I think the author is correct to a point but I don't believe the examples they've chosen provide the best support for their case. Gen Z buying iPods and people buying N64 games again is not evidence of the monoculture breaking apart - it's a retreat into the past for the enlightened few because their needs are not being met by modern goods and services. You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s (or even a Zune).
Instead, I see the growth and momentum behind Linux and self-hosting as better evidence that change is afoot.
AGPTEK makes decent and affordable MP3 players that still have buttons, and the battery life is really solid (~40 hrs!). I think they also use a dedicated MP3 player OS rather than an Android reskin. That's my recommendation if you want a 2007-style MP3 player with more modern hardware.
> You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s
Tell me about it. My iPod Classic was in a terminal phase, and since I like to carry my music around instead of streaming arbitrary stuff, I bought a Sony Walkman mp3 (+ other formats) player. It's bad. It takes a long time to boot, the battery life is mediocre, the UI is mainly lists of things, searching always misses tracks or albums, the volume defaults to a pretty low level, and when you increase it, it interrupts you asking if you're sure.
And when I started copying my itunes collection to the "walkman" (it is branded Walkman, but not worthy of the name), it would constantly stop copying. The included software was useless, and wouldn't copy a single track, giving up after 5 to 10 minutes of scanning. I had to write a Python script to overcome problems with long directory and file names and copy them to the proper directory.
Worst of all: there's a very loud click when you stop a track (using wired headphones). It's as if they never even used it.
>You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s
wat. I'm curious how an ipod from 2000 is better than, for example, the Fiio jm21. It's worse in pretty much every possible way, other than the ipod might be appealing to a certain kind of 'old man shakes fist at clouds' type of user.
I can't speak from personal experience with the Fiio jm21, but I was a big user of a previous generation of Fiio, and while I imagine some technical leaps forward have been achieved with this generation (the Fiio M1 never, for instance, achieved gapless playback from 2015-2021, even though this was promised with every new software version), taking a quick look at it... this is just an android phone interface! App store? Chrome? I certainly don't want this from a dedicated music device
Beyond this, I'd say that the true advantage of the iPod Classic was a matter of polish and UX:
* Dedicated buttons/wheel/etc that are tactile instead of a touchscreen interface (the Fiio M1 was button-and-wheel based, but it never approached the quality of Apple engineering); I see the jm21 has some side-based buttons for pause/forward/back, which is nice, but a touchscreen as main interface still grates
* A way to interface with your albums that was delightful and visually dense (Cover Flow remains the single greatest music UI put forward)
> growth and momentum behind Linux and self-hosting as better evidence that change is afoot.
Linux is still not user friendly enough. Products from two decades ago are more user friendly than modern "mainstream" disros.
Look at Matrix and other OSS that wants to be mainstream. It's got awful UI/UX. And it's never taken off.
Gimp is an ugly beast with a bad name. Nobody's using that unless they're a Linux nerd.
I do see lots of people building retro game collections. Analogue 3D was a huge hit. Massive demand. It's sold out instantly five times. Palmer Luckey has a company building a similar product, and that's also sold out.
The clothing stores sell cassette tapes and vinyl. iPod and Zune are venerated.
My wife is Gen Z and into mainstream culture. She's all about retro. Polaroid, Instax, 2000's era digital cameras. The low end consumer digital camera I bought for $100 or so in 2004 is now selling for more than that. These things are wildly popular.
They're even hunting down old disposable one-use film cameras to pop off the lenses.
In any case, my wife knows this stuff. She doesn't know what Linux is.
> Linux is still not user friendly enough. Products from two decades ago are more user friendly than modern "mainstream" disros.
> Gimp is an ugly beast with a bad name. Nobody's using that unless they're a Linux nerd.
It depends on the use case. The vast majority of computer users nowadays use only the browser and an office suite. Even email clients are a thing of the past.
It's true that Gimp doesn't have a great UX, but who spends time photoretouching on the computer, when one can do it in a few seconds on the phone?
I'm not sure I agree with all of that - that single-purpose tech is making a real comeback. But I do have one example in my daily life that supports this: A Garmin watch.
Unlike "full" smartwatches (arbitrarily defined as: You can browse the web on them in some fashion) Garmin devices are intentionally limited but in return, what they do works very well and seems fully debugged. I spent several years recording outdoor activities with the Strava app on my phone, and always there was about a 1% failure rate where for one reason or another, the GPS trace was interrupted or corrupted. With the Garmin watch this simply doesn't happen. If it's recording, the recording is good, period.
It is that, that has somehow been lost. That devices that just do one thing and do it well have been replaced by apps on a device that, in the modern software fashion, are "mostly" debugged, get constant updates that may or may not remove bugs (or features!) and usually don't add anything useful. One app got an update which, on my lower-end phone, changed it from crisply responsive to incredibly slow (5+ second response time to a tap). It worked fine before.
In this, isn't it more that Garmin has been making sports watches for a long long time? And were given the grace by their customer base to just keep making that particular function better.
You could probably find the same with bike computers. Established brands that have a fairly predictable customer base tend to continue to focus on the thing that they do well. If you are having to chase a market that doesn't really exist, you find half baked features that speak to an idea, but often don't actually deliver on it.
For an amazing example of that last, look at how Amazon is destroying their echo market. If they just focused on "voice activated radio and timers," the device would be very different from the "we are trying desperately to make a new market for our smart assistant."
I've started to realize of late that a vast majority of tech is "making things and services that maximize the amount of money taken out of customer wallets" and not "making cool technology that works". They have just as much pride and put just as much care and craft into squeezing money out of consumers as developers and engineers put into their projects.
This creates a market where quality and craftsmanship and customer service reduce competitiveness and eat into profits. We've empowered and optimized a market for the enshittifiers, and they're damn good at what they do.
Tech hiring has shifted dramatically. It used to be people genuinely interested in, and passionate about technology. Top companies used to filter for this as well.
Now it's just anyone that wants a big paycheck. And the culture shift is reflected in the products.
It's shifted because you can outsource and race to the bottom, and abuse H1B and other programs to ensure you suppress US wages, and you fatten up the ranks of middle managers to make people leave every 3-4 years, stagnating wage growth, ensuring you get a constant stream of fresh, energized, underpaid workers, some of which can't complain or advocate for higher wages, and all participate in a culture of competitiveness and bean counting. Nobody builds relationships or sticks around long enough for policies and perks that are used to sell the package in the first place. There are all sorts of dark patterns that are taught to MBAs as "best practice". Throw in McKinsey et al, third party CYA vendors, and you have a rancid stew of bare minimum, low effort, "technically legal" policy and practices designed to screw everyone out of as much money as possible in order to make number go up. Companies that compete in the number go up game end up beating every other company that think they're in the something-as-a-service game, or the best quality product game.
