DocAndersen
One of the things I used to dread was upgrades. There was a time, back in the dark ages of phones, when if you were upgrading your PPC phone, you had to start over every single time. In the past six years, I have updated my iPhone every single time and only bricked my phone one time. That said, I have a full online backup of my phone so bringing it (making the phone unable to be operated or restored) meant getting a new phone from my cellular provider and restoring my backup. Apple gets Kudos for making upgrades painless. Microsoft and Google also get high marks now. Android and Windows updates are incredibly easy to start, finish and move on from!
The reality of what an upgrade represents is frankly that you are adding new functionality, new security, and new features. You are fixing old issues and solving old security issues. You get to start over with an operating system. There was a time, many years ago, as mentioned that you had to start over. The reason for starting over has to do with drivers. The impact of the internet on upgrades is that you now can do the upgrade and not work on drivers. The drivers are on the internet and for the most part, are provided back to you in a fairly reasonable manner automatically. I suspect back in the dark ages we called the beginning of personal computers, that was the single largest impact on systems.
What used to take 4 hours, or more now works in minutes. Worst case, with a failed upgrade you go to a backup. The freedom created by not having to stress about updates is an incredible value. It makes me wonder if I can get all those lost upgrade hours back? Imagine, consider, contemplate all the time you have lost over the years on a specific task. What, if you could ask for that time back. It would be interesting, of that I am sure. Not the activities you love. But things you wished you didn’t have to do. Things you would have preferred to, well not do. What would you spend all that new found time on? I know that not having to waste time upgrading causes me to spend more time playing with other technology. I guess I really don’t save much time after all!
I was a programmer in the MS-DOS days and upgrading software was so easy then. You copied the new version over the old. OK, sometimes it was more complicated.
unless you copied over a new autoexec file or one of the other critical login batch files. Or, copied over the wrong version of the TCPIP stack. Or, removed the .dat file for mainframe login in.
Yeah other than that it was really easy 🙂
Fortunately, I never did any of that. My point was that I never had the problems updating DOS apps that seem to be a regular occurrence in Windows.
I would agree 🙂 But the other side of that was those MS-DOS applications had a much smaller impact and far few users. You get fewer variables, systems are much easier to manage.
really impressive post!!!!
Thanks Hamza, I am really glad you liked it!
You’re welcome @Doc!!!
Thank you, this is interesting.
I am glad you found the post valuable!!!!
Always worth sharing Doc
Thanks! I try 🙂 sometimes I swing, and miss. Sometimes as Harry Carry used to say “It could go all the way!”
I would love to get so much time back from the past. Moments gone. And I am satisfied with my painless Apple backups.
Painless backups are awesome! Between Carbonite and Apple, all my computers are covered!
With my thousands of photos I have confidence in the cloud plus I back them up to a memory card every few months, just in case.
we are definitely entering a new era of accelerated technological advancement….scary for some, fantastic for others. I am concerned about the health related effects of say, 5G & find it interesting this morning that employees of tech companies are protesting their employers relation to government contracts that might not necessarily be ‘for the good of mankind’. interesting blog, as always.
Thanks for the compliment. It is interesting that employee action is increasing. Google just pulled out of a contract with the US government because it wasn’t in the best interests of humanity.
The problem, of course, is that today is always a short-sighted view of what is next.