July 31, 2007
Why nowadays computers suck
Beware, this will be a rather long text and it is solely my own opinion I express here 
Okay, another headline that might not sound too nice. But I will do my best to explain why I think that nowadays computers suck.
I should say that I’ve used computers for many years. The first one was the infamous C-64, a computer without a mouse, windows or millions of colors but with a 0,9 MHz-CPU and a tape-drive as data-storage. Well, to be honest, I only used the tapedrive on my cousins C-64. I was one of the first in my town who did buy it with the (infamous as well) 1541-floppydrive. And guess what: I had a wonderful time with it (okay, I played on it most of the time, but I was curious also and tried out the built-in basic. And the more I learnt about it, the more interesting it was. And that leads to the first issue:
1. Nowadays computers don’t have a newbie-language to try out.
Yes, I know there are several dozens or more interpreters for so many languages freely available on the web. But if you are a complete newbie the first steps are steep, because:
a) you have to know what you are looking for or you will never find anything.
b) Most of these languages need some kind of installation-process before you can try them out.
c) For most of them, there’s no “sandbox” available. Something like a C-64 screen where you type in some short commands, hit return and immediately see what happens. I guess most of the professional developers highly underestimate the fun of this experience.
All these issues (imho) are enough to drive away newbies, but there are more. So up to the next point:
2. Nowadays computers are terribly complicated. (Yes, they are!)
I guess this should better read: Nowadays operating-systems are terribly complicated.
Sure, on the surface most of the well-know operating-systems do look nice (well, maybe with the exception of Windows-XP which looks like a kids playground (imho).
But back to the point:
Nowadays operating-systems are terribly complicated. And they don’t need to be!
Okay, I am not a professional developer (just someone who tried out several rogramming-languages, did some basic programming with C, php, Modula-2 and others. I guess I am a kind of scriptwriter-hobbyist, doing some widgets for Mac OS X from time to time).
So I may not know about all the problems operating systems have to deal with. But recently the operating systems seem to get more complicated with every release.
Upto Mac-OS 9 it was relatively easy to understand what was below the surface. Even for non-einsteins it was possible to fix things when something went wrong, it was possible to know how to extend the system, where to find most of the essential files and so on. But look at OSX now! Or Windows, even more terrible! Or Unix/Linux, whatever!
What do you see, as a “normal” user if you just are brave enough to open the system-folder? You see folders within folders within folders with virtually zillions of files in it! Do we really need all of this crap just to simply run an operating system? Some might say yes, but I say no! And I think I have good reasons for it.
To make this clear I have to give some info about my computing-history. After the C-64 and before the Macs there where the Amigas. Oh what great machines they where! I guess this has “hurt” me forever.
What I want to say with that: Using a C-64 was a bit complicated but with only a few days of learning you could do many interesting things. You even could begin programming after a few seconds or minutes if you where completely new to it! This was the time when computing was a bit complicated but it was fun also.
Then came the Amiga and, amazingly, this was even more fun! Not only the games (though many of them where lightyears better than all the mainstream crap that floats around nowadays, giving you logical puzzles, something to think about or something for pure fun. Not something where you need to spend weeks (or even months!) to get somewhere in one of these monster-games). I guess this makes another point.
But what I wanted to say here, was that even the Amiga with its’ advanced operating-system, its’ windows, its’ mouse and tremendous graphic-functions was quite easy to use! You didn’t have to deal with hundreds of folders and hundreds of thousands of files and the system did exactly what you wanted it to do (well, most of the time, to be honest)! Hell, even nowadays, it is possible to use an Amiga to write your letters or do some internet-surfing! And all that without all the crap that is found in the aforementioned leading operating systems. To shorten that: Working on the Amiga was still fun.
To shorten things a bit: After the hippocrites of managers managed the Amiga to death I had to use Apple (or: I chose the more appealing of two not too good alternatives, one being Windows 98, the other Mac-OS 9). And it was nice. To be honest, it wasn’t that worse. Sure, Mac-OS 9 wasn’t bad, in contrary. But compared to the Amiga it was something to laugh at and that includes the hardware, too.
And then, even worse, came OSX and this leads to the other major, maybe the biggest complaint of them all:
3. Nowadays operating systems are sooooo slow!
You don’t believe it? Well, maybe it’s because you bought one of those new intel-driven Macs with 2 GB of RAM and a 3-GHz-CPU. But, as nice as OSX may look, it is far away from being a fast operating-system. Not what I would call fast, anyway.
