I miss the old days...
...when the hardware said (lets use IBM) "IBM" outside.
You could be sure that every. single. chunk. inside. said IBM, or Made by IBM, or manufactured at [IBM address]. Every single part had the IBM logo, either embossed, or printed, or had at least a sticker. Every manual was carefully constructed, detailed, that even an idiot (hello, myself at age 16) could take it apart with a Phillips screwdriver. And it had pictures! Changing hard drives? Page 18! Adding RAM? Page 12! Your wife dumped you? Annex 12-b! It looked like they gave a fresh box to an intern and told him to put it together, and everything that went wrong on a statistical significance was logged and added to the manual.
Even things like flash a BIOS using a freaking bootable DOS disk were detailed, from which file to download, to "insert disk on drive a:" to how to find the reset button on the carcass of your model. They took you by the hand, and politely opened the limo door for you while holding an umbrella. You felt a VALUED CUSTOMER, you felt CARED.
These days, everything is licensed, it betrays the confidence you placed on this or that company, because almost ANYTHING is done through third-parties, where the Main company does NOT vouch for their warranty, or quality, or whatever.
(Not everybody. Shout out to AMD, that replaced me a Ryzen that never booted with a new one. RMA and a fresh proc across 2 continents in 15 days.)
We lost something valuable here.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
