
The iPhone killed my inner nerd - merlinpierce
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/29/15892222/i-miss-the-days-of-hacking-things-before-the-iphone-first-click
======
scandox
There's precious little contemplation in this piece. It's like things are just
happening to the author, like waves crashing over his head. Really what he's
saying is that his "inner nerd" (I'll never get used to (give in to) the
enthusiastic adoption of nerd and geek etc) never really had much interest in
technology beneath the level of practical communications for home/hobby use.
His interest in those things never made him go lower down. But there's always
going to be a layer you can go to where tinkering and fiddling are still
required.

So his point is taken: for people whose main interest in technology was
effectively for personal organisation and home entertainment there is no
longer much need, or use, for technical knowledge. Perhaps that will close one
pathway into technology. Others will open up.

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zyb09
I wonder if this will have an effect on how kids get into programming. Back
when I was a kid we had MS-DOS, my primary motivation was to install and play
games, but there was this easy built-in pathway of: Hey, you can do a lot more
with this machine if you want, including making your own games.

Nowadays consuming and developing are so disconnected, it seems almost
impossible for the younger generations to just stumble upon it like many
people did back then.

~~~
II2II
I would like to think that the industry learned the error of its ways.

The 1980s and 1990s were prime times for kids getting into programming. Early
personal computers came with BASIC. Early HTML and JavaScript were simple
enough for a child to get into. That seemed to fall apart in the 2000s when
programming languages did not come standard with personal computers and the
growing complexity of web development made it increasingly difficult to create
anything exciting by the standards of the day. Those were also the times when
programming books geared towards kids seemed to disappear.

Of course many of the modern efforts are much more artificial since they rely
upon programming languages geared towards kids. Yet that is the price of
complexity. Regardless of what the article's author argues, modern devices are
much more complex under the hood. Much of that complexity bleeds into the
tools that would appeal to the inner nerd. Languages geared towards kids both
reduce that complexity and add to the excitement of creating more
sophisticated programs. Children who learn them will have the basics to leap
into "real" programming languages.

The other thing that we have witnessed over the past few years is a renewed
interest in books geared towards children of most ages. For a while the best
that I saw were titles geared towards teens and determined tweens. Now it is
possible to find Python (and Ruby) books that mirror some of the BASIC books
that were written for children in the early 1980s.

Things are getting better, even if walled gardens are leading some people to
claim otherwise.

~~~
tarsinge
For me I found it way harder to get into programing in the 90's, as a kid in
this decade I really wanted to make my own games and software but being on a
Mac I couldn't find how to cross the gap, you didn't have BASIC like before
with the Apple II or MSDOS, it was full-featured GUI with expensive compilers
or nothing. Now any kid can open the dev console in a browser and write
javascript, or even create basic HTML files. Maybe we should encourage more
quick and dirty approach and avoid recommending frameworks and complex build
processes for hobbyist projects.

~~~
icebraining
What about HyperCard?

------
amelius
Also, modern cars with their proverbial weld-shut hoods have killed my inner
mechanical engineer.

~~~
xedsvg
Can you be a little more specific? I find modern cars to be funnier just
because of the closed source stuff. It's more rewarding (for me, at least)
when i figure out a can bus message or how to flash my ECU with diy adapters.

~~~
amelius
That sounds more like IT-work than mechanical engineering.

------
grw_
> I’d sit smugly reading my emails on a train with my iPAQ or one of the
> original HTC Pocket PC devices with a stylus. I couldn’t download apps from
> an app store for these phones because those stores didn’t even exist yet.

This killed me- I used to run a 'App Store'-like site for Pocket PC around
this time which allowed installing apps OTA- usually this required running the
installer on your Desktop PC and syncing to device. I knew lots of people
wanted this but didn't know how to let them know about my site. Web archive
has a copy, but only the home page :(

[http://web.archive.org/web/20051201023911/http://www.cabfile...](http://web.archive.org/web/20051201023911/http://www.cabfiles.net:80/)

~~~
timvdalen
I recognize the domain, I'm pretty sure I used your site all the time.

I usually got there from a search after looking for something specific though.

~~~
grw_
Awesome :D

------
corford
Now I've grown up and free time has become scarce, I tinker a lot less than I
used to but I recently enjoyed a weekend burst of the "old times" when I
offered to build a hackintosh for a friend.

I'm a linux and windows guy and the last time I used a mac was pre-OSX days so
I knew nothing about modern Macs, the ecosystem, what the 'go to' apps were
for it or even how to use one (thank god it has a terminal and a semblance of
linux underneath!).

Anyway, my friend's a designer and he needed a new mac but didn't have the
cash on hand to buy one. I offered one evening to google around and see what
options there were for building your own machine and sticking OSX on it. From
that, I discovered the hackintosh scene, did some reading up and decided to
have a go.

I researched parts for his budget (~€800 with monitor), he bought them off
Amazon and then I set about getting it working one weekend (side note: amazing
how cheap hardware is these days - managed to get 16GB RAM, a 500GB SSD and a
24" monitor in there for that price!).

Turned out to be a lot of fun, doubly so with the constraint that I didn't
have a mac on hand to bootstrap with (virtualbox to the rescue!).

It was a nice little nerdy project. Didn't take too long to do, provided a few
interesting things to learn/geek out on, gave me some sweaty moments fighting
with clover configs and kex files and yielded a happy, tangible result at the
end.

So Apple managed to re-kindle my inner nerd for a weekend at least :)

------
dingo_bat
> Windows 8... probably wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the iPhone.

I highly doubt Microsoft would have given up on new versions of Windows if
iphone hadn't been released.

