I don't fully agree with it, but the argument is that automation increases productivity and creates new higher paid jobs allowing human labour to be used for more useful things than just moving boxes around warehouses.

Agreed. And it would help if that automation/designed was made in the UK.

But they have cannibalized local businesses on the high street.

Honestly it's a little...complicated

On one end more employees are good for the economy because people have to work and have jobs.

On the other end having less people is good because it means the productivity rised, that's out objective.

The future scares me

I think TV's should be completely dumb just a monitor in fact with maybe a lot more HDMI ports. I can attach my own media device, Apple TV, Roku etc no need to paying extra for poor version of these built into the TV.

Most of their effort now seems to be driven by saving them money, hence the big podcast push. Every time you listen to a podcast instead of music costs them less money so their profit from you goes up.

I am also a recent switcher to Youtube Music and love the recommendations. Also not having podcasts I don't want pushed at me is so nice.

Massive generalisation about Europe I and most people I know use it.

It's true, though. iMessage requires an Apple device, and Apple simply doesn't have a lot of market share in Europe (around 30% for iOS, less for macOS). So most people don't have access to iMessage.

Yeah that's what I meant, they don't have the critical mass to really put it on the map here. It falls back to SMS for Android recipients of course, but group chats and pictures/video are out of the question.

So in practice nobody in my circle uses it whereas Whatsapp is huge (still). I don't have iOS but I would notice if I got SMSes. The only ones I still get are insecure 2FA and spam.

Working rather nicely on Stadia.