Alright... get ready for a rambling, nonsensical post.™
Like an earlier poster said, I love how YouTube has become the de-facto test for whether or not a machine is outdated. I guess it could be considered fairly valid, considering the sheer number of people who use it, but honestly, how many people really do on a day to day basis? I know of many, many internet users including myself who rarely watch any kind of videos on the internet, if any. On the occasion I do want to watch something on there, it's only in the lowest quality possible (Why should anyone care what quality a YT video is? Pointless.) and I download it instead of streaming it. VLC will play any YT video with no issues on almost anything it runs on. (I've heard of MacTubes, have yet to check it out. Betting it's good as well.)
I just don't understand it. There's vast amounts of software out there for PPC Macs that work as well as the day they came out. Sure, new features are nice I suppose, but what exactly was wrong with the old versions?
It would be fascinating to me to have people who are used to the latest and greatest Mac/iPhone/Whatever to go back and use the products of 10 years ago. I'd be an adjustment for many of them I'm sure, but I think many of them would be surprised to find out how not terrible the experience is. For example, I have an original iBook G3 running OS 9 I like to surf the web on sometimes. It'll do eBay, my online banking, MacRumors, etc. Not lightning fast, but hardly unusable. YouTube? Hell no, but we made it fine without YT back inj the day didn't we?
I understand technology has to move on and progress, as much as I don't really for it doing that. But, the bigger issue I have is how fast everyone is to dump last years model and move on to the latest and greatest. Honestly, it's kind of disgusting how disposable our everyday things have become. "Oh, this new product has a much higher resolution screen and more memory! MUST HAVE." If that's really what you wanted from that product, you should have waited until it came out with that to buy it. If you were perfectly happy with what it did have when you bought it, you have no logical reason to get the new version.
I run an eMac as my main machine. Sure, new Macs have 4 or 5 times the speed, memory and hard drive space, much crisper and better displays then a clunky CRT, and run all of the newest software. Would it be nice to have a new Mac? Sure, it's fun to play with bells and whistles. But do I need it and be able to justify spending the money and dumping my current machine? Not a chance.
Like I started off with, this is a post that most likely has many issues, problems and illogical information in it. That's my head, for you. I just have such trouble understanding why people just throw away their old, still very capable machines, and spend hundreds of not thousands for a slightly better version every year or two? (three, four, take your pick.) Please don't tell me "because they can" or "if they can afford it, why not?" I'll seriously lose that much more faith in humanity.