Tech That Doesn't Work
I never expect technology to just work. Young people seem to expect that every piece of software and hardware should work perfectly with all the bells and whistles operating exactly as described. As if they are living in the Star Trek universe 300 years from now. I see them plough into complex software like a recording DAW at full speed and they fully expect that every single feature will be rock solid 100% of the time.
To me, that's like driving a Ferrari into a farmer's plough field at full speed and expect everything to just flow perfectly with a smooth ride.
It occurs to me that this expectation gap might be due to age. I came up through the 1960's and 70's and 80's when cars were not that reliable, for example. Most cars had some sort of major flaw immediately right out of the factory. In fact, the Initial Quality Survey was measuring the cars' quality based on how MANY flaws cars had as brand new units rolling off the factory line. Some flaws were EXPECTED with every new car. Then by 50,000 miles, they were tired and barely operating. By 80,000 miles they were completely dead. Lots of cars only had a 50% chance of starting in cold weather. With many Chryslers from the 60's, for example, you needed to open the hood, take off the air filter and jam a screwdriver down into the carburetor to hold the choke open while you tried starting the car. That sort of thing.
Nothing ever worked as advertised. Least of all computer software. In the 80's when personal computers were just getting started, it seemed like things worked as expected about 25% of the time. If that. Almost everything was incompatible all of the time. Every time one package upgraded, you had no idea whether any other packages would work with it. Or with your hardware. There were just too many untested variables, and it seems, a lack of industry standards to adhere to.
You wanted a new graphics program. So you buy the software and suddenly realize you need a new graphics card with more memory and a faster GPU chip to run it. So you buy that. Then you realize you need a new monitor because its not compatible with the graphics card. So you buy that. Then you realize that you need a processor chip upgrade to be compatible. And then these all work, but now suddenly all your other software doesn't work with the new hardware, so now you have to start upgrading all your software packages one at a time. And it costs a fortune to do all this upgrading. And it takes months. And during that time, some other aspect needs upgrading and now you're doing it all over again. I remember paying $500 for a 10 meg (not gig) hard drive as a second drive to expand into. Everything was expensive. My computer was $11,000 worth of hardware. The graphics card alone was over $2,000.
That was just how it was. With everything. You buy a new toaster, it might work. 90% chance on something simple like that. But if it's a toaster oven, well then that chance drops to about 60% that it would work for more than 3 months. The ding stops dinging, or it stops too early and you have to start it again, or too late and it burns, etc. I remember in the era before me, if people went on a road trip, they just naturally expected to get a flat tire or two. It happened all the time. Part of learning to drive meant learning to change a flat tire.
You just expected things to only work marginally or briefly. Now, at this age, with complicated things like recording software on a laptop, I still only expect that the core functions will only work about 75% of the time. So you take steps to mitigate and reduce loss. But in the instruction videos I see online, they just happily jump into any situation taking no backups or copies and start changes that will destroy all the recorded work if they fail. To me, that's like running into highway traffic without even looking.
One repeating problem I'm having these days is that the basic File Manager tool for windows stops working. It goes into some sort of loop and stalls. Other software keeps working, but I can't move things around, I can't make backup copies, etc. It's a fundamental basic function of the operating system, but yet it fails. I might have to reboot 30 times to get it working again.