[bvlaar]

When I was younger between the ages of 9-15 I loved hardware hacking. I would take apart Xboxes, Play Stations and even my computers. I would install mod chips, homebrew software and even tacky lighting. Being apart of the hardcore gaming community (CS, Team Fortress, WoW) almost instilled the notion of modding your 'rig'. People would overclock and and liquid cool their PCs which is hardcore stuff. I feel like there are two things that have led to a decrease in the hardware hacking environment (which I feel is parallel to the author's point).

1.Manufacturers began to 'get it'. Computers began to look cool, no more beige boxes and lame looking side panels. With the birth of Aleinware, the Dell XPS and Falcon Northwest came a huge blow to the modding community. Instead of spending days modding your PC to make it look cool and perform well, you could buy one out of the box (sometimes even overclocked)! This started to eat away at the modding culture. Even console makers stepped their game up in terms of connectivity. They began to provide more codecs for video playback which was one of the main reasons to mod a console- to allow video playback.

2. Another thing happened which pulled me and others away from the modding/hacking community- I bought a Mac. Ever since I moved into the Apple ecosystem I haven't opened up a piece of hardware. I bought my first Macbook when I was 16 and loved it. It worked, it did everything I needed it to. I moved more into the less horsepower social game landscape where I didn't need the heavy duty processing power. Once I was in the Apple ecosystem I didn't need a home NAS server running with my torrents, I began buying my music, movies and TV shows. This content then streamed on my devices (Apple TV and mobile) perfectly. It required no hacking to work, it all came together effortlessly. I feel like this is happening to a lot of hackers. I deep down feel Apple has made people complacent with current technology and has really created a lack of need to hack your hardware and software.

This begs a question, has the paradigm shifted from enthusiasts pushing the envelope with hardware and software to the technology companies?