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.

what on earth is this alarm?
do you not just have it on your phone?

it's is my phone alarm, yes, but the standard android clock app only lets you dismiss upcoming alarms in the 2 hour window before they go off.

I use this popular app instead of the native android clock app, which I don't trust and never will. You can turn the alarm on or off with a button, and it remembers the time even if you turn it off.

The best thing is setting the alarm at night, and then it says "alarm set for 10 hours from now", because that means I have ten hours of sleep. That's the highpoint of my day. Turning on the alarm, and seeing that I have ten hours of sleep. I survived another day, and now I get to spend ten hours in the loving embrace of darkness.

I'm pretty sure I've got the standard android clock app, and you just slide a slider as to whether you want the alarm to be set.

my phone is ancient, but my OH's one is similar and the same except you can set multiple alarms.

i get that you want to press "dismiss" but surely that's not the only way you manage your alarms?

^^^ Right, the "dismiss" option exists specifically for when you wake up early. Turning the alarm on or off is done elsewhere.

yeah, but i don't want to fully disable the alarm because i want it to go off as usual on the next non-bank-holiday and i don't want to have to remember to turn it back on again. the dismiss button would be perfect for this except for the window being only two tiny hours, meaning i can't set it the night before.

Ashley's 'popular app' (Google Clock) might be the one i'm using given that it's an android phone. it's also saying 'install on MORE devices' suggesting that it's already installed on some of my devices. oh, it is, the version is identical...

and looking at those pictures i notice there's a 'Pause' for each alarm, which lets you set a date range... which seems to do exactly what i want

(android pixel phone, that should say - it's a google phone, it obv that it should include google clock)

Non-clock-related: the dusty, dorky, but quietly lovable app Bitmoji has updated all its graphics to a hideous "3D" style, probably AI-generated, and drained of any of the cartoony sense of personality that they previously conveyed.

yeah, but i don't want to fully disable the alarm because i want it to go off as usual on the next non-bank-holiday and i don't want to have to remember to turn it back on again. the dismiss button would be perfect for this except for the window being only two tiny hours, meaning i can't set it the night before.

If I turn off my standard recurring android alarm using the slider, it gives me a nice option to turn back on for the next normal recurrence.

it has never occurred to me before now that there would be a need for a recurring alarm. i think i just need to always set my alarm for the next day before i go to sleep as some kind of ritual/visualization for the day ahead

Yeah me too. However, I just mentioned it to my OH and he says he doesn't like thinking about a specific time, it's whatever he's previously set as "school day", "office day" etc that always seems to work, which has blown my mind a little!
ie he couldn't tell you what time his alarm goes off on a school day as it's whatever he set it as months ago. (it's 7.25 btw and I have no idea how he doesn't know that)

I set my alarm on my iphone every night. Never occurred to me to do different.

This is psychotic behavior

i have alarms set for

6:20 reading
7 think about getting up
8 get up if i haven't before (am usually by the Thames or in the park when this goes off)
8:50 time for work
10:15 daily standup
and will enable others to match any meetings i have, because outlook is simultaneously too quiet and too noisy

and 8am set for weekends.

multiple alarms with different recurrences (and different alarm sounds) is a game changer

yeah multiple alarms is a massively useful tool.

I have lots of alarms, I just toggle them on and off as needed.

10:15 daily standup

Wow, what are the mid morning crowds like?

arf arf

Matt #2 otm on the bad writers thread:

It's a crying shame that flinging an e-book across the room is impossible unless you fancy trashing the device you're reading it on too.

Just lie and say “I flung the book across the room” to ppl even tho you haven’t, tbh that’s what I have always assumed to be the case anyway

Not being able to see the menu of a restaurant online, unless you 1) 'start an online order', or 2) look through the random phone pics of outdated menus uploaded to google

^^^^ this drives me crazy

omg yes

absolutely

Also, every time I go into a McDonalds or some other place that has a order-by-yourself from a large touch screen, I have to navigate through tons of order options I would have never even considered (options to not have a pickle!?) in addition to tedious upsell prompts every step along the way.

Much easier to tell a person what I want, and just say "no" to "fries with that?"

I happened to catch an episode of The Brady Bunch earlier while folding laundry and there was a scene where one of the Brady kids just...turned the tv on using a knob. That was it.

I, on the other hand, living in 2025, have to endure the following process to watch...well, let’s just use The Brady Bunch as an example:

--Turn on tv via remote
--Turn on Apple Firestick via different remote
--Wait for spinny wheel to load main menu screen
--Navigate menu screen to find the Pluto app (there is latency, so sometimes this takes a few tries)
--Wait for Pluto logo to appear
--Pluto asks me if I want to save my preferences*, which it does every time; I choose “not now”
--Pluto then immediately defaults to a channel called “Pluto Spotlight” and begins playing a random movie. Navigating away from this requires several tries for some reason
--If there are no latency-related user errors or a frozen screen because I am hitting the buttons too quickly, the elusive channel guide finally materializes. I select the Classic TV channel and scroll down to click on The Brady Bunch. Sometimes this will work, other times it will inexplicably switch back to whatever was on Pluto Spotlight.

(*I’ve actually tried to sign in to save my progress, mostly out of defeat / frustration from having to see this screen each time, but this requires a tedious process of syncing my phone (which I do not have on my person at all times) to my tv and then using the Apple remote to type things using the excruciating virtual keypad (because I don’t have or want Alexa).

