That panel gap thing also is blown way out of proportion.
I challenge anyone to find a bad aligned one on a chinese made one - interestingly enough , those only seem to be a thing on US made vehicles, which basically are only Model X and Model S (ironically being the higher priced cars).
> Pretty much anything HomeKit supported will last “perpetually” for its smart features.
How so, should Apple ever decide they'll remove it from tvOS/HomepodOS?
And frankly, having to use Homekit for automations (or using it at all) is - compared to Home Assistant - frustrating, especially given their more or less unlimited resources.
And don't even get me started on Siri - compared to what it was when it started on the iPhone 4s i don't feel it made like any progress, at all. Having updated to iOS 26 a few days ago - congratulations, Siri is now failing 100% to "turn off bedside lamp" which worked fine on 18.x and ever before.
No, i don't think Apple is going to keep Homekit's lights on (heh) indefinitely - and wouldn't bet the farm (or house) on it.
> The one irritating exception is the windshield wipers
Push the wiper button (left stalk) once, adjust with left scrollwheel (either up/down if on a recent firmware or left/right if it’s older than a year or so).
Facelift has a dedicated button on the steering wheel I think and then scroll wheel as well…
> Opening a moving car door is presumably quite difficult given the aerodynamic pressure on the body. So the car would have to be moving rather slow
Actually, no - at least not slow by my definition.
You’d have to drive over 130km/h, this is when you need some serious force to open the door more than maybe 10-20cm - but anything slower than that, it’s still pretty easy, certainly easy enough for a kid to open the door wide enough to fall out or get in serious trouble..
Source: 18 year old stupid me and buddies, doing stuff like opening driving cars doors, going over 100km/h
>I'm also curious who the market is for a thinner phone
Hm, i'd consider it (if i was upgrading yet again).
Why? My 15 Pro (not-Max) gets way too hot way too fast doing basically nothing and it p*sses me off - so, i'd rather not (yet?) take a bet if the new 17 Pro (Max) does better with an entire new thermal design - considering _something_ is _always_ off with new Apple hardware designs, starting with the iPhone 4...
Honest question: after all the reports of co-mingled inventory, plain fakes etc. being sold by Amazon - for years i might add - do you really consider Amazon being a reliable source for anything that is not some unimportant trinket?
I went from spending > 10k€ per year to less than 5%, probably not even that, on there, all by their own fault.
And i see no reason to buy there anymore:
- the default assumption of having the best price on the web went out of the window years ago
- next (or 2) day delivery - does not happen anymore in most cases, Prime or not
- even finding (!!) what you're searching for is a total sh.t show
- for years, Amazon is now a front for chinese cr.p shipped by the boatload
- the once useful review system has been and is being gamed, it is beyond broken these days and should not be trusted (basically forget everything that scores 4.5 or less, read all reviews and ensure that the review you're reading is not for some other variant of the item you're looking for or that the review you're looking at hasn't been swapped one item for another, because that's a thing as well on there...)
I mean - buying things on Aliexpress is more trustworthy, for crying out loud - yet, most people can't seem to be bothered. scratchinghead
The only reason I didn't quit Prime already is that it gives me discounts on certain items from Whole Foods. I save enough from my groceries using Prime that I don't cancel it. And Whole Foods is the grocery store closest to my home. Otherwise I rarely shop on Amazon.
> do you really consider Amazon being a reliable source for anything that is not some unimportant trinket?
Not the person you're asking, but yes, I do.
You know the biggest reason wny ?
Their no-bullshit returns policy.
Seriously. Click button, get your returns label. The refund is sent to you as soon as the courier or post office has scanned the barcode.
Hell, sometimes Amazon just refund you and don't even want the item returned !
You don't get that anywhere else. At most other vendors you have to fight to even get a returns label. And even if those other vendors give you a returns label without a fight, you have to wait until their warehouse has processed your return and hope that you don't get charged a restocking fee or they try to claim some bullshit excuse about you having lightly scratched something.
Oh, you want to know another reason too ?
I don't like spreading my personal data far and wide.
Yeah, sure I'm sure I could buy my widget from some random shop. Probably at a cheaper price than Amazon too, I'm sure.
But that means another place with my personal data on their database.
Open to that company spamming me, and the Russians hacking them and spaffing my personal data all over the darkweb.
