Latency: why typing on old computers just feels better

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Apple has a blinkered utopian’s relationship with feedback in general(though tactile gets hammered especially badly because it tends to imply moving parts, which are a sin against unbroken smooth surfaces).

It’s ‘utopian’ in the sense that it seems to be animated by the idea that ‘feedback’ is ultimately suboptimal because it implies that you are grasping for signs of whether or not the computer is doing what you want; rather than having it Just Work; being confident that it is Just Working, and getting on with your day.

On a good day this can work out: not crashing all the damn time does render obsolete a variety of the UI heartbeats that exist mostly to imply that things haven’t hung yet; having a fancy touchpad with fancy gesture recognition makes it less necessary to have a variety of ill-conceived cursors to indicate what misinterpretation of your intentions the system has arrived at; a suitably screaming SSD generally doesn’t leave one pining for the ability to detect a system going into swap hell by listening for HDD thrash.

However, when you are a complex system most days are not good days. Unless you can deliver success so immediately and reliably that success is your feedback, denying the user feedback merely leaves them helpless. Apple’s self-evaluation about how often this happens is the ‘blinkered’ part.

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No argument on that point. So many things are created by companies in “Startup Mode”, they are fighting to exist and the
criteria for software is more or less “Did it compile?” Anybody who has worked in that environment, knows that they are cutting
corners, hopes to someday get a chance to clean up their code, but the chances of that happening are almost into Imaginary
Numbers. :slight_smile:

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Question:
my Corsair keyboard (K70 Rapidfire) and mouse (Scimitar pro) both poll at 1000Hz my monitor is a 144Hz Acer XG270HU 1ms (not sure if GtG or BWB) but would that beat out the old apple?

No way does the TI 99/4A belong in second place on this list. Or if it does, its typing latency may have been pretty good but the thing was slow as molasses for everything else!

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It reminds me of switching from Amiga to Mac/PC – I was surprised at the slow keyboard given the extra bit length and speed of the newer CPUs. And switching between programs was much quicker on the Amiga too.

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Amiga 4 lyfe

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Depends on your expectations, I guess. If you expect an instantaneous reaction and obviously aren’t getting one, that would piss you off. On the other hand, If you’re able to gauge the latency from the time difference in a situation where compensating for it would be advantageous…

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