Technological/practical "backward steps" we all just accept now

I was watching a programme about Nokia which mentioned how Apple came along with its massive touchscreen, which sacrificed battery life and durability i.e. we all now accept that a phone battery will need charging at least every night and if we drop the phone the screen will shatter, which wasn't the case before. There must be tons of these?

My own personal bugbear is how you used to be able to change the TV channel with a remote instantaneously rather than having to wait a couple of seconds after pressing the button and now that's seemingly impossible.

On a larger scale it's probably a backwards step that everyone is expected to have a recent smartphone to conveniently do loads of things (show your boarding pass, or whatever) and shit stops being supported within a few versions. Music compression too. But I guess I'm thinking of specific annoyances that shouldn't even be problems.

I was only half-watching the Nokia programme so please feel free to correct my comprehensive history of Apple there.

the original gameboy lasted about eight years through new release support and actual durability of the hardware

Everybody's landline used to work in a blackout.

^^ good one, also you can no longer get DC power from landlines

taking the headphone jack away

Audio fidelity/quality was better with landlines too.

sez you, "Telecom"

:)

at my gym i have to log in on a giant touch screen to run on the fucking treadmill. the other day it asked me if i wanted to install updates. hl;kjalkjh;asgdhl;kasgd

My own personal bugbear is how you used to be able to change the TV channel with a remote instantaneously rather than having to wait a couple of seconds after pressing the button and now that's seemingly impossible.

― kinder, 14. august 2019 00:14 (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Wait, what?

oh god please just go away

iPod clickwheel RIP

Audio fidelity/quality was better with landlines too

Right? It used to actually be enjoyable to talk on the phone (not to mention that handsets were much more ergonomic/comfortable/seemed less likely to induce brain cancer), no wonder phone calls seem like an intrusive nuisance now.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/08/the-us-navy-says-no-to-touchscreens-maybe-automakers-should-too/

I realized too when I got an iPhone for xmas how much it suffered from an absence of the trackball on my old phone.

The iPad was a bit of a stumble
-techno beaver

remote control thing is a great example. that drives me crazy any time i'm in a hotel or something and just want to enjoy the mindless zone-out of channel surfing. related: TVs coming with "motion smoothing" turned on by default and sometimes with no option to turn it off.

* many websites/apps/etc. have gotten slower and junkier as they've added features, loaded up with data-draining graphics and videos and scripts. like, just trying to see what the hourly weather forecast for tomorrow is involves a lot more clicking and waiting than it did a few years ago. google maps is another one that's gotten a lot shittier.

* new laptops with only USB-C ports so that to make this sleek, elegant thing fully functional and do basic things you need to buy an expensive dongle and have it hang awkwardly off the apple lust object.

* also in general, laptops replacing desktops for a computer that remains at a desk at all times --- massively worse ergonomically and less computer for your money.

* not to make this a physical media thread but def all the downsides of the streaming world belong here. but obv there are many tradeoffs.

* general trend of offloading labor onto unpaid customers (self check out, surveys, pressure from amazon to answer support questions for products you've bought, etc.).

* death of big-budget 2D animation (in hollywood anyway).

history is littered with these of course, cf. invention of agriculture and human health/life expectancy/society. or cars replacing transit networks, all of those stories. or at a pettier level, all the changes in shaving since idk the 1960s or 70s.

Audio fidelity/quality was better with landlines too.

i hung onto my landline for longer than most people and in the early days of cellphones it was infuriating talking to anyone on theirs because the audio quality was terrible. it's better now but still not as good as landlines were.

the substitution of plastics for paper, cloth, wood, and metal (not as acceptable as it used to be but never more pervasive)

Color printer/scanners are a now an everyday cheapish appliance but their rate of malfunction makes them barely worth the trouble.
A black and white laserjet that couldn’t scan shit would cost you an arm but you could be sure that sucker would turn out pages for ages, iirc.

