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A comment on What I learned from watching my iPad's slow death. Parent comment

Re:What I learned from watching my iPad's slow death by jacobolus on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @05:57PM (#16320743)
My parents kept using their 1989 Mac SE to do most of their typed work up through at least 2005 (a job for which it arguably worked a lot better than many later machines, with simple predictable software and a fantastic keyboard).

Plenty of people used 7-year-old computers in 2000.

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Re:What I learned from watching my iPad's slow death by wil421 on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @06:09PM (#16320840)
Just because someone did it doesn’t mean it wasn’t horrible. You are comparing people who are obviously way behind in technology. There was and is a large portion of people who aren’t tech savvy but not a tech dinosaur.

My grandpa never got a smart phone. But he was never more than 5 years behind in Home computing well into his 80s.

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Re:What I learned from watching my iPad's slow death by jacobolus on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @06:17PM (#16320887)
It wasn’t horrible. It was a very well made little machine, and it did just what they needed it to do. I would argue it was quite a bit nicer for what they wanted than a typical PC of 2005. (For one thing the keyboard was dramatically better.)

Gadget nerds have criteria for computers which are not necessarily related to predictability, sturdiness, or fitness for a particular narrow purpose. Instead there is a mix of excitement about technology qua technology, new toys to experiment with, status signaling, etc., in addition to functional improvements for doing real work.

Not everyone shares a gadget nerd’s sensibilities. It’s fine for people to be happy watching TV on a 18" CRT, listening to music on a cassette player, reading paper books instead of a screen, rolling down their car windows with a little crank, playing card games instead of VR games, etc.

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Re:What I learned from watching my iPad's slow death by blacksmith_tb on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @07:29PM (#16321299)
Well, yes and no - the Mac SE had a really tiny screen, native resolution was 512x342[1], which I would say is pretty small for composing text of any length on (though I wrote plenty of undergrad papers, including a 110 page thesis on mine).

1: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classic/specs/mac_se....

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