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When did the PC market get "stupid"?


Keatah

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When did the PC market get "stupid"?

 

I would say right around the introduction of Windows 95 and the Pentium MMX. Up till then, the PC was all serious business and productivity oriented. But once those super-gay MMX commercials and dumbing down of the interface (Win95) came to pass - all went to hell.

 

Mainstream marketing got a hold of the PC and stupidified it. It was no longer a serious scientific tool, but instead it became a wedge. A wedge that companies would drive into your household and use to split open your wallet with endless upgrades and shovelware. Subscriptions and frivolous software abounded. Cutesy wootsie email applications, stupid marketing experiments, all sorts of non-sense. Shit that made you go through the motions of doing something but getting nothing back.

 

Strange and crazy hardware was part of this "expansion" into the mainstream. Not to mention the half-melted and retarded looking un-stackable peripherals.

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Anything that becomes mass produced suffers from a blending effect, a by product of the market turning into something that everyone can digest. However, had the market not exploded as it did, technology could not have accelerated at the rate it has. The masses that buy those "retarded" parts as you put them, pump billions into the industry, thus allowing companies to put great gobs of money into R&D. Is the special spark of early computing gone? Yes I think so, but I don't think it's quite as awful as you seem to think it is. I respect your opinion of course, and I think you raise a valid point. But to imply that the industry went to hell seems rather strong.

Edited by TPA5
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MMX was the first time I took I took a better look at the PeeCee as a serious computer gaming and multimedia contender to the Mac and Amiga. Win95 is what turned it all around for me. Spent a little more than $2k on a real IBM system that year, but...

 

IBM PC market was stupid since it's inception. It was born stupid. Lots of jackoff's arrogantly and confidently wasted their money purchasing these overpriced wastes of space, all in the name of "business". Then ended up spending even more money trying to get them to do things that home computers that cost several times less, had been released several years before them - and still came up short. The rest is history. :lol:

 

...only thing to survive the most expensive PC system I have ever bought... are the amplified speakers that I still use to this day! Makes my Amiga's sing like nothing else! :lol:

Edited by save2600
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That is why atari and commadore rule the market today

 

oh wait, that's right, they went the other side of stupid and could not come up with a better reason to buy them other than "check out these graphics and sound, plus we do similar, but not the same so its worthless in your professional life work alike software"

 

Remember my day saing, "not going to pay a thousand bucks for a video game machine sold at kmart that only MIGHT work with the files I already have my business running on"

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Clones, IBM replies with MCA with the PS2 that crashes and burns. Pretty early on, really.

 

But agreed with the mass-market theory too - once you let the marketroid retards into the game with their stupid buzzwords, the whole thing goes to the dogs.

 

Just look at the modern day situation. Capacities or network ability usually quoted in bits rather than bytes since it gives a bigger number.

K, M, G all bastardised such that they're no longer powers of 2 but actually thousands, millions, billions - once again all in aid of giving a bigger number that sells better.

Pissant capability graphics cards with 2 Gig of RAM that's usually 2 or 3 generations old installed.

 

MMX in itself was a joke, same with NetBurst. Stupid buzzwords that barely relate to what a feature provides.

Edited by Rybags
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Thats right! It's why you see an endless multitude of websites dedicated to vintage computing and gaming of all architectures other than the PeeCee. ;)

Dedication by fans is not commadore or atari ruling their markets ;)

 

I would argue those super cheap 8 bit machines started the downfall, maybe Jr got too used to slapping in a cart and flipping the power on for instant game or word processor, and after that started to disappear is when PC's started with the general public crap, cause more than 2 things was too hard.

Edited by Osgeld
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IBM PC market was stupid since it's inception. It was born stupid. Lots of jackoff's arrogantly and confidently wasted their money purchasing these overpriced wastes of space, all in the name of "business". Then ended up spending even more money trying to get them to do things that home computers that cost several times less, had been released several years before them - and still came up short. The rest is history. :lol:

 

But it got the job done! And got it done correctly. No fucking around with flimsy toys from department stores. The 5150 was metal and industrial-strength plastic, the 8-bit toys were not. Exception, Apple II, they're pretty tough puppies. Ask any owner.

 

Now, as much as I like all the early 8/16 bit machines, I could never quite get them to behave exactly, precisely, to a T, how I wanted them to. I could never format my print output with the precision I wanted or the exact look I wanted.

 

The one 8-bit machine I could manhandle and beat into submission was the Apple II+. Biased? Probably a little. But the Apple II+'s architecture was open enough and software varied enough that some package would satisfy my requirement at the moment. Same deal with the PC. But not any other 8-bitter.

 

Why's that so?

 

I think the magic here was the lack of ROM routines and those damned custom chips. Both II+ and PC were the essence of bare-bones. The ROM-BIOS didn't provide much beyond getting the machine powered up and going. The firmware routines of the day (in these two machines) were geared toward internal housekeeping and external peripheral interfacing and control. That's it! Just the basics ma'am, just the basics.

