“Everything is amazing, and no one is happy” is an often-quoted rant, but that’s because it’s still very often a relevant sentiment. You may have noticed that I haven’t updated this blog in months, and it’s largely because I haven’t been inspired to say much. Perhaps that’s because of a simple truth: I rarely write about how happy I am with something, and I’m basically happy with everything I use these days.
Things are boring in the tech world, but I think we’ve lost sight of why they’re boring – because everything is actually pretty great now! Even iOS vs. Android arguments have largely lost their luster; the OSes are closer in functionality now than ever before, and we actually finally have a Nexus phone with great hardware and a great camera – the unicorn of the tech world! We even have an Apple TV that can run third-party apps, something people have been asking for since the Apple TV was first a thing. We have a laptop made by Microsoft, which is yet-another thing that die-hards fans have been clamoring for since the original Surface.
The most I could ask for is that some of my devices get better at talking to each other, and that things be a bit less buggy, but that’s all basically things that can be solved in software and services. Hardware-wise, I’m basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, because everything is pretty ideal. All of the big questions – what phone should I get, what tablet should I get, what laptop should I get, what streaming box should I get – have easy, straightforward answers.
People too-often view “boring” as a negative thing, but remember that things are often only interesting or exciting because of how imperfect they are. iOS and Android releases every year were exciting because, for awhile, they were works-in-progress that lacked fundamental features – now they both have basically everything I’d want, and everything else is a bonus. Phone releases were exciting because every phone out there had some major compromise – these days, the compromises are few, far between, and relatively minor. It’s harder to buy a bad phone than it is to buy a great phone.
Don’t get me wrong, we’re certainly on the cusp of some exciting new technology changes; VR and AR are finally heading to the mainstream in a big way, and new pushes in screen technology will certainly lead to gorgeous TV/phone/tablet/laptop/headset screens that make our eyes bleed rainbows – but until then, it’s essentially all quiet on the western front as things have generally settled in a consumer-satisfying way – and I couldn’t be happier about it.