Google says it can’t fix Pixel Watches, please just buy a new one | With no official repair program and no parts, broken Pixel Watches are just e-waste.

Often times when people complain about this there is some misconfiguration somewhere, which is admittedly hard to notice a lot of the time. One big gotcha with DKIM, for instance, is that TXT records have a limited size in DNS, so if you have a large key you likely cannot fit it within a single TXT record (an RSA 2048 key is too big, unfortunately). In theory you can split the key in DNS, but I'm not sure if every mail server will handle this correctly. Anyway, people will make an RSA 2048 key (or larger) and try to stuff it into a single TXT record and they might not notice that it doesn't fit (e.g., their DNS provider's interface may truncate the record silently). So, it's good to confirm after the fact that the records are good and working (there's a number of free services that will do that, e.g., https://www.learndmarc.com/).

The other thing that's a bigger deal than I think it should be is rDNS. The rDNS on the mail server really needs to be the same as the MX record or certain spam detectors flip out. If your MX record is mail.example.com, it seems like the spam detectors really want the rDNS to be mail.example.com and not example.com, for instance. You'll see some advice online that suggests that the rDNS record just has to exist and doesn't have to match exactly, but this has not been my experience.

Beyond that I have also registered for Outlook's SNDS and Google's Postmaster services, and I've also added myself to the whitelist here: dnswl.org/. I'm not sure how much of difference that makes, but it's something else you can try.

I recommend tutanota, cheap clean and few frills.

I am in the Apple ecosystem, but this strategy is universal. Every month I am reminded by my calendar to make a backup. That means:

A Photos export to flat file format for photo and video

An iCal backup (easily imported elsewhere)

A vCard backup of contacts

A bookmark backup

A to do list export by pasting to a .md

Same for notes

I like the easy way an ecosystem lets all my things play nice together, but I don’t want to be beholden to it. This is an acceptable workaround to me.

At the very least, periodic visits to Google Takeout.

I installed this week, so I'm not a long time user. But it's by far the best self hosted photo app that I've used. Before that I used nextcloud, but the user experience isn't as good Imo.

The only things that I miss are automatic albums based on face recognition and pet recognition. I still use google photo to share with family though.

This is TOTP. I use my password manager for that. I used to use Bitwarden, but I recently switched to 1password.

SSO means single sign on. If I sign on to Google, it automatically sign me on other apps. I use a forward auth on my self hosted services. I used to use authentik but I switched to google since it just works much better. If Google makes a shitty move in that department, I can always fall back to authentik.

I don't mind using proprietary softwares if they're good, I just prefer to think about an alternative in case I need to switch.

12. No ad blocking.

Apple doesn't allow "questionable" apps like emulators, bit torrent clients on its store and of course you can't sideload them either.

I have an iPhone, but I will say for me the biggest deal breaker with it is absolutely not the lack of USB-C support (though that sucks and THANK GOD they're switching)... The lack of sideloading for apps is a much bigger problem IMO, because it's really hard for free and open source apps to even exist on iOS (which makes paid apps, subscriptions, and advertising much more common). Honestly, I'd care a lot less about the lack of sideloading if it wasn't for the other inconvenient facts, like the a $100/year developer license to publish anything on the App Store, or the fact that you pretty much need to have a Mac to develop for the iPhone... The $100/year developer license is just a death sentence for any open source apps and hobby / passion project apps. It's not thaaaat much money, but it's a lot to pay on top of putting in a bunch of free work to build an app in the first place.

Inability to self-repair. Apple made it harder on purpose.

Can you repair android phone nowadays? Afaik, they are just as hard as apple

Clipboard and files sharing is still a joke. It works, but is uncomfortable as fuck.

Never had a problem

No easy & free way to sideload apps.

this should come before March 2024

Overpriced smartphones & gadgets.

True for the gadgets, smartphones are just in line with other android phones but at least the phone is supported for 5-6 years and it doesn't go to shit after a few years of use

Shitty media format support.

Preach.

Buying an Apple device means I would literally support anti-consumer company with shitty behavior towards its users

Then buy no phone and remove google, etc. For a computer, buy a System76 et similia -but do not use Nvidia/AMD/intel GPU/CPU; no Samsung for SSD, no Intel network card etc.

Apple wallet does not support discount cards.

But you can?Maybe it's new, idk

Can't simply upload & download files from my PC (both Windows & Linux).

True. I use iCloud webApp on Linux or transfer the files on Mega

No proper files management.

It works for the most basic use cases

No ability to install 3rd party OS.

True, but on the other hand iOS is the reason you would buy an iPhone. I'm a power user on desktop but I can't be bothered on mobile: back when I had an android, I used the stock apps too and never did anything """weird""". I'm a desktop user throughout, so if I have to do anything I will just use my PC instead of relying on my phone

-- That said, if you don't mind paying:

• try protonMail, there is the auto import and forward for gmail;
• MEGA has a sync feature for the photos. I use it but on iOS it's not that great, for example the photos never get deleted but just uploaded;