This piece has been making the rounds in my feeds, and it seems to be resonating with a few people, including me.

Most of us are caught on a treadmill of constant software updates. Some of that is necessary because of how tightly-coupled software is to modern existence, and the security vulnerabilities it exposes to faithless actors (including criminals).

My rant about Apple moving the pause and stop buttons on the Fitness app on the Apple Watch is very much in this mode. Change for the sake of change, or rather, so someone has something to put on their brag sheet when performance reviews come around.

I'm sure it won't be too long before the new locations are committed to muscle memory. And then they'll change them again anyway.

When I was a young man, technology and technological change was exciting. I don't know if it still feels that way for young people today. It wasn't just the marketing. At least in my cohort, we were seeing many things for the first time. Calculators, "home computers," digital cameras.

What are some examples of new, consumer-facing technologies that young people are seeing for the first time? I can't think of any. But maybe I'm just old.

There are new apps. New colors, new ways of presenting the same things.

When home genetic engineering kits become available, maybe that'll be exciting. People home-brewing their new pets.

At some point, my 27" iMac will become unsupported in new OS updates. Maybe Sonoma is it. Maybe then I'll get to enjoy "finished software."

What's kind of interesting about retro-computing is the experience of watching people discover these old machines for the first time, and seeing oldsters with deep, profound knowledge about how they work, kind of guiding people around.

I struggled briefly last week with wanting to buy an Apple ///. I can afford it, but I really have no place to put it. And once you buy the box, you wind up buying a ton of other crap to go along with it. So I'm sticking with an emulator.

Emulators are often updated, so I guess they're not "finished software." But presumably they're getting closer to perfect fidelity because they're chasing a finished, fixed, objective.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:34 Wednesday, 1 November 2023