- Joined
- Aug 4, 2014
- Messages
- 2,330
- Name
- Jonathan
So, my 17 y.o. son has asked in the past why "save" symbols (like the one in our tool bar, next to undo/redo) look like squares with a little rectangle on the edge. I explained to him how, not long ago, in order to save anything you were working on, you had to save your data to "floppy disks". He's seen pictures of these things, but never a physical example.
This week I had to get some old CAD files from another architect for a project I'm working on -- a hotel remodel, a holiday inn that was built in the early 90's. They didn't have anything they could email me, because their old CAD files were stored on floppies, so they literally snail mailed me 13 floppy disks. I'm working on uploading them now (whole other story), and my son saw one & was like, "oh, that's right, that's what those save symbols are! why do they still use that symbol??"
It's a pretty good question -- you couldn't even plug an old floppy drive into your PC's case if you tried, there's literally no port on motherboards built after the mid-2000's where you can plug a floppy drive cable. Yes, as I found out yesterday, they have their own cables & you can't use a standard hard drive / CD drive cable. Your motherboard has to have a floppy port. Which no motherboard built in the last 15 years has.
It's crazy, something so common 20 years ago has literally become an anachronism. And there's literally not been any attempts to correct it - virtually all software uses this symbol as a metaphor for saving your work to a drive of some sort. I think eventually they'll be replaced by a cloud symbol, I see those sometimes but "the cloud" is still a relatively new concept for folks.
This week I had to get some old CAD files from another architect for a project I'm working on -- a hotel remodel, a holiday inn that was built in the early 90's. They didn't have anything they could email me, because their old CAD files were stored on floppies, so they literally snail mailed me 13 floppy disks. I'm working on uploading them now (whole other story), and my son saw one & was like, "oh, that's right, that's what those save symbols are! why do they still use that symbol??"
It's a pretty good question -- you couldn't even plug an old floppy drive into your PC's case if you tried, there's literally no port on motherboards built after the mid-2000's where you can plug a floppy drive cable. Yes, as I found out yesterday, they have their own cables & you can't use a standard hard drive / CD drive cable. Your motherboard has to have a floppy port. Which no motherboard built in the last 15 years has.
It's crazy, something so common 20 years ago has literally become an anachronism. And there's literally not been any attempts to correct it - virtually all software uses this symbol as a metaphor for saving your work to a drive of some sort. I think eventually they'll be replaced by a cloud symbol, I see those sometimes but "the cloud" is still a relatively new concept for folks.
