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.

Voice on three in Britain is borked

i saw that. but i wasn't getting a dial tone even and then i popped the SIM card out and i did. neither of the numbers i called picked up though, so it could still be bad, i guess

thanks for the last heads-up - I'm on 3 and hadn't realised

"the 'phone' is an app now, and apps break"

I was relatively late to smartphones - I was a laptop-then-netbook-then-Asus Transformer person, with a phone purely as a transmitter - but this confused me as well. I remember when I bought my first smartphone, wondering how to actually make a call to a completely new number. Beforehand I either just pressed the keypad or used the address book. But how do you phone someone who isn't in your contacts?

Off the top of my head I think I actually spent some time adding numbers to my address book and phoning them that way. But, as you point out, Android has an entirely separate phone app. I think I assumed that the phone app would just show me billing information. But no, it's the actual phone functionality. With numbers etc.

I think it was at that point I realise that I was being overtaken by twelve-year-olds and that I was no longer ahead of the curve. Instead I was Richard Harris, running behind the departing transport aircraft at the end of The Wild Geese.

Wait what?

I know Ashley’s the best

More and more sites no longer even let you log in with a password anymore, it's just enter your email and receive a code. Really annoying. Logging in with a password manager was really easy, this adds some extra steps and pollutes my inbox.

this and 2fa for sites that dont hold any private or important information— like please stop this

xp YES. I hate this. I can manage my passwords, thanks, you don't need to junk up my email inbox

Sometimes there is a small link below that you can click that says “sign in with password” but not all sites, which is annoying.

I hate having to always have my phone nearby because of the 2fa crap. I have gotten to the point where I know the 6 digit numbers for most of the regular 2fa systems… sometimes I feel depressed when I look at my message history on my phone when it’s mostly 2fa codes and hardly any people

Like who would gaf if i died, my closest friends are the 2fa systems from software companies and banks?

If you have an Apple device you can set it to autodelete 2FA texts and emails. Plus he password manager integrates the rotating key method quite nicely

However, passkeys are the business and are slowly blowing all this away.

I find passkeys to be VERY spotty at how they are integrated. Some sites seem to do it right: generate the passkey and then never think about a password for that site again. But others seem to want you to take your phone out and scan a QR code every time. Surely this defeats the entire point. Other sites claim to use passkeys but then simply don't log you in at all, or force you to do 2FA anyway.

Yeah I've given up for the moment

i guess i have to buy a new computer now, because my existing one won't run plex and its video card increasingly fails, which results in a 20+ minute reboot process

apparently one *can* still get something with a CD drive, but it's a bit sketchy

honestly exhausted at the mere thought of moving everything over and figuring out the port forwarding and security measures and shit

today someone asked me what I do for streaming and I was like....uhh I don't do streaming I download MP3s from Soulseek and listen mostly to vinyl at home...I didn't want to sound like a dick but it's true!

apparently they used Spotify and Tidal and had big issues with both...something like how Tidal keeps downshifting the quality if your connection is bad and Spotify was tossing a shitload of ads at them.

then I think about how like 20% of the posts in music subreddits are something like "wtf why did they take this album off of streaming???"...I guess if all you did was streaming, that really would suck. and I think that's true of most people these days.

like I'm trying to send the stuff from this mashup album I'm working on to a friend, he doesn't know how to use Google Drive or Dropbox or anything, if I throw it on Mixcloud or whatever it gets copyright struck, I have to like put all this on a USB stick and give it to him, but nobody does that anymore. in the olden days I'd just burn him a CD and it would cost 30 cents

he can use USB sticks but not drive/dropbox? have you considered staging an intervention?

i have a friend who is more than a decade older than me, who runs a business on the internet, and i often find it breathtaking how little he understands about how computers work. he also can’t read a map— like he is map-blind. he admits he is problematic autistic in some way.

it seems like somehow when I touch my iphone something totally random happens--yesterday I somehow was about to, without any intention to use Google Maps or to navigate to places, give Dinosaur State Park in Connceticut a one star review and have absolutely no idea the steps that led me almost to do that part from just fumbling with my phone to get a photo.

