It also looks weirdly flat compared to contemporary all-in-ones. The Pizza Box Performas were pretty chonk. This stands out because most of their 'cursed' qualities come from being something that could have been but really shouldn't have been.
I love it! All those grey and beige machines still feel like someone is about to do something amazing on them, even though modern stuff is better in basically every way. It's like seeing the alternate possibilities for how tech could have developed, and invites you to ask "What if we had tech just like now but used it differently".
Is the fact that all tech has mostly the same look related to the fact that it's mostly all just used for consuming the same content? Smartwatches have greatly changed how I use tech, what other possibilities are we still ignoring?
I wonder why we don't have tablet cases that look like old laptops. Even thought form and function are more separate than ever, we have way more boring aesthetics, just ever thinner phones I'll immediately put a rubber case on as soon as I take them out of the box, and cases that all kinda look the same.
It's a good thing partly, because stuff is thin and light and cheap, but I'd think there'd be some serious products that keep the old 2000s look, or at least accessories that have it.
There's a lot of niche communities out there (cyberdecks, console miniaturisation, case mods, new-old-retrocomputing, custom mechanical keyboards, custom arcade cabinets) that basically do what these mock-ups do, but for real. It is however an expensive and difficult hobby to get into (and I would bet that 90% of the people doing it happened to pick up the skills in their day jobs), and when it goes wrong you're typically out hundreds of dollars in components. Tooling and prototyping-as-a-service have gotten a lot better in the last decade, but it's still something that requires a lot of trial and error.
The AI revolution I want isn't chatbots and anime girls with mutilated fingers, it's one where it's as easy to make a real novelty piece of hardware as it is to make a mock-up in Photoshop.
Is the fact that all tech has mostly the same look related to the fact that it's mostly all just used for consuming the same content?
I think this is part of it (but then again, we're consuming mostly the same content we always have), but I think there are bigger reasons. It's more about how fewer companies are designing/producing tech. Add that to the fact that each company's design is branding, and we're unlikely to see such radical changes to the designs of popular tech, like a ThinkPad, and many companies want to copy the successful look of say, a MacBook, rather than risk creating something new (all these look-a-likes are probably all using the same off the shelf parts, so that lends itself to having a similar design as well).
The next is the advance of touchscreens. A flat panel can be the UI for anything, and it's probably so much cheaper than developing purpose built UIs. For this reason, all UIs are the same flat panel touchscreen with different graphics on them instead of a unique-looking array of physical buttons, switches, dials, etc., let alone any custom parts.
It's like seeing the alternate possibilities for how tech could have developed, and invites you to ask "What if we had tech just like now but used it differently".
I just watched the Running Man over the weekend. Even though it was set in a dystopian 2019, the tech that the film imagined for 2019 looked so much more playful and interesting than what we have today. Compared to some more recent film's guesses about future tech which usually involve graphics on a touch screen that may or may not be invisible.
Is this just nostalgia for physical buttons or is do we all get excited to play with physical objects? That, I really don't know...
Functionality flat screens are wonderful. No scrolling through menus with buttons that get sticky when someone spills juice on it, no confusing unique UI, no physical knobs that can respond to digital controls. Im definitely happy everything is flat, it's so much more durable. But they could still do more with case design.
I wonder why physical controls never advanced to be as good and cheap as touch. I mean, they still have them on cheap low tech stuff, but it's craptastic switches that break. Hall sensors could be even cheaper and magnets don't cost much, physical UI doesn't have to have real contacts and mechanical linkages.
The nest thermostat is a good example besides still having the boring minimal aesthetic.
Part of the problem is that if someone did make something unique I'd wonder if it was novelty kickstarter trash that barely works made by people new to the industry, unless it was an established company, and the established companies don't innovate for the reasons you mention.
Scifi UIs are specifically meant for emotional impact and storytelling, and early IRL tech seemed to take more inspiration from that, so I guess that's part of it.
Also, screens have the mental association with scrolling TikTok and browsing HN, so if someone used an iPad to control a spaceship people might think "Why is she using the crap scroll machine to save the world" just like some people don't like seeing wedding photographers use a phone camera.
Even reading books on a tablet invites you to think of the other more instant gratificationful things.
In movies physical buttons, or screens with obviously unfamiliar UIs reinforce the fact that a character has a certain set of capabilities at the moment and they are doing what they can.
They're not at home with a door dash app, there's no play store, there's no time to reboot, they're trying to get the shields up with only what's available at the moment.
Real life tech is meant to be anything to anyone at any time, but only by having a huge library of predefined stuff, not by allowing on the fly creativity.
Old analog stuff was less reliable and less capable but more hackable, it makes a better story, and most people want some trace of adventure even though it seems like most of us prefer life in general to be more safe and managed.
Looking at real life from a storytelling perspective, for a user screens can be Mary Sues, and associated with places where everything is so safe there's no story to tell.
Maybe analog stuff is like dressing up for a formal event. We want to change stuff so it looks and feels different, and use different words, and stand up straight, because it seems right for something that's supposed to be different from a boring trip to McDonald's.