Say what you like about Amazon. But I think their Infosec practices are pretty good.
I closed off my Prime because I kept having terrible experiences returning things and then having them claw back the refund on things they returned. For a few items I had to call 3 or 4 times over the course of 6 months because the claw-back kept getting re-applied to the card despite the CSR repeatedly telling me it was solved and not to worry about it. That plus the counterfeit items I've gotten over the years plus the general crap quality of everything was enough for me. In my experience you have to really stay on top of them, and you're probably not having that experience because you're not ordering things like clothing where you need to get a lot of items and then return almost all of them for not fitting or for not looking anything like the image online.
Sure, Amazon is fast at returns and usually pretty good about processing them.
But you know what I find even faster? Not having to process a return in the first place because I actually got what I ordered and it wasn't cheap bullshit or counterfeits.
Plus it seems like half the time I'm dealing with their support because they just failed to actually seal the bubble mailer. So that two day shipping that actually took three days to show up really took me nearly a week because of their inability to actually mail things properly. 30% of my orders over the last few years have been this exact problem.
In the end sure, their support is pretty good and fast. But I've had to get their support on over half the orders I've placed with them because the item arrived damaged, the item was clearly used but sold as new, the item was a fake/knockoff, or I ended up with an empty bubble mailer on my doorstep that was clearly never sealed.
Meanwhile I haven't had to interact with support on any of the other online retailers I've used, and I placed way more non-Amazon orders than Amazon orders.
I have been waiting for three weeks for them to pick up some fake POD-crap they delivered instead of the books that I had ordered and refund Rs. 800 (~ $8). I have had about 8-10 phone calls with them regarding this issue and CS is completely unbothered (with one exception, but too little too late). They do their fake apologies and set up another return pickup.
These last three weeks have been absolutely terrible as far as deliveries and Amazon CS are concerned. I have been moving all new purchases to Walmart-owned Flipkart as I no longer have the mental bandwidth to deal with these people.
> Seriously. Click button, get your returns label. The refund is sent to you as soon as the courier or post office has scanned the barcode.
Hah, exceptions and all, but let me tell you of the absurdity that was me getting a broken bottle of shampoo and Amazon trying to insist that I return the "unused portion" (which was poured out into the bubble wrap mailer) to get a refund. Shockingly (only to Amazon), the UPS store didn't want a Ziploc bag of shampoo.
So they agreed to send a replacement.
Which also was broken.
"I want a refund."
"You already got a replacement, you can't have a refund." "The free replacement was also broken." "We can't refund a free replacement." "I've still paid for a bottle of shampoo that I haven't got". "Oh... uhhh..." before "my supervisor has made an exception and we are issuing a refund"...
Caveat emptor though, I trusted this policy as well and got my account closed for unclear reasons. They hinted at returns fraud (not the case) and a high return rate (not the case either).
I provided detailed records of everything and even escalated this to jeff@amazon.com, no luck.
Still have a few hundred euros in Amazon Echos in storage that I cannot use anymore.
> Honest question: after all the reports of co-mingled inventory, plain fakes etc. being sold by Amazon - for years i might add - do you really consider Amazon being a reliable source for anything that is not some unimportant trinket?
Not really 100% sure why you're getting down-voted (edit: I guess not anymore. Comment was gray when I replied.), but to answer your question, no. I do not trust Amazon for anything important.
I do still sometimes use Amazon in spite of this, only because they are nonetheless very useful. They have a very wide selection, and are often able to do same-day and 1-day shipping of almost anything even over here in some random suburbia. This has become important lately because things I used to just buy physically are no longer obtainable physically. For example, the last local electronics store went out of business, and the nearest Micro-Center is probably an hour drive or so, and that's not even as good for electronics.
Still, I'm always skeptical of Amazon. I never trust that the prices are the lowest, and often they're not. And I never trust that the product will be authentic, because it might not be, though it usually still is. And yep, the review system is bullshit. You can see people playing around with "variations" to basically group unrelated things, if not literally re-using an old Amazon product ID. And when you search for anything, even if Amazon actually has decent products from known brands, they'd prefer to show you key-smash anonymous Chinese brands instead, even when the prices aren't that much cheaper anyway.
