> Remember endless configuration to get one program working? Remember the computer just throwing its hands up and giving up when you gave it input that wasn't exactly what it expected? Remember hardware compatibility issues and how badly it affected system stability? Remember when building a computer required work and research and took hours?
There are examples, but it's no longer the de facto experience. I have put PCs together from parts since about the 386 era, and there's absolutely no question that it's far smoother now than it ever was before.
Things were getting pretty good for a bit with HDMI, but the USB-C, DisplayPort, HDMI mess is a real shitshow. Sure, I don't have to set IRQs on my ISA attached serial cards, but there are still plenty of things that are really unstable/broken.
Don't forget that there is a sub-shitshow inside USB-C cabling all of their own, as well as DisplayPort enabled USB-C, docks that do some modes but not others, monitors that run 30hz on HDMI but 59hz on DisplayPort....
Just yesterday I couldn't connect my laptop to a new classroom projector with a USB-C input. When I selected "Duplicate Display" it caused my whole system to hang unresponsive. Works fine in other rooms with HDMI to USB-C. I have no idea what is wrong.
My new iPhone XS doesn't connect to my car's bluetooth, while the 4 year old phone I replaced does. My wife's iPhone 8 does. I'm stuck using an audio cable like it's 2003 again.
A new coworker couldn't connect to the internet when he had a an Apple Thunderbolt display connected to his ~2014-2015 MB Pro via thunderbolt. Mystifying. Even more mystifying was corporate IT going "oh yeah just don't use it".
That's probably because he had his network connection priorities ordered so that the TB networking had priority and there wasn't a valid route on the connected network to the TB display. That's very likely a fixable problem, as I have encountered similar and resolved it.
Literally all of these are still a thing...