I keep on reading ancient OS X reviews.

It does make me kinda sad that I missed an era of huge evolution in computing. There were so many unique systems, even in the 1990s - Apple was trying to create a next-generation operating system (and eventually succeeded when they got Jobs back, essentially turning NeXTSTEP into OS X), there were Sun and SGI workstations (do MIPS and SPARC even really exist anymore?), Amigas and Ataris were still doing well(-ish?) in the early-mid decade, and even ARM was a thing then.

In a way, a lot of these don't matter too much. Aside from Amiga and Atari, all of those other platforms were professional workstations, to my knowledge - very unlikely most home users would even know they exist, let alone own one.

Windows XP was the big thing for most of the time I've been heavily using computers. Vista happened in 2006 (and before that, Longhorn builds and such), but considering a lot of the bargain basement hardware of the time, it wasn't really a hit. (Granted, SP0 was pretty bad, but when hasn't this been the case? Hell, it even kinda extends to OS X's .0 releases, depending on how you look at it.)

Things are still developing, still evolving. Hell, for all I know, in three or four years almost everything we own now could be woefully obsolete. As it is, a good machine from the late 2000s (and even mid-2000s, depending on your use cases) is still probably pretty serviceable, depending on what you want to do. Crazy to think about.

In ways things get old even quicker than ever, but in ways things are lasting longer than ever.

I write way too much about computing lately. I guess there's some sort of itch that really needs scratching, but hell if I know what it actually is. Maybe I'll set up a better chroot on the chromebook and play around in that. I've got a fresh Mint install on an older laptop, but it's not a machine I find myself usually using, whereas the Chromebook's my main portable.

(maybe if I ever see one cheap I'll debate a MacBook Air. Depends on how good they serve as Linux machines.)