A lot of fast fashion type stuff bugs me, like having to actually look for cotton underwear.

as someone who lives in a country where you wear gloves several months out of the year, i daily cursed the engineer who introduced thumbprint unlock as the default on the iPhone

the default of ‘pick up your phone and look at it before we reveal the content of a text’ on the iPhone ten also a v stupid idea

A black and white laserjet that couldn’t scan shit would cost you an arm but you could be sure that sucker would turn out pages for ages, iirc.

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, August 13, 2019 5:02 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Brother still makes products of this caliber and they aren't disturbingly expensive.

at a pettier level, all the changes in shaving since idk the 1960s or 70s.

― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, August 13, 2019 4:26 PM (fifty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

development of laser hair removal is a big improvement tbh

Color printer/scanners are a now an everyday cheapish appliance but their rate of malfunction makes them barely worth the trouble.

Not to be a commercial but after years of having problems with inkjet printers and generally feeling like they were the most unreliable piece of technology in existence, I bought an Epson Eco-tank and it has been life-changing. I actually love my printer now and wouldn’t trade it for anything. 100% reliable, scans and prints great, I haven’t had to refill it yet and I’ve had it for... 2 years? No more of the seemingly constant cartridge replacements. /commercial

Of course, that’s the opposite of what this thread is about.

I just had a 1958 Grundig tube radio repaired, it sounds amazing; finding someone who could work on it was the hard part

it wasn't really so long ago that devices like radios, TVs, stereo components, and even personal computers were designed to be repaired and kept in service for many years; now the same kinds of devices go directly to the landfill as soon as they fail, if not sooner; the fact that the replacement devices are cheaper and more capable than the junked ones is not a particularly impressive sign of progress

The loss of institutional knowledge about how to build heavy-duty, reliable liquid propellant rocket systems has had a massive impact on space programs around the world.

Now somebody tell me they have a way to get to the moon just fine.

I’m gonna be really anxious when the time comes to buy a new TV because the one I have has been so good for so long *raps on wooden table*

i was curious about buying a new tv - i haven't had one since the mid 90s, a portable black-and-white model from the 80s passed on to me from my parents - and the enormous variations in crazy features and too-good-to-be-credible prices just made me give up

I started with the knowledge that I wanted a Sony of a certain size with a certain number of HDMI inputs and went with that, I think?

i recently had ceiling fans installed, and we got the ones with lights built in

too late i realised that to turn the lights on and off we now need to fumble around with a dinky battery powered remote

curse a society that no longer understands that light switches should be easy to find in the dark

(also every button press is accompanied by an annoying beeping sound that can't be muted)

that everything has a remote is ridiculous.

Wait, I've never turned lights on or off with a battery-powered remote. That is not a backward step I accept!

Landlines, though. Still had one until 2011. I sometimes wonder if I'm the only person who finds it physically difficult to converse satisfyingly on a smartphone.

i hate talking on the phone now, it makes me antsy and eager to get off the phone. but i don't know if that is something abt the phone itself, or how my expectations and practices around phones have changed, esp thru texting taking the place of calls for almost all the things i used to make calls for. and the ppl on the other end feeling the same way and distracted and eager to get off the phone too.

everyone hates talking on the phone now.
it's social anxiety and because we have so many job related activities where one is on the phone all the time.

although my mom still chats away like she is teenager of the year.

It used to be that after CRT and plasma declined, televisions were a forced compromise: backlit LCD or nothing, which suck for watching films (bad shadow levels, motion smoothing, etc etc). I white-knuckled the gap between plasma and OLED by self-repairing my plasma when the power supply failed, and then buying a used plasma which got me through (barely, with lines on the screen and driver failures) just until the OLEDs came down enough for me to consider an end-of-line clearance price.
Now of course I have the best TV of my life - it's kind of ironic because my film library is worth probably 5-10 times as much as the screen I watch them on.

Landlines were easier to have a conversation on because it was in real time. Cellphones have gotten better, but they're still bouncing audio off of metal towers like a pinball machine. Landlines were the technological final product of an evolution that began with two cans and a piece of string, and worked just fine.

I have the same tv remote problem with my microwave.

