apps to properly make use of them. I'd have 5 authenticator apps on my phone to do paperwork. And I won't be able to communicate with friends or find out if the shop is closed today unless I have an account and maybe the app of some platform. All of that is proprietary, part of surveillance capitalism. And it's getting proceedingly more difficult to evade Google, because they're slowly adding SafetyNet and device verification to many apps. And of course sprinkle some AI on top because that's what we do and it aligns with the rest of it. Or Google just changes strategy and asserts more control over every phone user as needed for their corporate interests.

We're not there yet. I still have GrapheneOS on my phone and I'm doing alright. It's not very comfortable, though, and I can clearly feel which way we're headed.

With the computer/laptop, it's easy. Backup your data, wipe it and install Linux. It's gonna take a while to get accustomed if you're used to a different operating system... But I don't think it's more difficult to use or anything in the long run. The initial extra work is an investment that pays off later. I'm fairly sure Linux is the one platform that will resist and keep coming with default settings without AI and corporate surveillance.

Interestingly enough, it's also used by big tech to power all the servers and AI services. But at the end of the day it empowers everyone.

I literally just switched to Mint over the holidays. Any advice?

There was never a time, at least in my lifetime, where software wasn't licenced and you actually owned it. The only real difference is that it was much harder to stop you from using it when, even if you went online, you weren't online 24/7 and shit was slow, and your software came on physical media that wouldn't change over time at the whims of the creator.

Linux Phones and Linux Phone OS do exist, but they're quite far behind on things, best for extending life of older ones than as your everyday

somehow

Capitalism. That’s the how.

Welcome to capitalism, where everything is shitty so some rich white dudes can get richer.

Because companies don't serve customers. They serve shareholders.

AI is the hotness right now and every boards of directors wants to know what the company plans to do with AI.

People on Lemmy hate AI. People who have even a modicum of knowledge about AI hate AI.

Get outside your echo chamber and 90% just blindly accept AI. They make images with it. They use AI search results as “research”. They quote AI results.

It’s the blind 90% they cater to. Not us.

They all know we all fucking hate AI and yet no one refuses to crank up the money generating machine

Because there really isn't any money in building things people actually want. Creating an actually useful product takes investments in infrastructure and labour, all the things that shareholders hate.

In our economy we don't make money by building things, we make money by withholding things and selling access to them.

It's why the monied class is so obsessed with AI. It sells the dream that you can not only get rid of labour cost, but actually make money off of selling access to the simulacrum of it.

Business people are so separated from the rest of the world they have no idea how your average person operates. "Whaddaya mean people don't like the robot that will kill jobs at the cost of the environment?!" People who need jobs and live in the environment- :|

Investor money is so much more than consumer money...

I have a 2018 XPS and its build quality is quite good.

I have an IBM ThinkPad R32, and even the original battery is still holding a 40ish minute charge. Things used to be built to last. Not so much anymore.

In the K12 computer space I always found it was cheaper to buy Apple devices for my users. Both from the fact that those devices did actually have less problems and lasted longer and so required less human monetary investment, but also an actual cost perspective since a MacBook Air could be bought for $800 after education enterprise discounts. Which was a much better than most devices in that price range (this was like 2018).

And in a world where HP exists you say the shittiest computer brand with dell?? (I work in tech sales now and I always joke with first time customers that they have to tell me their brand preference first since everyone in IT has a preference of devices between Dell, HP and Lenovo.)

Why shittiest? The do pretty good pcs

What's next, Apple creating budget systems?

According to our IT department at work, a Mac is now on-par for price in the Q1 2026 numbers we have for our region with the Lenovos we have been getting and cheaper than comparable (hardware spec enterprise type) HP models, so kinda, yeah.

Currently it sounds like any member of our workforce that wants a Mac can get one now, where previously it was deemed cost-prohibitive and required an exception and approval.

Who knows if that will hold, though, those numbers might be based on Apple's existing stock of RAM and subject to change when they need to re-up.

Perhaps first one on the big-brand manufacturer side.

Many of them have invested heavily into AI and are panicking that it's not going to pay off soon, or perhaps ever.

So they push it even harder hoping their bet will somehow turn around and they won't have to take the hit to their stock options or reputations.

People often think CEOs and upper management attained their positions because they are experts in the field and savvy at their jobs, but many of them have just failed upwards with a high appetite for risk-taking and low ethical standards - they're often actually shockingly unskilled idiots. 'Trumps', if you will.

Damn, think you can convince them to make more AMD options, too?

AI computers have a NPU chip in them. These ones do too, the article seems to be mostly about how they're not marketing AI heavily because people really don't care about AI.