But, that's just how it goes. People voted with their wallets and they chose Amazon, and now that they did and all of the smaller local shops are all dead, Amazon doesn't really need to worry about competing with them anymore.
Near my friend's house, there used to be a little mulit-generation "mom & pop" hardware shop.
It was an aladdin's cave. As a customer the place looked a mess, floor to ceiling (and even the ceiling !) covered in hardware widgets. But the owner could wave his magic wand and go find exactly what you wanted.
One day, across the street, a new shop opened. It was the "click & collect" branch for a large national hardware retailer.
All the builders and electricians that used to shop at the little shop moved over to the large retailer because they had all their trade discounts.
The little shop couldn't survive on the random home owner just popping into buy a single screw or a short length of cable. So they shut down.
Fast forward a few years and along comes Mr Property Developer. Takes one look at the patch where the large national retailer's shop is and thinks "ooh, that looks nice".
So they bought out those shops, knocked them down and turned the plot into a high-rise instead. But the national retailer survived because by then most people were getting stuff delivered to site from online orders by couriers and not doing many collections.
So dream all you like about "support your local business". But the reality is that its more like Darwin's theory of evolution out there. Those who can adapt thrive. Those who don't will be eaten by a predator.
The reality is its 2025, we live in an ever increasing online world, and all these "local businesses" of which you speak need to learn that online footfall is just as important (if not more important) than the traditional walk-in footfall.
This seems to be saying "you shouldn't bother supporting your local businesses because not enough people do it to make it worthwhile." But, if they're what we want, somebody has to be the one to start shifting support back to them.
They're not what I want. They can't possibly maintain a sufficiently-diverse inventory to provide what I want/need when I want/need it.
See also Wal-Mart and the decline of small-town retail. News flash: nobody actually misses them, because they never stocked anything but lowest-common-denominator merchandise.
That's some mighty high horses you have there my friend.
I live in a city where McDonalds shut down because the local burger place was more popular.
I have spent my whole life not supporting big companies, I have been running those small local businesses myself. And I'm pretty tired of the 20-year olds coming there with the usual "It's the year 1999, this is the future, keep up!".
Totally understand that and pretty much agree, the main problem I have is that the local businesses I liked to support are basically all gone. Not sure what to do now.
> Honest question: after all the reports of co-mingled inventory, plain fakes etc. being sold by Amazon - for years i might add - do you really consider Amazon being a reliable source for anything that is not some unimportant trinket?
For me, it's just physical books, basically.
Occasionally, I'll order an Anker charger or something too.
They may not have the best prices at every point in time, but they consistently have good deals. There are several price trackers out there; Keepa and CamelCamelCamel are the big ones. Use them to your advantage and figure out whether the item you're after is a good deal or not.
I've had to "experience" those once for our testdrive of said Ioniq 5. Well, never again. "Dubious" is the most friendly word i have for the one that is next to us.
And: the car itself is priced at least 10-15k€ too high for what it is.
I tried to buy an Ioniq 5 when Hyundai had attractive lease offers published. A dealer near me had a car that showed as qualifying and I emailed to verify that it was in-stock and qualifies for the lease offer. That started one of the most Byzantine discussions around “come on in and we’ll create a custom lease package that suits your needs best.” “I don’t need anything custom; I find the published lease offer suits my needs perfectly.” <3-4 more emails made clear they had no intention to sell that car for that lease offer.> Now we have a CPO Lexus and I couldn’t be happier.
I watched the Rich Rebuilds review of the Ioniq 5N recently and while I'm underwhelmed by Hyundai as a company I'll disagree with you and Rich about Hyundai pricing these $10-15k too high. Pretty much the only competition is the Model 3 (Performance), and by that metric Ioniq pricing is spot on. Sure the iD.4 exists but VW really flubbed the software on that. And if you're eyeing the 5N over the regular 5, it did the Pike's Peak climb faster than the Tesla (and on a single charge IIRC).
Compared to the Tesla, the Hyundai has an actual interior with physical controls, an 800V charging system, panels that actually line up, and a far bigger dealer/support network. These are things that cost money and even without those things Tesla isn't making a ton of money.
Of course I'm in California so EVs are more expensive to run than ICE cars so it's all moot.
I wonder how long ago it was I last used it - must’ve been sometime around 2010 or a few years earlier..
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