Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | throwa356262's commentslogin

Offtopic but I have to ask:

What's with these clickbait titles (that give hint about what will happen within parentheses)?

Just look at recent light-science videos on YouTube.


Gemini 2.5 pro was the best Gemini, it has gone downhill since

Interesting, I found the pro version to be very capable.

If stepfun is even better, then Chinese models are getting really good.


I am working really hard to not start using Copilot.

And belive me, if you use any Microsoft products or services they really make it hard to avoid accidentally using the damn thing.

Including adding it to your office plan and then charging you 2x.


Gotta love how they moved the "Create Email/meeting" buttons in Outlook mobile and stuck the Copilot button there so that you will hit it accidentally.

I’m a Mac user and the only way to get Office 365 is a monthly subscription. Since there’s no subscription that doesn’t include CoPilot and since they hiked the price with the excuse that they’d added this thing I didn’t want, I just cancelled my subscription. A customer lost: hardly an issue, but if enough people do it, maybe they’ll get a clue and stop ramming this unwelcome abomination down our throats.

You can buy a perpetual Mac Office 2024, if you want.

I’ve only used it once, for WorkFlow creation but it seemed really useful there, but that may be more of an indictment of WorkFlow than an endorsement of CoPilot.

Who found this? Where is the leaked data and how do we know this is not just gaming the market before the IPO?

And remember that they said similar things about security capabilities of Opus 4.6 and while these models are getting better and better with each release and are now an important tool for security researchers, they are not the skynet level these CEOs are constantly "warning" us.


Some CERN employees are already important contributors to KiCAD and IIRC CERN has sponsored some yosys /nextpnr development.

I would love to see more involvement from CERN in this space.


Serious question: why is this not a problem with apple products?

Fundamentally, I think you are driving at a legitimate complaint and it should be a concern with Apple products.

The direct answer, though, is largely one of execution. Microsoft isn't just pushing this heavily. They are doing so poorly.


Mac doesn't require an Apple ID to use. iPhone only needs one for installing apps, and my only complaint is it's the strictest auth check on the entire phone besides disabling the account. Shouldn't need to input the Apple ID password just to install a free app, shouldn't even ask for passcode.

> iPhone only needs one for installing apps

So you can't have Firefox, Organic Maps, good ad blocker, popular chat and video apps and numerous other things without it. Do you consider that normal?


Yes. Considering that Apple created the smartphone as we know it, and it had this limitation from the start, seems normal even though I don't really like it. This wouldn't be acceptable on a PC or tablet (hence why iPads suck).

An iPhone without an Apple account is about as useful as brick because you can't load your own software onto it without the store.

You can if you have the source code, but I think that requires at least signing with a free account.

Setting up an iPad was rather obnoxious on this front, though. So, fundamentally, it is still very similar.

Apple does not tie the local account to the cloud account the same way. On a Mac you create a local account and you can (and almost certainly will) create a cloud account to link to it. But they are separate accounts. In fact I’m pretty sure Apple blocks you from setting the passwords the same on both, presumably with the intent of reminding you that they are not the same entity.

But what about our phones? Why are people so OK with an online account for their phone or tablet but not laptop?

I don’t entirely know. It’s not something that especially bothers me.

I will say that I think the forced linking has encouraged other unpleasant behavior like the profile folder hijacking to OneDrive. I rather like having this stuff in OneDrive. I do not like that it is pushed so aggressively. “We moved all your stuff to OneDrive. You need to subscribe so we don’t delete it.” This feels hostile. So some of the distaste with logins tied to the cloud is probably more about the surrounding ecosystem.


An Apple account also isn't required on an iPhone. They certainly encourage you create or link one on device setup, but it's not required to use the phone. Though one IS required to download apps, so you could argue it functionally is required.

Because I get benefits from it. With Apple I get a way of managing my devices, seeing location, remote erase, sharing services with family, storage, all integrated in a way that is there if I need it, out of my sight if I don’t.

What benefits am I getting from a Windows account? Syncing my profile picture? OneDrive is a mess I rather not have, is never happy.


How would the answer to this question illuminate your understanding? People using windows at their job also don't care. "Caring" does not need to be consistent across a group of people.

What kind of answer is this? This seems condescending and literally provides no answer.

Why even post this?


You read what you want into the message, but have you considered turning your own perspective onto your own post?

I don't recall macos forcing it. They definitely over-suggest it and the ecosystem (especially for dev) is very full of it and I consider that a problem, but it's limited in scope. If you don't want the Apple ecosystem, as far as I know you never need an AppleID.

