Technology that has come and gone in your lifetime

[Patrick Thistle]

Apple will always want its own connectors because that's how they keep you Apple loyal. If you can connect other devices, how can they keep the faithful pure?

[pebblethefish]

I thought that iPhones had a chip in them that disabled all other manufacturers' items in the owner's house. (Possibly to the extent of your phone sneaking around your house at night using the Laser App to delete non-conformist technology). But I may be paranoid.

[Snake Plissken]

The MacBook Pro is USB-C / Thunderbolt 3. The MacBook Air is USB-3 and Thunderbolt 2. The iMac Pro is USB-3 and Thunderbolt 3. The iPhone drops the headphone jack in favour of a Lightning connector (which means no charging and headphones at the same time) except on the new iPhone which is wireless charging.

In short, Apple hate you. And I say that as a household with two iMacs, an iPad and two iPhones.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Apple will always want its own connectors because that's how they keep you Apple loyal. If you can connect other devices, how can they keep the faithful pure?

Mac laptops pretty much only have USB-C. Your assertion only really applies to iPhones.

[Snake Plissken]

Nah, they just make it needlessly difficult. MacBook Pro can't even do a signal to a HDMI TV without buying a dongle. That sort of thing has been on laptops since time immemorial.

Much as their stuff is lovely, they are a very, very strange company when it comes to connecting devices.

[Patrick Thistle]

And yet they have an army of zealots who will queue overnight in the rain to prove they are worthy of buying shiny new things.

[Snake Plissken]

The iPhone X is out soon. Seeing as I wander past the Arndale Apple Store each morning at just gone 8am, it will be interesting to test that theory out. A couple of years ago, they had barriers set up outside the Liverpool store for (I think) a new iPad and the queue was at least five people deep.

(Reminds me. When the third iteration of the iPad came out, a guy I was working with did the queuing thing. Five hours or so. He proudly brought it into the office and before he even got to unbox it, my phone beeped with a text message - it was my wife, saying hers had just been delivered to the house.)

[ad hoc]

Sat next to a colleague at the airport on Sunday. Sitting at one of those bar type countertop tables that has sockets for charging. I plug myself in, and he gets out his airbook, with its hyper-designed accessories. The plug is thin and tall, like someone thought about how to make a plug look different and cool. Because the sockets are right above the counter, he can't plug in, as the plug is too deep. He swears "Fucking Apple". They do have great design but practicality is not in any way their strong suit is it?

[Stumpy Pepys]

I'm not going to defend Apple's decisions when it comes to port selection, but USB-C is definitely the way forward, even if it means having to use dongles sometimes. My laptop has USB-C charging and it's great to be able to power the thing with basically a phone charger (and to be able to plug it into either side of the machine).

[Levin]

I love the idea of USB C but from this it appears to have some issues

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Broadly speaking about the world as a whole, but with aviation technology being a good indicator, was the 20th Century the hundred year span above all others which saw the most progress and development?

I’m no historian but on a purely technological viewpoint I’d say yes, with the post WWII years providing the thrust of the progress.

Humanly speaking too the advances were huge in the 20th century. Again, the post-war era spearheaded the changes (eg racial segregation in the USA). As late as the early 1930s, they were still exhibiting people from the colonies in France, and elsewhere too (eg Manchester), usually presenting them as "authentic cannibals", cf the Paris’s Colonial Exhibition of 1931 held in the Bois de Vincennes where 111 Kanaks – indigenous Melanesian inhabitants from the Nouvelle-Calédonie – were proudly exhibited in a "human zoo".

This Libération article of 1998 informs us they were told to play the role of "savages", having to eat raw meat, dance wildly and "scream like real savages". Some of them were later exchanged for crocodiles with a German zoo…

Christian Karembeu’s great-grandfather was one of the 100-odd Kanaks exhibited: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfqD...utu.be&t=1m24s

The Industrial Revolution put forward by Sits and Satchmo Distel is a strong contender too of course but it would have to be qualified as I think that most historians identify two (more or less) discrete periods in the Industrial Revolution: the 1760-1820/40 phase and the 1860/70-1920(?) one, with the advent of the railways driving the metamorphosis – economic expansion, society, agriculture etc… not to forget the massive development of football of course!

