We don’t hear this enough. Google doesn’t hear this enough.

unbelievably ignorant or dishonest.

Embrace, extend, extinguish. But I guess since Valve is doing it and not Microsoft, I’m the one called ignorant or dishonest for calling it what it is. For every minor contribution to Linux they made, they made multiples of regressions to the entirety of the PC platform and games sphere. Keep sweeping everything under the rug to convince yourself your favorite American corpo is the savior - not all the volunteers that made the hard work Valve latched on for free.

The whole reason why SteamOS exists is because Microsoft introduced the Windows store with 8.

Ah yes. People panicked that Microsoft was going to somehow self-mutilate the ecosystem they have built, and Valve decided to opportunistically jump on the bandwagon and sell a “cure” to a non-existent problem, by porting their DRM to Linux, and wooed the world by… forking existing Linux distros with their DRM set to autoboot on big picture, and Wine? Damn, I’m impressed. /s

I really don’t think you understand why people like Valve.

Rather there’s nothing reasonable about liking them in the first place. American corporation paying taxes to the current regime, founded by an ex-Microsoft employee turned billionaire and owner of multiple yachts. Developed its own DRM, then found ways to monetize and enshittify it to make even more off PNGs and chat emojis. Singlehandedly killed used copies for PC games way before it crossed Sony’s mind. A loot box pioneer. Also popularized the toxic F2P model from mobile to the PC world with TF2. Attempted to make paid mods with a hefty cut going to themselves. Didn’t offer refunds for well over a decade until Australia forced them to legally - and yet their refund system remains subpar. I could go on…

gamers getting a real choice on running an operating system of their choosing.

Yes you keep shifting the topic. I’m talking about game ownership and physical copies, here you are talking about operating systems. I can run a fully libre system running GNU/Hurd and play GOG games all I want, it doesn’t change the fact Valve made it so I don’t own my digital PC games any more than Sony wants you to own them - they made it so GOG is unironically a store whose entire selling point is “we let you download offline installers for the few games we sell” which is IMHO dystopian - so why are we still rewarding them? Is it the shinies?

If you don’t remember the shit show that was windows 8

I’ve used windows 8.1 and 8 itself briefly. All applications from previous eras of windows worked. I’ve no idea what you’re on about now.

When Valve does shady shit, we’ll call them out for it

Oh really? You’re not calling them out for the shady shit that I’m literally dangling right in front of you. All I’ve seen you do is credit other people’s work to them and shift the topic away from the fact Sony is copying their homework from them. And you keep doing that.

The loss of physical isn’t the real fight here though, it’s open competition.

The loss of physical is the loss of another venue for ownership, including the ability to resell or give away your copies - something not even GOG lets you do. Oh, and also it’s something Sony themselves made an entire ad around…

I’ll still buy from Valve just to reward them

Then you don’t care about the Sony dropping physical media thing, since you’re willing to give Valve a free pass despite literally paving the road Sony is going down on.

I’d expect people boycotting Sony over their decision to be better informed than that, and stay clear of Valve’s dystopia, right? Right?

EDIT: also since you said consoles are locked down to 1 store yourself, I want you to make a guess how many PlayStation users are going to figure out that they can go buy their stuff from GOG on hardware literally branded after Steam, where as I established, its subscribers don’t give a shit about other stores, much less GOG.

Live services are all the rage because, well, you can see where I’m going now. One or two could flop, but maybe third time’s the charm and it generates all the profit. That’s the reason other companies - not just Sony - double down on live services despite these flops.

You’re expecting the average Sony fan to know about GOG? That’s kinda cute. Steam subscribers don’t care about GOG, if they even know about its existence.

But Valve’s hardware still have no physical media, and their digital model is still what’s inspiring Sony. How about being consistent and rewarding neither?

Which, again, they wouldn’t double down on said decisions if they didn’t know by heart that Gamers™ will be distracted by the next issue, or the new shiny as the commenter noted.

Ah yes the “”“platform”“” that Sony is copying from…

Sony wouldn’t even be doing this kind of war of attrition if it didn’t know that eventually, Gamers™ will forget and accept it.

and my god the insults I received over the years about it.

Me too, me too. When I lost the internet for a mad long time and noticed my steamed games not working because the launcher was refusing to log in while offline (despite having a so-called offline mode) and questioning why a singleplayer game even requires all of this in the first place, I would then get told the problem was actually my internet provider and not the game’s or steam’s for creating this mess in the first place. Yeah, make it make sense. Incidentally I had to acquire a bunch of executables for those very same games like you did, and yep, they’d work offline as should be. Creator of service problem says piracy is a service problem, why is this not a headline already?

Then other DD platforms popped up, and people bought games there (myself included, fuck you direct2drive), and lost all the games and all the money when the platform died.

