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> The problem I found with this (and many other recommendation engines) is that I've read all of the suggestions.

Immediately had the same experience: input a Theroux, Bill Bryson and Bruce Chatwin into the engine, as I've been longing for some new travel books to read, but naturally it just gave me... five or six other books by Paul Theroux and Bill Bryson.

Definitely needs more input parameters to be useful.

Say goodbye to ever photographing anything abroad on film again.

> I am surprised I am getting downvoted.

You got my upvote because I have a similar experience - still using my 2014 MacBook Pro.

However, I also agree with the other take I’m seeing in these comments: the current prices do seem disproportionately high (at least in the EU).

I feel I have to go back about 25 years to see the same level of expense for high-end electronics. I genuinely thought we were past that era of rarefied ‘professional’ hardware.

And as others have also pointed out, adding RAM or disk capacity is ridiculously expensive.

A few years ago I had a medical procedure that entailed not eating for 2 or 3 days - just drinking water. By the end of that fasting period, my sense of smell was immeasurably heightened, and could definitely smell the differing fragrance of other humans walking along the streets.

> Not in Sweden and we have less accidents than Germany.

I don't think you got the memo where everyone seems to think getting blind drunk and then getting on an electric scooter is totally ok "in Sweden".

I've had a few near-misses myself with crazy drunk riders on pedestrian streets in central Stockholm; I once interviewed a job-candidate with a cut-up face who laughingly told us he'd crashed a scooter with two(!) friends on the back after a drink night; a friend of mine smashed their hip after a night drinking and then jumping on a scooter.

The rules may be there. The actual reality is different.

This gives a really distorted image of the real Sweden I know. 99% of kids in real Sweden are definitely not hanging out at these educational centers: in this massively conformist society (especially for teenagers), the kids are getting hold of beer as soon as they can, driving cars to the nearest petrol station or out-of-town car parks, and burning tire marks in the asphalt.

This sort of article is just window-dressing for what it’s really like to live in this mostly restricted and limited land, out in the boondocks.

Swedes living abroad probably actually believe this nostalgic fiction of their homeland.

> COVID was never very dangerous for young people…

An ex-colleague who is now 31 (or 32) who was running the Stockholm marathon in 2018 and 2019, got Covid very early in 2020, and suffered a massive pulmonary embolism which took him months to fully recover from.

This was before the vaccines were available, of course.

> the effects of covid/prolonged lockdowns on missed screening.

This ignores that lockdown was a 'side-effect' of covid that affected the health-service, whereas covid itself had the exact same effect on healthcare, with or without lockdown. This can be seen in Sweden, for instance. Not only were death-rates during the height of the pandemic much higher in Sweden than its Nordic neighbors, the healthcare system was crippled by the workload and stress.

People were not getting health-checks here — just the same as in countries with lockdowns - so the effects of late screening on cancers are just as great.

The system is still overloaded, so there are constant stories in the news where people who need treatment urgently, are needing to wait a year or 18 months or more for treatment that might save their lives.

In addition, the stress that was caused by having totally overloaded emergency wards for 3 years has meant that nurses and doctors are leaving in unprecedented numbers, leaving the service woefully under-staffed.

A recent survey of all the country’s hospitals by an oversight authority found every single one of them under the minimum standard that they should maintain, with long waiting lists, people dying unattended in corridors and on floors, and staff-levels that are way too low.

Sure you could have a coffee in town during the pandemic in Sweden. But getting decent healthcare wasn’t (and still isn’t) an option.

> At the low end Apple is actively ripping off users providing computers which can't even edit photos.

> open a 20MB photo suddenly you're out of RAM and the software starts crashing

Have an M1 laptop with Photoshop and Lightroom and need to edit 16-bit film-scans from a 6x12 that are more than a GIGABYTE each and have had zero issues.

> The software experience is getting worse imo, particularly when upgrading.

Many people chiming-in about the absolutely rock-solid stability of the last few updates, and I'm adding my vote to that.

I have had zero system-crashes or freezes for maybe 2 or even 3 years now. I tend to wait to hear what other people's experiences are, but that waiting-time is getting shorter these days. And the update process is also getting smoother: almost never any need to fix update issues with apps.

If I go back 10 or 15 years, I remember regular kernel panics, tricky restarts into 'safe mode', spinning beachballs, clearing the PRAM (don't even remember what that was about anymore - but it was needed all the time), and so on. It was an ongoing task to keep the OS running.

So this idea that MacOS is "getting worse" is just complete amnesia, in my view. I have never worked with anything so stable and powerful in my entire developer experience over the last 25+ years.

If we're talking about the price of these machines (and especially the measly disks and RAM on the cheapest options) - that's another matter...