The Kaleidoscope of Technology

We used to call it planned obsolescence. Now it's called an upgrade. Version decimals, security patches, new (and "improved") user interfaces, Office ribbons, hidden files, incompatible apps, viruses, spam & worms, and a language that seems like English but is nothing of the sort —it's all a continuing kaleidoscope that refuses to stay still.

I have an iPod Touch 3rd generation. I've had it maybe six years. Its current operating system is IOS 5.1.1 that's been out only four years. I use it a lot to play internet radio, but then the app started to hang up so I thought I'd delete and reinstall. That's when I learned the hard way that Apple no longer supports its 3rd generation and my iTouch can't upgrade. Worse, Apple's app store doesn't have anything that's compatible with 5.1.1. Apple wants me to buy a new iPod.

I have a collection of iPod docks that don't charge newer iPods. How complicated can it be to ensure that the same wire is used to conduct electricity? But at $40 a dock, Apple has an incentive to play connection roulette.

I never could follow Apple's zoological nomenclature: tigers, snow leopards and lions. Had they used wombat, armadillo or giraffe, I might have been able to distinguish among them, but they stuck to cats. Now they are into weird geography. But Apple still dotes on its decimals. If you check "About this Mac", your Apple doesn't disclose the animal or geographic name of its operating system, only its decimal. The names serve only advertising and they add another layer of confusion.

We tried to upgrade Shari's OS and her MacBook locked up. We took it to the tech-doctor who announced that the upgrade was too traumatic for the hard drive. It had to be replaced. Hello? The hard drive was over-worked so it crashed?

I upgraded my OS and plugged in my external hard drive that I'd used for years on my existing OS. The new OS couldn't read the files. I could have lived with that. I have other computers that could have read it. But the new OS went in and affirmatively mangled my files so no one, not even the tech-doctor, could read it. Why would anyone design an operating system to mangle files it can't read?

Then there is the Microsoft Office ribbon. I got pretty fast using the old Office Word menus. Now that I have been made to upgrade, it's a whole new learning curve. Features I used to access with a hot key or a couple of key strokes are now attainable only through a couple of menus and three or four key strokes. It's way more complicated. I'm slowly peeling off the ribbon layers and replacing them with simple commands.

It's like the annual Detroit model design. What's the point except expense?

I still run Windows XP. It's only eight years old. It runs on a laptop that's over a decade old. I use it to run a high resolution scanner that isn't supported by anything newer. I really don't care to buy something new when the old one works very well. It also runs my Photoshop 6 which is fourteen years old, and PageMaker which worked perfectly well to lay out and publish a half a dozen books, and still works. But it won't run on anything that's made nowadays.

My Windows XP also runs my web design software, Expressions Web, which is five years old. I have a couple of websites; one with over three hundred pages.

Now I find that Microsoft server software on my website host no longer supports Expressions. I have to buy a new web design program that's compatible. I know the features I want, but the descriptions never mention anything relevant: like whether it imports existing pages without mauling them into something unrecognizable; or whether it includes an html editor. From what I can tell, web design programs are either ridiculously complicated or template-based simpletons. I tried a couple. They confronted me with multiple screens, dialogue boxes, and goofy gizmos. They may as well have been cuneiform impressions on clay tablets. Looks pretty, but I can't get it to do anything. Dumb as a rock.

The computer kaleidoscope now effects even the telephone. For work I have what I call my batphone. It operates through the internet and is tied in with the office servers. For some weeks, my batphone got phantom phone calls. Scores of them, day and night.  Pick up the phone; nothing. The office tech guys realized hackers were getting through because the firewall wasn't set up.

Now I am getting calls from "anonymous". That's an odd name for caller ID, particularly when the call is from some echoing, concrete room in India and the thick Indian accent announces that he works for Microsoft and is calling about …. He jabbered off some impressive sounding techie words. I had no idea what he was talking about, except that it had to be some scam. But has the kaleidoscope of computer gibberish turned so mainstream that scam artists assume tech-talk is understood by regular people?

I'm getting too old. I remember standing on the train platform at Wynyard looking at the billboards across the tracks. One was advertising a musical then playing in Sydney: Stop the World. I want to Get Off.