this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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The new data — comprehensive and definitive — should put to rest the countervailing narratives over Musk’s management of the app. Under his stewardship, X’s daily user base has declined from an estimated 140 million users to 121 million, with a widening gap between people who check the app daily vs. monthly. X’s remaining daily users are engaged similarly as before. But the pool is shrinking. Apptopia pulls its data from more than 100,000 apps on iOS and Android, along with publicly available sources.

So apparently it lost only 13% of daily users? Thats a smaller number than I thought. Still bad news for Twitter though.

On the other hand, it shows the power of content creators and niche communities. I used less Twitter but cannot delete it because it is literally how I connect with my niche community on there.

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[–] cloud@lazysoci.al 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They didn't lose money, which is what they care for. They also don't lose much power on people because these who are leaving are most likely smart people that twitter and other companies don't want in the first place. Their business plan is to rely on stupid people, just like apple do selling their overpriced products, they know that no matter what as long as they stay relevant there will be idiots following the trend. Purging smart people benefits them because they can create a bigger circlejerk and keep at bay potential troublemakers. Their fail is in the total lack of foresight but big tech and capitalism never ever gave a shit about what's not directly under their nose.

[–] upstream@beehaw.org 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You almost had me there - until you claimed Apples business plan was to sell to stupid people.

[–] yoz@aussie.zone 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In his defense , the laptop is the only thing that you can give credit for, rest of the stuff is just overrated BS with locked in feature that will only work with other apple products so yea its selling to stupid people who love apple *ecosystem"

[–] PupBiru@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

yeah stupid people like most tech workers who just need their tech to work as expected rather than be “customisable”

there’s value in the “just works” when not working costs you hundreds of $ per hour that it doesn’t work

$2000 for a phone is nothing when it’s a professional device

[–] cloud@lazysoci.al 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mobile phones are toys designed not to be professional devices at all. Photographers use real cameras, journalists, business men, programmers, don't type their shit on a 1 inch touch keyboard.

If you want your tech to just work you don't buy apple products that gets locked in by updates and have all sort of incompatibilities, some of their shit doesn't even have usb ports

[–] abhibeckert@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Photographers use real cameras

They are real cameras. Have you seen the photos and videos people create with phones? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8qFTgcRV6w

Yes, there are some situations where an iPhone won't get you a great photo... but that's true of any real camera too. You don't take a several hundred thousand dollar Sony HDC-4800 to a wedding for example. Professionals use the right tool for the situation and these days that is often a phone.

journalists, business men, programmers, don’t type their shit on a 1 inch touch keyboard.

I'm two of those, I type constantly on my phone. Yes - I also have a nice mechanical keyboard and I always use it at my desk, but I'm not always at my desk.

[–] cloud@lazysoci.al 2 points 1 year ago

Ask a photographer to take pictures at your wedding and they will show up with a real camera not with an iphone.

[–] Helvedeshunden@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Most nerds I know (including sysadms) started out on Android because of all the reasons you'd expect. Most of them now use iOS / iPadOS because, at home, they want things to Just Work - and have the available income to throw at the problem. Desktop-wise many of them have used Macs on and off, but it seems like lately they trend Windows and Linux again. Probably because macOS has become more hassle than it's worth with the continued locking down, increased paranoia, lower flexibility and ridiculous storage prices. It used to be that you could work around the storage prices, but these days it's practically impossible to run programs from somewhere other than Applications if you want your system to stay up to date. Macs just aren't the great *nix alternative that they used to be, and while Windows is still pretty awful for my use, Linux as a desktop/gaming system is getting better every day. At least so far. I miss when macOS became more useful for every release. The big releases these days break more than they fix for me.

[–] coffeejunky@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I work in software development, not sure why but most of the sysadmins and DevOps guys I know use Apple (phone and laptop). Most developers use Android (and usually Linux). Most testers use Android and Windows. This is purely from personal experience from the last few teams I worked in.

[–] abhibeckert@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's because DevOps need to be able to do anything, and there are some tasks where a Mac has better software. Also, iPhones have amazing integration with Macs. From copy/paste as if they were the same device to being able to open a dev tools inspector on your computer to debug a page loaded up on your phone to just not even needing to use a phone at all (you can run iPhone apps and websites, on every hardware size and operating system version, on a Mac).

[–] upstream@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

In my experience very varied. I feel students lean more towards Android, but if you develop on Mac you’re also more likely to have an iPhone, but the one place where it’s somehow been consistently Android in my team is the app developers.

While I don’t mind it at all, somehow the Android build of our app still has the most issues. Consistently over almost six years now. Which I find a bit ironic.

