Comment by csomar
1 month ago
I think it's just nostalgia for a simpler, less complicated past. We do lots of things today that would've been impossible with Access and that we now take for granted. For example, most people today expect to access their system from anywhere via the internet; pulling up a specific invoice on their phone, for instance. That just wasn't possible with Access 2000. And if you tried building a web-accessible system on top of its database, you'd essentially be starting from scratch anyway. The reality is that the web is complicated because we want endless possibilities while staying fully connected.
Most businesses don't really operate like that though. That's what has been sold to us as an idea and we are blinded by the environments we work within in the tech industry. Really a hell of a lot of it is bums on seats in offices still.
One of the hilarious things I've seen recently was an ex partner of mine's hair salon paid for a SaaS booking system. It's a pile of junk. Doesn't work properly, screws up scheduling and finances and generally costs more time that it does some other way.
They literally went back to a paper bookings diary and just phone or whatsapp people if there's a problem.
Sure, which is why roughly 2/3 of the world's desktops are still running Windows. I actually met an accountant the other day (from Germany) who still uses the desktop version of Microsoft Excel (not the 365 web edition) because the old version works fine for his needs while the web one doesn't.
> They literally went back to a paper bookings diary and just phone or whatsapp people if there's a problem.
I couldn't book a place the other day because their online booking system was broken. It made me realize why most places and hotels use Booking.com or Airbnb. It's not just about discoverability; getting a booking system to actually work is a really hard problem.
But look at these two examples: MS Access wouldn't help in either case. For a booking system to be useful, people need to access the calendar online. These are things only made possible with web or mobile apps. Booking.com and Airbnb have a combined market cap of around a quarter trillion dollars. That's how valuable a functioning booking system really is.