We don't have to live like this. We can make them stop with reasonable regulations. That'd require term limits and nuking the dark money PACs and all the other corrupt bullshit, though, so who knows. Maybe we're all screwed, and "getting yours" is the best and only move left.
> A Timex ad went viral this year: “Know the time without seeing you have 1,249 unanswered emails.”
Having to micromanage notifications is why I have two phones - one without a SIM card. It's nice to be able to do stuff on the phone and know it won't bug you. I simply put the one with the SIM card elsewhere (other room, leave in car, etc). No - I'm not going to spend too much time learning how to "effectively" manage notifications on a smartphone (and if I do, have it change on me with some future update).
I've been saying it since around 2004-2005 - even before smartphones - that consolidating everything into one device is a bad idea.
One thing I really miss from the 80's and 90's: When you buy a product (hardware or software), its features and capabilities were stable. You never had to worry about some update changing the behavior on you.
I really like some of the health features on Apple Watch. But I won't buy it because I don't want it to be my watch, and I don't want to pair my Apple account with it. I just want the health features and nothing else.
Can you default it to off and not have any popups (during run/install) asking you to enable permissions to notify? Or do you have to decline once per app?
> And then decline for every app you install after that.
That's what I already have. And that's what I find painful. I don't want to have to decline at every install. I want a setting that is the default, and no prompts to grant permissions when I install.
> I really like some of the health features on Apple Watch. But I won't buy it because I don't want it to be my watch, and I don't want to pair my Apple account with it. I just want the health features and nothing else.
I use an Oura ring because of this. I want 1) no notifications 2) passive health monitoring 3) no subscription
I was early enough to be grandfathered into no subscription. The app itself gets worse all the time as they try to do provide higher level guidance and make the data harder to see. But it still serves its purpose.
If I had to pay the monthly subscription I might would probably forgo the category altogether.
Adding on to this I think it's bizarre how you need to have a phone to navigate life now and corporations just assume you have one. So for example, using QR codes to gain entry to things. It's weird to think about how we all carry around this expensive computer and think nothing of it. It's like when we laugh about how people in the Middle Ages carried a personal knife for eating because hosts wouldn't supply you with a knife. The knives even came in more fancy and expensive versions for the rich kind of like the Android/iPhone divide. I wonder if historians will talk about these phones in the future.
> Adding on to this I think it's bizarre how you need to have a phone to navigate life now and corporations just assume you have one.
I have a VoIP phone line from 2004. I was told yesterday that it was showing up as "Spam" on someone's phone. Sigh.
Also, for 2FA, some services allow phone calls. So I put in the VoIP line and not my cell phone. At some point, any given service switches to text-only for 2FA - but they don't notify me in advance and I'm locked out for good.
Even worse, some 2FA that allow phone calls just will not call my VoIP line. No warnings, etc. But if I put my mobile number it calls.
And QR codes for menus? I try not to eat at such establishments. Paper is cheap. I don't need a fancy menu. If you change your prices, just print new ones.
> Having to micromanage notifications is why I have two phones - one without a SIM card. It's nice to be able to do stuff on the phone and know it won't bug you. I simply put the one with the SIM card elsewhere (other room, leave in car, etc).
A lot of the Graphene/modscene folks use two phones (one cert and with minimal apps and the modded phone). I think it will become more popular with techies unless google goes fully closed source
> You never had to worry about some update changing the behavior on you.
The most WTF thing was when Airpods got a firmware update that worsened the noise cancellation, because some patent troll sued them saying it violated some patent...
The refurbished pebble has been perfect for my iPhone. The more limited functionality is exactly what I want. It tells me if someone is calling, but I can’t answer on it. It displays calendar notifications/reminders. It doesn’t do social media, it doesn’t text, it is just a glorified beeper and fun little gadget basically.
What a weird techno-optimist blog post, full of cherry-picked examples, with a twist of consumerism. Refreshing take in a sea of nihilism, but saying people are interested in Pokémon and N64 games again when it's mostly post-NFT "everything is an investment" mentality is cute in its naivety.
I think the key, and I’m basing this on people in real life, is that these are all different people, and the person toying with Linux desktop is not also buying an mp3 player and paper notebooks and that person isn’t the one who’s building a DVD library.
But what he’s onto is the thing that unifies all these weird little niches: they’re motivated by a bone deep annoyance with the most popular big tech offerings. None of these groups are all that big, but if you add them together there’s something here.
> is that these are all different people, and the person toying with Linux desktop is not also buying an mp3 player and paper notebooks and that person isn’t the one who’s building a DVD library.
Hey! That's (almost) me!
My desktop has been Linux for multiple decades.
I buy paper notebooks and write with pen. Always have.
mp3 player: You got me on that one. Although I did buy a Yoto (https://us.yotoplay.com/) and perhaps I should just use it as an mp3 player, but to be honest it's a poor player (no shuffle without app, etc). On the flip side, what I like about it is putting podcasts on cards. I can assign a card to any podcast feed and it will let me choose which episode to listen to.
DVD library: Nah - I used to have one and gave in to Plex. I don't know how many of my 20 year old DVDs will work now. Video files have more longevity. But someone did once post on HN how he had set up a physical card + NFC for his kids. A given card has a particular movie/TV show. They insert the card, and the TV plays just the movie on the card and turns off after. I'd definitely pay for that if I could buy it. I'm sure many parents would.
It was the "growth of Linux on the desktop" that broke my suspension of disbelief. If there was going to be any year where Linux made strong gains it should have been 2025 with the forced retirement of the "forever OS" Windows 10. But the needle barely moved at all.
The author paints a nice picture but there's a lot of wishful thinking and projection there.
Every time a new version of Windows drops there are legions of Windows users who say this is the final straw, they're keeping their old version until the updates stop then they'll use Linux. And every time that doesn't happen, they just keep going back to Microsoft like it's some sort of domestic violence situation. Their standards forever dropping, getting slow boiled like an apocryphal frog. I've seen this repeating over and over for the past 20 years at least.
At this point I don't even have sympathy for Windows users. They choose their lot.
And yet their standards still haven’t dropped low enough for Linux to be an acceptable replacement. I don’t think that’s a knock on the Windows user, but an indication that Linux desktop (and its replacement applications) still isn’t user-friendly enough for most people.
I hope Linux is never suitable for windows users, who's tolerance for abuse is matched in magnitude only by their lack of taste. You have no idea just how over I am with the very premise of Linux evangelism. I will go as far as find reasons or even just flimsy pretexts to oppose and criticize any change to Linux calculated to win over Windows users, because being co-users with such people is plainly against my own interests. My lack of sympathy extends to full blow gatekeeping.