Are there really cars out there that combat drowsiness by not letting itself drift over any white or yellow line unless the blinker is on?] Because I will lose my shit, that's all there is to it.

things have gotten a bit better, but even as the early playstation era was happening i remember thinking "wow it sucks that i have to wait 15 seconds for every other screen to load". that was in stark contrast to the near-instant load times of the cartridge based systems at the time and of the recent past.

of course, we were all more than willing to wait as long as it took to gedda load of them polygams

https://i.imgur.com/KKf0O1X.jpg

When you buy a new video game and it has to spend an assload of time downloading "updates" before you can play the fucking thing.

Also Denny's getting rid of the Breakfast Dagwood

“like, just trying to see what the hourly weather forecast for tomorrow is involves a lot more clicking and waiting than it did a few years ago”

(since you’re not opposed to using google:) google “(city) weather” once, ctrl+h “wea” for every instance after

P much any form of watching tv now.

Are you guys saying landlines don't sound as good as they used to, or that cellphones don't sound as good as landlines? I agree with the latter, but as for the former, my landline still sounds great. I would never have a conversation on my cellphone unless I was away from home.

We have a landline so we can put the number on paperwork, and for “just in case.” I think we turned the ringer off two years ago. It sits behind the dehumidifier in our master bedroom.

xp saying that cellphones don't sound as good as landlines.

Coca Cola Freestyle machines. Ok...i love em. But...

Soda fountains in the past, usually your biggest problem was the soda came out flat because the bag needed to be changed. So maybe your number one choice isn't available, but other stuff is. Also, multiple people can fill their shit at the same time.

But with these fuckin machines, if you are unlucky enough to go to a store with only one machine, you gotta wait behind the dummy who can't figure it out.

Then when you get there, sometimes they're out of like every diet product, but you don't find out until you click on it and try to pour it, it stops, and greys out.

And then sometimes the shit just malfunctions and nobody in the restaurant knows how to fix it because they gotta call some help line. And if none of the machines work, you gotta wait in kine and get someone at the counter to pour you a drink

iPod clickwheel RIP

Oh and inspired by Neanderthal’s post just now! Automated airport bag drops - just an awful scourge and take far more time than having someone check the suitcase and slap the sticker on it for you. Goes double if you’re stuck behind people who are confused by this (naturally). Waited fifteen minutes behind a family checking in three suitcases the other day - there should have been staff to help them.

compadre!

Granted, back then, there were far fewer area codes to learn.

i'm trying to buy tickets for the african cup of nations in morocco, starting in 5 days, and the whole process is insane. first, you have to create an account on the official ticket site - ok that's understandable. however i can't buy more than 4 tickets for a game, despite wanting to go with 5 other people. then when i want to pay it asks for the fan ID of all 4 people. for that you need to download another app, create another account there. it asks to scan my residency permit to create the fanID and despite trying several times, the app stalls and ends up shutting down. if you don't have a residency permit, you need to obtain an e-visa via the same app from what i understand.
i've already spent 45 mn trying and it's looking very likely i'm not going to buy any tickets despite wanting to because of this. who the hell thought this was a good idea

good luck, gamers, music producers, graphic artists, et al

https://wccftech.com/you-might-soon-see-8gb-laptops-everywhere/

> Related Story Okay, Don’t Panic, But HDD Prices Are Now Rising Faster Than They Have in Years; Mimicking the Great RAM Shortage

tell me about it... looked at two more nas drives in october, didn't press the button. looked again in december, 20% more...

Xp - because of phone number portability, and young people still on family plans, you can tell where a lot of people under 40 are from based on their phone number. It’s still weird to me, when I think about it, because for the longest time, the phone number corresponds to one’s current location.

I've lived in three states and have had three area codes in my phone numbers.

I dunno. Would've been odd to apply for jobs in Minneapolis with my 501 number.

But yeah, NOW. It's like they went out of the way a few years ago to make SS#s less localized, but now with everyone keeping their childhood phone number, the point is made moot.

Usta be I could tell what neighborhood someone was from by their phone number, but that's all shot to hell now.

501 was one of the first area codes I memorized at the boring job.
I think I quit before I memorized all the Texas ones.

