Tech Nostalgia and the Glow of the Early 2000s

This post started as a quick note in the MacStories Discord, but I’ve expanded it here because it’s something I keep coming back to.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about tech nostalgia — how we remember old tech, and how it made us feel. I graduated university in 2002, and the decade that followed felt like an explosion of possibility. The internet was growing up. Personal computing was hitting its stride. And it actually felt like the big companies in tech cared about their users.

Google was this amazing search engine that just worked. It felt smarter than anything else out there, and it really seemed like it was built for people, not advertisers. Then came Gmail, and it blew every other email service out of the water. I still remember buying my beta invite on eBay. Google was quirky and fun. They had lava lamps in their offices and ran goofy April Fools’ Day pranks. It all felt fresh and lighthearted.

And then there was the iPod. Compared to every other piece of consumer electronics, it was so slick and easy to use. It made digital music feel personal. When Apple said they were going to make a phone with that same sensibility? That was an instant yes. I was completely in.

Even social media felt exciting back then. It felt like discovery. Like connection. Not the exhausting, commercialized mess it eventually turned into.

These days, things feel different. Google is more “enterprisey,” and their products often feel less focused or thoughtful. Their search results are cluttered. Apple still makes great hardware, but I can’t get excited about things like the Vision Pro or their constant push for services revenue. Developer relations seem worse than ever. Everything just feels more calculated and extractive.

But — and here’s the part I keep coming back to — I was in my early twenties when all of that great stuff was happening. I felt like I could take on the world. I was falling in love with the woman who would become my wife. The whole world felt full of promise and possibility. So how much of that tech magic was real, and how much of it was just me being young, optimistic, and wide open?

It’s hard to separate.

That said, there are still things in tech that bring me joy. It just looks a little different now. I’ve had a lot of fun spinning up my own open source blog using Hugo. I still follow indie blogs. I love discovering small tools made by passionate people. I still mostly love Apple stuff (and begrudgingly rely on Google stuff), but the things I’m hopeful about now come from independent creators, open source projects, and small communities that actually care.

Communities like the one that inspired this post.