A friend of mine that was also a former colleague has always been an Android guy. A year ago he switched employer and the new company is iPhone only - but he can’t get the latest versions, and it’s basically just the base version too. So he’s still running with his Galaxy S21, but no e-mail or calendar sync.

I think he’d switch if he could put some of his own cash in and upgrade to the top model.

People can have the preference they want in life, but there’s no need to obnoxious about it.

[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

It's because at home the efficiency doesn't matter and you can do more with x64 still. The constraints of having their memory on the CPU instead of slightly slower socketed memory are more relevant, too, because there are more uses for higher amounts on a desktop.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Since at the very least the release of Dell XPS 13 we can have "just-works" machines that run Linux.

Also, specially for developers, the amount of software tools that have better performance and UX on linux is incredible. Homebrew is a clunky mess compared to any other package manager. I've worked with devs who refused to run docker on their machines because they said they battery got destroyed. Unless you work with iOS development there is no real, practical advantage in using MacOS for work.

[–] abhibeckert@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Since at the very least the release of Dell XPS 13 we can have “just-works” machines that run Linux.

Uh. No. I love Linux, use it every day, but you need to know what you're doing.

I’ve worked with devs who refused to run docker on their machines because they said they battery got destroyed

How much power a docker container uses depends on the container. Obviously if the container pegs all eight CPU cores at 100% utilisation then yeah - battery life is going to suck. But with commonplace server side software running in the container I'm able to keep docker running all the time on my Mac and get about 18 hours on battery... and that's with a battery quite a bit smaller (therefore lighter) than the battery in the XPS-13.

Unless you work with iOS development there is no real, practical advantage

I have done iOS development in the past, but these days all of the software I write is for Linux. I think a Mac is the best way to develop Linux software - the Mac window manager is so much better than Gnome or KDE and it has really nice integration with other hardware (for example I'm typing this on a keyboard connected to my desktop Mac, but have the browser window open on a screen connected to my laptop Mac... you can do that on Linux, but it's just two clicks to enable it on a Mac and requires installing/configuring/troubleshooting third party software on Linux)

I have Linux installed on my Mac - and it works perfectly... if it was better I would be using it.

[–] yoz@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You mentioned apple, what's your thoughts on macbook air or pro ? The reason I am asking is because I am looking for a new laptop.

[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are better value options if you're looking to play games on it. There are cheaper options if budget is a huge concern and you're OK with low quality plastic builds.

For all metal construction their value is really good, and there still isn't anything out there that balances the power and battery life they offer. For most professional use cases (which usually mean working with video/photos, in terms of what's demanding on a laptop), they're at minimum competitive on raw power. The biggest difference is that can use that power all day on battery, while the stuff that can be argued to be competitive will chew through the battery at high loads (and, compared to Apple, at idle, too).

[–] yoz@aussie.zone 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You actually have no idea what you're taking about. Don't you?

[–] Helvedeshunden@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

It's pretty spot on.

[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

There is nothing on the market at any price that provides both of the performance on battery and battery life the MacBook Air has, let alone higher tiers. Apple Silicon is sincerely insanely impressive.

Apple has also always been perfectly fine performance per dollar in the class they've actually been in. Their build quality isn't perfect, but it blows everything meaningfully cheaper out of the water. You can't compare an aluminum shell with trashy plastic and be surprised the plastic is cheaper. The actually well built stuff like thinkpads were never meaningfully different pricing than Apple. That's what it costs.

[–] OfficialThunderbolt@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Please ignore cloud; they have been posting inaccurate flamebait throughout this thread.

I would never not buy a laptop from Apple. Not only are they the last PC maker that hasn't fallen to the Microsoft Monopoly Machine, but their laptops are well-built†, futuristic, and have incredible value and battery life for what you get. Especially since they migrated off of Intel.

† I know someone will inevitably come up with a counter-example, but the last time they had a widespread quality problem was a little more than ten years ago.

[–] cloud@lazysoci.al 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why would you want one? They are overpriced, unreliable and closed in all possible ways. You can't change os as you want or swap a component in these. Look at pinebooks or similar devices or used laptops which are well supported by the community like old thinkpads. If you need a more powerful device buy a desktop

[–] yoz@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Need processing power and battery backup which sadly theres no other laptop out there that can beat apple macbook for the price.

[–] cloud@lazysoci.al 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

get a laptop with a removable battery and you can swap as many as you want also i doubt you will be much time away from a power switch. As for processing power if you need to do anything serious you are supposed to do it on a desktop

[–] yoz@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago