I think “discontinued after one year” would be a fun punchline here, like the “perfect r/cars car” being a “brown, manual transmission, V8 wagon that’s used from the factory”
I remember a lot of moments like this, the sheer time I had to mess with systems, how things weren’t taken for granted and all seemed new - Halo 1’s Flood reveal blew me away and the driving physics were incredible - it changed on ice and the Warthog’s turret ejected casings that bounced and accumulated on the ground! And then Halo 2/Half-Life 2’s physics impressed me, etc. But of course going back to some things from today’s perspective makes them seem primitive. Starcraft’s 12 unit selection limit? Skyward Sword’s lack of direct camera control without hitting a button?
But most recently I’d say Outer Wilds, Titanfall 2 and the recent main Zelda games threw the most wonder at me.
Outer Wilds for being a completely fresh onion of a puzzle/space exploration game, plenty of video essays with varying levels of spoilers there.
Titanfall 2 is on the surface a sci-fi FPS but the shift in scale between on-foot and in-Titan is unique combined with inventive levels and mechanics.
Breath of the Wild amazed me with the reveal of its scale and world.
Tears of the Kingdom amazes me with how polished it’s physics and sandbox is, I haven’t seen things work as well and without crazy quirks like I have in this game.
I think about that sometimes, I’m already cringing at new slang like “X is giving me Y” replacing “X is giving me Y vibes” since I’m old and keep wondering “X is giving you Y what?”
I’ve been deleting a lot of the old time-specific ones too in my photo library here and there - I imagine those like the Boat-Stuck-in-Canal or OceanGate memes - assuming the internet kinda survives - will be thought of like that Mesopotamia joke(?) that has lost its context except by super history buffs.
Bingo, I saw an ROG Ally(?) on display at Best Buy the other day and it was sitting on the Windows 11 desktop with a couple applications open like any demo laptop out on the floor - what dumbstruck me is that the scaling was set so the interface was absolutely tiny. Of course someone could have messed with DPI settings but it just looked like an interface for ants!
Windows 8 or 10’s tablet mode would have probably gone a ways towards making it more suited for a handheld but that function is gone.
At least the bottom edge swipe opens the start menu which I found by mistake. Maybe Big Picture mode would help.
I have not heard about SAR in a long time, I’m just glad the days of alleged baseball-sized tumors associated with cell phones and facing the phone towards one’s body are over.
They’re just joking about what the future of iPhone could be if Apple reaches “Peak Camera” since that’s been a big ticket upgrade in pretty much each one, even slower years
which one? It’s not so much one big scandal (although that skipping basic anti-theft features decision to save a buck is pretty big right now) but all the medium ones that pretty much point to poor engineering decision-making or standards that causes trouble for owners despite their (usually) lower prices and sharp styling. Their past decade of 4-cylinder GDI engines being junk, fire risk stemming from several very different causes, etc. Of course, one can argue corporations will penny-pinch, but Hyundai and Kia just seem to keep pinching in the wrong places that other manufacturers either learned not to, or never bothered to pinch.
I can’t say if it’s what the person you’re responding to had in mind but I noticed Macs have shorter supported lifespans than a comparable Windows machine. Of course there’s factors like Windows being more hardware agnostic but it effectively means that today, no Mac older than 2013-2014ish/that aren’t supported by macOS Big Sur isn’t getting security updates. They do have options in terms of Windows (potentially), Linux, patched versions of newer macOS releases but for a user that’s non-technical I think that’s too soon. I was able to end my college career in 2019 by pressing my 2008 ThinkPad and Windows 10 into service. (albeit hi-res video and 3D games were naturally out of the question, it was up-to-date and got the job done - EDIT: but now that I think about it I did need patched Intel integrated graphics drivers…)
Of course, Microsoft’s ditching of so many machines with the jump to Windows 11 and putting a 2025 expiration date on many machines (without bypassing or Linux) is abhorrent too and potentially renders part of my complaint moot but I still hope the ARM Macs have longer supported lifespans but too soon to say if anything will change.
I can’t see Apple stopping the “will they, won’t they?” since it probably drives sales or doesn’t set expectations ahead of time but I’m convinced (although I could absolutely be wrong) that the 2020 SE’s launch kneecapped demand for the 12 mini since it came out months earlier with no sign of any mini phone on the horizon. Since my 8 met with a horrible fate at the time I bought a 13 mini, looks like we might be here a while.