Eh, kinda. The macbooks still come with 8gb non replaceable memory and the upcharge for another 8gb is $200 (not just for the air but the $1600 pro too). These are still great laptops but the pricing feels hostile.

IPad hardware is brilliant but what’s the point? You’re stuck with a neutered OS and a handheld formfactor that is not especially suitable for work or for gaming (the fields that usually need more power).

The baseline iphones are still lacking basic features like a high refresh screen purely for product segmentation purposes. And once again a slew of hostile, anti-user and anti-developer decisions like banning sideloading or alternative browser engines mainly designed to lock down the OS so they can retain all control of what goes on on your device. Another way this control is used is to funnel you to use icloud which offers an introductory free tier of 5(?) GB of data. I don’t think I had a single relative that didn’t have the “your icloud storage is full” popup every day until we disabled photo backups or they started paying a monthly subscription.

The app store is also a disaster. Just open it and search for something, I’m not even going to say more. This is an obvious profit vs user experience tradeoff.

Airpods are more or less fine. I had a gen1 Airpods pro which were kinda category defining at the time. Competition has caught up however, also better repairability would be nice. I’m actually surprised you were allowed to use them without an iPhone.

Apple watch seems fine, still no 3rd party watchfaces. The locked down OS is somewhat more justified in this case.

I haven’t tried the vision pro but that is also locked down software wise.

Overall, as you said, the hardware is good to best-in-class but it feels to me that at every turn you are being pushed and manipulated into giving more of your cash to Apple sometimes in the form of product segmentation, sometimes via artificial software limitations.

You don’t get to be a trillion dollar company just by making good products.

I don’t think it’s going anywhere either but Warren Buffet did sell his position in Apple. The M1 for sure is/was a hit but other than that they seem more focused on extracting every penny from customers, rather than providing the best products possible. I guess we’ll see how it works out as a long term strategy.

The new stunning, groundbreaking, and bespoke iPad Pro. They are nice enough but it is safe to say I was not stunned.

I think as of like yesterday you can sign up just to marketplace with just an email, no Facebook account needed. Might be an EU only thing though

Sounds to me like some of your fundamental settings are incorrect.

1. Make sure your bed is level. Level manually with the piece of paper trick and then use autolevel if your printer has it. Make sure you’re actually loading the auto level offsets, I had to add some extra gcode for this at the beginning for every print.

2. Check your print height and extruder speed. Check reference images for how your first layer should look. Your z offset should allow for a single line of print between the bed and the print head. Overcompensating by smashing the print head into the bed can help with adhesion but causes other issues later in the print. Also calibrate your extruder. It’s a pain in the ass, but actually go and get some digital calipers to do it. This is very important as overextrusion can cause many issues.

3. Don’t overcompensate with temperatures. If you need 80c for your pla to stick it’s probably a different issue. I had generally bad bed adhesion before I ended up switching to a PEI steel sheet. If you’re staying on glass, cleaning the bed and using a bit of hairspray works wonders.

4. Make sure your printer is in a stable environment. Close windows, doors in the room, make sure there is no draft (try not to blow on the print if you’re examining it from close as it goes) Air movement causes faster cooling which can cause warping.

AFTER you are done with these, you can experiment with temps a bit and try more advanced things, but go through these steps first, start over from scratch if you have to. Using a brim or skirt is also sometimes helpful.

It took me more than a year of off and on tinkering to get the printer to a somewhat stable state, so good luck! There is quite a steep learning curve for all of this.