Modern computing has made a lot of things dis-interesting to me as well. I very much like removable storage, working with floppies, etc. Just think if the Zip drive technology had been more popular or standardized. The LS120 drives too, remember them?
But yeah, like an Amiga, IBM clones and Mac's can still boot from floppy or optical drive, but most peoples mindsets have shifted from that way of thinking. It's really only used now to save a HD or install/prep said HD. With the computing power we have today, think of how well certain programs could run if coded so that they were written entirely for a given machines architecture (machine language) and NOT a crappy OS. Oh wait - that's what dedicated consoles pretty much are. lol Going from MSDOS to Windoze the first time, couldn't help but scratch my head in amazement that, all of the sudden, we need a program to run a program?! I felt exactly the same way about GEOS for the C64. Somehow, the ST, Mac & Amiga all seemed different as they were "born" with the mouse driven interface. Really though, it *is* the same thing. Programs running programs. Supposed to make our lives easier, better - faster. HA! lol
But when it comes to "computing", perception is everything. Mainstream folks feel the need to be moving "forward" all the time, even if they're going nowhere fast. The digital music industry has already proven that. Using a floppy today, especially a measly 1.44mb one, would just screw with their perception of the computing experience. Besides all that, the format simply isn't large enough to handle all the inefficient coding going on in today's software and I agree with HammerD... just isn't practical anymore en masse.