~~~
arethuza
I suspect he means that without of the success of the iPhone and then the iPad
the emphasis in Windows 8 of having a "touch" interface might not have been
there.

~~~
stinos
Yes and no, I guess. Yes: iPhone/iPad showed what to do properly with a touch
screen on a phone or some other portable device. No: if they wouldn't have
done it, I am fairly - if not 100% - sure somebody else would have done it. I
had an industrial touch screen PC more than 10 years before iPhone existed.
Even then, using it with a non-touch aware OS, I reckoned there was future in
it: that thing, but smaller and flatter and faster and fitting into your
pocket wasn't too hard to imagine. I'm by far not the most creative and
definitely not alone on the planet so if even I could imagine something like
my TI calculator but with a touch screen and a mail reader and my GameBoy
games, others could as well, and better. So that's what happened, and Apple
was basically first. And immediately spot on.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
This - so much this.

Touch-screen tech was coming along nicely before the iphone. I worked in a
call center around 99 or 2000. We were using something that seemed to be a
very powerful, blackberry reminiscent, touch-screen powered computer. Most of
the time these were used to grade the rep's phone calls, adding notes as
necessary. Smart phones seem like a natural outgrowth of this sort of
technology merging with something folks were already beginning to carry with
them - mobile phones.

------
tpxl
>Apple’s iPhone has been on the market for 10 years now, and it hasn’t
experienced a single instance of a mass malware attack like we’ve seen twice
in the past month on Windows PCs.

>Sure, there have been vulnerabilities, bugs, and near misses, but nobody has
been forced to pay $300 to unlock their iPhone after a huge malware attack.

I feel the article is disingenuous by comparing a phone to a PC.

~~~
zimpenfish
I dunno - your average iPhone is a powerful PC running a complex OS with a
(largely) permanent network connection and the owner almost certainly will
cough up $100 to unlock given how much people rely on their phones these days.
That sounds like a perfect target for hackers to me.

~~~
keyme
If all the data on the phone is in the cloud (as it is for most users),
unlocking would just be a factory reset of the device.

Also, while it is indeed a powerful networked computer, it does a lot less
stuff in the background than a PC (and does no "legacy" stuff at all). Unlike
a PC, where a thing like SMB is expected to work (even though it's old and
buggy).

------
kalleboo
I stopped tinkering when I grew up, which just coincided with when the iPhone
became usable.

------
rodolphoarruda
Well, not a single reference to Linux in the article. It bugs me because one
of the reasons I use it as my primary OS is that it keeps my "inner nerd"
alive. I believe similar essay could be written with the software in mind.
Apps like Whatsapp/WeChat are reducing the pressure we used to feel to find a
solution to a given problem via a specific tool. These apps are hammers we use
for anything, even for fixing screws on the wall.

~~~
crusso
Why would he reference Linux? His point was that his needs are met without
having to tinker.

His needs drove his inner nerd. Introducing Linux into his environment so that
he would be forced to tinker would be backwards.

~~~
rodolphoarruda
So maybe I didn't get his point at all. I thought that he was upset with the
fact that new gadgets would be turning him into a plain user (and a
consumer...) and reducing the tinker inner nerd facet of his life. If he is
pleased that now he doesn't need to build/keep those 5 boxes in his room and
just have an iPhone in his pocket, well, then I missed the point badly.

~~~
crusso
I read it as just a fact-of-life statement about how the iPhone has obviated
his need to tinker. He may feel nostalgic about it, but I didn't read "upset"
in there... certainly not that he's looking for ways to make his life more
nerdy by contriving reasons to tinker.

~~~
rodolphoarruda
Ok, fair enough.

------
norswap
I get it. I only started programming precisely when the first iphone came out,
and I started tinkering a few years before. Even so I long for this sense of
wonder that existed when everything was hard, or at least required some
thought and ingenuity.

I know the raspberry pie and stuff are a way to do that, but it feels so
artificial and fake.

(No, this comment really has no other point but to evoke diffuse nostalgic
feelings.)

~~~
Aardwolf
Raspberry pi and similar are not fake if you actually want something of this
form factor (not full PC size, and not a smartphone you would build into the
wall...) to run some particular job in your house or elsewhere.

~~~
amelius
Yeah, but it might feel fake if you just download a bunch of libraries,
install them and call it a day.

~~~
ali_af
On one hand you could take advantage of available tools to make your job
easier. On the other you could do everything from scratch for personal
satisfaction. Neither option discounts the other but I think the author comes
off as whiny when he clearly chose the former over latter.

