I’ve held onto FireWire for long and feel attached to it. I’ve used it for over 25 years.
I think I feel the same way about TiVo and fear the day the guide stops updating or the motherboard fails (everything else in the box is replaceable).
These things are ephemeral in the grand scheme of history, but when they are embedded in workflows and habits for decades I find it hard to let go.
I also have a few machines I'm attached to. When I was fresh out of school I got a job at a startup writing PHP and bought myself an (at the time) brand new Thinkpad X220 with a Sandy Bridge i7 inside.
My 9 year old has it now. The battery is toast but the machine still faithfully trundles along. It plays Rollercoaster Tycoon on Fedora Linux. We're building a robot together for her birthday, so I'll be trying to install the Arduino tool chain on it.
I'll definitely miss that machine when it's no more.
Lumia 920 for me, obsolete but I keep one around
I still need to read “The Soul of a New Machine”, should I save this until after?
Stop reading HN and read the book now. You’re welcome. ;)
Soul of a New machine is a great read, never slow or self-gratifying, highly recommended
That's a great book to read, after that pick up The Cuckoo's Egg.
Honestly, when I read this book in 1982 or so it changed the trajectory of my life and career. It is an story of a bet-the-business project that occurred in real life. After reading I though I was late to the tech party, missed out on so much, and yet, here we are, 45 years later with incredible advancements and a career I couldn't have imagined. Tracy Kidder was a gem of an individual, just a wonderful person who was truly interested in others. I hope you'll read the book soon.
It's unrelated to the book, other than the title.
Should be compulsory reading. Actually, now that I think about it, this would make a great interview question in the AI era: “what did you think of Soul of a new machine?”
I found Showstopper! even more compelling
Those two books are probably the two best about tech projects I've ever read. I worked at Data General as a product manager for about 13 years and know many of the individuals although I joined a few years after the book was written.