For an explanation, I will once again pull up some memories from the past, the computers I owned, to be exact:
1. C-64, CPU running at 0.9 MHz (that is right, it did not even run with a full Megahertz!)
2. Amigas 500/2000, CPU running at amazingly 8 MHz (as I remember it)
3. Amiga 1200, I think with a CPU running 16 MHz (not sure), later equipped with a CPU-Card running at 50-MHz.
4. iMac-G3 – 300 MHz
5. iMac-G4 – 1 GHz
So, some simple mathematics shows us that the computer I use now is around 20 times faster than the accelerated Amiga, 142 (!) times faster than the first Amiga and more than a thousand times faster than the C-64!
And how does it work out in everyday usage? Not too good, imho!
From my point of view as a user, the iMac-G4 with the latest OSX doesn’t nearly feel as snappy or fast as my latest Amiga with its’ 50 MHz-CPU did. Sure, the Mac can compute an amazingly lot of numbers, much more than the Amiga could. But why is it then, that I still have to wait seconds for a simple menu to open? Shouldn’t it be there right at the moment I use the mousebutton? Well, on the Amiga it was, even when run with only 7 MHz…
I already hear the developers, telling me something about Millions of colors on nowadays operating systems and so many other things that have to be calculated internally. But have they? And about the colors: I tried to lower them, just to see what happens and guess what: It made almost no difference. So much for “advanced” graphiccards. If I remember right, my last Amiga also had a graphic-card and I am sure that was about 10 years or more before today. Shouldn’t there be a bit of a speed-improvement?
One last thing I menationed before should be pointed out, too:
4. Applications-size nowadays is ridiculous
One question: Shouldn’t the OS-Developers have made some progress in the last few years in that respect? Why is it then, that the utilities-folder on OSX is more than 40 Megabyte (and I already threw out all the languages I will never use). A size, my whole Amiga-System-partition never had! I guess, it was around 25 to 30 MB with quite a lot of extensions that where added to it later.
Again, I have to compare this so-called advanced operating system to a machine that was built around 20 years ago. The Amiga was ahead of its’ time, regarding software but even more regarding hardware. Sure, the OS didn’t have all the bells and whistles of OSX, but it was efficient and it was easy to understand. You could find out where to find System files and you could find out how all fit together relatively easy.
Compared to the Amiga OS (I guess, the Atari falls in that category, too, though I never used one), all the so called modern operating systems completely suck. They are bloated, slow and full of eyecandy that doesn’t help the user in any way. I sometimes feel the only reason they are there is that the designers can tap their own shoulders and tell each other how talented they are.
So, contrary to his holyness Steve Jobs, I think OS X as well as the hardware he sells us sucks as much as Windows-PCs (compared to what we’ve had in earlier days). While I still use OS X for everydays work and for some widget-programming, computing is no real fun anymore.
Too many times I see the infamous spinning beachball on OSX. Too many times I have to wait a second or two until a menu pops open or another function that should be executed in milliseconds takes far too much time. So, this is why i think nowadays computers suck.
TheKebab said,
October 19, 2008 @ 8:45 pm
Any who read this page, you are reading the words of a very wise person. I totally agree! Nowadays, our Dual-Core computers and our power hungry SLI cards are still yet slower than the Amiga.
To be truthful, I myself am very lucky to own a custom built computer (AMD 64×2 ^2.8ghz dual-core, 2GB 866mhz ddr2 ram, 250GB hd, 8500GT) however I experience a small amount of lag running XP SP3. I tried vista and it was good speed but I hatd it! However, when I used the Amiga it was tenfold the speed.
What is happenning, the world is becomming slower!
djfil said,
April 23, 2010 @ 9:35 pm
You’re comparing a bicycle to a car driving on a city.
Wich one is faster or better? (both can only go up to 50km/h but bicycles can go through much more places and easy to park)
But also keep in mind that, in that city live a lot of thief’s .
Would you like to transport your money on bike or by car? Or leave your bike at work place entrance?
Even better, you can probably find ways of running old C-64 OS (if that’s what’s called) on some virtual machine, and compare it to the real thing. time boot times. That would be more comparable.
Oh Multitasking is the thing that’s bugging you. If one wants improve his OS, since you now use Linux, you can write your own kernel, and use your scheduling algorithm of choice.
