The Modern Internet

It's really sad what the Internet has become nowadays. Social media sites employing predatory algorithms, that breed hostility and doing stupid stuff/self-destructive stuff for the sake of meaningless clicks, and creating hiveminded echo chambers. Said algorithims also rely on scraping data en masse, meaning privacy is pretty much gone at this point. Not to mention that almost all of it is under the control of just a handful massive corporations.

The old Internet was certainly the "wild west", but that's exactly what made it so magical. You could find anything, talk about any subject with anyone, and sites had personality and individuality, rather than just being Generic Bootstrap Template #37.

I'm pleased by the recent popularity of services like Neocities. Sites here truly feel personal, and that's probably the biggest thing I miss about the old internet.

Microsoft Windows

How the mighty have fallen.

In the 90s, NT was the absolute gold standard for stability. 2000 followed, and only got better.

Then XP came out with it's fisher-price theme (it was still quite good however, had a rough launch though), Vista had a bombshell of a launch (but ended up being pretty good), and 7 was just Vista with a crappier coat of paint.

Windows 8. I don't need to say much more. Why in the hell did Microsoft decide to focus solely on tablet users for WINDOWS?? It's sad, because even though it's UX is absolutely horrendous, 8 (and 8.1) have a lot of nice improvements on the desktop. It's fast, stable, and I really like the new Task Manager more than the old one.

Unfortunately, this version marks the trend of Windows's enshittification. It only gets worse from here.

Windows 10. Ads, telemetry, freemium bullshit. At least the UX makes some lick of sense now.

Windows 11. There goes the UX. Now with literal spyware (Recall) to boot, generative AI, and even more ads/freemium bullshit! Oh, and we threw stability out the window too. Have fun! :)

Mac OS

UNIX that's actually user-friendly? Sign me up!

If only it weren't vendor-locked to overpriced hardware that are effectively ticking time bombs. If only it wasn't getting progressively dumbed down and becoming like a smart phone OS with how locked down it is. Such missed potential.

Snow Leopard and Mojave especially were awesome. Fast, stable... it's UNIX but user-friendly, what more could you want. It's a shame that Apple has been progressively dumbing it down and making it feel more like iOS.