#best home assistant ecosystem

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

sharp bramble
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i want to get 2 speakers for my room and kitchen that has voice assitant that can be later easily tinered and costumized in the future. i currently have majority ios devices, a windows pc, a nest thermostat. would apple really be the best ecosystem for this? i have access to the paid subscription for gpt, gemini and claude

fierce yoke
sharp bramble
fierce yoke
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if you want customisable voice with various options then this is the kind of direction you want. if you buy into an ecosystem you have less choice and no garantee of it working well with home assistant now or in the future.

sharp bramble
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@fierce yoke so home assistant is its own ecosystem? is it something that integrates with like setting alarms and timers and changing the source of where my spotify is playing?

fierce yoke
sharp bramble
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well im only here in this home for the next 6-8 months. would it be better to just get the big brand that works best for my devices then getting into home assistant when i move to my permanent location with all the gadgets being slowly bought at that time

fierce yoke
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its totally down to you. whichever way you go you can pick them up and take them with you when you move.

sharp bramble
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okay so i feel like just choosing the plug and play option for the time being. would homekit be better than google home?

fierce yoke
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although I imagine that google is probably more compatible with stuff than apple by its nature. and then there's the benefit of not giving apple any money...

sharp bramble
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i mean theyre all monopolies nowadays. couldnt care less which one gets my money nowadays unfortunately

fierce yoke
sharp bramble
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yeah i agree with supporting neither. but i also dont understand the hate for apple anymore. they really did care about aesthetics but i believe now they care more about optimizaiton than anything else

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their whole ecosystem is pretty much flawless compared to my dad's full andriod ecosystem

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espeically with me moving away from family and convincing my grandparents to spend the $100 a year for infinite use of good and patient apple care support is worth every penny

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never seen google and their andriod partners or microsoft and their window partners offer that kind of help

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i can damn text apple on imessage the most complicated and stupid problem i am having with literally any of their devices and in 15 mins they'll put me on the phone with an agent like its a damn amex black card or costco membership

fierce yoke
# sharp bramble yeah i agree with supporting neither. but i also dont understand the hate for ap...

apple care mostly solves problems that apple made then sold the solution to. but for sure, if people like it on a personal level and it works for them then fine. i dont nessasaarily have a problem with that. i dont care how other people decide to use tech. apple have great marketing and do a good job convincing people that they want the product. and if the product doesnt have a feature then the feature is not worth having.

sharp bramble
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i dont understand how apple sells the solutions to the problems they cause though

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not even trying to come at you. i just want to understand why this hate still exists lmao

fierce yoke
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they make the thing borderline unrepairable then sell you an expensive warranty.

sharp bramble
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a 3 year old macbook battery replacement vs a 3 year old microsoft surface laptop battery replacement
the newest iphone screen replacement vs the newest samsung screen replacement

are the apple counterparts really more repairable, readily available and reliable?

fierce yoke
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yeah, other companies do it too but mostly because they saw apple getting away with it.

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also a bunch of their marketing hinges on the fact they convinced an entire generation of children that the colour of a text bubble matters.
it doesn't matter how much better other devices might be. a bunch of people see the "wrong" colour and scream "LOL POVERTY PHONE"

sharp bramble
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thats because those people are not free thinkers lmao

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that has nothing to do with marketing manipulation

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that is at the fault of the user

fierce yoke
sharp bramble
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i have met people infinitely richer and smarter than me using some generic andriod phone

fierce yoke
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force people into 1 device by societal pressure then cram the rest of the rest of the ecosystem down them.

sharp bramble
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well shit let me see andriod and windows seamlessly sync all my photos between all their computers, tablets, phones and web services the same way apple does

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then i'll let those comapnies cram their ecosystem down my throat

fierce yoke
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don't get me wrong i know apple do some things well. the memory bus design of the m4 chip is genius for example.

sharp bramble
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the m chips are game changing. that's what made me really like apple

fierce yoke
sharp bramble
fierce yoke
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it entirely depends on your use case.

sharp bramble
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but the average american user can expect apple ecosystem to function flawlessly in comparison to its competitors right?

fierce yoke
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for the vast majority of people it makes no difference except perception

sharp bramble
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at least we can agree that apple devices do function correctly for the average user

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cause there are sickos that do not see that and its pretty pathetic but hey who am i to say

fierce yoke
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I will also defend apple from companies that get all pissy that after agreeing to the cost of being in the walled garden and basing their entire business on it that they have to pay the cost.

sharp bramble
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walled green?

fierce yoke
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garden

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"we agreed to pay apple 30% so our startup could exist. now we are a successful we dont want to pay the 30%"
if they don't want to pay apple the 30% then they can stop making stuff for apple. if that kills their company then they are apples bitch forever.

sharp bramble
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yeah there's no hiding that but they all do that. google and meta with their ad space
amazon with their marketplace

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gotta spend money to make money amirite

fierce yoke
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the fact that they got people to buy into the garden in the first place is the clever bit.

sharp bramble
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i wasn't around for this but their ipods were amazing at release right? assuming you might have been around..

fierce yoke
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i never understood the appeal of the ipod vs other players. that didnt force you to use a proprietary app.

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mass storage device appears. you drag and drop and done. vs device appears. are you on the right OS because if you onboarded with a mac you cant use windows to access anything. do you have itunes? is it updated? add music to library. sync library to device.

