Old habits die hard
By Prem on May 4, 2019
On shifting back to India, I had a few other things to take care of and hence, couldn’t keep up with my collection hobby. I was still following up online and when Flipkart pulled ebay off the market, my passion went down the drain as well. Given the regulatory landmines one needs to safely navigate before successfully ordering something of interest from a global store, I decided to browse local stores. These days, I contact the sellers directly and buy interesting old school shit they come into possession of. My wife really hates it, but a guy needs his toys, right? As long as I don’t bring them to the main house, she’s OK with it. I have a separate storage room in my property, so we have been able to work it out. The choices are fairly limited in India though. Still, tracking down some legacy shit of interest is immensely satisfying and the rush is simply fucking unbelievable.
I get asked many times as to why I collect old stuff. I cannot really explain why. May be it is the excitement of repairing and making them work again. I look at old hardware like I do art. Age dictates value. A common misconception about collectors of computing devices is that we typically end up using the machines as our daily drivers. That is untrue. Sure you can have a fully functioning Atari Portfolio, but to write an entire novel on it today would be an overkill. What is not an overkill though, is hacking the portfolio and giving it a backlit screen to make the experience even more awesome! So you see, our priorities are different when it comes to collectibles.
As you can see in the above picture, two of my Atari Portfolio’s are on display right next to my EEE1000H. I wrote some weird code on the Portfolios and it was quite some fun. The action figure collection in the background warrants a separate blog post.
When I started out as a consultant, Blackberry basically became my spouse. I spoke more to it than anyone else. It was a fantastic phone and I was very disappointed when they went almost bankrupt thanks to iOS and Android. Around that time, discussing Blackberry’s future was a favorite conversation by the water cooler. My opinion back then was for them to get out of phone business entirely and reinvent themselves as a security and software company. My reasoning behind it was that one cannot imagine a Blackberry device without a keyboard and given the software models of both iOS and Android, more apps and programs will become available for those two platforms than Blackberry OS. Steve Jobs successfully demonized the keyboard in his first IPhone speech and once touchscreens became all the rage, Blackberry became almost an afterthought. True, they came up with the Z3, Z10 and Z30. But for the true Blackberry fan, those phones did nothing. The newer Classic with the keyboard and touchscreen was an absolute joy though. If you’re a keyboard slut like me, you would understand why Blackberry was great. Coming to security, this is where Blackberry has no competition. iOS and Android devices back then were worthless pieces of junk as far as security was concerned and not a lot of things have changed today. Security space is where the company is focusing right now and no wonder they are slowly rising up again. TCL is doing it’s best in keeping Blackberry, the phone alive with their Key series and Motion. I have mixed emotions about Blackberry and Android, but I will admit that the security infrastructure built in those models is exactly what other Android phone manufacturers should look into.
I still use my trusted Blackberry 9300 Curve as my primary phone. For a more “smartphone” experience, I use my Blackberry Passport. I really love this device and it is probably one of the best devices made by Blackberry. Comes pretty close to the Classic. If you are not into phone games, selfies and checking social media updates every fucking second but focused on reading, writing reports and working on that business presentation with the aid of a fucking keyboard, then the Passport is for you. In an iOS and Android dominated userland, you have to work out a bit to make certain things run on a Blackberry. For instance, I am obligated to use my current employer’s Android app that runs my machine learning model. It was tricky at first to set this up on Blackberry OS 10.3. But after some mods here and there, side-loading select Android apps is a breeze and I have been using a few apps on my Passport without any observable performance issue. Of course, the form factor can be a pain in the ass for a few, and yes some sites render like shit on the Passport, but I can live with it. Some people have started saying that the Galaxy Fold’s form factor will piss off a lot of web developers and they are correct. The Fold becomes a square device on dual display, much like the Passport. So, I can totally understand their worries in developing sites that render properly on a dual screen square display.