Ah, High Tech. It's all so promising. And yet . . .
I am (Well, was) an electronic design engineer. I've designed, prototyped, tested, redesigned and shipped circuits. I have designed, coded, tested, reviewed, fixed and shipped "Apps" before anybody called them "Apps".
My VCR never blinked 12:00 for more than a few minutes.
Now, I am a technophobe. I'm really starting to hate this stuff.
I scream at my F-250 too often. I just want to listen to the radio, but Ford "Sync" is trying to desperately connect to a cell phone that died a horrible death on my mountain bike a year or so back. Or it is trying to read or reply to a text that I couldn't care less about, I'm driving. I want to rip Ford sync out of that truck, impale it with a pickaxe so it will never harm another human again, and replace it with an AM FM radio. But, I'm afraid that will break the truck. Mrs. Wuck would frown on that.
I built a home PC in the early 80's. A Z-80 based
CP/M system with
8" floppy discs. I used a 300 baud "
Volksmodem" to connect to bulletin boards to get free software and communicate with other nerds. Yay! Then, I got Windows. I got really tired of going thru the headaches of upgrading to Windows.X, then upgrading my PC because the old one didn't have the speed or the memory to run Windows.X. Now, when I have to use Windows (Not often), I get grumpy. It usually starts with having to wait while it "Updates". Why do you need to update NOW? Then, it reboots while I'm trying to work. Then I start screaming, again. Nothing like a tool that keeps you from working. I like playing with hammers and saws now.
That said, I do use
Ubuntu / Linux on my PC, and have a lot of appreciation for the folks that make that happen - most often programmers chasing their passion - and not getting paid for it. Yes, Ubuntu also updates regularly. But it asks me nicely first before doing anything, I can dismiss it with a click.
Yes, I have "Smart Phone". I yell at it occasionally too. But, I have very few apps on it. In fact, I can't install any Google apps on it, Google wont let me. Because I use an
open-source version of Android, Google doesn't like that 'cause their hooks aren't in it. Well, not all of them anyway.
I do still fix my cars. I really don't like paying mechanics to guess at what is wrong with it, as it seems some of my friends will do. With my background in electronics and automotive (I was also a mechanic while going to college) , EFI was pretty easy to learn, and IMO it is also the best auto invention since the electric starter!
Just call me App-less.