Linux even permits you to custom install everything.
Open source is the way. Power to “root$: man “
admin said,
April 26, 2010 @ 11:10 am
@ djfil:
Either you have missed my point or I didn’t make it quite clear. I certainly wouldn’t dare to compare the C-64s’ functionality to that of Windows, Mac OS X or Linux/Ubuntu or whatever. What I would compre however is the functionality of an Amiga-OS to any of the above mentioned systems. If you want me to make a similar comparison, the Amiga-OS would be a Porsche and all the other OSs would be Hummers.
The first is lightweight and doesn’t carry any unnecessary weight with it (while still being able to serve everything a regular user needs), the second does carry far, far too much weight with it. Weight that may be valuable in emergencies but is certainly not needed by every user.
Let me explain that a little more, going back to the Amiga again. To this day I have nothing but utter respect for the people who created the Amiga. Simply because they were able to build an actually usable (and very responsive) computer around a 7 MHz-processor (and some highly dedicated co-processors of course).
But it didn’t stop there. I think the highest amount of RAM I had ever built into my Amigas was maybe 6 MB of RAM. Nothing more. Oh, and did I forget to say that the Amiga didn’t have virtual memory? But, even with that tiny amount of memory I was able use, say, a text-editor, a painting-application, a browser and an Email-application at the same time.
The reason why this was possible was an OS that was built for efficiency. Compared to it, I think that most every so-called modern OS is a big pile of bloated junk that does tons of things under the hood that I probably wouldn’t notice if it wouldn’t be there.
My simple question is this: Why are the OSs we have to use nowadays are still sluggish too often, and sometimes about as “fast” as a turtle? Why did the Amiga with the laughable slow CPU feel much more responsive than any of the modern OSs? Again, I absolutely do not see how an Amiga could be seen as a bicycle.
I also don’t see what you’re up to with pointing me to the kernel. While hacking the kernel might be a theoretical possibility, most of us regular users (and even the geeky ones) will never do that, mostly because of the lack of time and experience. And regarding OS X and Windows: We couldn’t do to that anyway, even if we wanted to. And why should we have to? It is not the users job to optimize the basics of the OS, it is the job of the OS-makers.
Also I think that isn’t the point here. My complaint isn’t so much about Linux (though I think it’s just the same big bloated mess as every other system out there). My main complaint is that even the commercial OSs out there are the sameugly, bloated mess. What I am convinced of is that, with all the insanely huge amounts of RAM and the even more insane speeds of our CPUs, the OSs we use should be able to fly like a Porsche, not crawl like molasses.
Again, I have to refer back to the Amiga. This computer has clearly shown me, that there is no good reason whatsoever for a slow bloated OS.
One could say, computers have a lot more to do today under the hood nowadays. But I would object. Do they really have to? Does the regular user really need all the “servcies” that run under the hood? And even if, why do they have to slow down the OS so dramatically?
Here are a few things I absolutely would demand from a modern OS nowadays:
1. Be clever enough to run only with a set of very basic services at the start, and dynamically load others when and if they’re needed. Everything else is bullshit and a waste of precious CPU-power, not to mention the additional energy that is wasted with the increased CPU-load.
2. Make economical use of the hardware-ressources via the programming-libraries, like old systems did (again Amiga comes to my mind, but it could be Atari as well for example).
Part of the problem nowadays seems to be that the programming-libraries provided by the OSs are bloated as hell (or at least seem to be very inefficient). To me it seems that with increasing amounts of RAM and CPU-power programmers just got more and more lazy. This has to change! The OS-makers should be aware that a sluggish OS is a very bad user-experience, something that the guys behind the Amiga and Atari obviously knew and cared for (and probably the makers of some other OSs I am not aware of).
I would even go as far as to say that needlessly wasting the ressources of computers is an insult to the user. What it says is: “While we could make a fast application, we do not care enough for you, my paying customer, to be bothered”.
Imho, every major OS nowadays fails utterly on all of the points I mentioned before. And as a conclusion, all of these OSs suck big time, when it comes to user-experience. None of them is up to par with the advancements of hardware we have “gained” throughout the years. Though “gained” is highly discussable as well, because, instead of being able to use most of the computer-powers of today for our own needs, far, far too much of it is wasted (yep, wasted!) for things the regular user couldn’t care less.