What is "Linux for normals" besides Android anyway? If that's the crap you actually want, use it. But no, that's not good enough, you want to bring the riff raff into real distros to stink up the place. I hope this never works.
It can never be user-friendly enough if how windows does things is the yardstick. Windows users bemoan about how terrible Macs are all the time just because things are done differently, and they don't even try to figure it out. If it doesn't work like windows it's not good enough.
It was hackers building crazy stuff (Steve Woz' book detailed how he built one of the company's first computers, and he knew what every logic gate in it did) and then some people realized there's money to be made...
Any "founders" out there showing off their vibe-coded SaaS with money from their FAANG career that they got after finishing the bootcamp course? (I mock, as the inner voice asks "You had the talent, why aren't you in the 2 commas club?")
My ideal situation is that AI becomes commoditized so much that it yields relatively little value for the producers and an incredible amount of value for the consumers.
I don't really expect the prices to be this cheap for much longer, but my hope is that the seeds for the next generation of tech have already been sown.
It would be cool if software becomes so mundane and interchangeable that tech once again distinguishes itself with hardware.
> I don't really expect the prices to be this cheap for much longer
Open models are a great proxy (and scare tactic) to what we can expect. As they are already released, and won't change, you'll get basically the same capabilities in the future for current or decreasing cost (with normal hardware improvements trends). The current SotA for open models (dsv3, glm, minimax, devstral, etc) are at or above the mini versions of top labs (haikus, -mini, etc). With the exception of gemini 3.0-flash I would say. So, barring any black swan events in Taiwan, we can expect to be enough pressure to keep the prices at those points, or lower in the future. And we can expect the trend of open to chase top labs to continue. The biggest "gain" from open models is that they can't go backward. We can only stagnate or improve, on all fronts (capabilities, sizes, cost, etc).
Call me a pessimist, but I don't agree with this blog post at all. The author's views seems a bit biased and narrow based on their social circle perhaps.
> VR is no longer experimental
Till it has practical everyday uses and is at least semi affordable, I would categorize it as experimental still
> Meta shipped a wearable that normal people actually use, thanks to a clever Ray-Ban partnership (and associated equity stake). 3D printers have become real household products.
I don't know a single person who actually owns a Meta wearable device or a 3D printer. Isn't Meta actually shifting their focus away from metaverse?
> Design matters again. In our devices, and in our lives
Design has been forgotten. Just look at your phones and computers and most of the web.
All I see around me are people swiping away at their screens (most of the time not using their headphones), getting their fix in bursts of 15 seconds, rinse and repeat.
It's getting harder to have fun with tech when you have to deal with things like:
* Operating systems that are actively hostile to their users (Windows and OSX).
* iPhone and Android being the only 2 choice when it comes to phones (the author did mention this). The chances of getting a 3rd player here seems negligible.
* Everyone trying to shove AI down your throat. At no time in the past did we need mandates to use a "useful" thing.
* A couple of players consolidating all the power in the AI space and millions of people having no ethical issues about using products from these companies, or opening up their source code and data for these companies to come suck it all up.
* No real disruption or competition in the browser space. It will be a long time before Ladybird will be usable.
* Bloated, heavy websites with popups galore.
* Everything getting a redesign every couple of months for no reason
* You don't own anything anymore. Even building your own PC seems like it will become a thing of the past given how price are rising.
In the article, he lists his 14 major electronics purchases for 2025 along with "more mechanical watches than I can count". Serious question: is this a normal level of acquisition? I'm not a minimalist, but that's more electronics than I buy in a decade.
I can certainly relate to the mechanical watches. There is a certain beauty behind timepieces that makes them so alluring to me. It is the only thing I can effortlessly buy in the knowing that I am hoarding. I do feel guilty sometimes, but not often.
It's a combination of a few things, and actually uncharacteristic of me.
Many of these purchases are replacements for 10+ year old devices (a Canon 6D, an absolutely brain-dead iRobot, a smaller hard drive that finally filled up, etc.).
I’ve made very few tech purchases over the past several years. Part of that was a general lack of inspiration inside Apple’s ecosystem stranglehold, and I tend to hold onto their hardware for a long time anyway (I’m hoping to skip from M1 straight to M6 or later)
A desire to spend less time purely in the software domain. Hardware can be fun. I originally studied electrical engineering but ended up spending all of my career in software; the 3D printer ties into a few side projects I’m working on, with mixed success.
A preference for narrow, purpose-driven devices. I now use the Android phone for "serious" things with minimal distractions, and the iPhone for everything else. And if Apple or Google ever become untenable, I have some optionality (and this is my first non-Apple phone since my Blackberry).
The programmable lights seemed kind of unavoidable. If you want lighting where you can change the color, the bundled software and ecosystem bloat is largely unavoidable.
The mechanical watches are tied to travel and circumstance: a Casio from Japan, a Mondaine from Switzerland, and the Interstellar Hamilton Murph as a gift. I’d honestly be happy with two or three watches, but they have a way of finding me. I do tend to match watch to outfit color, which admittedly opens the door for a few more options.
Some of these are simplifications. Instead of upgrading my 12 year old Canon 6D to the mirrorless ecosystem with all its lenses, I opted for a single handheled camera.
In other cases, I bought alternative devices instead of upgrading within the same platform (my Mac and iPhone are both 5 years old). The alternatives turned out not be compelling enough to fully switch to, but found a niche as purpose driven devices. In many cases distraction free devices.
In some cases, the super upgrade cycle was driven by a desire to finally stop carrying a microUSB cable with me when I travel.
As for the mechanical watches, yes I have too many.
I'm in my 20's now, graduated secondary school (as IT Technician). In meantime cured marrow aplasia.
I love 2000's era (especially tech, but music too). I think almost everything about 2000's tech was superior, from hardware to software. Things were solid, build to last. Software had clean, simple user interface. The user was invited, not forced to do something. For me nothing can beat philosophy of XMB (XrossMediaBar).
I don't know how to find my way in all this IT thing now. Never liked programming, what always intetested me was hardware and IT administration. But every day I wake up it just gets worse. IaC, SaaS, software is worse than ever before. And don't forget hardware speculations.
In 2000's tech was so easy, now it's just annonying, harder and obfuscated with every day.
Strong disagree. While I share the 90s nostalgia, the trend of just relaunching everything is a sad reminder of how bad tech is today, not an exciting new development
This isn't really the author's point, but I think one effect of AI and the forthcoming robotics revolution will be the unrolling of a lot of consolidated supply chains for all sorts of products. It could usher in a renewed era of bespoke products.
For instance, when the cost of building a new (good) app goes to zero, it becomes economical to make a great app for a narrow niche, with a skeleton staff (maybe just one) and no VC money. And this can happen thousands of times over.