I’m getting Desura flashbacks. Lucky I downloaded everything I had when I felt the signs of it going down, but I know others weren’t as lucky. Silver lining is they’re still playable, DRM-free is nice, but like I established we’ve already moved on from that into bigger fish like “the credits reference a consulting company I don’t like.”

I’m so sick of this cyberpunk hellscape bullshit where you pay everything and own nothing.

And there’s not even any cyberware to show for it! But yeah at this point I’m focusing more on buying stuff other than games and playing my massive library of games from multiple decades. It’s just I really suck at that too.

Certainly if Gamers™ had half a spine, we wouldn’t get here. Instead it’s always been inch after inch being taken, Gamers™ either downplaying it or viciously complaining about it for a short while without anything tangible happening, and rinse and repeat. Miles have been taken, now Gamers™ argue about 30fps in a game that ships with super draconian DRM and no physical copies because we’re already cool with DRM now.

Also the bitter irony when I hear people upset by Sony’s steamification switching to PC, the most steamified platform of them all. I guess it beats waiting until 2028 when you can pull the trigger now?

I uninstalled all of flatpak and never looked back. I love wasting gigabytes on duplicate dependencies just to run the two flatpak apps.

Yeah, that was a thing. They planned to shut down the store and that didn’t come to pass for the Vita and PS3. Plan went through for the PSP though.

And I love my Vita! Still wish I got a PSP along with it though, always wanted one as a kid.

They’ll be shut down this year? Have you got a source I could look at, cause that’s news to me.

It only sounds like magic because all of you succeeded at speedrunning “you will own nothing and you’ll be happy” into coming true, music, videos, games, books and even OSes (reminder for keepandroidopen.org). But it’s not magic. If you can download cat photos and memes, you can save and play MP3s. I’ve taken this feature for granted, and so can you.

Bandcamp lets you download music in several formats. I think Apple Music and Amazon are still viable for MP3s (but eugh supporting US oligarchs, Bandcamp is also US). Some people graciously offer MP3s on SoundCloud. When all else fails, use NewPipe or an app to convert YouTube videos into local MP3 files - in fact you may find links to buy and/or free download music albums in the description. Nothing about this is magic, and shouldn’t be.

The author is unnecessarily making the rebellion against enshittification harder, and neglecting to mention you can start now with current hardware to achieve the same desired results. You don’t need an iPod.

I went ahead and read the rest. It’s like the author is pretending Android only has Spotify and clones, and nothing to do the iPod’s thing. If you don’t have a system music player, go find one on Google Play or F-Droid. I had PowerAmp and ditched it because of its online activation DRM scheme, and for a while I had Musicolet before it had a subscription tier attached to it, and jumped apps until I settled on Retro Music, for now. A better app might dethrone it. Come to think of it, that’s a pro over the iPod, it’s stuck with Apple’s idea of the music player back then, but Android lets you choose upcoming and past players.

The intentionality of putting gigabytes of tracks and curating them after the fact is definitely way easier with Android, too.

Okay. I read a bit of the article. By a bit I mean I made it to the part where the iPod HDD and battery have been modded. This dude is leaving out half his side of the story.

You need to get MP3s for the iPod. Did the dude even try to put those same MP3s on their phone? Who knows. They spent a lot whinging about streaming apps and their enshittification, really funny. Local music apps are set up and forget affairs, I use Retro Music from F-Droid - zero enshittification, no subscription fees, and that version is free. The author can use it too.

I’m certainly no iPod modder, but I’m pretty sure you needed to install iTunes to get it to play literally anything. Android lets me play whatever from the SD card root, phone memory root, Download folder, or even if it’s lost in my screenshot gallery for an absurd example.

Heck, you can’t watch videos unless they’re encoded/converted in a way that the Pod can play them. Any modern phone can play anything with the system video app or VLC or something.

Not a concern to me at all, but the pod doesn’t have Bluetooth, so you’re practically required to use something with the 3.5mm jack. A decent phone should have both.

If you don’t want to receive a LinkedIn notification, turn off LinkedIn notifications. Android’s notification system has matured tremendously, no app will send anything unless YOU have allowed it in the first place. Or turn on Do Not Disturb, which the author says they did, but I don’t believe them. Bedtime Mode is an even stronger option, as it can hide your notifications. For the nuclear option, just turn off WiFi/mobile data - of course streaming apps will be unable to do anything in this case, but… Local music players will keep trucking on.

TL;DR Just download and use a LOCAL music player you’re comfy with and play the MP3s you already put on your iPod.

The iPod isn’t something you’re gonna hold constantly in your hands, like a classic handheld console where you can argue that you prefer playing GBA, PSP or Vita games on their original hardware, screen, buttons and all. You will most likely pocket it and only interact with it using your wired earphones. Your phone is still the best option here.

And just manage to push it unilaterally too. This shit must be opposed.