This coming weekend I will become 36 years old, distressingly sweeping me into the ‘late’ thirties bracket – an age that I remember my parents being just five minutes or so ago. While I know that many of you have a good few years on me, and that I still fall into the ‘what does a young buck like him know about anything’ category for some, I still know how it feels to watch far younger folk snapping at my heels and stealing a march on me when it comes to progress.
Progress. Moving on. Developing. I love to do it, I love to see it. But in so, so many ways, I hate to experience it. I’ve just bought a new DSLR – after eleven years and 28,597 shutter actuations I felt it was time to upgrade from a 6.1 megapixel Nikon D50 to something only a few years out of date, and as soon as it came out of its crisp new box I was already finding things I don’t like about my new D5300. Buyer’s remorse immediately hit me, and I was starkly reminded of the sacrifices I’ll be forced to make if I ever have to buy a new car.
I’m lucky enough that I get to write about cars for a living. My paid duty is to read and learn, to experience and report on developments at the bleeding edge of vehicle technology, and I enjoy it immensely. The car industry is bursting with ideas right now – not all of them terribly good, of course, but every single one is interesting in its own small way. And, although many of the advances made every day are buried beneath the surface – involving processes that the driver really doesn’t need to get involved with up to and including how the thing is fuelled in the first place – the changes that we all notice on cars involve how we interact with them.
Before we go any further it’s interesting to first consider the Boeing 737. Boeing’s first short-range twin-engined jet airliner first flew 50 years ago this month, and was soon found to be so fit for purpose that its appearance has barely changed today. Of course, todays product of the same name has virtually no parts commonality with the original, and has been aerodynamically tweaked in the intervening years, but the 737 of ’67 is every bit as much of a 737 as today’s version is today. It’s just that today’s version has evolved to suit our present requirements.
I reckon cars are doing a similar thing today. Although fashions are fickle things and retro-charm is hungrily bought and devoured by millions, it’s still a remarkable coincidence that today’s Mustang and Camaro have reverted to forms so close to their progenitors of half a century ago. Of course, nostalgia has to play a big part in things, and a 50 year anniversary is well worth celebrating, too. But the appearance of today’s Mustang and Camaro, and the Beetle and Fiat 500 all go to show that the shape of the car was pretty well optimised as far back as 50 years ago.
So, it could be argued that the fundamental concept of the car was firmly established by ’67, and all we’ve been doing since is optimising it. We’ve made it safer, reduced its fuel consumption, experimented with and adopted different ways to power it, and now we’re exploring new ways to make it more functional. Pretty soon, we’re promised,while travelling we’ll be able to concentrate on far more worthwhile things now we can dismiss the chore of having to drive (end of autonomy discussion for this week). Right now, more than anything, it’s the way we interact with our cars that seems to be occupying the world’s designers 24/7.
Side by side, my new Nikon D5300 bears an obvious resemblance to my old D50. They’re both cameras, after all, and the SLR’s visual form has been firmly established since, well, about 1967. Naturally, beneath the surface the specification of the new is wildly more advanced than the old, but it’s when you come to interact with it that you notice where the details are – and many of them are remarkably reflective of the differences between an eleven year old car and one you’ll buy from the same brand today. To whit – more complicated systems dressed up as offering ‘greater sophistication’.
The old camera had a monochrome LCD adjacent to the shutter release, bearing simply presented detail on flash status, exposures remaining, white balance and autofocus mode in such a way as it was easily read while the camera dangled around your neck. On the new camera, the same information is displayed in glorious colour, on a crisp, high-resolution screen that can fold out from the back – but which saps battery, isn’t permanently visible and can’t be seen as it dangles from your neck.
As with the D5300, today’s cars are ever more feature packed, and this in itself isn’t a bad thing, but development is happening at a pace far beyond that which drivers are actually demanding. As with mobile phones, in order to keep the market buoyant, the R&D divisions are endlessly trotting out new and exciting features the likes of which consumers had never dreamt of, to ensure that the latest and greatest model is worth buying. I fell for it, too.
In 2015 I decided that the unreliable battery life of my then two-year old Samsung Galaxy Note made it worth my while upgrading to something new. Not feeling the gaudy design of the Galaxy Note two, I plumped for the HTC M8 and almost immediately found things about it that I didn’t like. There were certain features I had gotten used to with the Note that the M8, a flagship at the time, didn’t have. There were also new features on the M8 that I didn’t, and still don’t, see the point of. In April this year, my 24-month EE cell contract having expired in January, after a protracted search of the current state of the art, I decided that there isn’t a single phone out there better at being a phone than my HTC, so I enlisted for a further 12 months on a SIM-only deal.
You can beat the system with phones. When it’s time to upgrade, you can drop down to a cheaper SIM-only contract and sit the next round of product developments out until it’s time to get back into the game. Unlike cars, after the £35 monthly charge for 24 months, you actually own your phone outright. At the end of the contract, to keep using your phone, all you have to pay is line rental and call charges. If you buy a car for £450 a month on a PCP, 36 months later you face Hobson’s choice – either you roll into another round of similarly steep monthlies on a car with all manner of new eccentricities just for the sake of change – or you hand it back in and have no car at all. Come the end of your PCP and you have to make a sharp decision on what to drive for the next three years – and if the perfect car for you hasn’t been introduced, you’re panic driven to choose a car to fill the void.
