So today I had some time to spare. And I decided to look around a bit for mobile phones. And then I realized that the time for mobile phones is over. As all ‘phones’ I see displayed are specified by amount of memory and such. And a lot of memory, even the simple and cheap ‘phones’. Memory like gigabytes. And this made me think.
It made me think about progress, technological progress. And progress in ‘production’. As when I grew up there were things like Walkman‘s that were new. And stereo equipment with cassette players where as a small boy I liked the large tape drives.
And recently I am thinking if I am getting old or not. As I don’t like to use the ‘tablet type’ user interface that is becoming more common. I am very much used to using a mouse and keyboard and a, preferably, large, simple screen, a simple monitor. And I am very happy with it. And I am a bit annoyed that all websites have been changed the last few years towards the ‘large icon type’, that are mainly built for mobile phones and tablets.
And I was even amazed that the newest Windows version, Windows 8, has a user interface that is also based on ‘tablet use’. And I just don’t like it. I just prefer the good old menu’s and taskbar, even though I know these also evolved over the years (as screens got bigger). And I don’t understand why Windows went to this new user interface for what I thought was and is a desktop operating system.
So yes, I am wondering if I am the only one who would still prefer to use Windows XP, which I still do, as that is just working fine, even though my bank tries to push me towards a ‘more modern’ operating system. But then again, are they going to pay the bill? And what is ‘modern’ in an operating system anyhow? I can imagine some technical reasons as it may not be that easy to keep it all backwards compatible and such. But come on, an operating system is just an operating system and those things don’t change that much. Similar to that car engines or engines in general don’t change that much.
So is it all greed, greed of industrial conglomerates pushing us towards things we don’t really need?
And yes, I do use larger memory and larger disks and stuff as I want to store more stuff and more user friendly programs do use more memory.
But do we really need a completely different operating system for that? And do phones really need an operating system (visible to the user) at all?
Looking forward to your thoughts.