My one take-away from my Apple HomePod fiasco is that I am not wasting my time trying to make things work as advertised. Apple said that HomePod would play my iTunes Match library, it would not, and I wasted half a day trying to get it to do what I bought it for. Then ended up sending it back when it wouldn't do it.

I swore never again.

I wasted a huge chunk of time trying to force something that wasn't going to happen.

And so I stopped doing that.

It either works out of the box or it doesn't, and I'm not going to throw any more of my life away fixing shit when it's not what was advertised.

And it's shocking how much stuff doesn't work out of the box. Today I just sent back a frickiin' iPad holder that didn't work Because is it really worth spending an hour... or even ten minutes... trying to figure out why the iPad clamp won't affix to the swing arm? Nope. — I read the directions. I followed the markings on the parts. I spent precious minutes of my life trying it one way, then the other way. Then I was done.

And so I spent a few more precious minutes boxing it back up and starting a return.

Minutes. Gone.

But wasting minutes is better than wasting hours.