Speaker 1: Get in Touch with Technology was tex Stuff from dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and I as actar, is joining us once again so
Speaker 1: that we can continue our discussion about obsolete technology. The
Speaker 1: list of obsolete tech that showed up on an article
Speaker 1: that was that Web Designer depot. This was a listener request.
Speaker 1: I asked, how are you doing? I'm doing very well.
Speaker 1: How are you very well? It's almost as if we
Speaker 1: didn't just stop recording a previous episode seconds ago and
Speaker 1: started it up again, as it's almost just like that.
Speaker 1: It's just yeah, I'm having a weird sense of deja vu. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me too. Something. Maybe it's just the continuous voo since
Speaker 1: it's not really deja At any rate. It is a
Speaker 1: great band. I listened to them all the time. I
Speaker 1: think they cover in excess. They are pretty good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw them on the voo. At any rate, we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking more about more obsolete technology. We had
Speaker 1: a previous discussion where we went through list the list
Speaker 1: item by item, and we started debating and discussing whether
Speaker 1: or not the the things that were on there in
Speaker 1: fact belong on a list of obsolete tech. Some of
Speaker 1: them we certainly think do belong there, and some of
Speaker 1: them we were a little you know, we questioned whether
Speaker 1: or not they belonged on that list. So let's continue.
Speaker 1: The first one for this episode is the idea of
Speaker 1: a huge mainframe computer, which I think we can say
Speaker 1: is pretty obsolete. Yeah, I'm just thinking like the idea
Speaker 1: of one computer that's that large. Today you'd be thinking
Speaker 1: of just server racks, lots and lots of servers and
Speaker 1: they're acting as one computer. So if you want to
Speaker 1: get technical, is it a well know, it is that
Speaker 1: really a main frame? But it's a giant cluster of
Speaker 1: a machine. Yeah, exactly like IBM S Watson is a
Speaker 1: good example. It's got thousands of processors, and if you
Speaker 1: ever look at the actual physical um compute, it's really
Speaker 1: a collection of of server like computers that are all
Speaker 1: network together that act as a single entity, like you
Speaker 1: were saying, I asked, But it's not just one gigantic
Speaker 1: machine that takes up the entire floor of a building.
Speaker 1: You know, Back in those days, mainframes had components like
Speaker 1: vacuum tubes that were necessary because the transistor hadn't been
Speaker 1: invented or miniaturized yet, and today, in the era of miniaturization,
Speaker 1: we no longer have to rely on those antiquated huge systems. Also,
Speaker 1: like the old mainframe days, a lot of those machines
Speaker 1: used a time sharing function, which, for the listeners out
Speaker 1: there who aren't familiar with this type of computing, time
Speaker 1: sharing essentially meant that there might be multiple terminals all
Speaker 1: hooked up to the same computer, but at any given moment,
Speaker 1: the computer would only be working on one set of
Speaker 1: calculations for from one terminal, and everyone else would be waiting. However,
Speaker 1: most computer as we're moving at such an incredible speed
Speaker 1: that it almost felt like you were having you know, continuous,
Speaker 1: a continuous experience as you worked on the the computer.
Speaker 1: It didn't feel like you were actually only getting us
Speaker 1: a segment of time each time, at least if it
Speaker 1: was a significantly fast computer. So both of those things
Speaker 1: are no longer really the case these days, so I
Speaker 1: agree that it should be considered obsolete. Although we still
Speaker 1: have huge computers like supercomputers are still obviously a thing,
Speaker 1: and there's still a real drive for computer scientists to
Speaker 1: make the next fastest computer. Yeah, but they're not typically
Speaker 1: this one giant monolith, these clusters of machines that work together.
Speaker 1: I do wish kind of that there could be one
Speaker 1: that's just a giant monolithic computer. That's how they built it,
Speaker 1: Like it was just this incredibly fast computer that's in
Speaker 1: a single form factor, sort of like deep Lot in
Speaker 1: the Hitchracker's Guide to the Galaxy. But wishing does not
Speaker 1: make it so, So you're right, you should just buy
Speaker 1: like thirty or forty servers and then put their parts
Speaker 1: inside of a refrigerator and make your own main frame.
Speaker 1: Just call it a mainframe. I might have to figure
Speaker 1: out a really good cooling system. Perhaps I'll keep the
Speaker 1: refrigerator working as a refrigerator in order to make sure
Speaker 1: that the servers don't overheat. How's that not a thing yet?
Speaker 1: If that's not a thing, that should be a thing,
Speaker 1: A refrigerator that doubles as a server rack. Heck, yeah,
Speaker 1: patent pending Strickland Actor Enterprises. You heard it from us first.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, then we have typewriters. I as, do
Speaker 1: you know what a typewriter is? I do know what
Speaker 1: a typewriter is. It's that thing you'd use before you
Speaker 1: had a word processor, And uh my dad would type
Speaker 1: all the time. So I remember hearing that little flax
Speaker 1: wax wax wax noise, which sounded more like a metal
Speaker 1: key smacking a piece of rubber, that rubber roller. And
Speaker 1: then when do you have the more automated version where
Speaker 1: you can hit backspace And he would like remove the
Speaker 1: whole word. That sound echoes in my mind. But yeah,
Speaker 1: back back in the old days, the typewriter, that's the noise.
Speaker 1: If you have an iPhone when you start typing on it,
Speaker 1: that's the noise it's emulating. Yeah, you have no idea
Speaker 1: what I'm talking to. Skewomorphism is what that's called, where
Speaker 1: we take something that has been obsolete and apply it
Speaker 1: to new technology just for really aesthetic purposes. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The typewriter chases its roots all the way back to
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, all the way back to the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1: But really you're talking about the eighteen hundreds before standardization
Speaker 1: came in, and the early twentieth century before it really
Speaker 1: became popular. So while there were predecessors to the modern
Speaker 1: typewriter all the way back in the late seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the nineteen hundreds that we really selled
Speaker 1: on a foreign factor that that was popular rised throughout
Speaker 1: the world. And those early models were purely mechanical. UH
Speaker 1: they worked. You know, you had a system of levers
Speaker 1: and and uh a little pivot systems where you pressed
Speaker 1: down a key and it would cause a a arm
Speaker 1: holding a letter to come up strike a ribbon that
Speaker 1: had ink on it against a piece of paper and
Speaker 1: that would be what would leave the letter there. You
Speaker 1: would also usually have a system where the ribbon itself
Speaker 1: would get pulled by just a tiny amount, so that
Speaker 1: way you wouldn't consistently be hitting the same part of
Speaker 1: the ribbon. Obviously, if you did that, you would very
Speaker 1: quickly run out of ink on that spot. Although there
Speaker 1: were some typewriters where you had to actually physically reapply
Speaker 1: ink to the ribbon. Um Also you had to worry
Speaker 1: about those little typing arms getting tangled up with each
Speaker 1: other and some of the older ones. I had a
Speaker 1: an antique typewriter where that would happen. If you typed
Speaker 1: faster than a certain speed, it would start to get
Speaker 1: locked up, which was frustrating. Uh IBM would introduce sort
Speaker 1: of the golf ball style typewriter. The and had all
Speaker 1: the letters on a round structure, and that was the
Speaker 1: one that had a very distinct sound when you were
Speaker 1: type it just kind of um uh you know, the
Speaker 1: clackty clack was replaced by a sort of sound as
Speaker 1: you were typing with those. And word processors came along
Speaker 1: a lot of typewriters and word processors were sort of
Speaker 1: combo things. But word processors allowed you to, uh to
Speaker 1: to create your documents uh in an electronic format before
Speaker 1: converting it to a physical format. Um. I actually had
Speaker 1: to use typewriters quite a bit in my early career
Speaker 1: with a consulting firm because we had all these different
Speaker 1: forms that we didn't have electronic versions for. We just
Speaker 1: had physical forms and you had to put it through
Speaker 1: into a typewriter and type things out on it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now you went to law school, right, I as, did
Speaker 1: you ever have to use a typewriter in that respect? No?