Robotics could open up bespoke local supply chains even beyond what's possible with a 3D printer today. For instance, if you had an actually dextrous humanoid robot "living" in your home, why wouldn't you have it just make all of your clothes? You could have any fabric, any style, exactly the right size. And only for the cost of materials (assuming you already own or lease the robot itself).
I do think the author is right in the big picture - the future will be more fun.
What the author describes seems to be more specific examples in his/her circle rather than a wider movement I’d say.
The walled gardens are imo getting worse. And opting out (dumb phone) isn’t the same thing as that dissolving.
That said I’m also cautiously optimistic in some areas. Linux on desktop in particular is on a good streak. Riscv seems promising. More people are understanding lock in risk etc.
But isn't Apple (the most egregious example IMO) losing a slew of cases in many jurisdictions (not just EU)? I think the consensus is very much that they've overplayed their hand and the bill is coming due
The regulation that I wish would happen that never will is user data sovereignty laws. It's obnoxious that there's not a way to back up my phone to my NAS.
I hope he's right! I'm terrified that like 4 companies own my entire life now. I do love the movement back to analog single-purpose devices. Would be neat if they had just enough tech to make them useful but not weaponized against me.
As an aside, can they bring back Symbian OS and Windows Phone?
> Antitrust pressure has slowed consolidation, opened app distribution, killed the anti-competitive iMessage and AirDrop moats
iMessage is still only available on Apple hardware. Apple’s malicious compliance has made developing apps for third party app stores a no-go. I have AltStore installed but there are no apps worth installing.
> iMessage is still only available on Apple hardware.
Yes, but I think the pressure is external. RCS brings many iMessage capabilities cross platform. As adoption increases I think the power and influence of iMessage will wane.
In my experience, people who "invest" in fancy watches usually have nothing of value to say. Same goes for people that buy supercars to drive on the street.
If it's the latter point from the purchase list that raised your ire, I've only ever purchased watches for fun. And that list would be a Hamilton Murph (the watch from Intersteller). Gifted to me, but < $1000
A Mondaine purchased from a Swiss railway station ($400)
Not strictly mechanical, but a Casio A168WA, purchased in Tokyo ($25)
Disagreements on the article are most welcome (and encouraged!), but should probably stick to content therein.
> Looking at my own purchases from 2025, the pattern becomes obviou
As far as I can tell he's among the techies that purchase a lot of e-junk each and every year, no matter the circumstances, not sure of how that's an improvement on anything.
Sort of the opposite, I've found everything uninspiring for the last decade or so and have rarely purchased anything, and when I have it's basically been Apple.
The below purchases are all durable things that should last at least 5 years. An E-Junk list would be riddled with IOT, and devices that forcibly ratcheted tech in ("smart water bottle", etc).
The Leica, Matic and Kindle replace 10+ year old devices.
The Oura replaces itself, with a heavily diminished battery. The hard drive replaces something barely half the size.
The Android is to create a minimal distraction device with only select apps, while slowly weening myself out of the Apple ecosystem stranglehold.
The TRMNL is a side-project, to build some custom code for. The Bambu is used for hobby projects at least weekly and frankly should have been purchased years ago.
The ASUS was a misadventure back into dual boot Windows / Linux after 15 years on Mac. Demoted from a CUDA dev machine to general use second computer.
The Ray Ban Metas only really make an appearance when I travel, but when I do, I'm very glad to have them. Provides a very different perspective than a handheld camera or smartphone, especially in dense areas (walking through crowded outdoor markets, etc)
The reason retro tech is fun now is because no one is making more of it, and the retro tech is as advanced as it could be without being ruined by enshittification and planned obsolescence. Every old piece of tech you come across is now a relic, rich in lore and history, and sometimes mystery when there are few people around who understand how it works anymore. These old devices are no longer things you just buy from a big corp, you have to find them in a pile of junk somewhere or trade a bit of money for it from some person, and on top of that the condition of the devices vary greatly, they are not fungible. This hunt for old tech feels very post-apocalyptic at times.
People will also look for creative ways to upgrade old tech and implement some quality of life improvements, doing things the original creators never thought of, or were simply limited by the technologies of their times. The result is much more variety in devices, no more homogeneous products.
And this effect will only get more pronounced as time goes on. Consider that in the year 2077, a humble N64 could be something sacred, handed down through many generations, each leaving their mark on the device, and people developing their own homebrewed games motivated more by fun than capitalistic ambition, or just pushing the limits of the device.
> Antitrust pressure has slowed consolidation, opened app distribution, killed the anti-competitive iMessage and AirDrop moats, and made big tech cautious about horizontal expansion.
Huh? In what reality is this remotely true? It certainly isn't in the one I live in.
The Big 6 control all media in the US, and mergers happen all the time (WBD->Netflix->Paramount?). Google owns web search and web browsing; Amazon owns e-commerce; Alphabet and Meta own adtech; Amazon, Microsoft, and Google own cloud computing; etc. All of these companies make frequent acquisitions and expansions. "Antitrust pressure" is just the cost of doing business.
What I think the author is referring to are the minor concessions Apple has made in some territories, mainly the EU. And even there, they're using every dirty trick at their disposal to do the absolute bare minimum.
Anti-competitive moats are still alive and well, and growing larger. It's curious that the author is positive about "AI", when that is the ultimate moat builder right now. Nobody can basically touch the largest players, since they have the most resources and access to mind-bogglingly large datacenters.
What a silly article. I don't understand how anyone can consider the current state of the tech industry "fun". I've been following it for nearly 30 years now, and it has gradually been devolving into a place that's anything but fun. Especially in these last ~5 years. I wish I could be optimistic about the future, but it should be obvious to anyone by now that technology, mostly but not entirely by misuse, is the cause of most of our problems.
I think the author is correct to a point but I don't believe the examples they've chosen provide the best support for their case. Gen Z buying iPods and people buying N64 games again is not evidence of the monoculture breaking apart - it's a retreat into the past for the enlightened few because their needs are not being met by modern goods and services. You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s (or even a Zune).
Instead, I see the growth and momentum behind Linux and self-hosting as better evidence that change is afoot.
AGPTEK makes decent and affordable MP3 players that still have buttons, and the battery life is really solid (~40 hrs!). I think they also use a dedicated MP3 player OS rather than an Android reskin. That's my recommendation if you want a 2007-style MP3 player with more modern hardware.
> You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s
Tell me about it. My iPod Classic was in a terminal phase, and since I like to carry my music around instead of streaming arbitrary stuff, I bought a Sony Walkman mp3 (+ other formats) player. It's bad. It takes a long time to boot, the battery life is mediocre, the UI is mainly lists of things, searching always misses tracks or albums, the volume defaults to a pretty low level, and when you increase it, it interrupts you asking if you're sure.
