The Changing Experience of Technology
Mom 94.9 had an unexpected Windows message pop up today and asked me about it.
She said she was still a beginner with computers and didn't know anything, but I reminded her she'd been using computers since the early 1990s. She knows plenty of things, but the Windows experience keeps changing.
When she started, you downloaded a program and used it. It was a "pull" content model--whatever you wanted, you went out and got it. There was no "push" content back then.
Now, everything on earth is push content, and every program keeps pushing it at you. Notifications, notifications, notifications. No matter how many you turn off, they keep coming, especially with Windows.
Mom's gotten used to four or five different versions of Windows over the years, but the look and feel keep changing, even though most of us don't want it to. Every change seems to be designed to sell us something else instead of improve our experience.
Windows had patches in the 1990s, but they were rare and small. Windows didn't automatically install them back then. So when they ask her about patches available for download and if she wants to install them, she doesn't have the background knowledge to answer.
Our conversation made me think about patches, which reminded me of the first time I got a patch for a game. It was 1989, and I was playing Cinemaware's classic TV Sports Football on the Amiga 500 (I bought an Amiga 500 just for this game, not knowing Cinemaware would release 10+ classic games and I'd love them all). The game was sensational and looked utterly incredible, but it had one nasty bug: after a touchdown (and the cheerleader cut scene), the game would occasionally hang and require a reboot. All progress in that particular game was lost and you had to start over.
It eventually frustrated me enough that I called Cinemaware's customer support line. The phone rang and someone picked it up on the third ring. No series of automated messages. Just a person. I explained the problem and they confirmed it was a bug and that they'd mail me a patch.
It was on two 3.5" diskettes. In fact, it was the entire game, with the newly-incorporated patch included. A company sending me diskettes to fix a bug? I felt like a king.
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