Speaker 1: But when in law schools like the let's see the
Speaker 1: two thousands, so we had computers and printers and things
Speaker 1: and the PDF. Uh we could always use a PDF
Speaker 1: to fill out things. But yeah, I didn't have to
Speaker 1: use it in school very often, but I do. You
Speaker 1: just reminded me how if you wanted to spy on somebody,
Speaker 1: you could just take the ribbon that was used and
Speaker 1: you can read the words because it was it's clearly
Speaker 1: printed on there. Because there's this ribbon of text, and
Speaker 1: you can basically find anything you wanted to. I always
Speaker 1: said that was really fascinating when he came to like
Speaker 1: this evidence as being left behind constantly. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: If you were using a typewriter, then you were leaving
Speaker 1: a record of exactly what you were typing. It would
Speaker 1: also allow people to see what a terrible typist you were,
Speaker 1: true and see all these mistakes that they they totally
Speaker 1: hit that backspace button for this one. Uh yeah. The
Speaker 1: backspace button often would use some sort of liquid paper
Speaker 1: type substance in order to cover up whatever it was
Speaker 1: you just type. Since you could type a new word
Speaker 1: in its place, it wasn't exactly undetectable. You could always
Speaker 1: tell when you would get a sheet of type paper
Speaker 1: where someone had to hit the backspace quite a bit.
Speaker 1: You can just peel it off if you wanted to
Speaker 1: see the original letter. And the other thing was if
Speaker 1: I remember right effectively the the type, I would remember
Speaker 1: what you had just typed. So if you're going to, like,
Speaker 1: let's say, do type to T by accident, just the
Speaker 1: white ribbon would come up and the tea would hit again.
Speaker 1: So you just had this perfect space T, the white
Speaker 1: one over the black one. So it's pretty visible if
Speaker 1: you knew what you're looking at. Yeah, So so not
Speaker 1: not flawless. And eventually printers became inexpensive enough and computers
Speaker 1: became popular enough that the typewriter largely disappeared. You can
Speaker 1: still find it in some offices. I know that there are,
Speaker 1: you know, medical facilities that still have typewriters. There's still
Speaker 1: some companies like consulting firms or whatever. Any any company
Speaker 1: that's using documentation where they don't necessarily keep an electronic
Speaker 1: version on hand, they still have a typewriter, but they
Speaker 1: tend to be the oddity these days, not something that
Speaker 1: is commonly a you know, necessary piece of equipment in
Speaker 1: your average office. So I agree that it belongs on
Speaker 1: the obsolete list, at least here in the United States.
Speaker 1: There are probably some other parts of the world where
Speaker 1: typewriters are still a very important piece of technology, but
Speaker 1: not so much. Here there's definitely obsolete. But again, one
Speaker 1: of those another one of those fascinating pieces of machinery.
Speaker 1: When you when you were talking about them being purely mechanical,
Speaker 1: when you see the leavers moving, when you see the
Speaker 1: arms hitting the ribbon, it's actually quite a feat of
Speaker 1: engineering considering what it was. It's like this movable type setup.
Speaker 1: It's like, so we're gonna have this easy way to
Speaker 1: print if I just punch these keys. Just a cool
Speaker 1: little bit of history. Yeah, I think it's It's one
Speaker 1: of those things that kind of hearkens back to the
Speaker 1: aesthetics of steam punk in a way. It's this idea
Speaker 1: of intricate, purely mechanical technology where it doesn't have the
Speaker 1: kind of sterile electronic approach. I think that's what a
Speaker 1: lot of people, you know, why a lot of people
Speaker 1: find steampunks so appealing is that it has this kind
Speaker 1: of you know, the hall, the working moving pieces. It
Speaker 1: gives it a character that that electronics tend to lack. So, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely agree with you there. How about the next one.
Speaker 1: Dial up modems? Oh man, uh, definitely obsolete. And if
Speaker 1: you're using a dial up modem, you probably want to upgrade,
Speaker 1: is I hope you would? Because they are it can
Speaker 1: be finicky I had I remember my bad modem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had one of those, and I was I was
Speaker 1: dialing into a o L back then was actually was
Speaker 1: AOL because I remember they had like five phone numbers
Speaker 1: for their servers. And then you dial in and hear
Speaker 1: that noise, you connect, and then you're like, mom, no,
Speaker 1: don't touch the phone. Don't know, mom, and then you'd
Speaker 1: be disconnected. Right, those are the old days, And the
Speaker 1: same thing happened to me whenever I would try and
Speaker 1: call into BBS. Is to the point where I think
Speaker 1: we finally got a separate phone line just for the computer,
Speaker 1: so that way we didn't have to worry about it anymore.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the dial up modems much slower data transfer
Speaker 1: rates than any other format. Uh. And also that is
Speaker 1: where that distinctive sound comes in, that weird statick e
Speaker 1: uh pinging, buzzing noise that whenever I see it on
Speaker 1: a movie or television show, I think, where when is
Speaker 1: this supposed to be set? There was actually we talked
Speaker 1: about in our last episode. UH. An episode of the
Speaker 1: popular series Sleepy Hollow recently had characters access the Internet
Speaker 1: through a dial up modem, and I thought, really, Sleepy
Speaker 1: Hollow is I mean I realized they've got a an
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, uh, former British Revolution soldier walking around, But
Speaker 1: are they really that far behind the times where people
Speaker 1: still have dial up? Um? But it does have that
Speaker 1: distinctive sound. It's one of those that you can kind
Speaker 1: of tell the generation someone belongs to, because if they
Speaker 1: don't know what that sound is, then you know, all right,
Speaker 1: So I can subtract ten years from the age I
Speaker 1: thought you were because you never encountered this noise, whereas
Speaker 1: those of us at a certain age are very familiar
Speaker 1: with it. And it just hearkens back that time where
Speaker 1: you know, you could connect to the to some sort
Speaker 1: of network service and you would try and download things
Speaker 1: and even a basic text document would take time to
Speaker 1: access because the data transfer speeds were so slow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you basically back then, I mean you think animated
Speaker 1: gifts were annoying. Now, back then it was forever for
Speaker 1: them to load, and you would see like, you know,
Speaker 1: Felix the cat going back and forth, and you knew, uh,
Speaker 1: like the sites would be done by college students or
Speaker 1: something because they have like the team one lines in
Speaker 1: their dorms and you'd sign in to get to this
Speaker 1: page because you want to really know everything about the Beatles,
Speaker 1: because you know know anything about him yet, so you
Speaker 1: want to read about him. And then you hear the
Speaker 1: MIDI playing after about like what maybe my I'd say,
Speaker 1: a good minute of loading and then this music scares
Speaker 1: the heck out of you because you do not expect
Speaker 1: it back then. Uh So, yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 1: definitely a different world with dial up modems incredibly slow.