------
sametmax
Yeah cause having an IA always on, connected to you entire house, to turn off
the light is definitely easier than a switch.

~~~
TillE
Honestly, this recent nerd obsession with using hideously complex technology
to control your home lighting is _extremely_ funny.

It's the idea of going to all this effort just to be able to do some not-very-
useful things. You're running an entire embedded computer to control a single
light bulb. Just hilarious.

~~~
II2II
Similar arguments can be made for most new technologies. When the critique
isn't over utility, it is almost certainly over disproportionately high costs.
The important things are to understand why things are done the way they are
and how it will progress in the future.

I suspect that the long term utility for home automation is for managing
energy use, rather than the gimmicky stuff that we are being sold on today.
The reason for cramming a microcontroller into it probably has a lot to do
with cost. Dealing with automation from top to bottom centrally would mean
rewiring buildings and dealing with mains. Dealing with automation at the
appliance level means that you can tailor the design to the requirements (e.g.
cheaper components that handle less power if the device needs less power).
Having a microcontroller means that you can use off-the-shelf components for
networking.

~~~
sametmax
It's like the bip-bop phones vs the iphone.

I get that you want the iphone now. I didn't get why would you buy the bip-bop
phone then.

Yet you need people that does by the unpractical, expensive, mostly useless,
polluting first versions of a concept for it to develop into something society
needs.

My first comment still stand though.

------
0x4f3759df
Author realizes he can't do anything worthwhile with his technical skills that
isn't provided by the market (reading emails on phones). The market is
working, but you lose that sense of elite-ness and accomplishment.

I'll bet that many people who used to get excited about building Linux based
home media servers are now satisfied with Netflix or Prime.

------
LeoNatan25
Another thing not mentioned in the article or comments is the great Apple SDK
APIs. Those “ruined” development for me, in the sense that most else looks
terrible in comparison. (I was not familiar with macOS development before
iPhone OS).

------
Nerdfest
"have been impacted by the iPhone. Chromebooks are locked down with an app
store". Windows 10S apparently as well. The damage done by Apple making this
acceptable is huge.

------
m0ther
This author is the founder of winrumors.

While he was running an exchange server, I was learning to program because I
couldn't afford server software. I wanted to be the guy running an exchange
server too. I wanted to run all sorts of stuff I couldn't afford. But I got my
hands on visual studio 97 instead.

I home schooled, and worked as a tech at a sort of server junk shop in Dallas
(what many may not know about Dallas is that it's city built on telecom). They
would purchase computers from companies going out of business, refurbish, and
resell them. I was 14, and paid in cash or store credit. My room was also full
of servers and networking equipment. I bought as many of the servers that
weren't selling as I could.

My friends and I watched the 1995 film "hackers" on repeat as if it were a new
religion. We had LAN parties most weekends, and a lot of my equipment became
"mobile". At any one time, I always had a "best" server that was stripped down
for transport (which changed every time I could get my hands on something more
powerful) and a bucket of switches and ethernet cables. Reminiscing is fun.

By the time the iPhone released, I was 7 years into my professional
programming career writing desktop and server software. I completely ignored
the iPhone. The idea was cool, it certainly looked cool, but the system itself
was an appliance. I didn't believe in computing appliances. I still have
little to no interest in mobile as it currently exists, and I don't regret it.

In my opinion, Apple's innovation wasn't the iPhone. It wasn't the app store.
It was getting carriers to subsidize a $1,000 pocket computer and call it a
phone. It makes sense, if you were building a $1k computer (that is actually
worth a grand) to fit in consumer's pockets that you'd want to build in a
store so you can make your money back. This business model already existed in
gaming consoles (in consoles a majority of their money is made in licensing
software). It was obvious it was going to sell like hotcakes. Unfortunately,
this cemented the iPhone's appliance nature. They HAVE to be accessible. They
HAVE to be secure. They HAVE to have long battery life. Those elements can
only be maintained if they are viciously protected. I can get my windows
machine to do whatever I want. The limit is physics and my imagination. I can
get an iPhone to do what apple approves.

From a consumer perspective I understand that mobile is awesome. Everything is
bite-sized and convenient. From a programmer's perspective, I can't help but
see your phone as a toy computer, and "apps" as software appetizers. That may
change, and I would welcome the change. As it stands, the walled garden,
battery life, and touch inputs keep it at toy status for me.

I'm 34 now. When I started my career, the young programmers were 34. I was
mentored by greybeards in their 40's and 50's. Now 34 is the beginning of
being old. I don't meet many programmers over 40 anymore. I do the work the
"young" guys are afraid of. I write the heavy math. I do the memory
optimization. I do the complex multi-threading. I build the novel features. I
write the code you can't copy and paste from stack overflow. I fix the fuck-
ups. Maybe that's because the iPhone never killed my inner nerd.

When I was young I programmed because I couldn't afford the real stuff. Now
when I program (outside of paid work) it's because the next real stuff doesn't
exist yet.

I'll be really sad if the future truly is your phone as an interface streaming
data to and from cloud processing. I can't help but feel like it's a step
back.