I mean I just wanted to zone out to some tv, man

Also, every time I go into a McDonalds or some other place that has a order-by-yourself from a large touch screen, I have to navigate through tons of order options I would have never even considered (options to not have a pickle!?) in addition to tedious upsell prompts every step along the way.

Much easier to tell a person what I want, and just say "no" to "fries with that?"

― fajita seas, Wednesday, April 23, 2025 6:58 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I think I was just reading on Instagram or something--so no idea whether or not it is true--that people, on average, spend far more when using the McDonalds kiosk as opposed to ordering from a person. Because of course they do.

Oh I have the stupidest one. In CH we weigh our fruits and veggies on the scale in most supermarkets. They just introduced a new step where it asks you whether you wrapped it in a plastic bag or not, and depending on your choice, it will deduct 2 grams. Maybe they thought their tomatoes were now pricy enough that it would make a difference to the consumer - or that we would be so happy knowing that we do not pay for the plastic bag.

re the TV thing, remember also that you could be in anyone else's house and activate their TV in one step. Good luck with that now.

Oh, I wouldn't even bother. I know it's partly my own defiant technophobia, but simply watching tv really should not be as difficult as it is.

when you buy a tv now you are mainly buying software. the only tv software that isn't completely awful is the dumbest tv panel you can find and an Apple TV.

idk my parents have cable tv and some friends just use over the air tv and when you hit the power button it just pops up to whatever you were last watching like in the old days

caek’s right, if I shut off my tv while in the middle of watching something on apple tv, it pops up to whatever I was last watching and continues

The last TV my bad bought was an LG where the remote worked like a pointer. I set it up so that turning on his DirecTV box turned the whole mess on but it a cat bumped the TV remote a giant arrow would appear on the screen for half a minute and if you did have to use the TV part (it would forget the picture settings and turn on motion smoothing twice a month) it was a nightmare.

Dad bought

Yeah, I have an LG TV and hate that remote control mouse pointer, not sure who was asking for that. Otherwise I am very happy with the TV though.

its also astounding how laggy and buggy modern TVs are, I get that they're 1000x more sophisticated now but it feels like a lot of that processing power and complexity is dedicated to pointing you towards things you don't want to watch. we use Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube, yet the app menu has like 50 things on it, sometimes Hulu is there sometimes it gets hidden in a submenu, yes you can pin the apps you use and remove the ones you don't but every so often the TV just forgets all your settings, also it loves to randomly log you out of everything

In that vein, streaming services making it hard to find things to watch that aren’t in their top 10. It’s like Blockbuster put 20 movies on a shelf and then sent you into a room with a bunch of boxes to sort through. Also every time you pull a DVD out of a box the store AV system starts autoplaying part of it.

If you fiddle with HDMI CEC and whatnot settings long enough you can usually simplify the modern TV experience so that you Apple TV or Firestick remote controls everything and you can more or less bypass the TV's crappy interface altogether. The remotes for my TV and soundbar are pretty much redundant, I just use the Apple remote.

But yes, getting that set up in the first place took at least an hour.

Using Apple TV also makes you realise that you don't have to put up with having to reload apps and refind what you were watching when you accidentally quit them: I guess it has enough RAM that it can go straight back to where you were if this happens.

I have a tv with roku built in but I haven’t set it up so I don’t have to use the separate roku remote …

It would be cool to have a TV with the 8-10 streaming platforms I always watch on an old school VHF-style dial.

i read about a supposedly viral video and became interested in watching it myself. i encountered news story after news story, reddit threads, all kinds of commentary, but for a video that is apparently spreading like wildfire, it seems very hard to actually locate it on purpose. we've sort of accepted a state of affairs where the algorithm is good at telling everyone to watch something, but if you are seeking something out -- good luck

Instagram is the worst for that. It largely shows me things I want to see, which is an achievement, but the second I want to click on a recommended post or save it or even just look at it to remember the name, it refreshes, never to be found again no matter what I search for.

I don't know if this is the intention, but I press "save" quickly now on anything I might want to go back to.

but facebook is just as bad - I was just shown a friend "sharing a memory" and when I wanted to post a comment - gone.

xposted from I HATE APPLE

Last night I installed the latest Sequoia update, 15.4.1, and now all of a sudden metadata on streaming radio stations doesn't work. I click on WFMU and it shows the station but not the song currently playing. I can click the Favorite star next to the station name and metadata suddenly shows up, but it doesn't update dynamically. If I click away to a different station, no metadata. If I click back to WFMU, metadata is gone and I have to click the star again.

I just got off a tech support call and they said they're phasing out support for metadata on iHeartRadio stations. I said "I don't use iHeartRadio" and he said that was the backend for all internet radio where you get there initially via "Open Stream URL." This is to get people to subscribe to Apple Music and access their internet radio stations that way -- metadata will still be supported there.

We watch most of our telly on an Apple TV device attached to our Samsung television. It's mostly grand, except the sound cuts out at least once an hour for a second or two. Doesn't matter whether we're streaming or watching something we've downloaded, doesn't matter what app it's on. Husband has searched through every forum, every setting, can't figure it out. It's very annoying.

do you have any external speakers attached to the tv or whatever? sounds like it could be an issue with that

Yes, it probably is that. Super annoying.

If it's Sonos, I had an issue with my router where it'd lose a couple wireless speakers every so often. It was related to a Quality of Service setting (or whitelisting some IPTV protocol ?!) that was interrupting traffic. Once I fixed that, it was fine. It was oddly completely a router issue. If the speaker's directly connected to the tv, I have no idea