On: The short, happy reign of CD-ROM

[bombcar]

1994 was when the CD felt peak, even though it grew in popularity later.

1994 was still solidly in the floppy era, and getting a CD-ROM was huge, even larger than some hard drives at the time.

If you had a CD-ROM drive in 1994, you were king.

[jasonfarnon → bombcar]

if you're excluding "peak of popularity" what is it the "peak" of?

[myself248 → jasonfarnon]

"Peak of feeling fancy when you have something new and special."?

"Peak of new people having access to their first cdrom drive"... hmm.

"Peak of this new thing totally changing the game, even if it gets more popular later, because it's mundane by the time that happens."?

"Peak of breathless press releases about MuLtImEdIa Cd-RoM"... That's probably it.

[bombcar → jasonfarnon]

Peak of hype/excitement - many things have their technical peak (most units sold/most units in the field) after the real "popularity peak".

CD-ROM drives first started not being put in Mac laptops in 2008, so the peak "units sold" would have been somewhere in the early 2000s. But by then Internet speeds were fast enough and other methods existed, so they were waning in popularity/excitement.

[will1am → bombcar]

Paarticularly in the context of both gaming and music

[pak9rabid → bombcar]

Quad Speed! ;)

[bombcar → pak9rabid]

It was later but we got a Kenwood True-X 72x and that thing was a beast!

[keyneus → bombcar]

I remember upgrading from a 4x to 24x, and being excited for the much faster data transfer rate. What I didn't anticipate was the fact that it sounded like a jet taking off when it spun that fast! I figured out how to ratchet it down to 4x and kept it there unless I knew I'd need a fast sustained rate for something like copying hundreds of megs. It wasn't worth the noise for smaller transfers.