I'm typing this message on a mechanical keyboard placed on top of my MacBook Air's built-in keyboard because the MBA's flat keys are impossible to clean. I'm not happy that everything is flat.
I'm also typing it in the dark and the keyboard isn't backlit. I can do this because my fingers can feel where the edges of the keys are. I still can't touchtype on touchscreen keyboards (ironically), and I've tried many times to learn. There was a lot of buzz (pun not intended, again) about haptics a few years ago, but it seems like it's stagnated before reaching the point where you can use a touch interface without looking at it.
Consumer electronics went flat because flat is 'good enough', but anywhere where 'good enough' isn't, buttons are still there. Companies like Elgato, Loupedeck and Korg sell boxes of knobs, sliders and buttons for basically every creative technical profession because there's a real benefit to having a dedicated control for everything in a consistent location that you can feel without looking.
I'd say those are more a matter of specialty use than strictly better.
I can type faster on my phone than on a keyboard, and if I use a real separate keyboard and monitor, I'm significantly slowed down by the extra distance to glance back and forth between screen and keyboard.
I tried to learn touch typing for about a week, got to 0.7 letters per second @95% or so accuracy with home row only exercises, then got bored and forgot the whole thing.
If you have good muscle memory, or the task is something where you want to leave a finger on a control and look away(Like a game controller), it's great.
If gloves or wet hands are involved, or you need one button activation but don't want to accidentally turn it on, touch has issues.
For something you look at while using, or anything used in a typical consumer environment where dust and crumbs and spills can happen, or anything that has too many one off tasks and not enough frequent stuff for anyone to actually learn a dedicated button screens are amazing.
Especially when size is an issue, one screen replaces a whole wall of controls, and screens required no force, so you can use things one handed without pushing them around while trying to push the buttons, on something like a timer.
Creative professionals tend to have good muscle memory and a sense of 3D space, and are more comfortable moving objects in reality than looking at a screen. They do specific things that require multitasking in realtime, and have the talent to do so, and they have things they do so often it's worth buying and learning a dedicated box.
Power tools often only have 2 frequently used controls, or 1, just trigger and direction, and are used all day, so it makes sense there.
Kitchen stoves need fast adjustment but no exact precision, unless you're a pro chef you crank it up to boil stuff, then turn it down till it seems about right, pretty good fit for analog.
But for most of my interactions with tech screens are great. They tightly couple input and output and make internal state immediately obvious. They're one of the defining aspects of most "tech products" as opposed to just a tool that was made with tech.
Of all these almost-perfect-looking mockups, the "ZIP drive" (which unfortunately has a very prominent position in the article) stands out because it 's just a 2D image of a zipper slapped on a 3D ZIP drive. But hey, everybody is allowed to be lazy once in a while ;) Or maybe there was some deeper reason for doing it this way that eludes me?
Sometimes I'll go down the rabbit hole, pixel away for half an hour or so and realise it's just not what I was hoping for, or I couldn't fix it how I wanted, or yes, often laziness.
But then I'll post it anyway because what the hell. Perfect being the enemy of the good-enough-for-a-laugh, and all.
Dana long championed the perfection that is the Quadra 605, and even got a PowerPC emulator running on it, then booted Mac OS X! It was a fraction of the size of its contemporaries, could have an FPU with a simple m68040 swap, could run at 33 MHz with a trivial overclock or 40 MHz with an overclock that's a little more work, its VRAM could be extended to a full megabyte, and it could take a 128 meg SIMM, giving it 132 megs.
She always posts these with their descriptions on Twitter totally dead-pan. If you scroll through the replies, it becomes obvious that thousands of people now believe her creations are real. Not sure if that's her intent, but she's done it nonetheless.
Not sure if this is entirely the case. Most of her images top out at dozens of replies, not thousands. Even still, a lot of these replies (I'd even venture nearly all of them) are people playing along with the parody, not believing it.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 65.7 ms ] threadIs the fact that all tech has mostly the same look related to the fact that it's mostly all just used for consuming the same content? Smartwatches have greatly changed how I use tech, what other possibilities are we still ignoring?
I wonder why we don't have tablet cases that look like old laptops. Even thought form and function are more separate than ever, we have way more boring aesthetics, just ever thinner phones I'll immediately put a rubber case on as soon as I take them out of the box, and cases that all kinda look the same.
It's a good thing partly, because stuff is thin and light and cheap, but I'd think there'd be some serious products that keep the old 2000s look, or at least accessories that have it.
The AI revolution I want isn't chatbots and anime girls with mutilated fingers, it's one where it's as easy to make a real novelty piece of hardware as it is to make a mock-up in Photoshop.
I think this is part of it (but then again, we're consuming mostly the same content we always have), but I think there are bigger reasons. It's more about how fewer companies are designing/producing tech. Add that to the fact that each company's design is branding, and we're unlikely to see such radical changes to the designs of popular tech, like a ThinkPad, and many companies want to copy the successful look of say, a MacBook, rather than risk creating something new (all these look-a-likes are probably all using the same off the shelf parts, so that lends itself to having a similar design as well).
