Floppy disks, watches, and wine

Found this article featuring the “last man standing” in the floppy disk space. This bit caught my attention:

There’s a beauty and elegance to them. I can see how complicated they are, and what an elegant solution they were for their time. I’m not a watch collector, but I have friends who are. The beauty of a finely made watch is something to behold. Even though it might be less reliable than a $19 clock, it is a work of art. Just consider the human effort that went into its making. The same can be said about the floppy disk.

That puts into words neatly something I’ve been trying to express for a while. Why even in the era of the Apple Watch and sub-$100 quartz G-Shocks that provide excellent and robust timekeeping (among other features), there’s still a place for intricate Swiss automatic movement watches. The toil and risk of small production wines.

Floppy disks are dead tech, of course. (I’ve bent over backwards finding solutions for loading software, etc., onto my project PowerBook 1400 that do not rely on a working floppy drive, or reliable 3.5" floppy disks, and my IIgs isn’t connected to a floppy drive at all, relying entirely on a CFFA 3000 card.)

But looking back at the bare metal tricks and engineering wizardry that made that storage medium viable (especially in the earliest days) - I’m amazed, and awed, at how it all worked.