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How Things Used To Be...
- Thread starter Dronecatcher
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Way back in another time I dabbled with IBM's OS/2 operating system.
Passed many an hour installing the system from the 18 Disk installation package.
Passed many an hour installing the system from the 18 Disk installation package.
v2.0 was kind in comparison to Warp (v3.0) that followed. If you ended up with the diskette version then the floppy count approached 40 depending upon what you wanted to install. You usually got towards the end when you got to the graphics drivers and that was the floppy that failed to read. Fun, fun, fun.
Also Windows NT 3.1 was a floppy fest. The CD only worked on a couple of SCSI drives so you had to battle through 23 floppies until someone worked out how to doctor the CD boot floppy to make it work with ATAPI drives.
My favourite was DOS 4.0. Only two floppies but for some reason, you had to supply a blank floppy during the installation process, which you had to swap in and out several times. Clearly something in the installation process took up far too much RAM to cache so you needed a 'scratch disk' to deal with it.
It's a shame the web became so bloated. I see little to no difference in the internet in that video and the internet now. Looked just fine. But now, for some reason, we need to have all sorts of scripts running in the background.
Imagine how fast one of our new computers/devices would perform on the internet of that time.
But nope, faster technology, so the websites have to become slower to match. 
It's a shame the web became so bloated. I see little to no difference in the internet in that video and the internet now. Looked just fine. But now, for some reason, we need to have all sorts of scripts running in the background.
Imagine how fast one of our new computers/devices would perform on the internet of that time.
Can’t waste those spare cycles when they could be earning the website owner $0.000001 per view. At every visitor’s expense of course.
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(This seems like the perfect place for my mini rant...)
Trawling through pages and pages of new Apple product marketing guff has left me feeling totally irrelevant. If I don't buy the iPhone X or the Watch 3 I'm going to miss out on all the great new features... but I can not put my finger on one feature that I actually WANT, let alone NEED.
My iPhone 6 that I bought outright a few years back is awesome, my Mac Pro from '08 which I bought earlier in the year is amazing and my PowerPC collection fits my desire to tinker and tune. I have zero interest in all of the current Apple gear.
Am I just jaded or is there nothing that is truly innovative here? I mean, who cares if the screen goes to the edge of the device and the UI matches the contours, really? Didn't the original Macintosh have rounded screen edges too?
I understand progress is slow (and I mean I truly understand this as a solo indie Mac/web developer). Things take time to evolve, test and tweak. But I think back to "the way things were" with Apple when I would sit up to 4am to watch Steve Jobs give his keynote speech, streamed live down to my 56k modem in a tiny blur of a squintable QuickTime window. Back then, announcements were "insanely great" and milestones came in leaps and bounds. Now it just seems to be more of the same bedazzling, slick eye-candy and not a great deal of substance.
The camera would be the most important improvement to me. And more speed always matters, when it comes to multimedia-stuff.
Too bad, as soon as hardware improves, a lot of other stuff gets blown up without any need: stupid GUI-effects, ad-loaded web-sites, insanely huge progs and games.
And it's also bad (w/o JB) iOS is a kind of no-way-back-machine ...
In future Apple and MS probably continue their business-model, making software and usage something more to rent than to own (like it was with PPC and "old" OS X or Windows7 or earlier). A lot of programmers jump onto that train as well, since obviously in spite of a base of potentially billions of users only a few programmers do benefit from the gold-rush of the exploding market of mobile-devices, since most people are willing to pay $$$ for the device but nothing for the software. And the jungle of apps makes it difficult to separate valuable stuff for long-term usability from bad remakes.
I'm happy I can still use my PPC- and pre glued-and-soldered-alltogether Intel-stuff to get my work and private things done with a bunch of great old-style software and I hope, most of hard- and software won't get cut off connectivity like email and basic-web-browsing and cloud-solutions.
This year like the year before I didn't go for the latest iPhone but instead gave my iP6s to my son in exchange for his(my previous) iP6, spend my money on a new battery and a new "Logic Board Antenna Flex Cable", since that device has got some problems with poor BT/Wifi-connectivity and I'm gonna wait and see how long I may resist a device with a dual-camera ...
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It's a shame the web became so bloated. I see little to no difference in the internet in that video and the internet now. Looked just fine. But now, for some reason, we need to have all sorts of scripts running in the background.
Imagine how fast one of our new computers/devices would perform on the internet of that time.
Some browsers offer information about what's happening in the background, which other sites are called, what stuff is loaded from somewhere else. It's insane to see all that ******** jam up the internet-traffic and CPU-performance.
How was PowerPC renting software and usage?
If anything, new OS X and Windows 8+ are something more to rent than own.
Oh, misunderstanding - I've meant software for "PPC and "old" OS X or Windows7 or earlier" has been the kind of software beeing accessible, storable, re-installable and "owned" by the user/purchaser.
Fully agree with your "If anything, new OS X and Windows 8+ are something more to rent than own..."
Most software is licensed and not sold. Apple nor Microsoft have ever sold copies of their software.
Yes, the purchase of software is in most instances a purchase of the license to use it.
I presumed that's common sense ...
But if you owe a copy of the installation software plus the purchased license-credentials you may rebuild your system whenever and wherever you want and that feels like owing the software.
Concerning PPC nobody is able to remotely wipe software off your system or keep you off restoring an old version of your operating system or legacy-software onto your legacy hardware ...
That's the difference between past and present ...
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