In my home town you could guess how long people had lived there because the prefix had filled up and newer numbers had a new prefix.

A similar thing happened with overlay area codes (like 301/240/227 and 703/571). The older codes were sometimes seen as more desirable because it meant you'd had a cell phone longer.

People can be petty about the dumbest things

I worked a call centre for years so can usually tell where in Canada someone lives based on their area code (except some of the new ones)

Why does it blow your mind?

― sarahell, Sunday, December 14, 2025 6:57 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

because I'm a credulous dupe and naively think that being offered a line of credit on every single purchase isn't something a sane society would do. I'm dumb enough to think there's some level of sanity out there

brb time to make the third payment on the McRib I ate last week

^ Aldi just opened some stores here, and I still don't understand the "split" option on the pay screen. Like how I can split hands in blackjack?

you split cash/card

not that hard to understand

Kinda is when I'm at a "card only" kiosk.

'card-only' kiosks generally give you a choice of using vouchers or accrued points, just not cash

that makes sense if you're using a prepaid debit card or gift card and then paying the rest on a second card

I was surprised when it just automatically did that at a Trader Joe's when I was using Apple Pay. I hadn't realized I was using some accrued credits and it just knocked the balance of the gift card off my cash register total and I owed the balance

xxxp to Puffin, I felt some Maryland pride in my 301 area code.

that BNPL shit like Klarna SHOULD be a deafening warning siren about the real state of the economy but instead all I hear is breathless stanning about how innovative it is and consumers love it. of course they love it, they want stuff and don't have enough money to pay for it, this is not a good thing

same with reverse mortgages, etc. Anything exploitative in capitalism is always branded as “empowerment”
bullshit by the ones who’ll lake money off of you.

I especially love it when PayPal or whatever wants me to break up my $15 payment into equal monthly installments

xpxpxpxp Always felt average about my 501 until I met someone from Louisville.

(Hey, we did have those jeans for awhile.)

"I especially love it when PayPal or whatever wants me to break up my $15 payment into equal monthly installments"

I've been confused about that. I recently bought some shoes - they were £24.13, but Amazon gave me the option to pay in three monthly instalments of £8.05, with no interest. I'm puzzled as to the advantages, and yet there doesn't appear to be a catch. Internet wisdom has it that splitting the cost will increase my credit score fractionally, but that doesn't sound likely.

Technically £8.05 times three is £24.15, but is it just a rounding error? 2p multiplied by one thousand orders is £20 pure profit, but it's such a small sum that it seems accidental. And yet it's £20 for no work at all. It seems odd to buy something that isn't hundreds of pounds on instalment, but then again some people really do need shoes right now... and are prepared to wait a couple of days to have them delivered.

I'm aware of Vimes' theory of shoes. It doesn't work on Amazon because there are seemingly no expensive good-quality options. There are expensive options, but not good-quality options. Every so often I hanker after a pair of Dr Martens. Then I read the reviews and decide against it. They seem to have the worst of both worlds, poor build quality and high cost. And yet how else can I imagine that it's 1992 and I'm signed to Sarah Records? But what's so great about having oil and fat resistant soles? That's a strangely specific selling point.

On the subject of computer components, I built a new PC back in October, because my old PC couldn't be upgraded to run Windows 11. I was lucky to buy the components just slightly before they went up in price. Looking at my order book, I paid £55.99 from Amazon.co.uk on 07 October for a 1TB Crucial P310 SSD, which now retails for £99.95. It might be a Christmas thing, or it might be because the Crucial brand has just been discontinued (Micron, the owners, wants to concentrate on the enterprise market), but that's a hefty rise.

On 13 October 2025 I paid £40.99 for a pair of Silicon Power 8gb DDR4 RAM sticks, which are now £69.99. In contrast the physical stuff - the case, the PSU, fans - seem to be static. Judging by Amazon's "price history" feature everything seemed to leap up towards the end of November.

