I totally agree. It's nice to have something that doesn't require magic vendor tools to fix. You don't have to go all the way back to the 80's though. The 90's are fine too and you still own your vehicle in the 00's. Late 90's make the vehicle harder to steal.
I remember back when Macbooks had issues with their temperature sensor. They would die due to the sensor cable being too short and everything expanding when the laptop got hot. Apple later resolved this with a firmware update.
Anyway, I got asked if I could fix a Macbook that was turning itself off. Sure, that's probably just performing the firmware update. But when I got the Macbook, it turned off just moments after starting OSX.
I put it in the freezer for 20 minutes and tried booting it again, yup, this time it took longer before it would turn itself off. I put it back in the freezer for a few hours. Booted it, started the firmware update, praying that it wouldn't turn itself off. Everything went successful and after that the laptop worked perfectly!
For other possibly dangerous things in society there are things like taking a license and renewing that license. Perhaps that should be a requirement for buying hard drugs where it's legal.
>only supported 3G - a networking standard that has been turned off by the major carriers.
Remember, the US is not the world. What major carriers do in the US is not necessarily a global fact. Where I live 2G and 3G is still a fallback if 4G or 5G doesn't work. It will continue to be that way until 2025.
>If your motorcycle only supported leaded gas could you use it?
Google lead replacement additive or think about whether the engine could be rebuilt/replaced on a motorcycle. I certainly would prefer an engine rebuild/replace over replacing a modem in an iPhone 3GS.
>the iPhone from 2009 was an iPhone 3GS, it had a 320x480 screen, 256MB of RAM
The iPhone from 2009 wasn't that impressive in specs compared to other phones at the time. My even older 2.5G dumbphone had higher PPI on the screen and could run useful j2me apps. In 2010, the iPhone 4 came, had a 640x960 screen and 512MB of RAM. The fact that the specs could be doubled within a year shows that the earlier 3GS wasn't pushing anything spec wise.