B.J. Major

Mark Zuckerberg says Apple's lack of innovation since the iPhone will lead to its decline "They haven't really invented anything great in a while. Steve Jobs invented the iPhone, and now they're kind of sitting on it 20 years later" "Year over year, I'm not even sure they're selling more iPhones at this point. Part of it is that each generation doesn't actually get that much better, so people are taking longer to upgrade" "They built stuff like AirPods, which are cool, but they've thoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone" "I'm pretty optimistic that because they've been so off their game in terms of not really releasing many innovative things... eventually they'll get beat by someone"

Evidenced by Steve Jobs thinking this was good design

On May 20, Amazon ended support for every Kindle made in 2012 or earlier. The devices can no longer buy, borrow, or download books. Reset one to factory settings and it will never log back in. The screen still works. The hardware is fine. Amazon reached across the internet and turned a thing you paid for into a brick, on a date they picked, for a reason that benefits them. The owners bought the devices. They bought the books. They followed every rule. Amazon changed the rules anyway, because the rules were never yours. When you tap "Buy now" on a Kindle book, you are not buying a book. You are renting a license that Amazon can revoke, expire, or strand on a dead device whenever it suits the quarter. They designed it this way on purpose, and they showed us the blueprint years ago. In 2009 Amazon reached into thousands of Kindles overnight and deleted, ironically, copies of George Orwell's 1984, a book people had already paid for. They refunded everyone, apologized, and promised never again. We took the promise for what it was worth and watched the door instead. In February 2025 they shut it. They removed Download and Transfer via USB, the last simple tool that let you pull your own purchases onto your own computer and keep them. Newer Kindle files use a format almost nobody can crack. They closed the exit, then they started bricking the devices. None of this was a surprise. They proved in 2009 that they could reach into your library and take a book back. Everything since has just been them deciding when. A copy you cannot hold is a copy you do not own. A library that lives on someone else's server is a library someone else can burn. The cartel rents you access to the words and calls it ownership, and the only reason most people never notice is that the landlord usually lets them stay. May 20 was the eviction notice. It went to 3% of Kindle owners this time. The lease is identical for the other 97%. Stop buying books you cannot hold. When you do buy from Amazon, strip the DRM the day it arrives and keep a clean file somewhere they cannot reach. Back up everything you already own while you still can. A book on your own drive is yours forever. A book in your Amazon account is yours until a lawyer in Seattle decides otherwise. And when you want a book the cartel has priced out of reach or locked behind a dying device, the shadow libraries that never expire are one search away. The pirates build libraries that cannot be revoked, because they assume the cartel always will. The cartel cannot delete what it cannot reach.

Just picked up a couple of new old stock (unused) Apple IIe and Apple IIc. Unbelievable I was able to find these.