And when I started copying my itunes collection to the "walkman" (it is branded Walkman, but not worthy of the name), it would constantly stop copying. The included software was useless, and wouldn't copy a single track, giving up after 5 to 10 minutes of scanning. I had to write a Python script to overcome problems with long directory and file names and copy them to the proper directory.
Worst of all: there's a very loud click when you stop a track (using wired headphones). It's as if they never even used it.
>You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s
wat. I'm curious how an ipod from 2000 is better than, for example, the Fiio jm21. It's worse in pretty much every possible way, other than the ipod might be appealing to a certain kind of 'old man shakes fist at clouds' type of user.
The jm21 runs Android, does that not make it a multi-purpose device without tactile, bespoke controls and against the main focus of the article?
I'd also argue that the manual[0] leaves something to be desired compared to those original iPods.
[0] https://fiio-user-manual.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/EN/JM2...
I can't speak from personal experience with the Fiio jm21, but I was a big user of a previous generation of Fiio, and while I imagine some technical leaps forward have been achieved with this generation (the Fiio M1 never, for instance, achieved gapless playback from 2015-2021, even though this was promised with every new software version), taking a quick look at it... this is just an android phone interface! App store? Chrome? I certainly don't want this from a dedicated music device
Beyond this, I'd say that the true advantage of the iPod Classic was a matter of polish and UX:
* Dedicated buttons/wheel/etc that are tactile instead of a touchscreen interface (the Fiio M1 was button-and-wheel based, but it never approached the quality of Apple engineering); I see the jm21 has some side-based buttons for pause/forward/back, which is nice, but a touchscreen as main interface still grates * A way to interface with your albums that was delightful and visually dense (Cover Flow remains the single greatest music UI put forward)
> growth and momentum behind Linux and self-hosting as better evidence that change is afoot.
Linux is still not user friendly enough. Products from two decades ago are more user friendly than modern "mainstream" disros.
Look at Matrix and other OSS that wants to be mainstream. It's got awful UI/UX. And it's never taken off.
Gimp is an ugly beast with a bad name. Nobody's using that unless they're a Linux nerd.
I do see lots of people building retro game collections. Analogue 3D was a huge hit. Massive demand. It's sold out instantly five times. Palmer Luckey has a company building a similar product, and that's also sold out.
The clothing stores sell cassette tapes and vinyl. iPod and Zune are venerated.
My wife is Gen Z and into mainstream culture. She's all about retro. Polaroid, Instax, 2000's era digital cameras. The low end consumer digital camera I bought for $100 or so in 2004 is now selling for more than that. These things are wildly popular.
They're even hunting down old disposable one-use film cameras to pop off the lenses.
In any case, my wife knows this stuff. She doesn't know what Linux is.
> Linux is still not user friendly enough. Products from two decades ago are more user friendly than modern "mainstream" disros.
> Gimp is an ugly beast with a bad name. Nobody's using that unless they're a Linux nerd.
It depends on the use case. The vast majority of computer users nowadays use only the browser and an office suite. Even email clients are a thing of the past.
It's true that Gimp doesn't have a great UX, but who spends time photoretouching on the computer, when one can do it in a few seconds on the phone?
I'm not sure I agree with all of that - that single-purpose tech is making a real comeback. But I do have one example in my daily life that supports this: A Garmin watch.
Unlike "full" smartwatches (arbitrarily defined as: You can browse the web on them in some fashion) Garmin devices are intentionally limited but in return, what they do works very well and seems fully debugged. I spent several years recording outdoor activities with the Strava app on my phone, and always there was about a 1% failure rate where for one reason or another, the GPS trace was interrupted or corrupted. With the Garmin watch this simply doesn't happen. If it's recording, the recording is good, period.
It is that, that has somehow been lost. That devices that just do one thing and do it well have been replaced by apps on a device that, in the modern software fashion, are "mostly" debugged, get constant updates that may or may not remove bugs (or features!) and usually don't add anything useful. One app got an update which, on my lower-end phone, changed it from crisply responsive to incredibly slow (5+ second response time to a tap). It worked fine before.
In this, isn't it more that Garmin has been making sports watches for a long long time? And were given the grace by their customer base to just keep making that particular function better.
You could probably find the same with bike computers. Established brands that have a fairly predictable customer base tend to continue to focus on the thing that they do well. If you are having to chase a market that doesn't really exist, you find half baked features that speak to an idea, but often don't actually deliver on it.
For an amazing example of that last, look at how Amazon is destroying their echo market. If they just focused on "voice activated radio and timers," the device would be very different from the "we are trying desperately to make a new market for our smart assistant."
Out of curiosity, which Garmin watch model do you have?
I've started to realize of late that a vast majority of tech is "making things and services that maximize the amount of money taken out of customer wallets" and not "making cool technology that works". They have just as much pride and put just as much care and craft into squeezing money out of consumers as developers and engineers put into their projects.
This creates a market where quality and craftsmanship and customer service reduce competitiveness and eat into profits. We've empowered and optimized a market for the enshittifiers, and they're damn good at what they do.
Tech hiring has shifted dramatically. It used to be people genuinely interested in, and passionate about technology. Top companies used to filter for this as well.
Now it's just anyone that wants a big paycheck. And the culture shift is reflected in the products.
It's shifted because you can outsource and race to the bottom, and abuse H1B and other programs to ensure you suppress US wages, and you fatten up the ranks of middle managers to make people leave every 3-4 years, stagnating wage growth, ensuring you get a constant stream of fresh, energized, underpaid workers, some of which can't complain or advocate for higher wages, and all participate in a culture of competitiveness and bean counting. Nobody builds relationships or sticks around long enough for policies and perks that are used to sell the package in the first place. There are all sorts of dark patterns that are taught to MBAs as "best practice". Throw in McKinsey et al, third party CYA vendors, and you have a rancid stew of bare minimum, low effort, "technically legal" policy and practices designed to screw everyone out of as much money as possible in order to make number go up. Companies that compete in the number go up game end up beating every other company that think they're in the something-as-a-service game, or the best quality product game.
We don't have to live like this. We can make them stop with reasonable regulations. That'd require term limits and nuking the dark money PACs and all the other corrupt bullshit, though, so who knows. Maybe we're all screwed, and "getting yours" is the best and only move left.
> A Timex ad went viral this year: “Know the time without seeing you have 1,249 unanswered emails.”
Having to micromanage notifications is why I have two phones - one without a SIM card. It's nice to be able to do stuff on the phone and know it won't bug you. I simply put the one with the SIM card elsewhere (other room, leave in car, etc). No - I'm not going to spend too much time learning how to "effectively" manage notifications on a smartphone (and if I do, have it change on me with some future update).
I've been saying it since around 2004-2005 - even before smartphones - that consolidating everything into one device is a bad idea.