Speaker 1: That one was fifty six k that was like the
Speaker 1: fastest you could go on dial up, and it was like,
Speaker 1: this is amazing that water than this. Yeah, that reminds
Speaker 1: me of when everything back in those days where you
Speaker 1: would look at the specs of a computer and you
Speaker 1: would just say, man, this is way more than I need.
Speaker 1: I will never require all the horsepower, slash, storage, slash
Speaker 1: whatever that this machine has. It just kind of quate
Speaker 1: because now my my my phone dwarfs all of those specs.
Speaker 1: And speaking of storage, speaking of you know, data storage,
Speaker 1: ZIP drives are on the list, which was a product
Speaker 1: from a company called i Omega and zip drives, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I think we have to cover the
Speaker 1: idea of floppy drives in the first place. Floppy drives
Speaker 1: are different from hard drives, and that these were portable
Speaker 1: storage media that used a magnetic storage to to save
Speaker 1: your work on a computer, and you would end up
Speaker 1: putting it into a drive and save your work, and
Speaker 1: then you could take the disc out and go to
Speaker 1: a different computer that had the exact same programs as
Speaker 1: the first one and pull that work back up. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if it didn't have the exact same programs as the
Speaker 1: computer that you used in the first place, it didn't
Speaker 1: do you any good to have the storage because there
Speaker 1: wasn't an Internet yet for you to go and get
Speaker 1: that program um. But zip drives were supposed to be
Speaker 1: a solution because floppy drives had a limitation on how
Speaker 1: much data they can hold. So for example, the three
Speaker 1: and a half inch disc, which although it was a
Speaker 1: floppy disc was uh in hard plastic five and it
Speaker 1: was a five and a quarter that was the one
Speaker 1: that was physically very floppy. Yes, uh this the floppy.
Speaker 1: The term floppy really confused people. I remember my dad
Speaker 1: coming home one day. He was teaching a word processing
Speaker 1: course at college. He was he's a professor, and he
Speaker 1: taught this word processing course and it was like an
Speaker 1: adult education course, and he says, yeah, people just don't
Speaker 1: get it. I was explained to everyone that the five
Speaker 1: and a quarter inch discs were called floppy disks, and
Speaker 1: one of my students immediately folded his in half and
Speaker 1: put it into his pocket. Uh. Yeah, don't do that
Speaker 1: is the moral of that story. But yeah, even the
Speaker 1: three and a half inch disk, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: was rigid, was in fact a floppy disk. It could
Speaker 1: only hold one point four four megabytes. Later on you
Speaker 1: could get some that could hold two point eight eight
Speaker 1: megabytes megabytes. That's that was considered a lot of storage
Speaker 1: back in the day. So it's like for for some
Speaker 1: kind of framework reference, like I think an MP three
Speaker 1: like two and a half minute song is at least
Speaker 1: i'd say could be three to four megabytes. That's on
Speaker 1: the small side. So that's one song could maybe fit,
Speaker 1: or like maybe like thirty pictures if you were getting
Speaker 1: JPEGs back then. Well, I recorded an hour long podcast
Speaker 1: with a friend of mine last night, and it was
Speaker 1: it was about a megabyte per minute, So that's about
Speaker 1: a sixty megabyte UM file that came out of it.
Speaker 1: So that would mean I would need somewhere around between
Speaker 1: fifty and sixty three and a half inch discs. If
Speaker 1: I were able to somehow divide that file up into
Speaker 1: into equal chunks and be able to save it in
Speaker 1: a meaningful way, it would take fifty to sixty of
Speaker 1: these disks to do it. Now, zip discs were supposed
Speaker 1: to be the next step. It was. It was a
Speaker 1: a high storage medium compared to the three and a
Speaker 1: half or five and a quarter five and a cord
Speaker 1: could hold even less than a three and a half
Speaker 1: could the zip discs could hold. Depending upon the type,
Speaker 1: you had one fifty or seven hundred fifty megabytes, so
Speaker 1: significantly more than what these other discs could have. But
Speaker 1: it came out pretty late in the game, and there
Speaker 1: was something else right on the horizon as the zip
Speaker 1: drive came out that completely negated it, and that was
Speaker 1: the rewriteable c D, the rewriteable compact disc. When combat
Speaker 1: disks first came out, they were read only. I mean,
Speaker 1: that was that. And there were a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: for that, pretty much the same reasons you encounter for
Speaker 1: any kind of medium when it first come out. The
Speaker 1: established powers that be don't want you to be able
Speaker 1: to write to that medium because they're afraid it means
Speaker 1: you're gonna steal all their stuff, right, So same things
Speaker 1: true with DVD s, same things true with Blu ray
Speaker 1: samething's true with the even VCRs and the vhs. They
Speaker 1: didn't want to allow that to be a writeable technology
Speaker 1: for a really long time. So CDs when they did
Speaker 1: come out, they were able to hold a lot more data.
Speaker 1: They were actually eventually priced lower on a cost per
Speaker 1: megabyte basis, and once you could have more data on
Speaker 1: a CD at a lower cost than it would be
Speaker 1: for a comparable number of ZIP discs, it was game over. Uh.
Speaker 1: And what I thought was really funny is that PC
Speaker 1: world named the zip disc the fifteen worst product of
Speaker 1: all time in two thousand and six, but then in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, PC world said it was the twenty
Speaker 1: third best tech product of all time. So what what
Speaker 1: is it, I as, is the best or the worst?
