I remember the first time I played with one. That thing was unbelievably fast.

Reminded me a bit my first contact with a fully tricked out deskside Sun E450. It was so fast I thought I was doing something wrong.

The most amazing thing is how in each case the passage of time saw each machine become slower and slower until eventually they are nothing but a relic.

The weird thing is even a smartphone running basically stock apps and nothing else will still exhibit the same effect. Blistering fast out of the box, frustratingly slow by the time it's replaced. I wonder sometimes if the CPU isn't clocking itself down based on some cycle count, or maybe the flash is literally wearing down and losing IOPS.

What about the fact that developers are writing more and more bloated and slow applications ?