Surprised my fellow typewriter folks haven't shown up yet! [paging @ebruchez]
If you want the writerdeck experience I'll echo the recommendations here for an Alphasmart. The brute-force autotyping file transfer it uses is quaint but always amusing. Gave one to a screenwriter friend and it's now gotten regular use for years. PDAs are a solid choice as well that may resonate with the HN crowd.
Don't sleep on owning an actual typewriter though. I have a small collection and use one daily. There's a rabbit hole of ~150 years of makes & models (most of which continue to function fine today) that will give any mechanical keyboard enthusiast much to chew on. :)
I was born in 1990 with two geeky parents who always had a printer and at least one computer available, so I didn’t get to grow up using one, but my brain always sort of romanticized typewriters. I eventually bought a used Brother typewriter, and also one of those “word processors” that was basically a crappy computer that uses a typewriter as a printer.
They were fun to play with, but ultimately I don’t really write fiction, and pretty much anything I do write about would necessitate internet access to research weird math or tech stuff. I could of course use my phone for that, and I tried that for a bit, but I found that even more distracting than a regular laptop would be. This, in combination of the lack of spelling and grammar checks made made made it so that it was never more than a toy for me, and I eventually gave it away.
It made an extremely loud and satisfying “thunk” noise whenever it typed or printed and I admittedly do miss that sometimes. Maybe I should buy one of those color dotmatrix printers.
Just a note for those in the market (as someone with the unusual distinction of owning ~30 Alphasmarts), a few hundred $ is more like a top of the line, NIB/serviced Alphasmart Neo 2 with bag, manual, etc.
If you just want to try out distraction-free writing with USB a used AS3000 is easily found <$50 (YMMV re. battery corrosion).
When I was shopping for one, I decided to get the one most favored (as you point out, the delta might be $150—fortunately that was not an obstacle for me). My worry was that if I got the less-favored model (or worst, a non-functioning one) my impression of the whole line might not be a fair one.
And FWIW, I like the machine. But I have barely used mine. But that has more to do with my procrastination at sitting down and writing in general.
You might take a look around for it. They made two original versions, the 1000 and the 5000. The 1000s are pretty hard to find nowadays (seems a lot of early adopters went for the higher memory spec).
Some folks in the community even have upgraded PalmCards (the replaceable CPU board in these) that run PalmOS 5 now, hack the display to show more bits, etc.
Careful fading Tom Swift too hard. The two main series date from the 1910-20s and the 50s-60s. Basically sci-fi Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys rather than modern YA, especially the second wave of books.
They're more "outwitting not-Soviet saboteurs with nuclear-powered inventions" and were written when science was putting the universe in our grasp.
They get mentioned here as an influence on folks from time to time (myself included), predictable adverb structure aside. :)
This is how we handle it as well. We were at friends' last night and the older kids had the N64 out. The older kids reported that ours just wanted to be read to the whole time, but early doses of things we intend to introduce anyway (video games predating modern addictive mechanics) are fine at that frequency.
We are mindful of potential Pandora's boxes though. You can't ban everything unhealthy without causing long term issues. You strive though to only introduce things when they're developmentally ready to cope with it, even if that means restrictions on yourself as an adult.
You work to constantly provide good examples via your own life, compelling narratives, etc. of people who exemplify the virtues you want to instill. That's how you help shape (the best you can) the life of someone with an innate identity to, when necessary, "just say no", or simply be uninterested in and unswayed by things that don't conform to their value system.
They aren't stifled by rules and wrestling with temptation--not valuing YT Kids is just who they are.
Agreed. So much of it is identity (going back to James Clear in Atomic Habits). "I'm not a smoker" is more powerful than "I'm trying to quit".
"We just don't watch Youtube on our phones in this house." [and you work to develop that into healthy self-confidence rather than ego]
Growing up homeschooled, we had the same simmering sense of pride in not doing what others (e.g. "public schoolers" did). Never had a rebellious teen phase, etc. Some families overdid it, but...idk...I'm still quite close to my parents, so I never felt stifled.
It makes it -very- natural in life to focus on what my SO and I think are optimal and more or less disregard what's normal.
#1 is exactly what we're doing with ours. The little one understands cassettes and the concept of an audiobook or a Welles radio drama (sometimes MP3/CD, but I record custom cassettes too).
