Quicky

How the grass at my house is currently looking

Perfect accompaniment the workplace chat up line:

“If you like my spreadsheets you should see my bedsheets”

Ha yeah, very good point. Reminds me of Lego. The entertainment is mostly in the building. Once complete, it’s mostly untouched.

I had a similar Ubuntu experience in the Windows XP years too (2006ish?).

Everything had a barrier. WiFi drivers always seemed to be a problem, but if I wanted to do anything non-standard it was an exercise in frustration. At one point I owned a Sony digital camcorder that I wanted to get video files from. Eventually, following hours of forum research I learned I had to recompile the kernel to do it, which did actually get me there. To this day I have no idea what a kernel is, and I have no desire to. I remember thinking how wildly complex it was to do something that worked so easily in Windows.

Entirely off topic and potentially triggering anecdote when accounting for Linux’s general prevalence here, but that wasn’t what turned me back to Windows from Ubuntu 20 years ago, it was actually something that most would could consider a positive for Linux. It was the fact that it was so customisable. I had weird multiple desktops that were mapped to a rotatable cube, I spent ages configuring translucent live performance stats on the desktop, hours updating icons and themes etc, whatever I saw on forums that looked cool and wanted to replicate.

Then one day I acknowledged I just wasn’t ever actually using the computer. I literally spent more time modifying and customising stuff than I did actually doing anything. I realised I was never satisfied with the current config and just kept tweaking.

It’s probably not surprising to hear I’ve since been fully into the almost entirely un-customisable Apple ecosystem for a while now. While it’s taken my money, it’s given me back my time!

Absolutely wild that there was a time when Microsoft had three generally well regarded consumer products in Windows 7, the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 all at the same time, compared to where they are now in all of those product spaces.

Windows was Windows, but 7 was largely consistent and didn’t need to be fought with like its successors.

The 360 was the go-to console for developers and gamers, despite the RROD issues, which I’d even give them credit for for handling (eventually) after lots of us got 2 free games and a free controller from them following the debacle.

Windows Phone 7 had a superb interface, great hardware and genuinely stood out.

Now they have nothing and are hated more than ever.

That was part of Microsoft’s pitch - they wanted it to be the central device. I was in the minority that thought it was a great idea at the time, but then I’d been running a dedicated Windows Media Center PC under the TV for years until that point, so to me it was a shinier upgrade.

Exactly that. The Xbox One came with HDMI in and HDMI out.

That and the one thing I thought was awesome - split screen TV so I could play a game and have a live football match or something on part of the screen. That was amazing at the time, I was gutted when they killed it off to get more resources for games.

My kids were like 3 and 5 when Kinect was released and they bloody loved it. Also Dance Central was superb for drunken adults.

Plus if Alien Isolation wasn’t scary enough already, a Kinect would dial it up a notch.

Definitely limited appeal and the tracking wasn’t great on the 360 version, but for those first two scenarios (younger kids and late night dancing) it was a superb party game.

Can’t relate