Zero dinosaurs, do not recommend

Deleting predictive text… how do I just turn it off? All the AI stuff… how do I just turn it off? Jfc

otm

Same with almost every software and the “helpful tips” that pop up unsolicited and cover the thing I actually need to see! … it’s revenge of clippy afaic

Have you ever wished you could meet that special someone who could finish your sentences?

No! Nobody likes anchovies What? Nobody likes autocorrect!

he can use USB sticks but not drive/dropbox? have you considered staging an intervention?

― encino morricone (majorairbro), Monday, July 7, 2025 10:59 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

im sure he could figure it out if he put his mind to it

My dumb middle-aged stubby fingers have given up on ever improving their texting game on an iphone. I constantly have to go back and delete stuff and fix it and damn it I will not take the stupid suggestions I can do it just fine myself fuck off

I largely dictate to my phone now. It drives my wife nuts when I do it of she’s around.

Somehow managed to change my phone keyboard to Arabic (i think) yesterday in the middle of an important WhatsApp text and spent about an hour going through Settings trying in vain to change it back. Turns out it's the little globe-icon key right next to the space bar, obvs.

on my cheap Samsung the keyboard sometimes just disappears, and I have to wait ages for it to reappear. would like to at least have the option of a physical keyboard, even if the buttons are tiny, that's still better for my fat arthritic thumbs.

Xp fetter … I guess I should be grateful mine only does that with Spanish !

Mine used to swap to Latin.

i had been having the worst time using ilx at work! Page would just not refresh in Edge (which i must use). I realized the trick is REMOVING THE BOOKMARK so it wouldn't rely on the cached copy. Cripes.

when I'm trying to read an article on my phone but the pop-up ads keep knocking the text around aarrrrgggghhh

Rick Lane‬
✧@rickl✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 10h
Every tech update now is like: "Great news, the word processor you've relied on for twenty years has learned to juggle! Is it good at it? No! Does it help in any way? Of course not! Has it made it insufferable to use? Oh, absolutely."

the number of things i need to wait for to pop up and be dismissed on my _phone apps_ now before i can just use them is fucking sickening

go to click the X to close the pop-up, pop-up moves as your finger approaches, you end up clicking on the fucker. no way it's not intentional.

for sure I stopped playing games on my phone for that reason, the ads got so insidious. they even started doing this thing where it would have this progress bar that would dramatically slow down as it goes on, so you'd think it was a 15 second ad but it's actually 2 minutes, they make the X really difficult to click on sometimes too

Several European countries are holding mail packages that are bound for the US until it's clear how the import tariffs/taxes will be enforced. (the "de minimis" exemption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_minimis#Duties_and_taxes_on_imports )

Its funny, I think we all forget it used to be quite costly to have things shipped in from overseas between the actual shipping cost, and customs import duties/taxes. I dont really remember when it all changed but suddenly everyone was orderin $2 widgets from Alibaba with no shipping, fuck the environment!

i'm in the photo app on my iphone. where are the albums? scroll, click all the buttons. can't find. now watching a 17m youtube tutorial. awesome!

Photos app is good except it's not obvious how to change the default homepage layout. Scroll right to the bottom and to get a Customise and Reorder button. From there you can set it up however you want, with albums prominent if you like.

Google pictures removed keystone correction in the last update. (It's being restored after protests, but still.)

BBC now has popup ads with NO X, at least not at first... you have to push the ad upward and only then does the dismissal X appear

I am so fucking tired of 2FA on everything, legit makes everything harder.

my company used to pay a cellphone stipend ($25 to $50 a month) back when cellphones were still kinda 'optional' and also really expensive

They no longer do but I absolutely NEED my phone now because of these stupid authentication jump-hoops.. if I lost it I'd be shit out of luck

If you need a phone for ANY work thing, your employer has to pay for it.

Of course I don't actually want to carry two devices ever again (I used to) so I happily connected my personal phone to my 2FA (and also put my work email and Teams on it, I really don't care).

people with smart watches that light up in a dark theater: please burn in hell

just the absolute rudeness and entitlement drives me crazy