50 in 50: Are you an early or late adopter of technology?

... A non-adopter?

I'm happy with the technology that I already have, if I am honest. I don't really care for the latest quote-unquote advancements, that nowadays seem to always involve a hefty trade-off too. For instance, my phone is the (now old) Samsung S9+. That actually in itself has trade-offs from a previous phone I had before that, the S4 mini, in that it is way too big and doesn't have a removable back cover.

If I wanted to update to modern models, I would gain a few things that are ... cool, I guess? Like 120Hz panels, whatever resolution modern phones have (the S9+ is 1440p), that sort of thing. But: there would be a lot of things I'd lose. I would lose the 3.5mm earphone jack (honestly: it would be better if this were standardised to be USB, but having it is still better than not having it), I would lose SD card support, I would (probably) lose the ability to flash a custom ROM, root it, etc. Even the features, like the better resolution, are bad in a way: honestly I feel like the increased resolution and refresh rate is just another way to make the phone more addicted.

Similarly, computers. My laptop is pretty old, and the specs are not great. I actually would like to improve it a bit, for instance, get 16GB or 32GB of RAM instead of just 8GB (which, even on Linux is a bit low), or get a better GPU or CPU. But: I am not so fussed about getting the latest CPU, as they don't change all that much nowadays from year to year. I just want something that can manage my workload.

Similarly, software. I don't care for AI, or that kind of thing. What I do think is fun to adopt is the language choice: I have spent a fair deal of time playing about with Zig, which is a new language (2015, iirc) and it has a fair deal of things that are advantageous over C. With C++, I think that using the latest standard is good to do. Improvements are made in the latest versions of software.

It is just that generally, I don't think that new technology (like all the AI nonsense) actually adds a great deal. When it comes to computers, essentially everything we need is already there: software is a solved problem.