Speaker 1: It was one of the best things that ever came
Speaker 1: out for computing. And here's why. Right, Like you were saying,
Speaker 1: we had these one point four four megabyte discs. When
Speaker 1: I it in line to get Windows ninety five upgrade,
Speaker 1: I had thirteen floppy disks given to me in this box, right,
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, I wish one day there
Speaker 1: was the ability to have a lot of data on
Speaker 1: a small disc, and the ZIF discs were about the
Speaker 1: same size as the three and a half inch disc,
Speaker 1: a little thicker when it came to the the I
Speaker 1: guess the height dimension. I don't know. I want to
Speaker 1: say that. So it was in a very familiar format. Uh,
Speaker 1: there was. It was so popular to the point where
Speaker 1: a number of computer manufacturers were including internal zipped drives
Speaker 1: in their computers. There was this click of death that
Speaker 1: would happen after a while. You just say this this click,
Speaker 1: and you knew your disc was fried. It's over. You're
Speaker 1: not getting anything out of this. One of the bigger
Speaker 1: problems with CDs being writable and rewriteable was there was
Speaker 1: this giant nightmare of C D R C D plus
Speaker 1: are minus are like, there's like this plus and minus
Speaker 1: r W. There wasn't enough of this bizarre incompatibility with
Speaker 1: rewritable discs because you'd have a proper drive that matched
Speaker 1: a proper disc, and unlike a ZIP disc, which only
Speaker 1: fit in a ZIP drive, you could get the wrong
Speaker 1: kind of optical media in the CD burners. So I
Speaker 1: think that prolonged the life of the zip disc to
Speaker 1: the point where two D fifty megabyte version and then
Speaker 1: a seven D fifty megabyte version showed up. But in
Speaker 1: the interim these things were pretty much everywhere. I remember,
Speaker 1: like there was an actual use for the parallel port
Speaker 1: that wasn't a printer. That was so excited about that,
Speaker 1: Um it was. I thought it was a really great
Speaker 1: way to have portable programs. I used to have. I
Speaker 1: used to run like Claire's Office on it. Where's Clara's works?
Speaker 1: Remember this program? I know of it. I never used it. Actually,
Speaker 1: it was the zip disc was fast enough to run programs,
Speaker 1: so in my limited hard drive space I would just
Speaker 1: be swapping out disks zip discs with different programs way
Speaker 1: back in the day before hard drive media, Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: hard drives were really expensive back then, So this was
Speaker 1: I think it was. It was pretty freaking awesome. Uh
Speaker 1: I Omega probably wishes it had one, but CDR CDs
Speaker 1: had to win because they were just so cheap. Technology
Speaker 1: became so low cost. Well. I also one other thing
Speaker 1: that I didn't think to mention when you were talking
Speaker 1: about how the CD did have some drawbacks. The other one,
Speaker 1: of course, was just the right speed. The early writeable
Speaker 1: c D s, the right speed was pretty slow, and
Speaker 1: so it would take a really long time to burn
Speaker 1: a CD. And uh, I remember, like this could be
Speaker 1: a big issue if you happened to be say let's
Speaker 1: say that you are a musician and you wanted to
Speaker 1: go ahead and just sort of produce just enough CDs
Speaker 1: so you're gonna go play a show, and you want
Speaker 1: to have something for people who like your music to
Speaker 1: take home with them, and you wanna, you know, create
Speaker 1: some copies of c d's. You know, it could take
Speaker 1: a long time to burn a significant number and and
Speaker 1: be even though the c D medium ended up getting
Speaker 1: pretty cheap, the actual production of it could be a
Speaker 1: real pain in the in the neck. So I think
Speaker 1: that probably also helped for a while. It took a
Speaker 1: while for those right speeds to get fast enough and
Speaker 1: not be prohibitively expensive for it to be something effective.
Speaker 1: Like if you had all the time in the world, sure,
Speaker 1: it's no big deal, but if you wanted to produce
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in a short amount of time,
Speaker 1: that was a that was a big drawback. Hilariously, UH
Speaker 1: c ds and NED CD drives used to have likeliest
Speaker 1: to boast giant graphics like four eight x read speed
Speaker 1: and four x burn speed. I can't remember the last
Speaker 1: time I've actually seen a drive that had any boastful
Speaker 1: words on it, because they're almost optical media is so
Speaker 1: dated that no one's using it because they got SD
Speaker 1: cards and everything. It's just so it was such a
Speaker 1: different world and houselow those things were burned just such
Speaker 1: a long time ago. It is kind of funny to
Speaker 1: think that, even though it's not on the list, optical
Speaker 1: media could almost be on a warning system for this
Speaker 1: because the solid state media has really taken over to
Speaker 1: a large extent. Now that we've seen solid state prices
Speaker 1: continue to drop, it they're still going to have to
Speaker 1: drop for a solid state hard drive to be uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to be something that the average person is
Speaker 1: going to go and buy as opposed to a spinning
Speaker 1: hard drive, because it does add a pretty significant chunk
Speaker 1: of change to a bottom line price of a of
Speaker 1: a machine. But when it gets to the point where
Speaker 1: it's negligible, it'll be really interesting to see if optical
Speaker 1: media sticks around, you know, how much longer it sticks around,
Speaker 1: or if it ends up fading into you know joining
Speaker 1: the same list. Um, how about tape drives. We just
Speaker 1: talked about the zip drives. Let's go even further back,
Speaker 1: shall we. I remember having an old computer that one
Speaker 1: the accessories you could get was a cassette drive, Like
Speaker 1: you could get a cassette drive that would allow you
Speaker 1: to run programs from cassette or to save data onto cassette.
Speaker 1: But we didn't have that because we had a even
Speaker 1: newer technology, the five and a quarter inch disk drive.
Speaker 1: But but that was definitely something that was part of
Speaker 1: the home computer system for a while, where tape drives
Speaker 1: that were either real to reel or cassette based depending
Speaker 1: upon the model, although real too real was really something
Speaker 1: you saw more in like research institutions and stuff, and
Speaker 1: less for the home market. But I think it is
Speaker 1: pretty safe to say that the tape drive is obsolete. Definitely, Absolutely.
Speaker 1: The tape drive was a great way, very cheap back
Speaker 1: up tapes were very low cost. He was incredibly slow,
Speaker 1: but the capacities were just enormous. At one point it
Speaker 1: was like the pretty much the only way you could
Speaker 1: back up your real PC unless you wanted to break
Speaker 1: it out, like you was saying, with lots and lots
Speaker 1: of but definitely obsolete. I don't know anybody who is
Speaker 1: actively backing up their company with tape drives. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: the last company I worked for before health Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: Actually no two companies back um many many years ago
Speaker 1: they were using tape drives to do backups of their system.
