The Useful Personal Computer • Hacker News Board

Re: The Useful Personal Computer

#41

Post by ForOldHack » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 3:23 PM UTC

Larrikin wrote: post #34

lmm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> taking/viewing photos Camera and screen quality are often what the new generation of a phone is sold on. For everything else, yeah if you're not watching videos or gaming then you probably don't need a top-end model.

I think this is where the consumer should be demanding more. We went to the moon and back with 64kb memory computers. Why are these basically sci-fi devices in our pockets that can communicate between each other dumb terminals for a bit of JSON and tracking. "Apps" should be using the array of sensors to be more than displays of simple information AOL could have done if they had really good marketing

Stone thrown for a hit. Apps want to use locations and the microphone, but not to help you, but to sell you stuff. I have 14 sensors on my phone, mostly for positioning, and the software still cannot reformat text for zooming without a left to right cornrow panning. You get the absolute absurdity of it.

AOL had great marketing, just not pointed at consumers, it pointed it at ad providers. The free disk thing ...

Re: The Useful Personal Computer

#42

Post by MarkLowenstein » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 11:08 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #14

MarkLowenstein wrote: post #2

Reliving the days when the possibilities were endless and we weren't already captured by an entrenched computing path is important. 50 years ago, every marketer intuited that a home computer would be used for storing recipes. It never happened. Why not? (Reasons aren't hard to come up with, but the process of doing so draws our imagination toward what computer interfaces could have been and should still be.)

What are you talking about? I store recipes in my computer, and routinely look them up on Google.

The spirit of GWBasic lives! How do you view them when you're cooking? Do you print them from your home computer or do you use a mobile screen?

Re: The Useful Personal Computer

#43

Post by MarkLowenstein » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 11:11 PM UTC

allturtles wrote: post #12

fragmede wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't? Who knows how many copies of Americas_test_kitchen.pdf are floating around out there, how many recipes are in Apple notes or in Google Keep. Sure, you might just Google for "banana bread recipe" and get lost on a tangent about technology, and the smartphone isn't the personal computer of yore, but recipes existing in a digital format has happened.

I think in the context of the GP's comment, 'never' means it never (or hardly ever) happened on the products it was expected to happen on (home computers, as understood circa late 70s/early 80s). Yes, it has happened on very different devices decades later.

Spot on. The home computer never became accessible from the kitchen, and the storage system most anyone uses for recipes, if not paper, is the web or some other internet-accessible source. (Don't know for sure but I'd bet photos of recipes found online, viewed on a phone, is the most common.)

Re: The Useful Personal Computer

#44

Post by gwbas1c » Sat, Nov 15, 2025, 10:31 PM UTC

MarkLowenstein wrote: post #42

gwbas1c wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? I store recipes in my computer, and routinely look them up on Google.

The spirit of GWBasic lives! How do you view them when you're cooking? Do you print them from your home computer or do you use a mobile screen?

Some are Word documents that I view on my phone. (Via OneDrive).

My turkey recipe is a PDF that I print out two copies of when I prepare the turkey. My hands get messy (and unsanitary) when I follow it, so I don't want to handle my phone.

(In case you're curious: When I called up a BBS for the first time as a teenager, I didn't realize that I had to make up a name for myself. My GWBasic manual was sitting in front of me, so I just called myself GWBasic and really liked the name. At the time, GWBasic was very obsolete, so most people didn't get the reference.)