Computers jumped the shark in 1998. I remember dual-booting NT4 and BeOS on a PII 300 MHz with 64MB of RAM. Connected to a 256 kbps SDSL modem, it’s the best computing experience I’ve ever had. You could do everything you can on a modern machine. Indeed, even more, because the modern versions of software like OneNote and Word are neutered compared to the ‘97 versions.
It feels like all of this effort has been spent making computer interfaces worse. The only improvement I can point to between MFC and a modern web UI is DPI scalability. Besides that, there are tons of regressions, from keyboard accessibility to consistency in look, feel, and operation.
Yes, that late 90s/early 2000s nirvana. I could perfectly browse the web and write documents and send emails on a PowerMac G3 without too much fuss. Only things like photo/video/audio manipulation were really lacking from machines at the time compared to today.
I don't know if it's the baby duck syndrome, rose tinted glasses, or 'back-in-my-day-ism', but I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Computing for me peaked in about 2002-2005 (I'm young, sorry), coasted okay until about 2010, then began gaining weight until today where I have a sense that computing latency is like a type 2 diabetic man having his midlife crisis. Either he loses some weight, or he has a heart attack and dies.
I agree on your point re: number crunching for rendering videos, manipulating photos, audio DSP etc.
MFC UIs will scale if you use dialog units and configure the manifest to disable auto-scaling, won't they? I guess I'll soon find out what the problems with it were, as I'm working on a Winforms app that currently runs in auto-scaled blurry mode.
I've considered using a PowerBook G3 as my main computer, but there are two practical limitations: can't get new batteries, and no support for modern cyphers/encryption.
It feels like all of this effort has been spent making computer interfaces worse. The only improvement I can point to between MFC and a modern web UI is DPI scalability. Besides that, there are tons of regressions, from keyboard accessibility to consistency in look, feel, and operation.