3 ms·

>The mobile bonanza (well, that one company who gets majority of revenue from hardware) in last couple of years perverted the word "upgrade" from "a software up

by lsc 11y ago

>The mobile bonanza (well, that one company who gets majority of revenue from hardware) in last couple of years perverted the word "upgrade" from "a software upgrade, which adds new features and ads value to existing purchased product", to "needing to buy a new device to keep on going with existing performance". I'm happy to see this hasn't spread to the desktop PC. Yet. I can't tell if you are joking, honestly. If you remember the '80s and the '90s and the early to mid aughts, there was a joke about how "what Intel gives, Microsoft takes away" - the idea was that every few years, you needed to buy a new and dramatically faster PC to do exactly the same sorts of things you would do before. This PC would be massively faster than the last one you bought, and it would probably cost a little bit less. Microsoft would come up with a new version of windows or office that you needed to upgrade to if you wanted to be able to open documents from other people in the office, and that new version would require a new and much more powerful computer. Especially by the '90s, a lot of times these software upgrades felt really pointless, like your stuff was getting slower, but you didn't get any better features. Around the time that everyone quit writing PC software and focused on the mobile bonanza, as you put it, this seemed to stop. Old PCs are just fine for workstations. but, of course, now the upgrade treadmill is on mobile.

tdkl 11y ago
You can't convince me that worsening the experience on a device in 30 minutes (time for OTA update to finish) is to be expected. Example: iOS 9 update. Although I don't agree with many practices MS does lately, I'll admit that they're doing a good job with Windows performance being better and/or at least not worse.
- lsc 11y ago
  > You can't convince me that worsening the experience on a device in 30 minutes (time for OTA update to finish) is to be expected. Example: iOS 9 update. I can tell you that in the late '90s and early aughts, well, they weren't OTA updates; you actually paid for physical disks, but yes, worsening the experience was completely expected. that's why you bought a new computer at the same time. I am telling you it's the same idea.
  - tdkl 11y ago
    No, you upgraded your PC with larger storage, or more RAM. Or if you were a mindless consumer, which my original post is stating, you "upgraded" (bought) to a new PC. And this mentality came over from mobile and is already pioneered on desktop as well (that one company who solders RAM and hard drives now). Speaking of MS, I don't remember if in the last 10 years I had to buy a new GPU or replace whole PC because the Windows update would bring the whole OS to its knees with slower click response and stuttery animations. From Windows 7 onwards the performance is actually more optimized and faster (disregarding UI design choices).
    - shard 11y ago
      When the CPU clock speed increases 3-5x in 3 years, upgrading storage or memory is not going to cover that gap. If I recall, my upgrade cycle was something like 1994: 40MHz 486, 1997: 200MHz Pentium, 2001?: 1.xGHz?
    - shard 11y ago
      When the CPU clock speed increases 3-5x in 3 years, upgrading storage or memory is not going to cover that gap. If I recall, my upgrade cycle was something like 1994: 40MHz 486, 1997: 200MHz Pentium, 2001?: 1.xGHz?

by lsc 11y ago

tdkl 11y ago

You can't convince me that worsening the experience on a device in 30 minutes (time for OTA update to finish) is to be expected. Example: iOS 9 update. Although I don't agree with many practices MS does lately, I'll admit that they're doing a good job with Windows performance being better and/or at least not worse.

lsc 11y ago
> You can't convince me that worsening the experience on a device in 30 minutes (time for OTA update to finish) is to be expected. Example: iOS 9 update. I can tell you that in the late '90s and early aughts, well, they weren't OTA updates; you actually paid for physical disks, but yes, worsening the experience was completely expected. that's why you bought a new computer at the same time. I am telling you it's the same idea.
- tdkl 11y ago
  No, you upgraded your PC with larger storage, or more RAM. Or if you were a mindless consumer, which my original post is stating, you "upgraded" (bought) to a new PC. And this mentality came over from mobile and is already pioneered on desktop as well (that one company who solders RAM and hard drives now). Speaking of MS, I don't remember if in the last 10 years I had to buy a new GPU or replace whole PC because the Windows update would bring the whole OS to its knees with slower click response and stuttery animations. From Windows 7 onwards the performance is actually more optimized and faster (disregarding UI design choices).
  - shard 11y ago
    When the CPU clock speed increases 3-5x in 3 years, upgrading storage or memory is not going to cover that gap. If I recall, my upgrade cycle was something like 1994: 40MHz 486, 1997: 200MHz Pentium, 2001?: 1.xGHz?
  - shard 11y ago
    When the CPU clock speed increases 3-5x in 3 years, upgrading storage or memory is not going to cover that gap. If I recall, my upgrade cycle was something like 1994: 40MHz 486, 1997: 200MHz Pentium, 2001?: 1.xGHz?