I am iPod man. And I am obsolete.
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Who’s the young buck on the left?
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I first learned word processing on a Mac. I guess it was Word but seemed like it was a really limited version of it. Maybe I just didn’t know how to use the features.
When I got into the work world, I was really super duper bored and had to look like I knew what I was doing. I had Word, and the manual for it (remember physical manuals?), so I taught myself all the features from the book.
When I got my first tech writing job, where we were doing layout and design work, we had WordPerfect and then Word, but we ALSO had to teach people to use Wang WP and WP+, which were some of the first word processing programs ever, and the reason that the DOJ had adopted the Wang systems 18 years before I even arrived at the job.
Surprisingly, most of the features in modern word processers were in the Wang programs, just you had to know specific codes to use them. Since we had to teach these programs, learning those programs also really helped me to use Word well.
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I’ve never heard of WP+, but Wang I’ve heard of. I think there was a Lexmark word processor in the office for our labs in grad school, and then an NBR system where I got my first job. Thankfully I didn’t have to learn either.
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It was a difficult job because office staff knew other people had Word and it was easier to use. WP and WP+ were more like Wordstar. The training staff had to learn the advanced features in order to train the office staff that “Sure, you can do whatever you want to do in Word in WP+!” I specifically remembering smiling big and hopefully convincingly as we instructed them, “and to bold, you just time /b before the word and after the words you wish to bold. It’s just that easy!” I learned how to put a positive spin on things in that job.
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What is this “transistor” patente? When I was a very young lad, radios had tubes (“valves” for our English friends). So did those newfangled things called “television sets”. (When I was a very young lad, Duplessis was still in power in Québec, and the roads in Liberal ridings were in horrible shape.)
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(It’s a silly, cute book I got when it was free.)
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This is the coolest computer restoration project I’ve seen.
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Meh…
I have some fondness for LPs and books in a tactile sort of way. But while I grew up with a stuck to the wall black dial phone (which is probably still in the house) I don’t miss most old tech.
Digital is awesome. I think the only ‘old tech’ thing I still like is having a dedicated mp3 player instead of using the phone.
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That looks finicky.
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I like my books on dead trees, and my music on vinyl. I’m no hipster, it’s just a comfort thing. I like the way old books feel and even smell, and I even like the little pops and crackles in vinyl.
I had one of those too. Last I heard, it was a prop at some high school’s drama department.
BTW, there were far fewer area codes in those days. This phone had a 312 area code, despite having been located a good 40 miles from the current 312 area code (Chicago loop). That phone must have changed area codes four times in ten years without physically moving.
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Seven digit dialing. Remember seven digit dialing?
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Oh I have no problems with that. I do like old books but I found once I had my cheapo nook I actually started reading a lot more and I am happy to be able to carry around ‘books’ that would otherwise be cumbersome to tote around anywhere.
As far as vinyl goes I think I miss listening to the album as an experience in itself more than anything. Back when not everything was available so readily.
I will restate that I think more than anything I miss the rarity of some things. Having to watch the flyer for the art house theater to catch the animation festivals or off the wall foreign sci-fi, or only getting to see Rocky Horror at Midnight on the weekends.
I somewhat miss things like having your friend ditch school and get tickets for the opening day show of ‘Return Of the Jedi’ and having to get in line hours ahead of time so you get a good seat. Being able to get your ticket online and just walk in the theater and reserved seating now even is kinda nice.
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Seven digit dialing. Remember seven digit dialing?
I remember 5 digit dialing. Last digit of the prefix and the 4 digits for the phone.
The 911 system did away with that
But that was Montana. Which still only has one Area Code. I knew several friends who got cell phones with the same prefix as their land line.
I still have an album hang up. I really don’t like flipping through my digitized music library and seeing “Albums” with one song.
Heck, back in napster days I … acquired … some Pink Floyd MP3s that were one MP3 per album. I was okay with that.
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I recall 6 digit dialing in Hawaii back when.
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My first radio looked a lot like this:
FM? What’s that?
The radio is long gone, but the case is still in use, housing my Lafayette analog volt-ohmmeter.
We kept a tube tester handy.
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Circa late 1981, my brother-in-law was a lieutenant commander in the US Navy’s Supply Corps, and he had to be fairly mobile for the job, so he was issued an Osborne 1.
By Bilby - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11120225
Okay, no, this wouldn’t fit in his briefcase.
The next year, my brother got himself a Kaypro II, which was even swankier and almost 5 lbs heavier.
We bought the 1976 edition of the World Book encyclopedia new, and that’s what my sister and I used for school research up until I graduated from high school in 1988. She hung onto them and her kids used them, up until her dog started eating them (long story) and she threw them out… around 2007!
One of the things I found striking about them: shortly before she threw them out, I looked up the word “Computer” in the old '76 World Book, just for shits & giggles. Sure enough, the expected picture of a wall-size edifice with tape reels and blinking lights and some bespectacled dude in a lab coat was the primary illustration. But the last subsection was entitled something like “The Future of Computers,” and went on to describe how, in the not-too-distant future, computers would be small and powerful and cheap enough where most everyone would have one of their very own, and they’d use them to talk with each other all over the world, and do most of their shopping on them, and eventually there would have to be privacy and security measures put in place…
“Damn,” I thought. “That was a pretty good encyclopedia article for 1976.”
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