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"Of course, it wasn’t always this way. Computers used to be small and straight forward. They used to be cute! Now they are big and scary and mind boggling." Yo
by gizajob 4y ago
"Of course, it wasn’t always this way. Computers used to be small and straight forward. They used to be cute! Now they are big and scary and mind boggling."
You're kidding right? Having a desktop PC in the pre-internet days was a scary experience. My smartphone and iPad are both cute and work unblinkingly every time all the time.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mcbishop 4y agoI think that was a reference to dark sprawling data centers.
- qwery 4y ago(A computer that boots to) BASIC is small and cute compared to DOS. Windows 2K is small and cute compared to Windows XP compared to Vista to 7. What was scary about having a desktop PC in the pre-internet days? I often use my desktop PC without the internet to this day. A lot of modern software expects you to be permanently online, however.
- bigfishrunning 4y agoThe difference is that your smartphone and iPad are hiding a ton of complexity from you, whereas an Apple ][ or a Commodore 64 hid almost nothing from you -- it did less, but was much more transparent about it.
- q-big 4y ago> You're kidding right? Having a desktop PC in the pre-internet days was a scary experience. My smartphone and iPad are both cute and work unblinkingly every time all the time. I beg to differ: - no scary golden cage - no fear of being surveilled - it was possible (DOS) if you were seriously to understand at least huge parts of the whole OS that ran on your PC - it was possible to understand the bare-metal software interface to the hardware; you had to, because if you were writing, say, games for DOS, you typically accessed the hardware (e.g. your sound card) directly.