But yet we have phones and computers that are arguably as (un) responsive as their counterparts in 1998. I really wish those issues would be addressed rather than making things flashier with sexy transition animations.
The past was full of a lot more paging to disk and it was awful. I mean, sure, things haven't progressed as much as they could I suppose, but I also don't know the last time I had to wait 5-10 minutes for a computer to shut down.
That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. A Text Messaging app shouldn't have perceivable load time. My phone shouldn't freeze doing a transition between desktops. Computer desktops shouldn't take time to open up a menu.
We've come a long way, and have tons more raw performance, but I just feel that we squander it on things that don't add any value.
Those sounds just went through my head. That noise hurts just to think about.
but I also don't know the last time I had to wait 5-10 minutes for a computer to shut down.
Windows 7 seems to take 5 minutes to shut down, even if I give it a head-start by explicitly closing all applications I can see or understand.
There are 137 "processes" and over 200 "services" running right now on the Windows 7 machine I am at. I can't watch them go away when I shut down, because if I leave the task manager running, Windows 7 complains about the Task Manager still running when I want to shut down.
There are many things that are much better today, but it seems that some things are getting worse.
I've recently managed to get an ubuntu server to boot as quickly (with preconfigured network interfaces and a few other things), but for years I could find the magic combination that would boot a usable system that quickly.
And I haven't seen a Windows machine that boots to usable state in less than 15 seconds (SSD, 30 seconds on magnetic hard drive) in a long time. "Usable" means you double click on something and it responds, btw - not that it shows the desktop.