Separately they don’t quite fit our 100-year span but if we merge them – after all they’re part of the same continuum during which a largely feudal, agrarian society was turned into an industrial, technological one – they just fit our criterion, give or take 30 years.

Let's remind ourselves too that in many other Western countries, the term "Industrial revolution" is not readily used as it’s felt that it wouldn’t be accurate enough, it cannot be compared to the original template, the English one. I wonder if it’s not only called Industrial Revolution in England as it happened exponentially, unlike elsewhere. Friedrich Engels for instance, who lived in Manchester in the mid-1840’s, likened the profound and sudden changes in England to the French Revolution in terms of magnitude. In most other Western countries, it came later, more gradually and the transformation is known as "industrialisation" as the changes were less dramatic, less revolutionary.

[Patrick Thistle]

In terms of tech I think might disappear soon or at least go very niche, digital cameras.

I know lots of people are into photography but most people just use their phones. Video cameras the same.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Of course phones are digital cameras, it just that you can do other things with them too.

But if you mean stand-alone cameras you may be right, but there's no sign of it at present. There's more diversity in photographic devices these days than ever before. Everything from high-end DSLRs, to medium priced 4/3s, to 'point and shoots' that will do more than a camera-phone for half the price. There's also a revival in analog photography that's comparable with audio. Including, over the past year, a number of companies launching instant-print systems comparable to, and including, Polaroids. It's actually a brilliant time to be making pictures.

[Patrick Thistle]

I think this will be the generation that takes the most pictures and prints the fewest. When the blackout comes it'll all be lost.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Without a doubt. It's estimated that on a monthly basis the number of pictures posted online exceeds the number of photographs printed during the first century of photography's existence. And yes most will vanish unless they're committed to paper. But the same applies to contemporary writing. In fact my next major photographic purchase is likely to be a large-format ink-jet printer.

[Gangster Octopus]

Just going back to the aviation theme for a moment - I was recently treated to a spin (and loop, barrel roll, etc...etc...) in my friends 1952 Chipmunk as a 60th birthday pressie. My friend, who is even older that the Chipmunk, learnt to fly at the age of 16 and had been taught by one of the original pilots of the Royal Flying Corps.

Interesting usage of the word "treat" there...

[Satchmo Distel]

Without a doubt. It's estimated that on a monthly basis the number of pictures posted online exceeds the number of photographs printed during the first century of photography's existence. And yes most will vanish unless they're committed to paper. But the same applies to contemporary writing. In fact my next major photographic purchase is likely to be a large-format ink-jet printer.

Would the lost photos be the ones that had least cultural value (a kind of natural selection of cultural artefacts) or is the cull random, like the BBC wiping tapes regardless of quality?

Perhaps film and video have already set the precedent here? TV retrospectives only choose from what was preserved in their preferred medium, so for example we only see a fraction of The Beatles' TV appearances.

[Ginger Yellow]

Would the lost photos be the ones that had least cultural value (a kind of natural selection of cultural artefacts) or is the cull random, like the BBC wiping tapes regardless of quality?

It's less random and more universal. When Vine went, all that content disappeared, unless someone bothered to upload it to Youtube. Unless someone consciously makes an effort to archive it, it's going to disappear eventually.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Increasingly the Save function in computer programs.

[Snake Plissken]

Ha. I use the Office online apps a lot and the lack of a Save button still throws me. Even editing within the desktop application from O365, the Save button doesn't save to disk but to the cloud.

[Sam]

Depends where you set it to save, doesn't it? I've got Office365 and when I save a document it goes to my hard drive.

[Snake Plissken]

In the browser based web application it is online only. I work in SharePoint so it’s cloud saves all the way whether I’m in the browser or the desktop application.

[Sits]

Excel Online is terrible.

[Lang Spoon]

Fuck this shit, I want my save as button.

[Snake Plissken]

Excel Online is terrible.

Depends what you're doing with it. Half of my job is converting Excel spreadsheets into the thing they should have been done in in the first place.