One thing I really miss from the 80's and 90's: When you buy a product (hardware or software), its features and capabilities were stable. You never had to worry about some update changing the behavior on you.
I really like some of the health features on Apple Watch. But I won't buy it because I don't want it to be my watch, and I don't want to pair my Apple account with it. I just want the health features and nothing else.
My strategy here is to default notifications off for everything other than calls and texts.
And then manually open Gmail to check mail, manually open Instagram when I feel like checking notifications, etc.
It’s such a better experience when you’re opening an app because you want to, and not because a notification is baiting you.
I actually have an Apple Watch that I mostly use for hiking. I just use a $30 Timex most of the time that I don't need to charge.
iOS or Android?
Can you default it to off and not have any popups (during run/install) asking you to enable permissions to notify? Or do you have to decline once per app?
iOS. Do a 1 time clean up by manually turning everything off. And then decline for every app you install after that.
I can’t believe I used to be one of those people who got every single email delivered to their smart watch.
> And then decline for every app you install after that.
That's what I already have. And that's what I find painful. I don't want to have to decline at every install. I want a setting that is the default, and no prompts to grant permissions when I install.
> I really like some of the health features on Apple Watch. But I won't buy it because I don't want it to be my watch, and I don't want to pair my Apple account with it. I just want the health features and nothing else.
I use an Oura ring because of this. I want 1) no notifications 2) passive health monitoring 3) no subscription
I was early enough to be grandfathered into no subscription. The app itself gets worse all the time as they try to do provide higher level guidance and make the data harder to see. But it still serves its purpose.
If I had to pay the monthly subscription I might would probably forgo the category altogether.
Adding on to this I think it's bizarre how you need to have a phone to navigate life now and corporations just assume you have one. So for example, using QR codes to gain entry to things. It's weird to think about how we all carry around this expensive computer and think nothing of it. It's like when we laugh about how people in the Middle Ages carried a personal knife for eating because hosts wouldn't supply you with a knife. The knives even came in more fancy and expensive versions for the rich kind of like the Android/iPhone divide. I wonder if historians will talk about these phones in the future.
> Adding on to this I think it's bizarre how you need to have a phone to navigate life now and corporations just assume you have one.
I have a VoIP phone line from 2004. I was told yesterday that it was showing up as "Spam" on someone's phone. Sigh.
Also, for 2FA, some services allow phone calls. So I put in the VoIP line and not my cell phone. At some point, any given service switches to text-only for 2FA - but they don't notify me in advance and I'm locked out for good.
Even worse, some 2FA that allow phone calls just will not call my VoIP line. No warnings, etc. But if I put my mobile number it calls.
And QR codes for menus? I try not to eat at such establishments. Paper is cheap. I don't need a fancy menu. If you change your prices, just print new ones.
> Having to micromanage notifications is why I have two phones - one without a SIM card. It's nice to be able to do stuff on the phone and know it won't bug you. I simply put the one with the SIM card elsewhere (other room, leave in car, etc).
A lot of the Graphene/modscene folks use two phones (one cert and with minimal apps and the modded phone). I think it will become more popular with techies unless google goes fully closed source
> You never had to worry about some update changing the behavior on you.
The most WTF thing was when Airpods got a firmware update that worsened the noise cancellation, because some patent troll sued them saying it violated some patent...
The refurbished pebble has been perfect for my iPhone. The more limited functionality is exactly what I want. It tells me if someone is calling, but I can’t answer on it. It displays calendar notifications/reminders. It doesn’t do social media, it doesn’t text, it is just a glorified beeper and fun little gadget basically.
What a weird techno-optimist blog post, full of cherry-picked examples, with a twist of consumerism. Refreshing take in a sea of nihilism, but saying people are interested in Pokémon and N64 games again when it's mostly post-NFT "everything is an investment" mentality is cute in its naivety.
I think the key, and I’m basing this on people in real life, is that these are all different people, and the person toying with Linux desktop is not also buying an mp3 player and paper notebooks and that person isn’t the one who’s building a DVD library.
But what he’s onto is the thing that unifies all these weird little niches: they’re motivated by a bone deep annoyance with the most popular big tech offerings. None of these groups are all that big, but if you add them together there’s something here.
> is that these are all different people, and the person toying with Linux desktop is not also buying an mp3 player and paper notebooks and that person isn’t the one who’s building a DVD library.
Hey! That's (almost) me!
My desktop has been Linux for multiple decades.
I buy paper notebooks and write with pen. Always have.
mp3 player: You got me on that one. Although I did buy a Yoto (https://us.yotoplay.com/) and perhaps I should just use it as an mp3 player, but to be honest it's a poor player (no shuffle without app, etc). On the flip side, what I like about it is putting podcasts on cards. I can assign a card to any podcast feed and it will let me choose which episode to listen to.
DVD library: Nah - I used to have one and gave in to Plex. I don't know how many of my 20 year old DVDs will work now. Video files have more longevity. But someone did once post on HN how he had set up a physical card + NFC for his kids. A given card has a particular movie/TV show. They insert the card, and the TV plays just the movie on the card and turns off after. I'd definitely pay for that if I could buy it. I'm sure many parents would.
It was the "growth of Linux on the desktop" that broke my suspension of disbelief. If there was going to be any year where Linux made strong gains it should have been 2025 with the forced retirement of the "forever OS" Windows 10. But the needle barely moved at all.
The author paints a nice picture but there's a lot of wishful thinking and projection there.
Steam is continuing to make it easier to leave Windows for gamers.
And my comment about desktop usage is based on these projections: https://www.webpronews.com/linux-breaks-5-desktop-share-in-u...
Every time a new version of Windows drops there are legions of Windows users who say this is the final straw, they're keeping their old version until the updates stop then they'll use Linux. And every time that doesn't happen, they just keep going back to Microsoft like it's some sort of domestic violence situation. Their standards forever dropping, getting slow boiled like an apocryphal frog. I've seen this repeating over and over for the past 20 years at least.
At this point I don't even have sympathy for Windows users. They choose their lot.
> Their standards forever dropping
And yet their standards still haven’t dropped low enough for Linux to be an acceptable replacement. I don’t think that’s a knock on the Windows user, but an indication that Linux desktop (and its replacement applications) still isn’t user-friendly enough for most people.
I hope Linux is never suitable for windows users, who's tolerance for abuse is matched in magnitude only by their lack of taste. You have no idea just how over I am with the very premise of Linux evangelism. I will go as far as find reasons or even just flimsy pretexts to oppose and criticize any change to Linux calculated to win over Windows users, because being co-users with such people is plainly against my own interests. My lack of sympathy extends to full blow gatekeeping.
