Last update: 2019-09-20

I like good tech, but I dislike trendy gadgets

Today the iPhone 11 comes out, and as usual there are long lines of people waiting outside Apple Stores awaiting the release. I use an iPhone myself and watched the keynote earlier this month, and I admit to (briefly) consider upgrading my current iPhone 6S Plus to something like the XR. In the end however, I decided to pass on the new gadget.

The bottom line is that my iPhone is fine. There's nothing the new phone does that would significantly change the way I operate, save me lots of time, or provide me with new and exciting functions. One thing I realized is that this is true for a lot of recent tech. I use a 2015 era desktop PC with Windows 7. Do I need the latest PC hardware, or a trendy laptop? No. When Windows 7 goes out of support, I'll probably move on to a simple Linux distribution like Fedora. Again, I could spend money on Windows 10, but I would probably have to upgrade my hardware. One new gadget requires another new gadget, more money spent in the economy.

Have I become jaded with recent tech advancements? You could say that. A lot of it has moved from the realm of interesting tech advancements to marketing buzz with the sole purpose to sell more stuff, like car models being released every single year with marginal improvements.

That isn't to say that I've lost interest in tech. One thing that does fascinate me is automation. Using Infrastructure as Code, the idea of having a written template that can be used and reused to deploy entire environments of servers, software instances, and so on is incredibly useful and a great time saving. Similarly, the move to serverless software, the idea that you don't need large systems to run tiny pieces of code, is also an exciting development.

To me an exciting gadget is something like the Raspberry Pi. This is a device that breaks the norms by releasing a useful computing platform for the lowest possible cost, and it's already been used by tons of people to accomplish all kinds of exciting projects. I own one and have done a lot of cool things with it.

As for my iPhone, the only concern I can see is the diminishing battery life on a 4 years old device, which will probably force me to at least replace the battery if not the whole phone at some point. But for now, the new iPhone isn't something that excites me. I pass on the latest trendy gadget.

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