Floppy disks:
I opened up the Apple Mac App store the other afternoon. Stick with me, the first computer I typed on, fell in love with the idea of typing without having to roll another piece of paper into the typewriter. That first computer ran programs on five-inch plastic diskettes, five and quarter, to be exact.
That machine also saved the data on those selfsame diskettes. My first Mac used “revolutionary” 3 and 1/2 inch diskettes but eventually that became an industry standard.
I wrote a newspaper article about the NeXT computer, ahead of it’s time, no floppy drive, but a revolutionary CD reader. I could be wrong about that, been a while and my memory is porous, at best.
I skipped a number of computer models, opting for years to do the “only a laptop” kind of thing. Part of living in a trailer in South Austin. CD drives and inter-web-tubes.
Apple has led us away from dangerously mutable storage material – floppy disks – to CDs and now, no need for that?
https://www.kramerw.com/2010/04/superstores/
I realized as I was putting together material that evolved into a top ten iPad list, the iPod and the iPad are about consuming media. Music and web.
The game has changed again.
While I still feel a need to have some tangible objects in exchange for my dollars, there is the savings on wear, tear, and dead trees. Although, many hydrocarbons must be sacrificed to make that electricity. Electrons must be horribly inconvenienced.
I’m just saying.