Instant Obsolescence by George Ziemann — December 15, 2010 When the software you installed last week already wants to be upgraded, is that a sign of rapid improvement, a failure to be thorough before product release, or a bad purchase? Technology is good, but instant obsolescence seems more than a little counter-productive. Before I complain too much about the screaming pace of technology, I have to confess that part of my problem is definitely my own doing. I'm a Mac user and stayed locked in at OS 9.3.3 for a decade because OS X introduced DRM. It interfered with my music production and I wanted no part of it. For the most part, this wasn't a problem. What worked in 2000 still works today as far as basic web site development, e-mail, graphics, word processing, and 95 percent of what I needed to do on a daily basis to communicate with the world. The CD audio format is still unchanged since 1982; an mp3 is still the same as it was in 1998. In July, I finally was forced to move into the present technologically to create a software project. But it wasn't until after I had finished the last album at the end of August that I finally let my old machine go (a 1998 beige Mac G3 that would still be working fine if I hadn't cannibalized it for the hard drive) to totally embrace the cutting edge again, like I did from the mid-80s until the turn of the century. What I've found to be the down side is not adapting to the new. The problem is that nothing will hold still long enough to get comfortable with it. Every new advance seems to take away abilities to do things that I want and need to do. Being a Mac user, I'm more or less tied in to iTunes software and I'm highly annoyed at the fact that I can't use it to make mp3s out of my own music any more. I'm not talking about music I already owned on CD, but the music I created and recorded. Every software update seems to orphan more and more of my old work. Upgrading from OSX 10.4 to 10.5 killed my copy of PhotoShop, so now I have to have a separate laptop that still runs 10.4 just to do graphics. This is not progress, it's a pain in the ass. Watched a presentation by Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley on the subject of Web Trends, during which she characterized the past six years as "not normal," then predicted it's going to stay that way for another 6 years or so. So "not normal" is the new normal, evidentally. The disconcerting part about the speed with which technology is moving is not the change. Change is good. New tech is fun. But how can you accomplish anything when the basic tools keep morphing before you can get comfortable with them? Some of this is certainly an attempt to stay ahead of the competition. Some of it is just a rush to get into the marketplace. However, some of it just seems like a waste of time and effort on the consumer's part. Buying into trends gets expensive, especially when they keep getting replaced faster than you can master them. If the next big thing is only going to last five minutes, why not wait a while and see what endures? I've got a Les Paul guitar with a serial number that says it was made in 1959. The thing is almost as old as I am. I can leave it in the case for a week and it'll still be in tune when I pull it back out again. I can count on that guitar. But I can't count on a piece of software that I installed last week if it's already screaming that it needs an update.