SuperSpruce

Oops I should've told you that it is the Windows 11 version. That version is like 10-20% of the speed of the Windows 10 version but it has tabs

Discord takes about 6-8 seconds for me, but if you think that's bad Steam takes 3 times that time for me.

Biggest offenders: MS teams on desktop. And even more so Epic Games store. Just ridiculously slow and laggy even on strong (Ryzen 9 5900HX, 32GB RAM, NVMe gen3 SSD) hardware. They almost take more time to open than Windows 11 (which is also slower thsn it should be). Buggy too.

Software that got much slower with a recent update:

1. Steam. Seriously, it takes almost as much time to open ever since the last UI change as the Epic Games Store. At least it's smooth once it's opened, but I seriously want an alternative to launch my steam games.

2. Firefox, specifically to open PDFs. There's now a 5-second delay when opening any PDF, even a tiny one. It's really frustrating honestly. It takes 90% of the time to open a 1 page PDF than to open a 10 page PDF.

3. Windows file explorer. On battery on my gaming laptop, there's a 1-2 second delay when I click anything on this app. Constantly seeing "working on it". The Windows 10 file explorer was much faster. And the search is atrocious, use Everything by VoidTools instead.

4. Some third party map apps on my Android phone used for public transportation start becoming really unresponsive after 10 seconds. It freezes my entire phone. This did not happen a couple months ago, and it really would've made getting around the city much harder if it wasn't for the motorcycle I recently bought.

FX File manager. Super fast even on weak hardware, customizable, and feature rich, with virtually no bugs. It's not only the best file manager I've found on Android, it's the best file manager I've found on any platform.

I was in college and needed to attend an important virtual meeting about choosing my major. They provided a Zoom link, but when I clicked it, it didn't put me in a meeting, it said this is unavailable with your free tier. So, knowing this is a stupid idea, I begrudgingly paid this evil company $17 for a month of pro.

And guess what? It still didn't work. Apparently I needed to sign in with only my school account for it to work. Never utilized the month of pro either. But at the moment, it felt like a gun was being held to my head to pay Zoom $17.

I hate tech sometimes, and despite being a young person I prefer things in person rather than always online at the mercy of these companies.

So what's the effect of this?

Quick question. I thought Reddit's API price debacle (the entire reason I'm here instead) forced Boost for Reddit to shut down, or at the very least charge a high price. I'm surprised to see it still working. What exactly is going on?

iMessage is how so many people communicate around me. It's a lot more than just blue bubbles. It's games, SharePlay, AirDrop (this is a huge one), and much more. Countless times, I've wanted to play some kind of iMessage game with a group of other people, but I have an Android so I can't.

Okay the 2nd point is pretty moot actually. The only thing I can think of is Snapchat dark mode but that's one feature on a proprietary social platform countless open source apps.

I really wish I could run away from the megacorps, but they dominate the market so I can't. And these days I hate Google much more than Apple.

Seriously, people care about this a lot more than me. And I currently prefer Android, unlike 90% of people in my age group.

Depends on your preferred platform.

For emulators or GBA, Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald is a good choice with one of the best OSTs in all of Pokemon

Black/White is another good choice with a banger OST for emulators or DS. Also has the best story imo.

If you have a 3DS, or prefer an easier Pokemon game, OR/AS (Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire) is a really good remake of Ruby/Sapphire.

Many recommend FireRed/LeafGreen as a first pokemon game, but the OST isn't as good imo.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pengyou.cloneapp

I couldn't find anything open source but this one works and isn't too privacy invasive.

Because there actually are some desirable features only on iPhones. iMessage is the big one, but also many app developers--and college students around me!!!--treat Android users as 2nd class citizens; also I want to degoogle myself a bit. I'm also afraid of the direction Android is going in right now.

However, iPhones currently have so many undesirable "features" that I'll never switch at the moment. The big ones are no sideloading, crappy file manager, no Firefox+uBlock origin, and no local music player. And the 2000% storage markups on iPhones are atrocious.