Favorite Era in Technology

<p>Yeah, I’d probably say the mid-to-late 90s up-to the late 2000s.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Windows </strong>and <strong>macOS</strong> were both more exciting then: <em>Windows</em> had the merger of the 98SE/Me and 2000 codebases into XP, with its new-look. <em>Vista</em> then added loads of new "in-box apps", which <em>7 </em>then promptly removed in the vein of being lighter-than <em>Vista</em>. And macOS in the past I’d constantly see reviews and articles for each major new version highlighting all the new features, but in recent-years, it seems not-much significant is being added.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Games-consoles</strong> were more-interesting back then, too. Between the PS1, N64, Saturn, PC and GameBoy you clearly had <em>obvious</em> hardware-differences, which sometimes meant entirely different games on every platform (for example, the first two <em>Harry Potter</em> games had five distinct releases: PS1; PS2/GameCube/Xbox; PC/Mac; GameBoy Color; Gameboy Advance). Thesedays, Xbox Series and PS5 games look virtually-identical; the same games on PC and Mac will generally look-better and allow for faster FPS; and the Switch ports will run at a lower-res and framerate. But they are all essentially <em>the same game</em>. As much as I like some of the stuff <em>Digital Foundry </em>does, for example, is it really that interesting to look at the same game on PS5 and Xbox Series X and note literal 1-2FPS differences between them in key-scenes?</p><p><br></p><p>(It was also nice that games didn’t need constant updates then, nor microtransactions, "loot-crates" and all the rest of the stuff we have now! You put the disc or cartridge in and that was that!)</p><p><br></p><p>Sites on <strong>the Internet</strong> were certainly simpler then, though don’t forget the security nightmares that were <em>ActiveX </em>and<em> Macromedia Flash Player</em> (and the scourge of slow-loading websites and noisy, flashy adverts that latter one enabled!). Not to mention all the security risks with both! (And it is great to be done with dial-up, too!)</p><p><br></p><p>I can’t remember too-much now about the CPUs of that era, but the most-exciting thing that happened around the mid-to-late 2000s was <strong>the introduction of dual-core CPUs</strong>, finally ending the "megahertz race". Though thesedays clearly what Apple is doing with their own Silicon is worth-watching, though not-exactly something others couldn’t copy. You just have to ask yourself "am I happy to gain speed by having the RAM part of the same chip, or do I want it to remain user-upgradable, and so on an external bus?". I’d argue that for most average users they likely <em>never </em>upgrade the RAM, so the speed-boost would be better.</p><p><br></p><p><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">TV </strong><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">was certainly a lot-simpler in that time too — your only main choice was "shall I get a 4:3 CRT TV or a 16:9 one" and "how many SCART inputs does it have, and is one an RGB one". Until </span><em style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Freeview</em><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> came along, here in the UK there were </span><u style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">five</u><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> free-to-air channels (BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4, 5ive) and </span><em style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Sky</em> was about your only subscription option. Now, there are too-many different streaming-services and some will inevitably fail as people can’t afford them all!</p><p><br></p><p>That-said, some things thesedays are simpler. Take <strong>installing Windows</strong>. Back in the 90s, you’d have to create a bootable floppy-disk with a CD-ROM driver, run FDISK, create your Primary Partition, set it as Active, reboot, boot from the floppy again, format the partition you created, then run <em>Windows Setup</em>. It took until <em>Windows Me</em> to finally have all CDs be bootable without a floppy. <em>Vista</em> and onwards’ setups are far-easier. And updating Windows post-install is much-easier too. No more <em>Service Packs</em> then 100s of updates to do; just create the latest install-media, and once it’s installed, you’ll only have about five-to-six updates to install (not counting drivers) to bring it up-to-date.</p>