What is "Linux for normals" besides Android anyway? If that's the crap you actually want, use it. But no, that's not good enough, you want to bring the riff raff into real distros to stink up the place. I hope this never works.
It can never be user-friendly enough if how windows does things is the yardstick. Windows users bemoan about how terrible Macs are all the time just because things are done differently, and they don't even try to figure it out. If it doesn't work like windows it's not good enough.
The market for something like a ModRetro or Analogue 3D surely can't be entirely about everything being an investment?
Pure nostalgia and nothing more
Tech was probably the most fun for me in the mid to late 2000s. Definitely a lot more fun than whatever the tech industry has become now in 2026.
Nah things were already going to shit then. Sure it kept getting worse, but that was well on the downslope.
Everything now has to be fully vetted before trying it as opposed to making something weird and quirky. Sad! I miss those days.
I'd generally agree, but 3D printer mentioned in the blog post is probably one thing that I'd wish to have back then.
Tech is being run by ignorant financiers and college dropouts who don't understand institutional knowledge or technology.
It was hackers building crazy stuff (Steve Woz' book detailed how he built one of the company's first computers, and he knew what every logic gate in it did) and then some people realized there's money to be made...
Any "founders" out there showing off their vibe-coded SaaS with money from their FAANG career that they got after finishing the bootcamp course? (I mock, as the inner voice asks "You had the talent, why aren't you in the 2 commas club?")
My ideal situation is that AI becomes commoditized so much that it yields relatively little value for the producers and an incredible amount of value for the consumers.
I don't really expect the prices to be this cheap for much longer, but my hope is that the seeds for the next generation of tech have already been sown.
It would be cool if software becomes so mundane and interchangeable that tech once again distinguishes itself with hardware.
> I don't really expect the prices to be this cheap for much longer
Open models are a great proxy (and scare tactic) to what we can expect. As they are already released, and won't change, you'll get basically the same capabilities in the future for current or decreasing cost (with normal hardware improvements trends). The current SotA for open models (dsv3, glm, minimax, devstral, etc) are at or above the mini versions of top labs (haikus, -mini, etc). With the exception of gemini 3.0-flash I would say. So, barring any black swan events in Taiwan, we can expect to be enough pressure to keep the prices at those points, or lower in the future. And we can expect the trend of open to chase top labs to continue. The biggest "gain" from open models is that they can't go backward. We can only stagnate or improve, on all fronts (capabilities, sizes, cost, etc).
Good points. I'm even more optimistic now!
Call me a pessimist, but I don't agree with this blog post at all. The author's views seems a bit biased and narrow based on their social circle perhaps.
> VR is no longer experimental
Till it has practical everyday uses and is at least semi affordable, I would categorize it as experimental still
> Meta shipped a wearable that normal people actually use, thanks to a clever Ray-Ban partnership (and associated equity stake). 3D printers have become real household products.
I don't know a single person who actually owns a Meta wearable device or a 3D printer. Isn't Meta actually shifting their focus away from metaverse?
> Design matters again. In our devices, and in our lives
Design has been forgotten. Just look at your phones and computers and most of the web.
All I see around me are people swiping away at their screens (most of the time not using their headphones), getting their fix in bursts of 15 seconds, rinse and repeat.
It's getting harder to have fun with tech when you have to deal with things like:
* Operating systems that are actively hostile to their users (Windows and OSX).
* iPhone and Android being the only 2 choice when it comes to phones (the author did mention this). The chances of getting a 3rd player here seems negligible.
* Everyone trying to shove AI down your throat. At no time in the past did we need mandates to use a "useful" thing.
* A couple of players consolidating all the power in the AI space and millions of people having no ethical issues about using products from these companies, or opening up their source code and data for these companies to come suck it all up.
* No real disruption or competition in the browser space. It will be a long time before Ladybird will be usable.
* Bloated, heavy websites with popups galore.
* Everything getting a redesign every couple of months for no reason
* You don't own anything anymore. Even building your own PC seems like it will become a thing of the past given how price are rising.
I could go on.
In the article, he lists his 14 major electronics purchases for 2025 along with "more mechanical watches than I can count". Serious question: is this a normal level of acquisition? I'm not a minimalist, but that's more electronics than I buy in a decade.
He likely has good money, or just decided on a shopping spree and won't buy much in the next few years.
I can certainly relate to the mechanical watches. There is a certain beauty behind timepieces that makes them so alluring to me. It is the only thing I can effortlessly buy in the knowing that I am hoarding. I do feel guilty sometimes, but not often.
It's a combination of a few things, and actually uncharacteristic of me.
Many of these purchases are replacements for 10+ year old devices (a Canon 6D, an absolutely brain-dead iRobot, a smaller hard drive that finally filled up, etc.).
I’ve made very few tech purchases over the past several years. Part of that was a general lack of inspiration inside Apple’s ecosystem stranglehold, and I tend to hold onto their hardware for a long time anyway (I’m hoping to skip from M1 straight to M6 or later)
A desire to spend less time purely in the software domain. Hardware can be fun. I originally studied electrical engineering but ended up spending all of my career in software; the 3D printer ties into a few side projects I’m working on, with mixed success.
A preference for narrow, purpose-driven devices. I now use the Android phone for "serious" things with minimal distractions, and the iPhone for everything else. And if Apple or Google ever become untenable, I have some optionality (and this is my first non-Apple phone since my Blackberry).
The programmable lights seemed kind of unavoidable. If you want lighting where you can change the color, the bundled software and ecosystem bloat is largely unavoidable.
The mechanical watches are tied to travel and circumstance: a Casio from Japan, a Mondaine from Switzerland, and the Interstellar Hamilton Murph as a gift. I’d honestly be happy with two or three watches, but they have a way of finding me. I do tend to match watch to outfit color, which admittedly opens the door for a few more options.
Probably once you're buying stuff that often, you have so much stuff that you forget what you already have and end up buying even more.
Some of these are simplifications. Instead of upgrading my 12 year old Canon 6D to the mirrorless ecosystem with all its lenses, I opted for a single handheled camera.
In other cases, I bought alternative devices instead of upgrading within the same platform (my Mac and iPhone are both 5 years old). The alternatives turned out not be compelling enough to fully switch to, but found a niche as purpose driven devices. In many cases distraction free devices.
In some cases, the super upgrade cycle was driven by a desire to finally stop carrying a microUSB cable with me when I travel.
As for the mechanical watches, yes I have too many.
I'm in my 20's now, graduated secondary school (as IT Technician). In meantime cured marrow aplasia.
I love 2000's era (especially tech, but music too). I think almost everything about 2000's tech was superior, from hardware to software. Things were solid, build to last. Software had clean, simple user interface. The user was invited, not forced to do something. For me nothing can beat philosophy of XMB (XrossMediaBar).