Speaker 1: Then I expect that these days they used a totally
Speaker 1: different methodology. And we've seen a lot of different technologies
Speaker 1: come into play that have replaced the tape drive. Just
Speaker 1: cloud storage being able to essentially outsource your backups to
Speaker 1: some sort of large company like like Amazon is a
Speaker 1: great example where you could have your backup stored in
Speaker 1: the cloud. Uh. Thus, even if you had some sort
Speaker 1: of catastrophic failure of the equipment in your office, you
Speaker 1: could still have access to the data that that equipment
Speaker 1: had generated. Um. You know that that is pretty much
Speaker 1: negated the need or any sort of tape deck h
Speaker 1: And as for the home market, obviously there's not really
Speaker 1: any point to it anymore. In fact, that this also
Speaker 1: illustrates something else and another issue with obsolete technology, which
Speaker 1: is that the stuff that we create one day is
Speaker 1: not going to be accessible to us because we will
Speaker 1: no longer be relying on those same methods to produce
Speaker 1: the the work, to save the work, and to access
Speaker 1: the work. And this is a real issue. This is
Speaker 1: one of those things that people talk about when they say,
Speaker 1: you can't just assume that a hundred years into the
Speaker 1: future will have the same sort of access to the
Speaker 1: stuff we're creating today, because the technology will be significantly
Speaker 1: different and will either be incompatible or the media that
Speaker 1: we're using today won't last long enough for that data
Speaker 1: to be accessible into the future. That's really an actual
Speaker 1: problem that engineers and scientists and researchers look into. How
Speaker 1: do you ensure that we have a continuation of our
Speaker 1: our knowledge from one media to the next, or one
Speaker 1: medium to the next. I should say um, because you
Speaker 1: never know what will be inaccessible tomorrow. Well, thankfully, because
Speaker 1: of the great historical documentary saved by the Bell, we
Speaker 1: know that if you bury a VHS yearbook and you
Speaker 1: leave it there for twenty five years, there will be
Speaker 1: a VCR in the principle's office later on to watch it.
Speaker 1: So that that problem has been solved. Jonathan oh Well,
Speaker 1: I am happy to hear that Zack has a looked
Speaker 1: out for us. It was Zach right. Well, well, Zach
Speaker 1: was on the VHS tape the future future blonde kid
Speaker 1: who looked just like Zach in the same set of
Speaker 1: racially diverse group of friends there. Uh. They also were
Speaker 1: very very happy that the same principle had a VCR attached.
Speaker 1: You're totally right there. If you're going to leave, this
Speaker 1: is just here's here's a tip that nobody ever needs.
Speaker 1: If you're gonna leave something in a time capsule, make
Speaker 1: sure you have the reader of the media of llable
Speaker 1: with instructions with all the cables, because otherwise it's kind
Speaker 1: of pointless. This just reminds me of my tape drive,
Speaker 1: which was also made by Omega, that I wanted to
Speaker 1: use it later on, where I had to get a
Speaker 1: I want to say, scuzzy to USB adapter because yeah,
Speaker 1: you just because I needed the data. Not really, I
Speaker 1: didn't really need the data, but I thought I did
Speaker 1: back then, So there you go. Okay, Well, how about
Speaker 1: slide projectors, Yeah, that's absolutely I mean, who's getting slides made? Right?
Speaker 1: Where would you go to process it? There? I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are only a few places in the United States
Speaker 1: where that are actually still processing film for slides. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, digital projection is so common. I mean, we
Speaker 1: we've one of the things we've seen at the past
Speaker 1: few c s s are these pico projectors where you
Speaker 1: can just have a projector that fits inside your pocket
Speaker 1: and you take it out and connected to even something
Speaker 1: like a smartphone and be able to project a large
Speaker 1: screen version of whatever it is you want to see.
Speaker 1: There's very little reason why you would need a slide
Speaker 1: projector unless you were doing it as really like an
Speaker 1: art installation, like it's your specifically doing it as part
Speaker 1: of the experience of whatever it is you're trying to convey.
Speaker 1: Another one of those great devices. Again, watch mad Men
Speaker 1: if you want to see basically a lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff we talked about in these two episodes. If you
Speaker 1: watch mad Men, you're gonna see a lot of these,
Speaker 1: a lot of like what's the typewriter look like? What
Speaker 1: does this sound like? Yeah, it's slide projector. One of
Speaker 1: the best episodes of mad Men called the Carousel. But
Speaker 1: I always wanted one of these things when I was
Speaker 1: a kid because to the projectors in general fascinated me
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, because of this idea of
Speaker 1: having an unlimited screen size, because all you needed was
Speaker 1: this one box and it wasn't that big and it
Speaker 1: wasn't that heavy because we had CRT s back then,
Speaker 1: uh that you can project this giant image, but then
Speaker 1: you'd always have the in the horrifying slide shows this
Speaker 1: is our family vacation, which now takes place over Facebook
Speaker 1: or on somebody just showing you their pictures on their phone, like, hey,
Speaker 1: here's the eight six pictures I took what I visited,
Speaker 1: the uh, the salt quarry exactly here, here are pictures.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna necessarily give you context, or I will
Speaker 1: give you more context than you ever wanted to know,
Speaker 1: and I expect you to sit here and be prisoner
Speaker 1: until I'm done. It was a lot easier with slide
Speaker 1: projectors really because it was just impolite to stand up
Speaker 1: off someone's couch and say I'm leaving now, but or
Speaker 1: you'd have the image projected on you. That's the worst part,
Speaker 1: right right. Yeah. The other thing about slide projectors, I
Speaker 1: remember two things really. The carousel slides there were. This
Speaker 1: just takes me back to my elementary school days because
Speaker 1: that's what we would use to look at, like science slides.
Speaker 1: I remember tons of classes where we used a slide projector,
Speaker 1: and I remember the carouselfs were prone to two things.
Speaker 1: One was that you would have actually have a slide
Speaker 1: get jammed, so it would stop the entire presentation while
Speaker 1: the teacher tried to fix the jam, and often that
Speaker 1: would even mean removing the carousel, which would require us
Speaker 1: to again find our way back to the proper slide
Speaker 1: so that we could continue on our journey of education.
Speaker 1: And the second was that invariably at least one slide
Speaker 1: would be loaded either backwards or upside down, so you
Speaker 1: would either get text that was flipped or you would
Speaker 1: more likely see something from the point of view of
Speaker 1: someone in Australia. And uh, while that definitely added levity
Speaker 1: to the classroom, it certainly wasn't the most effective means
Speaker 1: of getting information across the students. Extremely extremely antiquated and
Speaker 1: definitely obsolete. Yes, however, I will say that that backwards
Speaker 1: image we still see a remnant of that today with
Speaker 1: people who take selfies using a phone where it flips
Speaker 1: the image so it acts like a mirror, and then
Speaker 1: you end up getting these backwards T shirts and things.
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of that. We're recording this the
Speaker 1: same week in the United States as there was an election.