I have a millenium-era iMac set up as the family computer in anticipation of introductory computing when old enough (probably soon) and learning that digital entertainment is a state of mind and place you go to for a time, and then shut down and do something else. It's in the living room and off, so right now we're just building familiarity with it and exploring the keyboard, mouse, etc. and mimicking dad. Currently the little one -loves- the physical interaction of a typewriter and requests one more than a keyboard (but loose keyboards are fun too!).
The TV is a projector screen that recedes into the ceiling. Total screen time for them in the home right now over the past ~2.5y is probably...3 hours? Maybe?
My daily driver mobile is a black and white PDA and almost never a phone. I don't think my toddler has -ever- asked me for my phone and certainly wouldn't think to request, e.g. a video on it. Entertainment comes from our books, legos, and trains.
My theory is an accelerated progression through history. Mastering technology means understanding where it came from. It takes the shine off the modern rectangle of doom if you can place it in time and space and your first habits aren't built around it.
To @ozim's point, the issue is what has been normalized in broader society and so, yeah, we've clearly figured out touchscreens and plenty of local places for kids have unnecessary TVs. The concerns of other kids/parents introducing things to ours too early is mitigated by building a core [home]school and social group who shares enough common values. The differences between our respective households become learning opportunities for everyone.
What's fantastic is that I can go to the grocery store or sit in a restaurant for an hour and a half (and even better, two flights with a layover--with effort) with no tantrum from a toddler and no technology. Just...not even a thought that enters.
I'll second this. WebOS was conceptually way ahead of its time compared to contemporary versions of iOS, etc. A lot of its UI paradigms (switching apps as cards, etc.) ended up being adopted later by the big names as well. Just not ready to pivot that hard as a company and carrying a ton of legacy baggage as a brand at that point.
Windows Phone was similar. Superior product (not just technically--in usability testing too), but late to the party and lacking cultural caché considering its parent company.
And multiple reboots on the SDK requiring throwing away perfectly working code, broken promises on which devices would get 8.1, broken yet again for 10, eventually driving away even the more hardcore advocates among us.
Now what is left is an anemic team trying to push WinUI/WinAppSDK, while pretending all of that didn't happen, and that the developer community is still willing to put up with it.
That too. WP7 brought the premise of the amazing UX to the table and then the 7 -> 8.1 -> 10 stuff was a mess for the devs who still did want to invest.
Though I'm not sure how much users noticed that fiasco (my SO didn't) and honestly, even when WP7 was getting updates and looked healthy it was pulling teeth to get companies to make a 3rd app.
Windows Phone had the best UX of any of the mobile operating systems, it was something I could hand to a user who'd never had a smart phone before, and it was much more intuitive for them - they could figure it out without help.
Sadly they never got enough market share (or perhaps investment by MS to pay for third party apps to get developed) to get the pool of Applications needed to attract users, which is unfortunate.
The one side effect of the 'easy to newcomers' UX, was experienced users had to forget a bit about what they knew about how a mobile device was supposed to work to use it - thats not a huge barrier, but I suspect it also made adoption by existing power users a little slower.
IMO your last line there really hits the nail on the head with what I saw both on the ground and in the data.
Windows Phone was absolutely crushing it with first-time smartphone adopters, but for folks switching it was tougher, because WP didn't use depend on the whole "grid of siloed apps" concept as much. If you'd already used an iPhone, it took a second to unlearn.
And considering anyone making smartphone apps in 2010 was still on the early-adopter side of the curve--they'd already experienced that way of using a phone. There were still a lot of first-timers in the following 5 years, but the folks at the agencies and companies making the software weren't them.
No this... was not true. I did extensive usability testing on MetroUI and it confused users as it lacked visual cues, had massive homogeny issues between functions, and lacked visual differentiation enough to let me remember where anything was.
Hate it or love it, skumorphism educated billions on how to use a smartphone -- no one else even came close.
If you want the writerdeck experience I'll echo the recommendations here for an Alphasmart. The brute-force autotyping file transfer it uses is quaint but always amusing. Gave one to a screenwriter friend and it's now gotten regular use for years. PDAs are a solid choice as well that may resonate with the HN crowd.
Don't sleep on owning an actual typewriter though. I have a small collection and use one daily. There's a rabbit hole of ~150 years of makes & models (most of which continue to function fine today) that will give any mechanical keyboard enthusiast much to chew on. :)