I don't know how to find my way in all this IT thing now. Never liked programming, what always intetested me was hardware and IT administration. But every day I wake up it just gets worse. IaC, SaaS, software is worse than ever before. And don't forget hardware speculations.
In 2000's tech was so easy, now it's just annonying, harder and obfuscated with every day.
I miss 2000's simplicity.
Strong disagree. While I share the 90s nostalgia, the trend of just relaunching everything is a sad reminder of how bad tech is today, not an exciting new development
This isn't really the author's point, but I think one effect of AI and the forthcoming robotics revolution will be the unrolling of a lot of consolidated supply chains for all sorts of products. It could usher in a renewed era of bespoke products.
For instance, when the cost of building a new (good) app goes to zero, it becomes economical to make a great app for a narrow niche, with a skeleton staff (maybe just one) and no VC money. And this can happen thousands of times over.
Robotics could open up bespoke local supply chains even beyond what's possible with a 3D printer today. For instance, if you had an actually dextrous humanoid robot "living" in your home, why wouldn't you have it just make all of your clothes? You could have any fabric, any style, exactly the right size. And only for the cost of materials (assuming you already own or lease the robot itself).
I do think the author is right in the big picture - the future will be more fun.
What the author describes seems to be more specific examples in his/her circle rather than a wider movement I’d say.
The walled gardens are imo getting worse. And opting out (dumb phone) isn’t the same thing as that dissolving.
That said I’m also cautiously optimistic in some areas. Linux on desktop in particular is on a good streak. Riscv seems promising. More people are understanding lock in risk etc.
> The walled gardens are imo getting worse
But isn't Apple (the most egregious example IMO) losing a slew of cases in many jurisdictions (not just EU)? I think the consensus is very much that they've overplayed their hand and the bill is coming due
Various player are getting slapped with fines but haven’t seen much sign of it having effect.
Think the fines need more zeros - especially if the behaviour is egregious
The regulation that I wish would happen that never will is user data sovereignty laws. It's obnoxious that there's not a way to back up my phone to my NAS.
I hope he's right! I'm terrified that like 4 companies own my entire life now. I do love the movement back to analog single-purpose devices. Would be neat if they had just enough tech to make them useful but not weaponized against me.
As an aside, can they bring back Symbian OS and Windows Phone?
> Antitrust pressure has slowed consolidation, opened app distribution, killed the anti-competitive iMessage and AirDrop moats
iMessage is still only available on Apple hardware. Apple’s malicious compliance has made developing apps for third party app stores a no-go. I have AltStore installed but there are no apps worth installing.
> iMessage is still only available on Apple hardware.
Yes, but I think the pressure is external. RCS brings many iMessage capabilities cross platform. As adoption increases I think the power and influence of iMessage will wane.
In my experience, people who "invest" in fancy watches usually have nothing of value to say. Same goes for people that buy supercars to drive on the street.
If it's the latter point from the purchase list that raised your ire, I've only ever purchased watches for fun. And that list would be a Hamilton Murph (the watch from Intersteller). Gifted to me, but < $1000
A Mondaine purchased from a Swiss railway station ($400)
Not strictly mechanical, but a Casio A168WA, purchased in Tokyo ($25)
Disagreements on the article are most welcome (and encouraged!), but should probably stick to content therein.
> Looking at my own purchases from 2025, the pattern becomes obviou
As far as I can tell he's among the techies that purchase a lot of e-junk each and every year, no matter the circumstances, not sure of how that's an improvement on anything.
Sort of the opposite, I've found everything uninspiring for the last decade or so and have rarely purchased anything, and when I have it's basically been Apple.
The below purchases are all durable things that should last at least 5 years. An E-Junk list would be riddled with IOT, and devices that forcibly ratcheted tech in ("smart water bottle", etc).
The Leica, Matic and Kindle replace 10+ year old devices.
The Oura replaces itself, with a heavily diminished battery. The hard drive replaces something barely half the size.
The Android is to create a minimal distraction device with only select apps, while slowly weening myself out of the Apple ecosystem stranglehold.
The TRMNL is a side-project, to build some custom code for. The Bambu is used for hobby projects at least weekly and frankly should have been purchased years ago.
The ASUS was a misadventure back into dual boot Windows / Linux after 15 years on Mac. Demoted from a CUDA dev machine to general use second computer.
The Ray Ban Metas only really make an appearance when I travel, but when I do, I'm very glad to have them. Provides a very different perspective than a handheld camera or smartphone, especially in dense areas (walking through crowded outdoor markets, etc)
The reason retro tech is fun now is because no one is making more of it, and the retro tech is as advanced as it could be without being ruined by enshittification and planned obsolescence. Every old piece of tech you come across is now a relic, rich in lore and history, and sometimes mystery when there are few people around who understand how it works anymore. These old devices are no longer things you just buy from a big corp, you have to find them in a pile of junk somewhere or trade a bit of money for it from some person, and on top of that the condition of the devices vary greatly, they are not fungible. This hunt for old tech feels very post-apocalyptic at times.
People will also look for creative ways to upgrade old tech and implement some quality of life improvements, doing things the original creators never thought of, or were simply limited by the technologies of their times. The result is much more variety in devices, no more homogeneous products.
And this effect will only get more pronounced as time goes on. Consider that in the year 2077, a humble N64 could be something sacred, handed down through many generations, each leaving their mark on the device, and people developing their own homebrewed games motivated more by fun than capitalistic ambition, or just pushing the limits of the device.
> Antitrust pressure has slowed consolidation, opened app distribution, killed the anti-competitive iMessage and AirDrop moats, and made big tech cautious about horizontal expansion.
Huh? In what reality is this remotely true? It certainly isn't in the one I live in.
The Big 6 control all media in the US, and mergers happen all the time (WBD->Netflix->Paramount?). Google owns web search and web browsing; Amazon owns e-commerce; Alphabet and Meta own adtech; Amazon, Microsoft, and Google own cloud computing; etc. All of these companies make frequent acquisitions and expansions. "Antitrust pressure" is just the cost of doing business.
What I think the author is referring to are the minor concessions Apple has made in some territories, mainly the EU. And even there, they're using every dirty trick at their disposal to do the absolute bare minimum.
Anti-competitive moats are still alive and well, and growing larger. It's curious that the author is positive about "AI", when that is the ultimate moat builder right now. Nobody can basically touch the largest players, since they have the most resources and access to mind-bogglingly large datacenters.
What a silly article. I don't understand how anyone can consider the current state of the tech industry "fun". I've been following it for nearly 30 years now, and it has gradually been devolving into a place that's anything but fun. Especially in these last ~5 years. I wish I could be optimistic about the future, but it should be obvious to anyone by now that technology, mostly but not entirely by misuse, is the cause of most of our problems.
[dead]