 

This forced and afforded great flexibility from the get-go. Whereas other 8-bit machines were burdened with custom chipsets that were too tempting for a programmer to use. "Burdened" with convenient ROM routines built-in. ROM routines that made sound and graphics effects and all that.. All this tended to create software that was not upgradeable and transferable cross-platform. Sure, you can mention games like Choplifter or Zork or whatever. But there was great effort in making those ports.

 

Let me make another example. Consider Voodoo Graphics. 3DFX stuff. Remember that? Games written for those graphics chipsets only work on those chipsets and nothing else. To run a 3DFX title today, you need to either get funky wrappers or the original hardware.

 

Compare that to Doom. Doom, as written back in the mid 90's, didn't use any custom graphics chips. The same code which ran on my generic Cirrus Logic 5422 1MB ISA videocard still operates on my i7 hexacore if I boot it through DOS. Talk about longevity and versatility!

 

And that is the key point. Lack of proprietary-ness allowed world-wide standards to develop. Something the original 5150, xt, at, had that 8-bit machines didn't. (The Apple II would have been the most standard and open of the 8-bit machines though.)

 

Consider that most software written to operate on a 286 or 386 will operate on a modern machine. The software is so generic and does not look for custom chips. This allowed continuity and all those upgrade cycles. 8086-286-386-486-pentium-pentiumpro-ii-iii-iv-core-core2-nehelam-ivybridge, and on and on. Each upgrade allowed users to keep their old software and realize a speed boost. With custom chips making up a big portion of the architecture you cannot do this!

 

 

Thats right! It's why you see an endless multitude of websites dedicated to vintage computing and gaming of all architectures other than the PeeCee. ;)

 

You see this because those machines are defunct and no longer in use. The PC has not (yet) fallen into what one could call a "legacy" status. The PC is a commodity and ever pervasive.

 

I also fear that Retrogaming is becoming a way to make money, amplified by the internet. And while I think the amount of homebrews becoming available is cool, I can't help but think a saturation point will be reached.

 

Of course, retrogames are cool and appealing to many people for many reasons. I prefer the simplicity and lack of DRM and need to be on-line. I also like the old staple and standbys of the characters. I'd rather see souped-up Zaxxon jet as opposed to a slew of new characters in a yet-to-be-named game.

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If the PC was entirely "stupid," most people posting on this site wouldn't be able to, without seeking a Mac or a tablet or something alternative. There are so many work-arounds for the PCs shortcomings that it's workable. There's also no denying that there are alternatives, and I think the point should be made that some now-defunct systems (Atari, Amiga) worked quite well with just the flick of the power switch and extremely-rare (compared to modern systems) updates. But we didn't do nearly as much with those systems as we ask of modern systems.

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Clones, IBM replies with MCA with the PS2 that crashes and burns. Pretty early on, really.

 

But agreed with the mass-market theory too - once you let the marketroid retards into the game with their stupid buzzwords, the whole thing goes to the dogs.

 

Just look at the modern day situation. Capacities or network ability usually quoted in bits rather than bytes since it gives a bigger number.

K, M, G all bastardised such that they're no longer powers of 2 but actually thousands, millions, billions - once again all in aid of giving a bigger number that sells better.

 

And retards they are. Marketing guys.. You should see the asinine ideas new grads come up with. Thank the gods common sense prevails when production comes. Or does it?

 

In discussing transfer speeds and network capacities - I will respectfully disagree with you there. I recall my 300 baud modem being advertised and rated at 300 bits-per-second. 300 signaling events each second. There was little or no competition or incentive to skew toward 300 bps as opposed to 37cps. I recall all my modems being rated bits-per-second. It is a logical choice because that's how fast the modem can "twang" the wires to toggle a bit and get it sent out. Once you get into exotic modulation techniques and compression, the actual throughput goes way up. And that is what is important to both marketing and consumers.

 

I'm willing to bet that the K,M,G situation came about (and may someone shed some light here?) because of several reasons.

1- It is easier for a common consumer to understand that 1G = 1billion = 1,000,000,000 and not 1,073,741,824

2- It is easier to represent in advertising material.

3- I believe Western Digital started this trend a couple of decades ago.

4- It is easier to do side-by-side comparisons.

 

My "1TB" disk actually equals anywhere from 930-976 (real)GB depending on how I format it, how much slack, and how much is used by the filesystem. I won't hem'n'haw over a few GB. And I tend to buy my storage solutions in generations. I'm still in the 1TB "space" for portable devices and 2-3 TB for fixed desktop solutions.

 

Years ago I might have debated big-time over a 340MB or 540MB disk. But not today.

 

Considering how cheap HDD is today I still consider myself getting one hella deal compared to 143K floppies of yore. Storage space seems to be one thing I never feel jipped on.

 

I also believe that numbers (like MHz & speeds) are becoming less meaningful and telling than ever before. They only define the canvas upon which a system is built. The end user experience is much more important. And software design is having a bigger than ever impact here. Witness the windoze 8 failure.

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Pissant capability graphics cards with 2 Gig of RAM that's usually 2 or 3 generations old installed.

