rubén on Nostr: I understand people have different reasons to pursue a hobby, but I just don’t ...
I understand people have different reasons to pursue a hobby, but I just don’t understand folks that write slop for retro computing platforms.
What I find the most rewarding about using a vintage Mac has been that it offers an alternative to the current generic, rent seeking world of software. It’s an era of constraints, different values, and more hackable internals. It’s also whatever the opposite of e-waste is.
I’m constantly amazed by the human effort required to keep these computers alive: indie hardware designers, archivists, software developers working within incredible constraints. It’s an act of care, attention, and conservation.
Every day there’s a new slop project, and they don’t have the charm of the old software: they often don’t work, they look boring, and just don’t appeal to me. They seem to embody the exact opposite values!
Of course they’re easy to ignore and not install, in reality it’s not affecting me in any way, but every time I see one of these pop up, I’m just confused. At a very fundamental level, I just don’t understand the type of person that finds that appealing.
#retrocomputing #slop #vintagemac #classicmac
Published at
2026-10-28 23:28:38 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "I understand people have different reasons to pursue a hobby, but I just don’t understand folks that write slop for retro computing platforms.\n\nWhat I find the most rewarding about using a vintage Mac has been that it offers an alternative to the current generic, rent seeking world of software. It’s an era of constraints, different values, and more hackable internals. It’s also whatever the opposite of e-waste is.\n\nI’m constantly amazed by the human effort required to keep these computers alive: indie hardware designers, archivists, software developers working within incredible constraints. It’s an act of care, attention, and conservation.\n\nEvery day there’s a new slop project, and they don’t have the charm of the old software: they often don’t work, they look boring, and just don’t appeal to me. They seem to embody the exact opposite values!\n\nOf course they’re easy to ignore and not install, in reality it’s not affecting me in any way, but every time I see one of these pop up, I’m just confused. At a very fundamental level, I just don’t understand the type of person that finds that appealing.\n\n#retrocomputing #slop #vintagemac #classicmac",
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