I can’t help but feel like that Services graph going up cartoonishly is inversely proportional to the pleasure of using Apple’s products. But it’s entirely possible that I’m just a crotchety old man.
Computers were fun and exciting 30-40 years ago. Now they’re just an endless stream of dickovers, cookie permission dialogs, inane security interruptions (yes, I want to paste into Notes from Safari—why do I have to confirm that?!), and having to receive a text message every time I want to access a bank account. All the joy has been sucked out.
After a day at work of programming, I used to come home and work on personal or purely recreational programming projects. Not any more. Now I’d much rather walk my dog or go play in my woodshop.
You’ve nailed the problem, at least for us old folks. All the neat stuff we could imagine has been done. I’m sick and tired of change for the sake of change – or more accurately, change for the sake of pumping up the bottom line. It reminds me of tail fins on cars; the fins stuck out so far that one hit a pole I was trying to get out of a parking space.
I’d say a couple of human traits come into play with any technology that becomes embedded into daily life. First, novelty drives interest and delight. Second, levels of pleasure and joy decrease the more something is consumed or used. So, I’d say it’s natural a lot of people no longer constantly feel amazed by their Apple devices, the same way, say, flying business class for the 27th time is more about meeting expectations than feeling blown away or how that last french fry isn’t as satisfying as the first.
Personally, I hope I don’t ever become so jaded, incurious, or, as Ian Fleming wrote in a self-revealing passage, “thoroughly bored with the prospect of the day ahead,” that I stop being able to appreciate beauty or to savor an experience.
Agreed. But the reason depends on why you considered them fun.
For me, I’ve always been a programmer. A lot of the fun is making my computer do things. I had near total control in the 8-bit days (Apple II, C64, TRS-80, MS-DOS PC). Less so with GUI systems, because you have to work within the restrictions of the OS. And much less so today where critical features like multitasking, memory protection, networking and system security put a lot of limits on what you can do.
Fortunately, there is an outlet for this kind of fun. In addition to classic system emulators, there are projects making and selling new computers based on classic designs. Like the Commander X16, a new modern computer based on the high-level design principles of the Commodore 64. And the C64 Ultimate a newly designed C64 built with modern parts focusing on the retro-gaming community.
There is also the ability to develop software for small embedded devices, like the Arduino, ESP32 platform and Raspberry Pi. These let you code down to bare metal, if you are so inclined (the Raspberry Pi runs Linux, but there’s plenty of opportunity to hack the kernel to make it do what you want).
Then there’s customizability. In many respects, the reductions have gone hand-in-hand with OS product maturity and system security. In the old days of Mac OS and Windows, your app could pretty much tap into any and every system service, allowing you to radically alter the look and feel of the system. But those “haxies” would frequently destabilize the system. So the infrastructure needed to let them work has gone away. Fortunately, this is not (yet?) gone in the Linux world, where the most popular GUI/desktop systems provide standardized mechanisms for massive amounts of customization.
Then there the presence of “fun” apps. There were a lot of novel games (e.g., Crystal Quest and Dark Castle), and a lot of silly nonsense apps. And software companies that seemed to revel in this (e.g., Freeverse Software). And even somewhat in the realm of productivity software (e.g., Kai’s series of photo-editing apps). I’m not sure why these kinds of apps have fallen by the wayside over the years. I can only assume that developing a high quality app that people want to pay for is no longer practical for a small company, and larger companies just don’t have room for whimsy in their products.
I think much of this is life phase. When I was little, I really liked building towers with blocks. Not so much anymore.
30-40 years ago, we were exploring the boundaries of what the machines of the time could do, and it was exhilarating. Those same activities—fiddling app metadata with ResEdit, laying out a flyer in PageMaker, playing Lunatic Fringe—are no longer interesting.
Today, I’m having more fun than I’ve had since HyperCard developing things with AI that I was never able to do before because I lacked the development and design skills. I’ll be writing more about this soon in TidBITS.
This. Thank you for stating it. Now if Apple and developers would only hear it.
While I shared your hope a decade ago, now I fear it is too late. Sorry for the downer.
Okay, I’m weird, but I really enjoyed the Cheshire app. When it ran, it put up an image of the Cheshire cat, which slowly (over about ten seconds) faded away. When the image was all gone, so was the app. The app deleted itself. It was such a nonsensical notion, it was great.
Computers. Can’t live with them; can’t live without them.
In other words experience. Some of us remember a time when actually useful features were added and when updates were issued because the experience actually became better. AI slop or ads in Maps is hard to sell as progress for those of us who remember Dark Castle or Word 5.
To me a relevant change is that I used to sit in front of my Mac and just have fun. Now I sit in front of my Mac because it is the least painful way to get a certain task done. There is a vast difference between those two scenarios. And I am 100% certain this is not just because I’m 40 years older, but because the way computers and software are designed and marketed has been changed fundamentally. Priorities have shifted. People are interested in Apple not because they’re the underdog with the best GUI, but because 10% of folks’ 401(k) is in AAPL. That changes everything.
I forget what it was called, but there was a fun little program that had a little animated dog run across the screen of classic Macs from time to time. It was completely pointless, aside from being fun.