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but it "looked nice"

sharp bramble
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ah didn't know that. i guess apple really did know how to perfect advertising the user experience and trap you into it

fierce yoke
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forcing the app allowed them to sell music though. so the music industry backed them.

sharp bramble
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but in my defense, i think any of apples competitors would swap shoes in a heartbeat because they missed out on capturing that problem in the tech industry

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aesthetics and appearance

fierce yoke
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i prefer the function over form. which is why i refer to apple as a fashion company

sharp bramble
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i can understand that

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dad's the same

fierce yoke
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it doesnt matter what they stop a user from doing. people will buy it because its got the apple name/logo

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then the first iphone came. it has no way to replace the battery and only had apple software on it (there was no app store with 3rd party apps) and people bought it and again i was confused.

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of that era if a phone crashed and fully locked up in a worst case situation.
you pulled and the battery and reinserted and rebooted it.
if you had an iphone you had to go home plug it into your pc/mac fire up itunes and tell it to reboot.

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there were so many things that were objectively a problem. but... "they looked nice"

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then came imessage and the chat colour thing. so the most dedicated that bought despite its flaws would start the peer pressure campaign against others. which was basically marketing to children. to get em while their young.

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all this time other manufactures were pulling their hair out that they were trying to sell better devices with more freedom and features and loosing to the fashion statement.
then apple invented paying them to write software which you could then pay them to give them all the code for and then pay them to allow it to work on the device. and comanies did it because it was seen as the big fasion thing and they wanted their name to be on it too.

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people realised it was too late to do anything about it when they had that design issue wheere you couldnt use the device left handed and the users went "it works fine these people are just holding it wrong"

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then the headphone jack disappeared and they implemented a proprietary protocol for their wireless headphones to use and nobody else. they were like "our headphones are better" which is like saying your car drives smoother whilst not allowing competiators car to have air in its tyres.

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every step has been awful but they have convinced people they wanted it and sold it anyway.

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then theres macs
problem: wires look a mess and it doesnt fit with our aesthetic.
solution: lets make the mouse unususable if its plugged in.

problem: people dont like to wait for boot up
solution: lets hide the power button on the bottom of the device so nobody ever turns it off.

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i know i am ranting at this point. but it baffles me how they continued to sell things.

sharp bramble
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i can't disagree with any of these things. at least euro union forced them into beneficial changes

fierce yoke
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well... sort of. they are doing their best at malicious compliance

sharp bramble
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better job than any other regulators. the rest wouldnt care, as long as it keeps their dollar moving

fierce yoke
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yeah, eu is trying to do stuff but their usb-c directives have no teeth

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IMO, if stuff doesnt follow the usb standard correctly then it should fail to meet the directive.

sharp bramble
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what is the correct usb standard. isn't it just usb c that transmits data and power?

fierce yoke
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the handshake protocols, the connector. etc...
although usb-c has its own issues.
for a time people were told "usb-c is usb-c" and its just not true

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we now have a bunch of cables and adaptors that are all different but you have no idea which one is which because they look the same.

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at least previously for the most part the one that fit worked.

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now everything fits but some work and some dont and some will even damage your device

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"i know this charger works because it charges my XYZ" "i tried powering on ABC device with it and it didnt work, therefore ABC is faulty and ill throw it out" whereas actaully xyz and its adaptor is non-standard and ABC is standard but a fully functional device got thrown out

sharp bramble
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you know i have noticed that. my monitor uses its own special usb c cable for treating its ports as a hub for my macbook and to update the monitor firmware

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that makes me want to ask, is there a universal one that works for all? like how there are different hdmi types but they universally all work on the old compatible devices

fierce yoke
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then theres people that just used the same power adaptor as they did previously and just slapped a usb-c port on it. which is like putting a mains plug on a landline phone. it will work if you wire it correctly but if you plug the phone into a normal mains socket then shit is gunna go bang

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hdmi is another problem because of the versions yeah. but newer cables tend to work with previous. buit thats probably because they wouldnt get away with it not working in the industry.

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customer: what the differnce between the 10 bucks cable and the 50 bucks cable that look identical?
seller: well the 10 bucks cable might not work with your tv
customer: how do i know if it will work
seller: you dont

that wouldnt fly in AV. it has to actually work (even if in a limited capacity)

sharp bramble
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so is there a usb c that should work for all?

fierce yoke
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"should" is the operative phrase there.

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yes there is but it doesnt mean it will work with all because people ignore the standard

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then for power delivery theres basic usb-c, PD USB-c (of multiple versions), PPS USB-c. not forgetting people just slapping a usb-c connector on any random power adaptor

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eu needs to put some teeth on the usb-c regs and if a product has a usb-c port on device/adaptor that doesnt follow the standard then it is banned from sale

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old system: you plug in a device and it doesnt work
its A. the deivce or B. the adaptor

new system:
its A. the deivce, B. the adaptor, C. the cable, D, a vesion mismatch. E.a nonstandard device, F a non-standard charger. G. a non-standard cable etc...

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the idea was, to save on electronic waste because peeople can reuse old cables and adaptors. but in reality they dont work anyway so people still throw them out otherwise they end up with a draw of cables that may or may not work and they dont know which one is which and which is the special one that damages devices if its used.
plus people throw out working devices because they think its broken as described previously.