My money’s on ChatGPT. I recognize some of the common phrases it uses.

If the US tech giants keep doing this then I will start removing their products from my overall life.

In my opinion, you should be doing that anyway as a matter of self-protection.

But, regardless of that, they're not only going to keep doing this kind of thing, they're going to get increasingly intense about it. That crowd has nothing but ill will for us all.

you should, because they'll keep doing this (please save this and revisit it in 2 years)

My concern here is are they going to start locking features for Pages, Numbers, and Keynote behind a paywall? Yes, it’s free—but will they still have all of the newer features without a subscription?

I’m assuming that they’re going to (fairly) lock AI generative features behind the subscription since they’ll be incurring ongoing costs.

They'll be pressured by gdocs and other similar products to not keep too much of this behind a paywall. I already don't know anyone who loves using Pages (every time I share a document I have to export it to .docx, which is annoying), so they're already starting off behind by a bit.

I think many more would be on to Pages if they realized it was more than a simple WP. It's especially great for personal use, where there's no non-Mac sharing needed — there's no simpler layout program out there, & the typographic options are nice to have. If I have something longer/more detailed to put together, that's what ()LaTeX, Inkscape, etc., is for. We need alternate app ecosystems out there, & it's nice that Apple hasn't left these apps to rot like they did back in the 2010s.

It's OK but way too limited for proper layouts and doesn't have enough features for long/complex documents like books.

As it is, it's barely better than GDocs but less convenient, and since people rarely need to print stuff, layout isn't that important.

What do you recommend for long/complex documents like books?

Well, that's a very hard question to answer without additional details.

If it's graphics/presentation heavy, you most likely will need something like InDesign. If there is a lot of math, you'll need something like Latex (typist). If there are a lot of tables, you probably need something like Word to auto-update embeds from Excel. In general, Word will allow you to control features like footnotes/endnotes, tables of figures, etc, much better than Pages ever will.

If it's mostly literature, you can use something like Vellum (https://vellum.pub/)

I don't have a list of solutions ready, but maybe I should make one. This is a complex problem, and the safe answer is usually to just use Word.

The problem with Pages is that it is extremely mediocre at everything while still locking you down to Apple hardware.

The young, foolish version of myself was a rabid Apple fanboy and pushed people to use Pages (back in the day when the iWork suite was paid but cheaper). Then people came back to me with problems that could be solved in Word relatively easily, but I had no answer for with Pages.

After being tired of saying, "no you can't do that" or "that has to be done manually," I stopped advocating for Pages.

I don't do much document preparation nowadays, but I think the ideal solution would be a GUI to bridge between web publishing and paper publishing.

I really enjoy Pages, but if they’re going to lock stuff behind a paywall — it might be time to look at other things. I can’t afford to add a whole bunch of new subscriptions.

It’s consistency with the rest of Spotlight. I imagine they want to enhance it, but getting people to use it might be the first step.

> For context, try tapping 'optimize photos' in iPhone storage settings

Same place it’s always been. In Settings -> App -> Photos, toggle Download and Keep Originals. Same place it is for macOS as well. It’s not that magical. Search for “photos icloud” and you’ll be led to the setting for it.

I don’t have this issue at all. I have a very generous amount of space to grab the corner with and it changes mouse pointer to the diagonal arrow.

Edit: despite all the negative feedback, I’m quite happy with Tahoe and I enjoy the visual changes. I think some of the subtler changes is more intuitive and Spotlight’s improvement is quite nice.

Pleased that I'm not alone. The comments here suggest that I should just bin my Mac and buy a Linux-capable machine instead since MacOS is now "unusable", "heinous", "diabolical", "worst OS EVER".

I updated, carried on enjoying the best desktop experience (IMHO). It's not perfect, but was and remains better than the alternatives for me. Very little "struggle".

I had the same takeaway -- in fact, I think it's CD Projekt who hopes to distance themselves from GOG.

does that count as self-hosting?

> Would a child have access to a paid VPN like Mullvad anyway, I wonder.

What's stopping the kid from obtaining a VPN number and mailing 5 bucks to Mullvad?