Well, to an extent. It’s still possible to use Word 5 in an emulator if that’s what floats your boat. But back when Word 5 (and WriteNow and FullWrite and the original Nisus) were new, what was interesting was how they experimented with new ways of improving the experience. But they certainly weren’t the be-all and end-all of word processing. I didn’t even like Word 5 when it was new, far preferring first WriteNow and then Nisus.
I still do, but the things I do to have fun have changed, just like many other things in my life. The world moves on, and what we enjoy does as well.
Oh and the early days of iOS too! Stapler app, hotel bell app, Koi pond, rotary dial phone app, and the one with the yellow smiley face icon that sang something in faux-Spanish. Just good fun.
Absolutely, but that misses the point. Pages came along and did some things really well. But instead of just ironing out bugs and polishing it, it has now been turned into a services generator for Apple. This is a good example of what I mean by change of focus. Instead of aspiring to release the absolutely greatest word processor ever and fighting tooth and nail against tough competition with other great pieces of software, the race is now how to extract more ¢ every month from a billion-user base. That is a fundamental shift of priorities. That’s not my preference that has changed. My preference has always been to avoid shite. The change is that customer-unfriendly stagnant baloney is now being peddled as progress. It isn’t.
Definitely. And part of it is that I’m mainly a hardware guy. I’m seeing neat new things in lasers, light and optical things, I enjoy driving cars with standard transmissions and working with my hands. I enjoyed writing books that explained lasers and fiber optics, and reading and writing about the history of optics.
I find too much computer technology just gets in the way. Cataract surgery a decade ago gave me a new look on life because for the first time since I was in grade school it could see the world without having to look through thick glasses. I don’t mind wearing reading glasses when I’m working at a desk on a large screen, but I find smartphones clumsy I don’t wear reading glasses when I’m up and around, and my reading glasses can’t handle the tiny type on tiny screens. I find the endless changes in software get in the way and break things. And it makes me grumbly, so I should go outside and enjoy the lovely day.
The song Jared sings (badly) in his eponymous app is an actual Guatemalan waltz, Luna de Xelajú.
Later Jared apps have him singing other songs. There was also a Jared MP3 player that would randomly change playback speeds, to dubious comic effect.
It, and most of the rest of Freeverse’s catalog is now available on the Internet Archve. But none will run on a modern Mac. Most are 68K and PPC apps. But they might be playable via an emulator, for those who don’t have old Macs.
I would much rather get OS and application upgrades when they offer useful capabilities and improvements, whether or not that can happen on a yearly basis.
I liked the fun stuff in earlier OS versions. I had all the After Dark screensavers, loved Kaleidoscope skins (until Adobe apps started misbehaving when they were installed), and Sounds4Fun. I created sound suitcases to assign to various actions, so that I didn’t hear the same sound every time I emptied the trash or whatever. I recorded some of my own sounds, downloaded some sounds from BBSes and AOL, and bought some Star Trek and 2001 sound clips to use with Sounds4Fun. I also used QuicKeys extensively before OS X came along. Maybe if I really dug into Automator, I could approximate some of what I did with QuicKeys, but it isn’t nearly as straightforward.
I’d love to be able to customize a few more interface elements, like the appearance of the dock, in the recent OS releases. AFAIK cDock doesn’t work beyond Big Sur. And some of of the startup screens after Catalina that make me want to rip my eyes out really should be easy for the user to change.
And that would be a perfectly understandable reason to switch to something else that retains the ethos you like. Part of what was fun about Macs back in the day was that new things were coming along all the time, and you could always see if someone had a new take that fit you better. That’s still the case, but it does require the switching effort. Perhaps what has changed is that it has become harder to switch because of all the experience we’ve built up.
If anything, I think we’re entering a new era of Mac software because of AI lowering the bar to people who wouldn’t otherwise have been able to turn their ideas into software. We’ll see if those ideas are good or not, but some clearly are.
@Shamino Yes, bingo, Jared! Now that I see the long list of their work, I remember playing a round or two of Burning Monkey Solitaire on an olde G3 Powerbook last month, what fun! Thanks!
Again, I must resist these attempts at shifting blame onto users. Switching IMHO has become increasingly difficult because of a lack of true choice. Everywhere you look some megacorp is trying to corner the market and lock in people. Free market economy requires stiff competition. We customers are seeing less and less of that. And tech, unfortunately, rather than supporting consumers in breaking out of that, is spearheading the push.
Interesting point. Maybe it’s just me, change of lifestyle, age 60+ general cynicism, but it doesn’t seem like Apples updates provide fun or usefulness anymore. I haven’t found many new features I’ve wanted to use in Apple softwares in a while. Most of their services have no appeal and developments seem to be oriented more to a business model lock-in and surveillance than making digital experience fun.
It must be a challenge to find something new and fun, though, after so many decades of development and massive growth (maybe an amazing “AI” can help with that ;-). I am dabbling in another OS and find it appealing but also in comparison makes me appreciate Apples hardware and software reliability. Ah well.
In the late 80s I started using Ami - a french word processor that came with runtime Windows. After the full version of Windows was available it became Ami Pro. It was brilliant and took full advantage of Windows capabilities. There are still features that other word processors lack, including after Lotus bought it and tried to convince people it had turned into Notes.