What tools for building skyscrapers used to be available but no longer are? My computer still has a CLI and all the esoteric flags my heart could ever wish for.
* MP3 players: I used to have a device with buttons that fit into my pocket that was able to locally hold my entire music library. I could control the device through my pocket without needing to look at it or hold it in my hand, it presented a filesystem with folders that I could simply drop music into (or whatever files I wanted, at the time 20/60gb in your pocket was a big deal). Since everythings' transitioned, first into library-based management and then into touch interfaces, actually using an MP3 player (or more specifically, whatever music program is on your phone) sucks so much more now
* Software used to work regardless of what happened to its creator. Desktop software still largely does. Nowadays it's almost like entrepreneurs enjoy writing emotional sunset posts, completely oblivious to all the customers they've fucked over because they suck at business
* Computer internals and abstractions were more exposed. Computing is slowly moving away from keeping users close to abstractions -- using modern software it feels like Product Managers want to erase and destroy users' concepts of things like files and folders. Cloud services would much rather you think of their software as an interface to their silos, and the kind of interoperability that you used to get for free by sticking to a 'protocol' of files and folders, is no longer there. (How hard is it to examine iOS or Android at the individual file level? How hard did it used to be?)
* I used to be able to open most software on my phone without being nagged with a popup for some reason or another. If it isn't a "HEY LOOK AT THIS NEW FEATURE YOU STUPID USER WHO NEVER EXPLORES ANYTHING" it's a "PLEASE VOTE ME FIVE STARS". Software talks too much, and I don't want to have a relationship with its creator. Leave me alone!
* I used to be able to boot up my computer (or, hell, even my Playstation!) without being bombarded with update requests. Software used to be finished, and as a program matured you could expect patches and update frequency to fall off dramatically. Our brave new world of evergreen programming means I am perpetually hassled with updates that I don't want, don't care about, and are frankly unnecessary. Sometimes those updates even remove features, sometimes even features that I am using! (How the fuck is that acceptable nowadays anyway? In what industry is it acceptable to take something away from users that they have paid for? We have compromised our standards too far!)
I so much agree with all of your points. I want to add a few thoughts.
> Since everythings' transitioned, first into library-based management and then into touch interfaces
I can forgive touch interfaces (smartphones are awesome, and a good headset will have buttons that can be used for track control), but I don't understand the whole library management thing. How on Earth did that happen? Why did iTunes-like interface win, with all that bloat and pointless misfeatures when all one needs is simple way to filter a list of your music files and group them in logical playlists?
Moreover though, in the better days, you controlled your music. It was made of discrete data files. The modern way is all cloud bullshit you have to stream over the Internet every time you want to listen to it.
> Computing is slowly moving away from keeping users close to abstractions
This is huge, IMO. The "low-level" abstractions of files and folders are good, because that's the level software operates on. All those attempts at abstracting files away only lead to your system actually lying to you about how the data is structured, and this can be confusing to people because different software now tells different lies, and they don't add up to a coherent whole.
> This is huge, IMO. The "low-level" abstractions of files and folders are good, because that's the level software operates on. All those attempts at abstracting files away only lead to your system actually lying to you about how the data is structured, and this can be confusing to people because different software now tells different lies, and they don't add up to a coherent whole.
I honestly feel that the only reason this happens is so that business-people can insert more "value-add" into the equation
I feel things would be much better if business-oriented people asked what value something adds for their user, instead of "value-add" being a code word for "more money for us".
I call this productification. "Can this feature be made into a product?"
Ah, your word processor can count words. Can we sell a separate product that counts words in documents? Ah, your network interface can be taken up or down. Can we sell a Network Management Product?
> I used to have a device with buttons that fit into my pocket that was able to locally hold my entire music library. I could control the device through my pocket without needing to look at it or hold it in my hand
