I initially hoped it would have a hub specific interface that looks similar to the Nest Hub. Instead though, the dock basically puts it into screensaver mode and the home icon pulls up the basic Google Home like if you were to tap the quick settings icon.
As a tablet, it’s decent but I wouldn’t get it if you’re mostly planning to use it with Google Home as I think the current experience is disappointing.
I think it’d be nice if they offered an option without the base for $400 especially since the hub experience on it as it is currently isn’t very good. All hub mode does currently is turn it into a glorified digital picture frame with the home controls button in the bottom corner and the Google Home experience isn’t as good as a Nest Hub.
As it is right now, I wouldn’t consider the Pixel Tablet as a replacement for the Nest Hub.
I have a Pixel Tablet and I really only used the speaker to charge it, but I’m probably going to stop because the base is becoming very flakey with my experience. The speaker randomly loses power and I’ll have to unplug and plug it back in about a dozen times before it’ll start getting power again and this problem started a week after getting it. The charger is not damaged in any way which leads me to think it’s probably defective.
I get ads may be a necessary evil if you’re using a website or service you aren’t directly paying for, but 9/10 times it’s because of how they’re implemented and behave and advertisers and large publishers are out of touch with users and never learned or they simply just don’t care.
First off, it seems that ads always have to be presented in the most obnoxious ways and this is a problem that’s almost as old as the internet. I remember going online back in the late 90s and early 2000s, you’d get those extremely obnoxious and seizure inducing “YOU’RE OUR 1’000’000 VISITOR” or “YOU WON A FREE IPOD” ads. Today though, ads are still as annoying or even worse to an extent since every website now insists having autoplaying videos with sound or if you’re using a phone and trying to read an article, 3/4 of the page will be taken up by an ad and you have little room to view the actual content.
Secondly, ads have been increasingly becoming a privacy issue. Advertisers want to know every little thing about us and have the ability to track us around the web. I really want advertisers especially to know as little as possible about me because they clearly can’t be trusted with data wether they keep it internally or sell it to data brokers because some of the data they’re able to collect is alarming.
I deleted my account after 8 and a half years after the API changes took affect and since then, I haven’t really missed it. Besides the API changes, the other decisions the admins have made shows that either they’re intentionally trying to run Reddit into the ground or they’re incredibly incompetent. Regardless, Reddit has shown it’s a platform I no longer want to be a part of.
There’s a learning curve with using federated platforms wether it’s Lemmy, kbin or Mastodon. Things will definitely improve as these platforms get more fleshed out but as is, it’ll probably come off confusing to a casual user.
To give Reddit and Twitter credit, they made it convenient to join communities as you just need a single account to interact with hundreds of thousands of communities and millions of people. It’s convenient as a user that you only need one account as opposed to 30.
If anything, we might end up reverting back to using smaller forums until the fediverse has time to catch up. I think it’s unsustainable as a business model and we’re seeing this with the self-destruction of both Reddit and Twitter where they’re leaning too far to try and make a profit where it’s affecting user choice and experience. Most people that ran web forums back in the day didn’t do it for the money but instead they wanted to foster a community. Yes going back to that might cause the internet to get a bit more fragmented, but I think it’ll work out for the best as both forums and the fediverse puts users first.
Lemmy and kbin are still very much in their infancy while Reddit has been around for nearly 20 years. There’s definitely going to be growing pains since it’s still so new and for right now at least most people that are going to join are people that are leaving Reddit so it’s probably going to remain a fairly niche thing at least in the short term.
Secondly, I don’t think they have to necessarily replace Reddit and they both could go on and do their own things. Honestly, even during my time on Reddit I found the smaller communities were better than large or default communities IMO. I just find that smaller communities have better engagement where ones that are too big your post or comment will end up getting buried.
Even if Lemmy or kbin don’t overtake Reddit, I think there’s still a place for them.
I left and deleted my account after Elon changed the algorithm to show nothing but his posts. With this decision and the many other bad decisions he’s made since buying Twitter, I’m glad I left and I frankly don’t miss it.
This will absolutely be abused and people will be harassed, but I feel this is intentional as he continues turning Twitter into a far-right echo chamber.