Speaker 1: So I saw a lot of my friends post selfies
Speaker 1: of them wearing the I have voted uh sticker, But
Speaker 1: the sticker was backwards because we were using that specific
Speaker 1: mode to take the photo. So I'm glad that that
Speaker 1: still lives. Like, even if it's not a physical slide,
Speaker 1: we can still send people images that have been flipped
Speaker 1: a d eighty degrees. Yeah, we have. We have the
Speaker 1: equivalent of jammed images. It's like when a slide doesn't
Speaker 1: load in the slide show, when you're trying to go
Speaker 1: in Facebook and you're going into the next image, like,
Speaker 1: why isn't it a loading jammed? It's yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you have to click on the picture or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. Our our lives are still just as miserable.
Speaker 1: It's just we've got a different means of producing the problems. Now, Um,
Speaker 1: we've already talked about floppy disks, so we'll skip that one.
Speaker 1: But the Polaroid cameras made up the last item on
Speaker 1: the original list. And Uh, if you're talking about cameras
Speaker 1: that are made by Polaroid, that's misleading because that company
Speaker 1: is still making cameras. They're still making digital cameras. They're
Speaker 1: even still making instant film cameras, are at least what
Speaker 1: they call instant film cameras. Some of those instant film
Speaker 1: cameras are technically not instant film. It's a digital camera
Speaker 1: with its own printer, so it prints the image as
Speaker 1: opposed to captures it on film that then develops. Uh.
Speaker 1: But they do still have an instant film camera called
Speaker 1: the p I C the Pick three hundred that takes
Speaker 1: instant film. So it's actually still a thing. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I think the reason why this is on the obsolete
Speaker 1: list is that for a long time it looked like
Speaker 1: Polaroid was just going to get out of that game entirely.
Speaker 1: But the nostalgia for the instant film photo demanded that
Speaker 1: there be a product to fulfill that desire. So this
Speaker 1: is an example of something that people weren't ready to
Speaker 1: let love. I think, yeah, I think this might be
Speaker 1: with the turntables kind of thing that like this is
Speaker 1: this still exists. There's a set number of people want
Speaker 1: to use this. There's a very long documentary on Polaroid's
Speaker 1: final years. I believe it's on Netflix currently, which I
Speaker 1: tried to watch, but the amount of sentimentality was so great. Uh,
Speaker 1: so much emotion of people crying because people are printing
Speaker 1: out pictures. I had to turn it off. But when
Speaker 1: it comes to Polaro cameras, I loved it when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, and you know, you would try to
Speaker 1: shake the thing and you try to see the image developed.
Speaker 1: That was a really cool idea. And then when you
Speaker 1: find out the science behind and how it works, how
Speaker 1: this this thing was being developed right in this this box,
Speaker 1: that was insane because it just seemed like, oh wait,
Speaker 1: that's how it stuff, that's how it works. It's not
Speaker 1: a big deal. But to know more about it as
Speaker 1: I'm older, it's pretty cool. But do you see yourself
Speaker 1: going out and buying a Polaroid instant film camera instant
Speaker 1: camera because it's not film. I I don't see myself
Speaker 1: going out and buying any cameras at all anymore. Because
Speaker 1: now I've gotten to the point where I used to
Speaker 1: be one of those guys who I like the standalone
Speaker 1: devices that were dedicated to doing one thing because usually
Speaker 1: they did that one thing really really well. And the
Speaker 1: stuff like smartphones could do lots of stuff, but they
Speaker 1: didn't tend to do all of it really well. It
Speaker 1: just did it okay. But now smartphones, either the smartphones
Speaker 1: have gotten to a level of quality that I am
Speaker 1: now happy with, or my standards have dropped enough where
Speaker 1: I don't care anymore. But either way, it's the same destination. Now,
Speaker 1: a smartphone for me acts as everything. It's my camera,
Speaker 1: it's my MP three player, It's the way I access
Speaker 1: streaming media. It's the way I text people or interact
Speaker 1: with social media. Once in a blue moon, it's the
Speaker 1: way I talk to someone because I hardly ever make
Speaker 1: phone calls anymore. But yeah, so I don't see myself
Speaker 1: going out and getting an instant film camera. How about you?
Speaker 1: Are you? Are you nostalgic enough where that's something you
Speaker 1: you need to have in your life. I am. I'm
Speaker 1: probably more likely to find a way to hack a
Speaker 1: Kindled for it to display my images on like a
Speaker 1: on like a loop. Then I would be a candidate
Speaker 1: to get a Polaroid instant camera, because for me, the
Speaker 1: coolest thing about printed photography is that requires no power source.
Speaker 1: It doesn't glow at night when you leave the room
Speaker 1: like a digital picture frame. So but I'm probably gonna
Speaker 1: hack together a solution of a digital picture frame that
Speaker 1: uses the inc then I would probably get this polaroid thing.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to bother with instant film because it's
Speaker 1: just not it's not it's just I'm not that sentimental
Speaker 1: when it comes to that. Well. Plus, I mean you
Speaker 1: would have to go on and buy refills of it, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the other thing is that you can't
Speaker 1: just offload the pictures and then make space that you
Speaker 1: can take more pictures. You actually have to physically replace
Speaker 1: the uh, the medium because it runs out. So that's
Speaker 1: also a hassle. And like you can't you just can't
Speaker 1: shoot a thousand photos. Like however, you can't like like
Speaker 1: you're not have a burst mode on Polaroid. Okay, there's
Speaker 1: no burst mode. You take the shot once and then
Speaker 1: it spits it out and you better you have to wait,
Speaker 1: So you better make sure whatever subject you have, which
Speaker 1: better be a bowl of fruit that's not moving, that's
Speaker 1: gonna be fine or very still subject because it's not
Speaker 1: exactly like that friendly unless your dog sits nicely and
Speaker 1: is trained not like mine, or or you Also, you
Speaker 1: should know you do not have to shake it on
Speaker 1: like the song. You do not need to shake a
Speaker 1: polaroid picture. Let's develop that great hymn. I remember that. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: that wraps up the list that was online. We have
Speaker 1: a few more that we were just going to mention,
Speaker 1: uh from our own experience. My first one was the
Speaker 1: capacitance electronic disk. Did you did you ever see these?
Speaker 1: Do you know what this is? I looked it up
Speaker 1: because I saw it on your list of things and
Speaker 1: I actually have seen them. Turns out they look like
Speaker 1: giant floppy disks. Yeah, yeah, they I thought of them
Speaker 1: as being about the size of a vinyl album record cover, right,
Speaker 1: except made out of a semi rigid plastic um and
Speaker 1: there was actually a disc on the inside of it
Speaker 1: that you didn't see because it would it would get
Speaker 1: pulled out when you put the whole case into like
Speaker 1: it's essentially a cartridge into a player, and then it
Speaker 1: would remove the disk and play it. It's called a
Speaker 1: capacitance electronic disc because it actually had a physical needle
Speaker 1: that would read the disk through electronic capacitance. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of in between a vinyl album that uses a
Speaker 1: physical needle and a laser disc, which uses an optical
Speaker 1: laser to read information. It was kind of like in
Speaker 1: between those. It was less expensive than the laser disc.
