Journal hfastedge's Journal: Ugh saturation 1
Here's a few things that I wish would just go away:
Hardware that comes out in cycles more than year.
I was thinking..."you know, what are some examples of systems that have already existed for a long time, and are just as complex as computers"? Well...basically, its not furniture. Its the automobile.
When you go for auto parts,for example, you ask for a clutch for a '94 honda civic, and they know exactly what you need.
I dearly hope that after 20 years, we'll see SOME normalization of this highly asynchronous release process.
Yet, its funny, software wise, the most conservative projects like redhat or mozilla still release sort of buggy shit.
Apple's done a decent job, only 1 paradigm shift in the last 10 years (OSX). Whereas microsoft shoves a new paradigm shift down our throats every 3 years...because they can afford to.
Stop The World! I Want To Get Off! (Score:2)
Hardware that comes out in cycles more than year.
I hear ya. The GeForce 3 card I bought just over six months ago is now nearly two generations old (and the manufacturer, ELSA, went bust a few months after I bought it. Just as well their drivers were just rebadged versions of NVIDIA's reference driver, so support is not a problem. Similar stories with the Videologic SonicFury soundcard I bought at the same time, except VideoLogic are still in business.
I dearly hope that after 20 years, we'll see SOME normalization of this highly asynchronous release process.
No chance! It's a war out there! In fact, at the rate they're cranking up the power levels, it will literally become a Cold War, as we'll need to refrigerate our PCs just to get them to stay working!
Yet, its funny, software wise, the most conservative projects like redhat or mozilla still release sort of buggy shit.
Part of this is down to the fact that there are so many different configurations of PC out there, and trying to test against them all is all but impossible. This is compounded by the fact that the same problem affects hardware manufacturers as well. So even if every last software bug on the planet were eradicated overnight, I reckon you'd still get at least one unexplained lock-up or crash a minute somewhere.
Apple's done a decent job, only 1 paradigm shift in the last 10 years (OSX). Whereas microsoft shoves a new paradigm shift down our throats every 3 years...because they can afford to.
Actually, that would be two shifts on Apple's part - from 68K to PowerPC, and from MacOS to OSX.
As for Microsoft, it's not so much that they can afford to, but that they need to, partly to keep people buying their wares, but mainly because the OS is forever lagging behind the advances in hardware technology. In some cases the two become intertwined, much to the consternation of customers. So Windows XP will (eventually) support Bluetooth, but Windows 2000 users will have to find alternative support. Guess which one I use?