Wow, I didn't get online until a got a 300 baud modem around 1981 but I remember dialing into CBBS once. I remember because I was on the west coast and it was in Chicago so I just dialed in to say I'd connected. To minimize the cost I got my dad's stopwatch out to ensure I hung up at 59 seconds exactly.
What I find fascinating now is that I was able to connect, read the greeting, look through the main menu and leave a note in whatever counted as the 'guest book' - all in 59 seconds at a connection speed a decent typist could beat.
Yesterday, I turned on my XBox One for the first time in several months so a visiting pre-teen could entertain themselves while his parents chatted. It took more than 20 minutes to atone for the crime of not turning it on for a while. First, it demanded a 'mandatory OS upgrade' followed by a reboot, then that I re-login and verify an MSFT account I never use (despite only wanting to run one game from a DVD-ROM already in the drive). Then the game itself wouldn't run until we completed a mandatory update download even though it worked fine last time it ran and we didn't try to do anything online.
BTW, not just bagging on XB. My PS4 pulls the same shit. If one of the next gen consoles coming soon advertised a "Just fucking load this media and work" mode, I'd choose it solely for that reason.
The switch is fantastic about this. If a game needs an OS update its generally included on the cartridge, and then it will just work. It politely reminds you about updates when launching software, but you always have the ability to just play the game instead. I think only online focused titles (Like Splatoon) would require an update, and those are fairly uncommon.
What I read out of this is that times were better when there were fewer bad actors. Every UX pain you mention is somewhat a fight against piracy and hacking.
> times were better when there were fewer bad actors.
At the meta-level, I don't think there are, per capita, more 'bad actors' in any broad consumer population today than there were 30 years ago. Most people are generally about the same morally and ethically in their day-to-day lives as we were back then. I think mass media and social media are incentivized to make things look worse today but the data doesn't support that view.
Media and software piracy are good examples. It's no harder today to pirate most music, movies or games than it was 20 years ago. Comparing the free Napster-to-Torrent options vs the paid-Spotify, Netflix, and Xbox/PS4 subscription services show consumers will pay a reasonable price for convenience. I would argue that anti-piracy efforts that make the user experience worse are shortsighted optimizations that are long-term foolish. In 2019 the recording industry set a new total revenue record thanks to the subscription model, finally surpassing the peak of the physical media era.
I brought a Nintendo switch and the initial install was pretty quick (sub 3 minutes I think) didn't require a Nintendo account until I brought a game on their store, and I could literally just plug-in the physical cartridge and get started with Zelda.
Granted the price is outrageously high considering the graphics quality, but still at least it worked.
The PS4 doesn't require an update if you don't want to go online. The same for a game, you can just cancel the update if it's started. The entire platform can run offline if you want. Any game that requires a system update to run will package the update on the disc.
What I find fascinating now is that I was able to connect, read the greeting, look through the main menu and leave a note in whatever counted as the 'guest book' - all in 59 seconds at a connection speed a decent typist could beat.
Yesterday, I turned on my XBox One for the first time in several months so a visiting pre-teen could entertain themselves while his parents chatted. It took more than 20 minutes to atone for the crime of not turning it on for a while. First, it demanded a 'mandatory OS upgrade' followed by a reboot, then that I re-login and verify an MSFT account I never use (despite only wanting to run one game from a DVD-ROM already in the drive). Then the game itself wouldn't run until we completed a mandatory update download even though it worked fine last time it ran and we didn't try to do anything online.
BTW, not just bagging on XB. My PS4 pulls the same shit. If one of the next gen consoles coming soon advertised a "Just fucking load this media and work" mode, I'd choose it solely for that reason.