My iMac turned six years old this month. I still use it as my main machine. It runs Mac OS 10.6.8, the last release that allows use of PowerPC applications. It’s also the last version before form began running roughshod over function in basic visual elements, with pastels, super-thin fonts, abstract iconography, and nearly invisible borders flying in the face of what used to be the interface guidelines. (That’s not just my opinion; two longtime experts have written a long dissertation about Apple’s departure from its once-rock-solid design principles. Jony Ive never should’ve been allowed on the software side, period.)
My computer has had some metaphorical creaking now and then, most recently when the weather application on my menubar abruptly stopped working (the server isn’t accessible anymore, and I’ve found a replacement). The best peripheral in the world isn’t being made anymore. I’ve dealt with a broken video card and the vertical DVD drive has ceased to function (thank goodness for cheap externals), but otherwise it still does everything I want to do. And on Dec. 8, Apple will declare my iMac officially obsolete.
While I have problems with some of what Apple has done since Steve Jobs’ death (there is an iPhoto/Photos rant yet to be written), the Mac is still the best computer out there. However, today, Apple can fairly be described as a mobile-device company that happens to make computers. I read recently that Apple sold more iPhones and iPads in a quarter than all Macs in existence. (In 2011, all iOS devices in a year outstripped the Mac total.)
While my computer is firmly grounded in the beginning of this decade, my active Internet work is even older. Iowa Highway Ends is now 14 years old. See that tagline in the upper right hand corner of the blog? Where I tout the “organic, occasionally hand-crafted HTML” that I still use for everything except the blog itself? That was supposed to be tongue in cheek but guess what — it’s cool again! From the linked Washington Post story:
Nostalgia for a purer, simpler time has already brought back the flip phone [What do you mean, “brought back”? — Ed.] and the cassette. So it was only a matter of time, really, until someone attempted to revive the ’90s era Internet.
You’ll find their communes clustered on the edges of the modern Web, just outside the glow of Twitter and Facebook: static homepages built entirely in HTML [ahem], or social networks running off a single Unix computer.
They’re not sentimental, the old-timers argue; they’re not pining for some dial-up past. Rather, they’re pretty sure the modern Internet is screwed — and they’re reverting to its last, truly viable version.
As someone who has HTML code old enough to vote, this looks like it’s right up my alley. (My Angelfire page is still active, along with the former index to this website before I migrated it. The pages haven’t been updated, but they are still there.) Bandwidth is one component — the “everything streamed and in the cloud” crowd needs a reality check from the Great Flyover — but there’s more.
Consider the autoplay videos, “social sharing” buttons, screens that cover the content of the page to get you to sign up for a mailing list, autoplay ads, “read more” lines/images that interrupt what you’re currently reading, “optimized for mobile” layouts that are useless on real computers*, autoplay videos, and endless calls to Google and Facebook APIs that slow down loading. What ISN’T attractive about nice, clean, width-of-the-window pages that load text and images and then don’t load anything else?** There are times I want the entire Internet to revert to its circa-2009 stage, before “YouTube celebrity” became something some people write/say with a straight face. I still frequent online forums that work about the same way they would have in 1999, for that matter. (Sadly, the MacAddict Forums have been dead for five years this month, MacAddict itself was renamed MacLife, and now it doesn’t even have a dedicated website.)
But I cannot stem the tide. I can only row along in my little boat, and as long as it’s seaworthy with a little duct tape that’s good enough for me.
*ESPN, SI, and Fox Sports, this means you.
**If we’re really going back to ’90s webpage design, a mottled-background pattern is an absolute must. I was ahead of the curve when I went for plain white in 2001.
