Gadgets and Technology I'm Thankful For

It's not necessarily that the older technology is inherently more stable, but that there's a survivor effect. Old technology that wasn't stable fell to newer technology that wasn't stable. Stuff that "just worked" (like the radio mentioned here) didn't see much improvement, because the stability was the issue (not the audio quality, as evidenced by the lack of uptake on HDRadio).

It's an example of the classic software graph -- on the y axis, there's stability, on the x-axis is age. As age increases, so does stability.

...i thought the apollo guidance computers were one of the first computers built using ICs?

Maybe upon launch, or when 16 finally went up they were 'primitive', but that's not so much a question of stability but rather long development times and not drastically changing your platform while in use.