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The tech monoculture is finally breaking

jasonwillems.com

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Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#91

Post by MarkusWandel »

iammjm wrote: post #88
MarkusWandel wrote: post #17

I'm not sure I agree with all of that - that single-purpose tech is making a real comeback. But I do have one example in my daily life that supports this: A Garmin watch. Unlike "full" smartwatches (arbitrarily defined as: You can browse the web on them in some fashion) Garmin devices are intentionally limited but in return, what they do works very well and seems fully debugged. I spent several years recording outdoo…

> fully debugged And here I am each morning having to manually enforce sync multiple times to have my fucking Garmin watch sleep data show up in my iPhone Garmin app. I love this watch (Instinct 2) but it’s far from bug free even in its most fundamental functions like data sync

Thats the app, not the watch. On my Android phone, I think it's runnig afoul of OS power saving features.

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#92

Post by mistrial9 »

echelon wrote: post #34
sylens wrote: post #29

I think the author is correct to a point but I don't believe the examples they've chosen provide the best support for their case. Gen Z buying iPods and people buying N64 games again is not evidence of the monoculture breaking apart - it's a retreat into the past for the enlightened few because their needs are not being met by modern goods and services. You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software po…

> growth and momentum behind Linux and self-hosting as better evidence that change is afoot. Linux is still not user friendly enough. Products from two decades ago are more user friendly than modern "mainstream" disros. Look at Matrix and other OSS that wants to be mainstream. It's got awful UI/UX. And it's never taken off. Gimp is an ugly beast with a bad name. Nobody's using that unless they're a Linux nerd. I do s…

Gimp and on the other side Adobe itself, are a special kind of sad story IMHO

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#93

Post by direwolf20 »

dsego wrote: post #62
atomicUpdate wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their standards forever dropping And yet their standards still haven’t dropped low enough for Linux to be an acceptable replacement. I don’t think that’s a knock on the Windows user, but an indication that Linux desktop (and its replacement applications) still isn’t user-friendly enough for most people.

It can never be user-friendly enough if how windows does things is the yardstick. Windows users bemoan about how terrible Macs are all the time just because things are done differently, and they don't even try to figure it out. If it doesn't work like windows it's not good enough.

Why can't we make Linux work like Windows? Modifiability is supposed to be a benefit of open-source.

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#94

Post by direwolf20 »

at1as wrote: post #9
sumuyuda wrote: post #6

> Antitrust pressure has slowed consolidation, opened app distribution, killed the anti-competitive iMessage and AirDrop moats iMessage is still only available on Apple hardware. Apple’s malicious compliance has made developing apps for third party app stores a no-go. I have AltStore installed but there are no apps worth installing.

> iMessage is still only available on Apple hardware. Yes, but I think the pressure is external. RCS brings many iMessage capabilities cross platform. As adoption increases I think the power and influence of iMessage will wane.

RCS is Google's iMessage with the same vendor locking — not actually cross-platform.

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#95

Post by californical »

Aurornis wrote: post #86
sylens wrote: post #29

I think the author is correct to a point but I don't believe the examples they've chosen provide the best support for their case. Gen Z buying iPods and people buying N64 games again is not evidence of the monoculture breaking apart - it's a retreat into the past for the enlightened few because their needs are not being met by modern goods and services. You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software po…

> You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s I could see how many people would assume this, but it’s actually false. There’s actually a big selection of dedicated audio players that do the job very well now. The battery life and audio quality are extremely good because there’s a niche market for them with a lot of competition. If you th…

I looked pretty hard - I specifically don’t want an android OS called an mp3 player. I want a dedicated media player that has physical button controls (not touch screen), is very snappy, has a good UI, and has a purpose-built OS specific to only playing songs and podcasts, and maybe movies, which I can sync with my computer (maybe with rsync or whatever else). No apps.

The only option that I could find was an iPod classic, modded with an SD card and better battery.

If something else exists, especially brand new, I’d love to know! But I couldn’t find hardly anything that wasn’t just an Android phone with no cell service.

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#96

Post by Onavo »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #17

I'm not sure I agree with all of that - that single-purpose tech is making a real comeback. But I do have one example in my daily life that supports this: A Garmin watch. Unlike "full" smartwatches (arbitrarily defined as: You can browse the web on them in some fashion) Garmin devices are intentionally limited but in return, what they do works very well and seems fully debugged. I spent several years recording outdoo…

The OG smartwatch is better

https://repebble.com/

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#97

Post by Onavo »

sylens wrote: post #29

I think the author is correct to a point but I don't believe the examples they've chosen provide the best support for their case. Gen Z buying iPods and people buying N64 games again is not evidence of the monoculture breaking apart - it's a retreat into the past for the enlightened few because their needs are not being met by modern goods and services. You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software po…

Well, there's SV's favorite minimalist hardware (along with the overpriced woop band):

https://bemighty.com/

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#98

Post by sylens »

stronglikedan wrote: post #89
sylens wrote: post #29

I think the author is correct to a point but I don't believe the examples they've chosen provide the best support for their case. Gen Z buying iPods and people buying N64 games again is not evidence of the monoculture breaking apart - it's a retreat into the past for the enlightened few because their needs are not being met by modern goods and services. You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software po…

> You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s (or even a Zune). What the what?!? There's tons of DAPs on the market, and more than a few that would put "an iPod had in the early 2000s (or even a Zune)" to shame.

As someone who would love to buy one - can you recommend a few?

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#99

Post by cptskippy »

arandomhuman wrote: post #79

>Looking at my own purchases from 2025, the pattern becomes obvious... Is it me or does this list really goes against almost everything preceeding in the article?

Yes it's very contradictory.

"I'm tied of Apple converting everything to services so I'll eschew the Apple Watch in favor of an analog watch and an Oura ring that requires a subscription."

"I'm tired of distracting notifications so I'm getting Meta Ray-Ban AR glasses."

What I find odd is that much of the rationale for these moves is completely absent from the article.

Why is Linux growing in popularity?

People are sick of being spied on and being manipulated for profit.

Why are people attracted to analog?

People are sick of being spied on and being manipulated for profit.

Why are people looking at offline or self hosted experiences?

People are sick of being spied on and being manipulated for profit.

I don't think the OP wants to acknowledge that fact because it paints him as a technology hipster rather than someone taking back their autonomy from corporations. He's saying "Look at me, I'm an individual because I choose to have a different set of companies spy on me than you do."

The other striking thing to me is that the list is also completely devoid of any sense of morality. He might be using Linux but he's actively spitting in the face of Opensource by choosing a Bambu printer.

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#100

Post by lastofthemojito »

BeetleB wrote: post #2

> A Timex ad went viral this year: “Know the time without seeing you have 1,249 unanswered emails.” Having to micromanage notifications is why I have two phones - one without a SIM card. It's nice to be able to do stuff on the phone and know it won't bug you. I simply put the one with the SIM card elsewhere (other room, leave in car, etc). No - I'm not going to spend too much time learning how to "effectively" manage…

> I really like some of the health features on Apple Watch. But I won't buy it because I don't want it to be my watch, and I don't want to pair my Apple account with it. I just want the health features and nothing else.

I agree with a lot of what you said, but isn't it wild to think that such a limited device would likely be more expensive than the do-everything Apple Watch that includes the health features among a myriad of others? Selling perhaps in the thousands instead of the zillions, the development costs would be amortized over such a small user base it would be an incredibly niche product. It often falls to us techies to figure out if we can hack an acceptable solution out of the affordable mainstream product.

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