 

MMX in itself was a joke, same with NetBurst. Stupid buzzwords that barely relate to what a feature provides.

 

I stopped worrying about graphics cards after the GeForce 4 era, mostly. Following all the marketing-induced granulation and thousands of variations just got to be too time-consuming. No fun anymore.

 

I feel MMX ushered in a new philosophy in CPU design. Pentium-MMX. It was the first commercially marketed CPU that had a major new instruction set added. While MMX may have had dubious value in gaming and real-world applications, the trend it started did not. It was the first in a long long line of instruction set add-ons such as SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE4 SSE5 AES AVX F16C XOP FMA3 FMA4.

 

I will however agree the marketing for it was a joke. Just as bad as the Disco era!

 

That and of course the NetBurst fiasco. Anything and everything "dotcom" and "net" related feels ridiculous to me. In fact, the bloated enthusiasm of the pc marketscape during 1998-2007 feels like a circus tent pressurized with oxygen!

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netburst

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_instruction_listings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_instruction_sets#Intel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

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Oh it all went downhill after the Altair 8800! Stupid marketing companies and they're fancy "terminals" running "graphics". Hah! Flipping bytes and outputting on teletype machines, THAT was before computing was real stupid. Back when only people with incredibly complex math skills could run computers, before the miserable unwashed masses starting putting their filthy miserable paws over MY computing industry. The utter GALL of people wanting technology to be accessible and available in their homes. Those rotten bastards wanting to use computers to make their lives simpler, without actually having time to read hundred of pages of manuals to get up and running. Why those entitled jerks, wanting to have a machine in their home that streamlines their lives while not being a difficult thing to learn to use. Heck, while I'm on it, remember back when the auto market wasn't stupid? Those good old Model T's that didn't pander to the masses with their forsaken "seat belts" and "airbags". Back before all these stupid people had to have "air conditioning" and "radios". I miss the days before the marketing buggers got their stinking hands all over the auto industry with "efficient" engines. It's all just hell in a hand basket now that MY industries have been taken over by OTHER people who think they have some right to use the technology that so obviously should only be used by people with computer science degrees. Those ungrateful wretches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

;)

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Those rotten bastards wanting to use computers to make their lives simpler, without actually having time to read hundred of pages of manuals to get up and running. Why those entitled jerks, wanting to have a machine in their home that streamlines their lives while not being a difficult thing to learn to use.

 

And still, today, people do not know how to cut'n'paste. Or x-fer pictures from a phone or camera to the pc. They say it's too hard to learn and walk away.

 

There were times I'd make a $50.00 service call to move files from one folder to the next!

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I tend to agree! The things that generate good nostalgia in me for my old and dear beloved 80486 DX2/50 are only a few things.

 

1- The occasional hardware upgrade. Especially going from 4MB to 8MB, and then getting the memory card to allow yet even more SIMMS. Topping out at 16MB.

2- Microsoft Word and the sweltering 97`F 99% humidity days where I'd transfer 100's of floppies from my Apple II over to the PC platform.

3- Playing Doom and Raptor for the first time.

4- Upgrading my SoundBlaster card to ASP and WaveBlaster-1.

 

Anything to do with "multi-media" was an exercise in headaches and waiting. Waiting for what would be shallow shooter-on-rails type of experience. I actively hated the word "Multimedia". Haven't computers and anything electronic always been multimedia since their inception?

 

If a computer doesn't have a speaker, you can listen to the key clicks, or sound of the fan or noise of the wires snapping in place when you hook it up. 'Bout as exciting as the first FMV games anyways.

 

FMV! ..talk about stupid-making! Especially on 1x 150KB/sec CD-ROMS..

Edited by Keatah
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It's not all bad. Highlights from my PC history:

- Getting a cheap 486 to get on the internet

- Finding a vesa-local-bus videocard (diamond stealth I guess) to make the graphics go a magnitude faster.

Later:

- Playing Quake2/Unreal on my Voodoo2 card

- Playing dvd's on Hollywood+ dedicated MPEG2 hardware.

- Recording videos with MJPEG hardware

 

I liked dedicated hardware. Maybe because that made my computer less PC :D

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Considering the "PC market" is really the people buying those PCs, they got stupid when the "smart" marketing people realized there were more stupid people out there who would buy PCs if they were easier to use (or were marketed as easier to use at least).

 

So they sold to that audience and it was a huge success for them.

 

desiv

p.s. I'm not saying there aren't smart people who would also like a PC that was easier to use...

Edited by desiv
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Considering the "PC market" is really the people buying those PCs, they got stupid when the "smart" marketing people realized there were more stupid people out there who would buy PCs if they were easier to use (or were marketed as easier to use at least).

 

So they sold to that audience and it was a huge success for them.

 

desiv

p.s. I'm not saying there aren't smart people who would also like a PC that was easier to use...

My thoughts exactly. The reason I got into a PC was cause I was young and patient. My parents didn't get into it until Windows 98 and having everything spelled out and explained to them. You had to educate a whole new group of people. So the systems had to change.

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