OK, punch tape it is then.
It’s baffling, you can do a lot of tasks with a compact version of PDP-11 (there were two Soviet clones, I don’t remember which of them is which - one was a proper one, and could be used as a terminal server too, another had the monitor board simplified, IIRC, making it more of a normal PC of that time, just with PDP-11 CSA and the OS was RTX-11 in essence, but reverse-engineered and localized and with hardware drivers for those machines).
(I know it’s a different period and they had floppies.)
Why do we need such enormously complex fragile things? We rely on them so much that if, say, a “global thermonuclear war” really happens, with following hunger, movements of population, rapid climate changes, - our civilization is profoundly fucked.
I don’t get why even use their “blessed” hardware.
When I was at school, a few things made me want it:
Apple was still kinda fine back then, playing nice with FOSS community;
I had good memories from using QuickTime under Windows 2000;
I’ve been Jobswashed by a few books for kids saying how innovative he was;
I had a PSP, it was really cool to use for listening to music, playing games, reading books in the Web (over wi-fi) and even Skype, and I thought iPhones seem kinda similar;
I was possessed by imitated (was bored, wanted to feel something real and heroic) romantic feelings and real (bright hair, greenish-gray eyes, warm smile, subtle voice, and at that moment she seemed intelligent and nice ; turned out not as honest though) sexual desire of one girl who had an iPhone, a perfect product placement, one can say;
Apple’s UIs back then seemed very usable, only later I actually tried them and realized that even Windows makes me less furious;
It still wasn’t today’s Apple, they seemed trustworthy.
None of this applies today.