Speaker 1: It's also less expensive, I think, than VHS tapes were originally,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't write to them. You can only read.
Speaker 1: It was read only, and each side of a capacitans
Speaker 1: electronic disc could hold about an hour's worth of material.
Speaker 1: So you would watch a movie and halfway through the
Speaker 1: film it would stop, and you'd have to eject the cartridge,
Speaker 1: flip it over, and put it back in to watch
Speaker 1: the rest of it. To this day, I can remember
Speaker 1: precisely where our copy of Indiana Jones and the Raiders
Speaker 1: of the Lost Arc stopped. It stopped right after Sala
Speaker 1: says they're digging in the wrong place. Then the video
Speaker 1: would stop. I'd have to turn the disc over and
Speaker 1: and watch the rest of Raiders. So it left a
Speaker 1: lasting impression on me. Ultimately, it did not succeed in
Speaker 1: the market. It went obsolute pretty quickly. In fact, you
Speaker 1: might even argue that the word obsolete isn't accurate because
Speaker 1: it never rose to prominence. So perhaps obsolete is giving
Speaker 1: it too much credit. But I have a soft spot
Speaker 1: in my heart for that particular piece of technology. I
Speaker 1: haven't had the same experience as you so, I I
Speaker 1: don't know how that would be growing up, well, uh,
Speaker 1: it was a magical time, I as. Uh. As for
Speaker 1: other types of obsolete technology, I'm just gonna lump a
Speaker 1: bunch of these together and mention the ones that kind
Speaker 1: of thought sort of might fit obsolete, Like a lot
Speaker 1: of those ports, like the parallel ports you were mentioning,
Speaker 1: I as a lot of those have largely been rendered
Speaker 1: obsolete by USB ports. USB has really taken over, and
Speaker 1: so we don't really necessarily need all those other ones
Speaker 1: these days. In fact, it's been a lot of time
Speaker 1: since I've bought any technology that required me to plug
Speaker 1: something else in. It's almost all, you know, just plug
Speaker 1: and play with the USB these days. There still are
Speaker 1: some out there. It's not I don't mean to suggest
Speaker 1: that they're all uh USB, that's not the case, but
Speaker 1: a large number of them are answering machines. Also, because
Speaker 1: now we've got things like digital voice mail. UH MP
Speaker 1: three players I think are fading away because again we
Speaker 1: have devices like smartphones that allow us to either stream
Speaker 1: music or store it natively on a device, so there's
Speaker 1: less need for a dedicated MP three player. UM. The
Speaker 1: analog television broadcasts. We mentioned that in the last episode
Speaker 1: that transition from analog to digital because a huge headache.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand nine, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: confusion about whether or not you would still be able
Speaker 1: to watch TV and who needed to have a an
Speaker 1: adapter and who didn't need to have an adapter. Uh
Speaker 1: were you covering technology back at that time? Yeah, I was,
Speaker 1: and I was very into this back then, and I
Speaker 1: believe it got delayed for a lot of months, maybe
Speaker 1: even a year. I can't remember how long the delay was,
Speaker 1: but I would. I found it just amazing that people
Speaker 1: were confused because the amount of advertising that was done
Speaker 1: about this transition, this change that's gonna happen, It's going
Speaker 1: to happen. It was like, it's gonna be the set
Speaker 1: date and it was pushed off by three So you
Speaker 1: should have been up to date at that point, but
Speaker 1: you weren't. A lot of people weren't. Um. I just
Speaker 1: couldn't believe how many people were left in the dark.
Speaker 1: On top of that, the transition caused so many issues
Speaker 1: when it came to just being able to receive a signal,
Speaker 1: because when it was analog, if you were far enough away,
Speaker 1: you'd get a signal, but it'd be very weak and
Speaker 1: you get kind of snowy kind of stuff going on,
Speaker 1: a lot of ghost thing going on with the images.
Speaker 1: So but you would get something, but with the transition,
Speaker 1: you either got the signal or you've got nothing. And
Speaker 1: so the the blacked out version of this added to
Speaker 1: the fact that these waves didn't travel as far through
Speaker 1: buildings that it was a huge problem for a while.
Speaker 1: It seems like with the with the years have gone by,
Speaker 1: a lot of that's been alleviated by different positioning of
Speaker 1: towers and things so that you can get a place
Speaker 1: like New York City where I am, you can still
Speaker 1: get signal because for a while, if you were like
Speaker 1: on the wrong side of the building, you were not
Speaker 1: getting like fox, and that's been now fixed. So it
Speaker 1: was it was a very interesting time that I thought
Speaker 1: would have gone a lot worse. I think the government
Speaker 1: had this program as well where you could get a
Speaker 1: converter box for a set, and I think it was
Speaker 1: like fifty less than that if you wanted to steal
Speaker 1: use your old TV and um. It was. It was
Speaker 1: an interesting time and I don't think a lot of
Speaker 1: people remember anymore because it's a lot of people were
Speaker 1: on cable at that point, so it didn't affect them
Speaker 1: directly because they were still using their boxes, right. I uh.
Speaker 1: I remember covering this as well and seeing the confusion
Speaker 1: that was around it. One of our first Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: podcasts was about this very topic. Chris Poulette and I
Speaker 1: did a topic about it to talk about who needed
Speaker 1: it and who didn't, because there was a lot of confusion.
Speaker 1: Even for people who just had cable television. They were
Speaker 1: wondering if they needed to have some sort of converter box,
Speaker 1: and there were there were some manufacturers that were kind
Speaker 1: of preying on ignorance at the time too, in order
Speaker 1: to sell devices that weren't needed to customers who who
Speaker 1: were fine where they were. But I'm glad that I
Speaker 1: finally went through. Also, it's an interesting entry on the
Speaker 1: list because unlike a lot of the other ones where
Speaker 1: the obsolescence came about as just the fact that people
Speaker 1: moved on to other technologies, this one was a forced obsolescence.
Speaker 1: There was no choice in the matter. It wasn't that
Speaker 1: people necessarily moved on to something else. It was that
Speaker 1: that thing no longer was supported. Yeah, that was It
Speaker 1: was a good time now we got not nice beautiful
Speaker 1: multi caast channels. You can get to four point one,
Speaker 1: four point two, all these other things. We have all
Speaker 1: the airwaves freed up for things like wireless communication, which
Speaker 1: makes it a lot nicer. Right, and then you have
Speaker 1: your own entry down here too. Right. Yeah, it's my
Speaker 1: favorite piece of obstlity technology is the UMPC. This was
Speaker 1: an initiative by Microsoft and I believe it Intel at
Speaker 1: the time. It was a geez. I don't remember how
Speaker 1: many years ago it was, but it was a while ago.
