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Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
341–349 of 349 posts
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#342No? Getting on a BBS in 1983 at 300 baud means text files "downloaded" at the same speed you can read. Word processors were crazy painful to use, and incredibly slow. A text editor was just a line-by-line replacement. My TRS-80 would slow to a crawl even making the most basic (ha!) of programs. Over the years, I've often thought about why computers never seem to get faster - mostly it is because people have a toleran…
The author went back a tad far, but not too much. The Amiga came out in 1985 and the Apple IIGS in 1986. The user experience of those machines would be more comparable a modern PC with a thousand times the clock speed and memory
I had an Amiga and the user experience was not comparable to a modern PC, except if you squint really hard. Like really hard.
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
You worded your initial response like you were referencing actual stats about software. I'm sure you think you and your colleagues are reliable sources, but to the rest of the world, they aren't.
Every single one of those statements was subjective. Don't be fooled by my use of the word 'metric'. It is, frankly, amazing that people here expect one to have facts and citations for every little nitty point.
It's not about having a "fact or citation for every nitty point"... It's about having even a tiny grain of self-awareness before making a statement about the global state of software in 2017, and perhaps having the self-awareness to know that, generally speaking, your anecdote ("citation") is meaningless.
I guess at some point I need to stop being surprised that HN comments are really no better than Reddit's.
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just last week I discovered I could disable animations in Android through the hidden developer options. It's fabulous. The only initial quirk was no visual feedback when a picture is successfully taken, so it felt like i missed the button, but I've gotten used to it already.
!!!!! That is a amazing!!! I had no idea developer meant "interested user". > Make sure developer options are enabled. If they're not, go to Settings > About phone, then tap on Build number several times to enable it > Go to Settings > Developer options, and scroll down to Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale. > Tap on each of the animation options and turn them off. https:/…
There are also various visual feedback options, such as a CPU load indicator, or a debug renderer for screen touches which allows you to see if your touchscreen is misbehaving and how (happens to me when I plug my charger, for example).
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
250 megabytes for a simple email client.
Versus, say, 1GB for Outlook and variable amounts for Mail.app depending on usage. It's not 1993 — these days email includes a full text search engine, rendering complex content, etc. Since even a phone comes with considerably more than 250MB of RAM, if you don't want to use the resources you paid for to make things faster or better, wouldn't that be an argument for using pine or mutt in a terminal window?
Outlook is using 88MB for me, after running all day. Not bad for a mail client that is bloated and slow.
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those of us that have been fortunate enough to avoid having a job that involved an adding machine or cash register the number pad is an awkward AF to use. Conversely the top keyboard row is in range for touch typing.
People that do any kind of data entry or work in finance learn to use it too. The number pad is not just for cashiers.
Yeah, which is why I mentioned adding machines.
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the web was young and most people were on dialup, having access to a T1 meant that everything happened nearly instantaneously. All the sites were optimized for dialup levels of complexity. Now that everyone has broadband there is no equivalent. The slowness is either because the page is so heavyweight in terms of memory or processing power (note that more money does not buy much single-threaded performance), or…
> Even the fastest computer and the highest-end Internet access can't get you such a huge advantage in performance that it can make the web feel snappy again. Until you install an adblocker and disable javascript. An enormous amount of modern-web overhead is adtech and user tracking cancer. If you don't believe me, install privacy badger/ghostery and ublock origin, visit any popular news/entertainment website, and lo…
Bufferbloat.
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
Physical maps don't necessarily have: - satellite imagery - reviews for destinations - automatic re-routing - traffic congestion - toll/public-transit information - On a mobile/gps enabled device you get your location as well - etc. Comparing physical maps to Google Maps is one-dimensional: you can see a specific area (if you had the foresight to buy it before hand!) with roads and mile markers.
Do people actually use satellite imagery other than to appreciate how cool is to look at one's house from above? Reviews are mostly around average 3 stars for most places. Because there are two types of revies: 1 star - waiting times were horrible, the meal was cold and waiter was rude; 5 star - the best meal I ever had, everyone was cheerful and helpful. Automatic re-routing is good. Especially with traffic informat…
> Do people actually use satellite imagery other than to appreciate how cool is to look at one's house from above?
Definitely! I used it when trying to find a good spot to view the recent eclipse - I wanted to find an open place that would not be obstructed by buildings, trees or mountains. I've used it to understand better how water drains through my community and across my property.
> Reviews are mostly around average 3 stars for most places.
That is exactly what I'd expect!
> Because there are two types of revies
That seems to be hyperbole.
> Automatic re-routing is good. Especially with traffic information. However it is miserable where there are unknown closed roads.
That's definitely true. Paper maps would not have this information either. In a worst-case scenario, you could use a Google Map like a paper map - disable routing and trying to plan a route manually!
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
#349This could be a copy-paste of rants I have written. I think marketing has ruined pretty much everything. Everything has a subscription now, and it's in the cloud . My experience is that everything is slower than when I first started using computers as a child in the 90's, and it does it worse. You don't own anything anymore, upgrades routinely take away features, and nothing interfaces with anything else. There are a…
The cloud is DRM. I think that and not scalability or anything else is the primary driver for most apps. It's a way of putting your code where users can't directly access it and charging a monthly fee.