OT-ish: "Got m'self a new phone" blues

Pick your overlord. ;-). Personally I use a lot of Google products and accept a certain amount of “quid pro quo” for using their free apps. As for other companies like Samsung etc, they can f*ck right off. ;-)

Tim

I've had an inherited Samsung for about ten years, and I've yet to open the Samsung app group. I use Google maps and very occasionally, email.

Here was I thinking 'it's just me who doesn't trust the buggers'.

It's all about handing over your stuff to somebody else, and almost certainly the sign-up agreement allows them to do whatever they want with it. Long gone are the days of 'we only pass on your email, we don't read it'.

My philosophy is to just use it for the things I want to do with it, which is mostly to be a dumb terminal to a couple of house databases. It's used as a phone, and to authenticate to an ever-growing number of vendors. I wonder how many of them have a credible back-up plan when the phone inevitably gets lost or stolen. "Yes, of course you can change your mobile number, sir. We just need to send you a text to confirm your identity first".

I assume you already have a Google account/Gmail address as you have used Android. Use that. I haven't bothered with a Samsung account (on my Samsung phone) and don't feel any loss.

I don't really use "The Cloud" as clouds are just hot air (and water vapour); though I do back up WhatsApp to it, which makes it easy to transfer my account to another phone.

There should be a single button press for "None" as there is for "All".

(and John Rumm said something similar; and I myself have never [knowingly] used any Clouds.

But then there's "the general public" .....

Does anyone remember the days when they said IT would save the planet, by making paper redundant? (!!!!! We in computing knew that that was a naive untruth, if not a simple lie, right from the off.)

What about clouds? Which are not (as we all know) not actually vaporous semi-mythical wonders, but unbelievable humungous datacentres, which are quite literally _eating_ the planet! And all for .... er ... what?

Sorry - veered off-topic, I think. Better have a lie down!

Another John Thanks again folks!

Well largely it *has* happened. My printer is increasingly idle, as is my scanner

Less computing power on yer desktop, and one application running centrally. Storage looked after better than the average joe can mange.

Always a good plan at our age

Generally there is... although there will be cases where it will render a particular feature unusable... e.g. if you deny the phone app access to the microphone, then it is not going to work that well.

I think rare rather than general, there is usually a choice of accepting all or working through a long list of individual selections.

When dealing with web sites or MS OS platforms, certainly... on phones however less so IME.

Interesting, I've only come across it on Android 'phones.