If you want to stay up to date, the user has to evolve as fast as the car. In three years time, you may need to learn an entirely new user interface, come to terms with a whole new raft of driver ‘aids’, and many of these will be things that just ‘come with the car’, rather than features you have deliberately sought out. To stay current, you’ve got to accept and embrace whatever fickle trends are in vogue when the car you choose is signed off.
As far as I’m concerned, the only gainful way to fight obsolescence is to embrace it. I continue to be fascinated and entertained by the speed of automotive development, but I’m more than happy to cover it from the perspective of a travel journalist – wonderful to visit but not quite home. Meanwhile, my old Rover, with its circa 8-second 0-60mph time is still at least on nodding terms with popular cars of today, and is immune from the ravages of depreciation and finance. You’ll have to prize the keys from my cold, dead fingers.
(All images Chris Haining / Hooniverse)
Fighting Obscelescence as a Grumpy Old Man
11 responses to “Fighting Obscelescence as a Grumpy Old Man”
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I hardly use the display of my D5100(?), but I bought Giugiaro’s F4 when the F6 was a year old. They’re well designed, despite of sporting dozens of functions, most of them accessible without menu skimming. Cars could do that, too, if you don’t order too many options.
What freaks me out is how good the cheap kit lenses are: sure, a bit dark and plastic-y, but stabilized 3x zooms for 60 bucks that sharp?
The older I get the less I care about others’ view of me, which is a degree of freedom I didn’t understand earlier. Experience needs to grow on you, I guess. -
Happy birthday! If it helps, you’re younger than all but three of the cars I’ve ever owned and they only beat you narrowly by one (Metro), one (Allegro), and two (Maestro) years anyway.
I confess that no part of this makes me feel any younger. -
With those cameras… Where does the film go?
And Happy Birthday, you’re catching up to the age I like to imagine I’m at. -
“So, it could be argued that the fundamental concept of the car was firmly established by ’67, and all we’ve been doing since is optimising it.”
Personally, I’d argue that at some point, we all lost our way and have begun de-optimizing it. Crash safety and advancements in medical technology had been reducing crash-related injuries and fatalities. Unfortunately, the proliferation of distractions in today’s cars means that fatalities are actually rising.
As a society, it’s even accepted that ads show us a distracted driver who was “saved” by collision avoidance/advanced braking technologies, normalizing the terrible idea of driving while distracted. -
Congratulations and welcome to the club. You now have several decades of rewarding irrelevance to look forward to.
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You are truly preaching to the choir here. If it wasn’t for my kids and obvious safety requirements, I’d never have sold my ’71 Volvo 145 (“peak Volvo”), maybe just added one or another classic from the cubism age or, if there was space, a Studebaker I8 or some such pinnacle of glorious splendour (What?).
About cameras…I always get stuck with Lumixes. I want clear and sharp landscape photos, with good zoom. So I own an ancient FZ20, and FX30 with a shattered display, and a GF3. Thinking about upgrading to a proper DSLR for my Kyrgyzstan trip, but…who wants to spend money?
Also: Happy birthday! I’ll be in the same boat in about a year, having no feelings about that number whatsoever – yet. -
As for cameras, I still feel sort of married to the Sony/Minolta system. This is because I started acquiring lenses for my 35mm Maxxum 5000, which got replaced with a better 35mm Maxxum later, which got replaced with a DSLR Sony Alpha A100. Now I hardly ever drag out the DSLR kit, relying instead on the camera built into my phone. I’m waiting for a full frame Sony DSLR in the $300-$500 (used) range. I have a bunch of really nice lenses that I have slowly acquired over the years (35-70 f2.8, 70-210 f2.8, 110-500(?), etc), it would be a severe downgrade to switch to another system.
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My collegiate camera for journalism school was a 35mm Canon AE1 Program – a fantastic bit of kit. Back in 1999 I sold my film cameras, dark room gear and associated bits and went digital. Recently however I felt an overwhelming nostalgia for 35mm and bought another NOS AE1. What a great viewfinder it has! The weight, the precision, the lovingly crafted details … it’s now back in my camera bag for most events.
The digital camera that I’m keeping is a Sony Alpha 6000. It’s been an amazing companion too: brilliant low-light high ISO shots that would sink other modern cameras – and best of all – there’s a Canon FD lens adapter so I can use all the fantastic old Canon lenses on my Sony camera. Win – win. Maybe not so helpful if you’re fully invested in Nikon gear, but I’m happy with my gear for a change. -
Obsolescence… buying a film SLR when digital ones were out but horrifically expensive – not one of my better decisions!
On cars I think that current base models are not bad, they have all the equipment you could need but without the intrusive driving aids, and the safety and refinement is pretty good. -
I hear you, the only reason I am going to replace my HTC M7 phone is because the battery is worn out, since sadly for HTC the M7 was the peak of the HTC One and it has been downhill since. I feel the same with cameras, my 10MP Nikon D60 is still fit for purpose and I’m more likely to buy lenses than a new body. Then again I still have a Nikon FM in the closet along with its AI-S prime lenses.
Modern cars disappoint me as they have gotten steadily bigger and heavier and less efficient. Other than AWD and Bluetooth integration our new Mazda CX-5 is not an improvement over the Mazda5 it replaced, but we needed a car on short notice and it was a good deal so we have gone to the dark side and have a crossover, at least until the lease runs out. -
You’re a grumpy old man, eh?
I still have, and use, the Minolta Maxxum 7000 I bought new…in 1985.
Git offa my lawn
…wait, someone took my Kodachrome!
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