Speaker 1: I'd say at least maybe eight years ago. The UMPC
Speaker 1: was the Ultramobile PC. It was a tiny, full fledged
Speaker 1: computer that was about the size of a Sega game
Speaker 1: gear if you if you want to actually have a
Speaker 1: size comparison, or think of a really really fat seven
Speaker 1: inch tablet, because it was a pretty hefty device and
Speaker 1: you have this touch screen in the middle. Some devices
Speaker 1: gopsed to have on screen keyboards only where you could
Speaker 1: just tap and you'd get like the semi circular keys
Speaker 1: on the left and right so you can do thumb typing,
Speaker 1: or you get a more traditional keyboard that would come
Speaker 1: up kind of like a tablet today has or phone has,
Speaker 1: and this was way ahead of its time because they
Speaker 1: were cramming in like pretty much laptop processors in these
Speaker 1: devices with like a six inch screen with a full
Speaker 1: operating system, and so you would get like two or
Speaker 1: three hours of battery life and it was about a
Speaker 1: grand or so. So it's very expensive. And for me,
Speaker 1: I've always had this dream of being able to just
Speaker 1: have one device, one computer that I can carry with
Speaker 1: me anywhere I go and then crazily enough like come
Speaker 1: home and dock it. And that's what the thing is
Speaker 1: supposed to be. And it didn't take off because of
Speaker 1: a lot of the things I mentioned, the battery life,
Speaker 1: the price, and it's just it's just couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: Did you have experiences with you and PCs? I, uh,
Speaker 1: only only tangentially. I never owned one. I had read
Speaker 1: a lot of the drawbacks and I never got into it.
Speaker 1: They were also really expensive, um, and so they were
Speaker 1: kind of out of my price range. They were there
Speaker 1: were enough drawbacks where I couldn't see them being that useful.
Speaker 1: I liked where it was going, and I thought that
Speaker 1: that was gonna be an entire like line of technology
Speaker 1: that we would see improve over time and continual continue
Speaker 1: to take advantage of things like mantorization, battery improvement, that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. I really thought that's where things were
Speaker 1: going to head, and then sort of I think cloud
Speaker 1: computing took a lot of the the need for that out.
Speaker 1: You know, as as you started to offload the actual
Speaker 1: processing onto other UH platforms, you didn't need to have
Speaker 1: a device that could do it itself. You had all
Speaker 1: these other things that could do the work for you.
Speaker 1: You just need a device to be able to access
Speaker 1: that stuff. And so I think that was a large
Speaker 1: part of why this never really took off. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just the drawbacks, which I think you could eventually engineer
Speaker 1: your way around, or at least try and create as
Speaker 1: efficient a system as possible so that it was still useful.
Speaker 1: It was that it largely became mood. I still I
Speaker 1: think the drawbacks were just gigantic when it came to
Speaker 1: using a it was a full fledged desktop operating system
Speaker 1: that you're using on a very small screen, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly optimized. I know, Windows XP they did have
Speaker 1: a tablet edition that's I believe was running on the
Speaker 1: number of these devices, so it was capable of being
Speaker 1: worked with with the stylus, but a lot of the
Speaker 1: work you would want to do on a desktop computer
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to do on a device like this.
Speaker 1: And like you're saying, with the engineering, we've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of things happen where like smartphones now are optimized
Speaker 1: applications that made those things seem like they were going
Speaker 1: they would move fast, and if you had a desktop
Speaker 1: computer versus a UMPC, you would know what it was
Speaker 1: like for this application to run fast. And there was
Speaker 1: a lot of pain when it came to this idea
Speaker 1: of trying to be productive on this small device. I
Speaker 1: think the smartphone is the successor in some kind of
Speaker 1: way to the UMPC because it does prettty much everything
Speaker 1: you want, and with the larger screens that are happening
Speaker 1: and multitasking on Android phones, like I mean actual like
Speaker 1: windowed multitasking, that's so close to this thing that I
Speaker 1: wanted where you can compare it with the Bluetooth keyboard
Speaker 1: and you can just prop this up and you can
Speaker 1: use it as a full fledged machine. Uh. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the UNPC was one of Microsoft's early initiatives that failed.
Speaker 1: They were ahead of a lot of things, including tablet
Speaker 1: PC's the first gen of that was really awesome. But yeah, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: whatever they're doing, pay attention to them, because the way ahead,
Speaker 1: pay attention to them. And then wait a couple of
Speaker 1: years for Apple to do it and then go out
Speaker 1: and buy it exactly and then Microsoft try to copy
Speaker 1: it again. But then again there is this. As we're
Speaker 1: recording this, there's a lot of news about Windows ten
Speaker 1: and basically you're gonna have a full flas desktop operating
Speaker 1: system in your phone and Windows phone and the apps
Speaker 1: are gonna run cross platform. So maybe I will get
Speaker 1: my wish where where I can just dock a phone
Speaker 1: and use it as a computer, although I don't know
Speaker 1: if I need to do that anymore. Now we we've
Speaker 1: seen we've seen some implementations of that technology over the
Speaker 1: last few years of people trying to do that, and
Speaker 1: each of them were you know, you could see where
Speaker 1: the promise was, but it never quite clicked properly. I
Speaker 1: remember seeing the the smartphones that were uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you would plug it into a docking station and you
Speaker 1: could even uh have a larger display running so that
Speaker 1: you you could look at a larger display, use a
Speaker 1: separate keyboard. But it's all running off the processor of
Speaker 1: the smartphone. But you know, we never got to an
Speaker 1: implementation that really met the needs and the price point
Speaker 1: for the consumer, so maybe we'll see it. That was
Speaker 1: the Motoral Matrix. I think that was like one of
Speaker 1: the first ones that that allowed this. Yeah, and I remember,
Speaker 1: like I was drooling over a patent application that Apple
Speaker 1: had where you could just pop an iPod into your
Speaker 1: computer and that would make it your computer like a
Speaker 1: giant cartridge. I'm like, that's brilliant, But that never happened obviously,
Speaker 1: So it's these The future for me is kind of
Speaker 1: like what do your talk about everything being cloud based,
Speaker 1: being able to log in and have all your settings,
Speaker 1: kind of like a chromebook experience. That's getting closer to
Speaker 1: this kind of every computers your computer, as opposed to
Speaker 1: I carry my little device, right Yeah, yeah, I agree. Well,
Speaker 1: this was a great discussion about technology that doesn't matter anymore.
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