 Computerdammerung:
The Twilight of the Magazines, the Computers ... all the beloved
gadgets and lies and stories
“Dammerung” apparently means twilight, both dusk and
dawn. ... Which is just to state the obvious, so far at least in the
history
of our
universe: whoever departs the stage will be replaced.
... But my tale is of the gathering gloom, the end times
of the adorable Personal Computers, particularly as reflected in the
sad evaporation of their chroniclers of so many years, the
ever-impartial truthful faithful computer magazines. ... In the U.S.
they
are gone — and
forgotten. ... PCWorld
stands alone, although to be sure accompanied still by an occasional
December PC Magazine,
left on the bookstore stands by the clueless staff....
And the computers aren’t really disappearing, either;
they’re just getting so cheap there’re no obscene profits in
them
anymore!
... For
years, Microsoft, hardware manufacturers, and computer magazines have
stood athwart history crying “Stop!” whenever markets tended
towards
lower prices, and were surprisingly successful with that peculiar
American combination of outrageous incompetence and straightforward
monopoly collusion. ... But, finally, the dream is dying. ... First
Moore’s
law got sick, and then
the Kredit
Krisis Krunch attacked our condos and all that entails, and
then — well people just won’t pay $1000s for stuff they
can get
for $100s.
The
Golden Years: Money for Nothing!
In brief, the Microsoft racket (from Windows 3.1 to
half-past Vista approximately)
was like this: each
generation of Microsoft’s operating system would, strangely, amazingly,
never
run on the
previous generation of hardware! Nothing
would work! ... It was as if
the hardware manufacturers and Microsoft conspired
to make
it so! ... Unbelievable, I know, but I remember trying to degrade a
Windows ME machine back to Windows 98, and the utter blank refusal I
encountered; I had to reinstall ME and return the thing. ... W98, you
must understand, was an infallible cure in
those distant days, for sickly Windows 95 and even 3.1 machines; it
would install on any hardware, recognize any modem, any CRT — it
was
the sovereign remedy! ... But not
for the h/w the manufacturers cooked-up for the next
Microsoft OS,
in this case the
execrable Windows ME which, even before Vista,
was known as Microsoft’s Big Mistake. ... The reason
it was this way was so people wouldn’t get strange ideas when they
noticed how fast
the old operating
system ran on the new, Moore’s law improved, hardware; they might
think the new Microsoft OS was pointlessly
encumbered with useless features just so it could justify
increased hardware capabilities!
... The new OS software
would
supposedly run on the old hardware, and indeed Microsoft ’n’
the ever-truthful and enthusiastic computer magazines urged
users to upgrade
their existing
operating system.
However, the Moore’s law improvements in the new hardware that made
it
so desirable would, if you were stupid-enough to upgrade the OS ,
actually make your existing hardware slower
and worse: Microsoft, for some mysterious reason, always
designed the new operating system so it required increased disk/memory
size and graphics capabilities that would, somehow, result in an
average new
desktop machine @
around $1200 or more — as if, in some mysterious way, they and the
hardware manufacturers were
working together
to make sure every new computer would cost as much or more as the one
you bought two or three or five years ago, even ’though Moore’s
law
should’ve made everything cheaper! ... But your old
machine would, typically, still have the pitiful amounts of memory and
hard drive and graphics which cost $1200 or so a few years
ago; hence, would run the new OS poorly, if at all....
The Moore’s
law effect was the collusion wasn’t so obvious: they weren’t
increasing
prices, they were just
keeping them the
same.
The point of the ever ridiculous increases in the operating systems’
“power” — pointless graphics and flummery — was
to
give this hardware something
to do:
think Vista’s pointless transparency effect. ... This was necessary
so people didn’t notice you don’t actually need
much power to do the average spreadsheet or edit a document. At least
since around 1989. ... In short, it was personal computer featherbedding!
...
And everyone was happy! ... And the computers stayed around
the same price, even ’though they should’ve gotten much
cheaper like what happened everywhere else — TVs, cellphones,
music systems — during the same period....
The
British
Fortunately, the United Kingdom has the blessings of
socialism bestowed upon themselves, and so equipment is still about
twice as expensive as in the good ol’ USA. ... Hence they have numerous
computer
magazines which I can buy in US bookstores
— not as many as there used to be, to be sure, and the “high
street”
retailers are falling-over like flies, and basically the sceptered isle
is not so insular they can’t see across the pond and the fate awaiting
them. ... But they publish, and print beautiful
4-color ads, and propagandize relentlessly about how the public really
doesn’t want cheap (that’s around $800 there) computers, and
about how
Windows 7, the Operating System to Come, won’t be anything like how
that
nasty Vista turned-out to be so sadly — although it’s really
working
great now with all the wonderful SPs!
—
and which they fellated in its turn oh ages
ago....
So I plan to chronicle the ridiculous mendacities and
obfuscations of the magazines and the industry, month by month, issue
by
issue,
especially amusing pretentious wacko puffery fantasy by fantasy —
and conceivably make this
site
even less
attractive
than it is already! ... Elsewhere I’ve noted the demise of poor
Dr. Dobbs, but
suffice it to say there are
no programming magazines anymore.
... I may even stop subscribing to Microsoft’s MSDN,
since it’s
become total puffery (The Tide
Recedes). So
that’s out....
And
I should note that it isn’t
just that everything’s gone to
the
internet. ... Expensive computers didn’t go to the internet;
conceivably
the competitive forces brought to bear by a relatively-truthful
advertising medium help
make computers
cheap, but the internet doesn’t make
them cheap. ... And “hobby” magazines still survive, most admirably
Nuts ’n’ Volts,
and
I believe that when the storm finally passes there’s plenty of room
for
written
distributed dead-tree content. ... Model
Railroad magazine still prospers, for instance, despite
their seeming
best efforts
to torpedo the thing; there are others.
... But on to the mortuary! ... Let the hypocrisy begin!
|
PCPro
But
I am confident I am not alone, and all across the fruited plain
thousands if not millions of computer users have the same invigorating
experience. ... There are many innocent 