The computer memory issue is being pretty widely covered. The datacenter boom right now is completely screwing up the memory pricing. There are three main computer memory-producing companies and the as-of-yet nonexistent computers that will go in the currently nonexistent AI datacenters will consume the entire market's output so there's hoarding and price speculation going on.

the DDR5 32GB kit I bought in August for $78 is now $338

I thought about upgrading my motherboard/processor/memory, or at the least bumping up the amount of ram in my current machine, but by the time I noticed the prices were going up I had missed the bus.

My group at work is pricing out a large hardware purchase for servers and it's going to be real bad considering those machines have at minimum a terabyte of ram

Many times in the 90s, my indie friends and I were walking home from a Bikini Kill or Afghan Wigs show and we happened upon a large oil slick. Blobs of fat everywhere.

We kept walking because we knew our Docs could take it.

Posers and wannabe-scenester newbies with inferior footwear found themselves bogged down in the oleaginous mire - or, worse, had their feet dissolved to the ankles by the many vats of acid one had to walk through in those days.

Amazon gave me the option to pay in three monthly instalments of £8.05, with no interest. I'm puzzled as to the advantages, and yet there doesn't appear to be a catch.

What if you miss a payment? £60 fee on top of the £8.05? (I don't know.)

entering DOB on phone apps. three sliders from left to right of day - date - month. My birthday is towards the end of the year, but you can't select anything past the current date, so start sliding only to find out I can't select the month until the year is done first. fuck forbid that it will remember the date also.

the paypal pay in 4 thing too. a great feeling to get something for a quarter of the price. then not great feelings when the other payments come out weeks later. except once I didn't have enough money in the correct account so they've removed that option and I feel like a deadbeat.

Wow, that app is going to have a tough time here in a couple of weeks.

Christmas tree lights have many patterns, some of which are epilepsy inducing, nothing any sane person would choose. but the default is to cycle thorough all the patterns so every minute or so it's like being in a rave

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy7BrKNmZAQ

Sharing Technology Connections yearly rant about modern xmas lights.

do we have a thread about the lack of technological progress? i have an incipient Andy Rooney rant about gas station air machines that still need bags full of quarters to operate

a lot of the ones around here take cards. but i recommend buying your own electric tire pump anyways, they are pretty cheap

portable air compressor that is powered by the cigarette lighter (or USB port for you rich bastards who own cars manufactured this century) is a lifesaver, especially the ones that combine with a rechargeable battery jumpstarter

There's still a free one up the road, but we also have our own tire pump too.

Because I live somewhere that's sometimes described as being "behind the times," I'm just now experiencing Aldi for the first time. Most of the kiosks are "card only," but I still have to remember to bring a quarter for the cart?

My Australian MIL said she uses some sort of clip that she keeps on her keychain to free the carts. Don't know what she's talking about, but I'm keeping my eyes open.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/YIXINHE-Trolley-Shopping-Supermarket-Keyrings/dp/B0FRXVLBS1

(400 tracking parameters deleted from URL but it might still work. search trolley token keychain)

Xp hazel — my car was manufactured this century and doesn’t have a USB port … I still have to manually set the clock when daylight savings happens… I kinda like that tbh.

i was under the impression that in California it is illegal to charge for air. But that's not exactly correct: Free air must be provided if someone purchases gas. But i've never had a station attendant refuse to just turn on the air for me after asking politely.

yeah I've got a trolley token (like a fake £1 coin on my keyring) for the rare occasions I go to Sainsburys that needs one

the air is free, the air compressor is not

We used to do a thing on tour where we'd take a coin and bend it with pliers and then cram it in the parking meter so it failed, and then put a 'broken' sign on it

We have a Stereolab branded trolley token, they were selling them on the last tour.

I don't remember stovetop ranges ever having timers to prevent absent-minded cooks from having unattended pots boil forever but it definitely feels like a feature that has been taken away.

enjoyed the Christmas light video; I tapped out at ten minutes but I learned a thing or two!

same

same

made it to where he started splitting hairs over jade green and forest green, but good channel.

Also, thank you for the Aldi hack links. Made me ponder if it was worth buying something for $2 that would replace a quarter, but I like filling my head with that kind of stuff instead of the other garbage these days.