The next is the advance of touchscreens. A flat panel can be the UI for anything, and it's probably so much cheaper than developing purpose built UIs. For this reason, all UIs are the same flat panel touchscreen with different graphics on them instead of a unique-looking array of physical buttons, switches, dials, etc., let alone any custom parts.
It's like seeing the alternate possibilities for how tech could have developed, and invites you to ask "What if we had tech just like now but used it differently".
I just watched the Running Man over the weekend. Even though it was set in a dystopian 2019, the tech that the film imagined for 2019 looked so much more playful and interesting than what we have today. Compared to some more recent film's guesses about future tech which usually involve graphics on a touch screen that may or may not be invisible.
Is this just nostalgia for physical buttons or is do we all get excited to play with physical objects? That, I really don't know...
I wonder why physical controls never advanced to be as good and cheap as touch. I mean, they still have them on cheap low tech stuff, but it's craptastic switches that break. Hall sensors could be even cheaper and magnets don't cost much, physical UI doesn't have to have real contacts and mechanical linkages.
The nest thermostat is a good example besides still having the boring minimal aesthetic.
Part of the problem is that if someone did make something unique I'd wonder if it was novelty kickstarter trash that barely works made by people new to the industry, unless it was an established company, and the established companies don't innovate for the reasons you mention.
Scifi UIs are specifically meant for emotional impact and storytelling, and early IRL tech seemed to take more inspiration from that, so I guess that's part of it.
Also, screens have the mental association with scrolling TikTok and browsing HN, so if someone used an iPad to control a spaceship people might think "Why is she using the crap scroll machine to save the world" just like some people don't like seeing wedding photographers use a phone camera.
Even reading books on a tablet invites you to think of the other more instant gratificationful things.
In movies physical buttons, or screens with obviously unfamiliar UIs reinforce the fact that a character has a certain set of capabilities at the moment and they are doing what they can.
They're not at home with a door dash app, there's no play store, there's no time to reboot, they're trying to get the shields up with only what's available at the moment.
Real life tech is meant to be anything to anyone at any time, but only by having a huge library of predefined stuff, not by allowing on the fly creativity.
Old analog stuff was less reliable and less capable but more hackable, it makes a better story, and most people want some trace of adventure even though it seems like most of us prefer life in general to be more safe and managed.
Looking at real life from a storytelling perspective, for a user screens can be Mary Sues, and associated with places where everything is so safe there's no story to tell.
Maybe analog stuff is like dressing up for a formal event. We want to change stuff so it looks and feels different, and use different words, and stand up straight, because it seems right for something that's supposed to be different from a boring trip to McDonald's.
I'm also typing it in the dark and the keyboard isn't backlit. I can do this because my fingers can feel where the edges of the keys are. I still can't touchtype on touchscreen keyboards (ironically), and I've tried many times to learn. There was a lot of buzz (pun not intended, again) about haptics a few years ago, but it seems like it's stagnated before reaching the point where you can use a touch interface without looking at it.
Consumer electronics went flat because flat is 'good enough', but anywhere where 'good enough' isn't, buttons are still there. Companies like Elgato, Loupedeck and Korg sell boxes of knobs, sliders and buttons for basically every creative technical profession because there's a real benefit to having a dedicated control for everything in a consistent location that you can feel without looking.
I can type faster on my phone than on a keyboard, and if I use a real separate keyboard and monitor, I'm significantly slowed down by the extra distance to glance back and forth between screen and keyboard.
I tried to learn touch typing for about a week, got to 0.7 letters per second @95% or so accuracy with home row only exercises, then got bored and forgot the whole thing.
If you have good muscle memory, or the task is something where you want to leave a finger on a control and look away(Like a game controller), it's great.
If gloves or wet hands are involved, or you need one button activation but don't want to accidentally turn it on, touch has issues.
For something you look at while using, or anything used in a typical consumer environment where dust and crumbs and spills can happen, or anything that has too many one off tasks and not enough frequent stuff for anyone to actually learn a dedicated button screens are amazing.
Especially when size is an issue, one screen replaces a whole wall of controls, and screens required no force, so you can use things one handed without pushing them around while trying to push the buttons, on something like a timer.
Creative professionals tend to have good muscle memory and a sense of 3D space, and are more comfortable moving objects in reality than looking at a screen. They do specific things that require multitasking in realtime, and have the talent to do so, and they have things they do so often it's worth buying and learning a dedicated box.
Power tools often only have 2 frequently used controls, or 1, just trigger and direction, and are used all day, so it makes sense there.
Kitchen stoves need fast adjustment but no exact precision, unless you're a pro chef you crank it up to boil stuff, then turn it down till it seems about right, pretty good fit for analog.
But for most of my interactions with tech screens are great. They tightly couple input and output and make internal state immediately obvious. They're one of the defining aspects of most "tech products" as opposed to just a tool that was made with tech.
https://twitter.com/mwichary/status/1173829224026628101
But then I'll post it anyway because what the hell. Perfect being the enemy of the good-enough-for-a-laugh, and all.
http://www.danamania.com/605/
I have a Quadra 605 which compiles NetBSD pkgsrc binaries named after her :)
* edit * I think she may've gotten Mac OS X running on a Centris 650, not a Quadra 605:
https://www.applefritter.com/node/5103