I had to make one to download Xcode from the store. I couldn' figure out a way around it, but admittedly I have about 4 hours of macos experience.

It’s impossible to install XCode without an Apple account. It’s only distributed through the Mac App Store, and downloads from Mac App Store require an Apple ID. And even XCode beta downloads are locked behind an Apple login.

You can install XCode CLI dev tools without an Apple account, which comes with clang and swift for example. With this, you can build most Mac software, but I don’t think you can run Swift tests without a full XCode.

As the sibling comment notes, you can install GCC/llvm and whatever other open source tools and build Mac software without full XCode.

You can also install Apple container support without an Apple account.


Xcode is also available as a standalone download from developer.apple.com, which requires an account too, but at least it's way more reliable than downloading from the store.

To add to it too, they only gate the download behind developer.apple.com or the app store. But the .app file doesn't phone home when installing

Yes, I was bunching up Xcode with "Apple ecosystem". I presume you can get clang/gcc without AppleID (but haven't actually done it myself), and for sure many other dev tools.

I'd definitely much prefer if even for "ecosystem" the companies would not require online account except where truly necessary (purchases?), but for operating the OS itself, I do feel there's a line in the sand where online account requirement = no.


Xcode needs an Apple ID for download but the macOS SDK and toolchain does not.

Try to run any developer tool or "xcode-select install" and it'll download the command-line tools independently from Xcode.

(and then bring your own IDE)


The key difference is that you do not need an Apple account to use a Mac.

Most people DO use one, though, because that's how you access the iCloud services that underpin the Apple ecosystem. But it's not MANDATORY.

My understanding is that you cannot even log into a Windows machine without an MSFT account. That's a big difference.


Also people probably have more of a problem with MS accounts because they don’t really have an ecosystem that provides clear value.

An Apple account together with an iPhone and MacBook let’s you share clipboard, passwords, notes etc., a no brainer.

Windows laptop and iPhone? I guess an Apple account still is more useful here too, actually. So the average user does not really need an MS account, hence the annoyance.


If you own more than one computer, the microsoft account syncs your desktop contents and other parts of the environment.. desktop background is one I've noticed. That can be nice

You certainly can log into a Windows machine without a microsoft account. It's actually still quite common in businesses that you log in with an account managed by your organization, although this is changing as more and more businesses migrate to MS Entra ID. This still isn't exactly a "microsoft account" but its similar.

You can also still log in with a completely local account as well. It takes a few extra minutes to set up but once configured it works fine.

The system is full of dark patterns and roadblocks that steer users towards an MS account, but you don't have to use one.


People that don't want to use Apple products are not forced to do so. They can use Android (which has alternative stores, at least for the time being). Though I guess almost everyone logs in anyaway. Generally both major OS have good support from application developers, while on PC almost every one ends up being forced to use Windows at some point (to use Office, to play games).

And phones have been little spying machines from the start, people are more used to their phone spying on them than to their PC doing the same. I don't think macbooks require an Apple account for example.


Apple is a hardware company -- their software exists to support their hardware.

Microsoft is a cloud provider now -- their software exists to support their cloud business.


you can totally use macOS without an Apple account

No apple product REQUIRES an iCloud account. I have an iphone without one and a mac without one

> No apple product REQUIRES an iCloud account

Except an iPhone and iPad,to install apps people want and need. The number of people who use an iPhone without apps can be rounded down to 0


How do you mean?

people remember creating an Apple Account login and using it on their laptop, but don't understand that it's connected in fundamentally different ways.

The answer is: Because the Apple Login is not calling out for every service, including login.


I also think that's what they meant. Alternatively, the person could've been asking why Apple hasn't made the same boneheaded mistake as MS. I wasn't sure how to interpret their question to know how to answer it.

If you start with something really really horrible, chances are even an accidental change by an intern can improve it.

it can ALWAYS get worse...

How is the speed and stability?

These small Chinese companies dont always have access to serious hardware.


I’ve never had any problems with MiniMax. I wouldn’t call the speed fast exactly, but it’s faster than GLM and seems similar to Opus.

It’s been fast enough that I’ve been using it as my main model (M2.7 and before that, M2.5). Opus still does better at tasks, but MiniMax is so much cheaper. I’ve used their cheaper plan and I’ve never been rate limited.


This is great, but you can also run foregjo (the server behind coderberg) on your VPS.

It is a single binary and I think it is also very light on resources. At least compared to gitlab.


I've actually been meaning to set up a forgejo instance on pikapods. Apparently it's 2 USD/month to do it.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: