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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36936 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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I don’t know if things have been getting worse since the Industrial Revolution. There are many things that are great. But I do think it requires some idiosyncratic leaders. I’m typing this on an iPhone. It is a fine device. But one thing I’ve noticed is it doesn’t always “just work.” Sometimes simple functionality goes awry in a way it didn’t ten years ago. Yes, it has all sorts of cool other functionality but those extra bells and whistles don’t really make up for simple reliability. I’m probably mythologizing here a bit but it was different when Jobs was alive. One of his mantra’s was to make sure the whole process was simple for the end customer. Sure, it might be difficult to do as cool of things as you could on other computers etc, but the simple things just worked and the simple basic things is what most people need.

I don’t know if things have been getting worse since the Industrial Revolution.

Ooh! Ooh! (waves hand) I know!

But what if you aren't a dying child?

We'll all have our own subjective preferences, but I despised the iPhone when Jobs was alive. The level of locked-down rigidity was incredibly grating to me, the typing interface was clunky and unusable, and every time I grabbed one I found it to be a terrible product. I switched from Android to iPhone well after his death and now find the product pretty enjoyable. I don't really see the shortage of reliability, although there are certainly applications that just plain suck, I don't really view that as Apple's fault.

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