Using it from chrome is how I use it.

Two limitations:

• You cannot let someone else control your screen. This is fine by me, I never want someone controlling my screen anyway. If I want to collaborate with them, I use any number of better ways to get them shared access.
• You cannot control other folks screen. This is often a challenge as too many people offer this up as the only way to remotely help them. I hate doing this because even in Windows the experience is utter garbage, but sometimes the other party just forces my hand.

Well mine is pretty petty. Every time I start up my system I’m spammed by epic advertisements in the lower right. It’s just so obnoxious, particularly since I’m on my couch and using my controller, so I have to pick up keyboard to dismiss those.

I’m so lazy I haven’t bothered to investigate options to be fair, but broadly speaking I don’t like how much it screams “look at me, look at me!” when I had no intention of interacting with their store/launcher at all that time.

Embargoes do get a bit of backlash sometimes, but not nearly enough.

Why should a full embargo get backlash? They are trying to get input for an understanding, controlled population before unleashing it on a wider public. The whole idea is that the preview is not representative enough to start setting expectations for everyone. But it is far enough along to get the general idea and get feedback to address.

I am constantly testing pretty well known products in advance of their release and they are frequently crap. Like one thing I’m working on hasn’t been able to work at all for a week due to some bugs that something I did triggered and they haven’t provided an update yet. However when they actually are available to the general customers, they are pretty much always solid and get good reviews. If I publicly reviewed it, it could tank this product even though no one could possibly hit most of the stuff that I hit.

A full embargo seems fair. The selective embargo seems like an unfair idea, but also is a bad idea. If everyone knows they are allowed to talk about it, but only the good parts, then people will be speculating on what is not said. One product I tested had someone fanboying so hard about it they were begging the product team to lift the embargo so they could share their enthusiasm. They said no, they didn’t want partially informed internet speculation running until they could address all aspects of the product publicly, and frankly there was too much crappy parts even if he was over the moon over the product and didn’t really use the bad parts.

I suppose I could see being uncomfortable with the “testers” also being the likely “reviewers”, because your are developing to the tastes of specific reviewers and tailoring for a good review in the end even if those reviewers aren’t fully representative of the general population. It’s easier to get a few dozen key influencers happy by catering to them/making them feel special, than releasing a product and hoping you hit their sensibilities.

I wager they are angling for the negative feedback to be private.

Do you guys not have phones?

It’s not about them being dumb, it’s them not caring about the particulars of their platform. Can it play some mobile games? Can it keep them connected to their friends through text and social media? Once it meets those criteria, that’s enough.

Then comes the next challenge: social status. Particularly during the teen years, social status is a keen focus and every little thing is part of the equation. iMessage versus SMS and RCS means that an Android user can’t tell their peer is an iPhone, but iPhones highlight Android users very obviously. So if either platform might align with social groups, Apple is the one that makes it easy to identify “outsiders” and ostracize them.

So knowing that, fundamentally, both platforms will give them what basic stuff they want in a handheld computer, so they just care about the ability to use the differences to identify “in” versus “out” in every possible way that presents itself. Apple does that most obviously.