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.

Same here! I still print a copy of the code or something just so there’s some sort of record of it but it’s not the same.

Same here! I still print a copy of the code or something just so there’s some sort of record of it but it’s not the same.

More and more, I have this not-very-well-thought-through fantasy that e-commerce will grind to a halt, either through some catastrophe or just though a slow grinding defeat to cybercrime. Do others feel the same way?

It's getting incredibly difficult to use cash nowadays. We've been trying to pay a builder in cash (sorry, yr honour) and getting your hands on a largish sum in a short period is quite hard, especially if you have a digital-only bank.

Basically I think all commerce is trending towards being e-commerce at this point.

Lol. So I get down there. Try to give the order number, can't find it in their system. Name of original purchaser, same thing.

Agent got so aggravated with how fucked up AXS made things today she gave me a fuckin handwritten ticket

It's getting incredibly difficult to use cash nowadays

I was in Sweden last summer and they're almost entirely cash-free.. so they actually looked at dropping paper currency altogether but then they did some analysis and realized the Russians could cripple their economy with some well-placed hacks and cyber attacks so they've backed away from that goal for the present

I'm involved with a charity and had to move bank accounts because the big ones charge you to pay in cash or cheques. A lot of our fundraising has always been solely cash but every year more and more people want to go cashless, which is a bit of an administrative nightmare when you're a volunteer short of time and have to navigate multiple cashless systems and you're at the mercy of their fees.

it does encourage more spending, I guess, but it would be awful to go totally cash-free.

"link in bio"

wow do i hate this. like, you're sharing something that you want me to read or listen to -- please include a link! i don't want to have to click through to your profile then sort through a link tree with 17 different things on it and try to figure out which one is correct. and god forbid i'm reading an old post and then now i'll never be able to find it. i don't know if the major platforms discourage having links in posts to cut down on spam or what this is due to but i hate it

Instagram doesn't let you put links in posts, X and Facebook do, but the algorithm will deboost you as they don't want traffic leaving the site.

yes, this is for sure a backward step, but it's caused by the platform not the user

We've been trying to pay a builder in cash (sorry, yr honour) and getting your hands on a largish sum in a short period is quite hard, especially if you have a digital-only bank.

It is impossible to get your hands on more than €1,000 of your own cash on one day from a bank or credit union here either. Kind of annoying for exactly the "paying a builder" reason. It's just about possible with Revolut if you answer "yes I really know them yes I accept I am an idiot for doing this" a million times.

It really annoys me how we have to pay by direct debit or online credit card for everything, but if a utility or government agency is sending us a refund, they are allowed to send us a paper cheque, which costs us money. My dad has a CPAP machine, which he has to pay by direct debit to rent. He then has to apply to a government department to be reimbursed for it, and they send him a cheque. It's so stupid.

It's just about possible with Revolut if you answer "yes I really know them yes I accept I am an idiot for doing this" a million times.

Whenever I have to get a transaction approved with a bank I learned to lie and say that the person/business I'm sending it to contacted me face-to-face. If I say phone or email there's gonna be more dumb questions about whether I checked the number, address, etc., how do I know it's them.

The whole pitch UK banks give - the world is full of scammers, you are a dumb child, bank with us so we'll only give you some money if us adults have decided you can be trusted with it - frankly drives me up the wall and that most people seem not to mind at all is baffling to me.

my lloyds bank shares pay me a dividend, which they initially did by sending a cheque along with yearly agm newsletter. one time it was for £2.53 which was frankly not worth my time taking it to the bank to pay in, so i didn't bother. 6 years later they still remind me every year that i have outstanding payments, of £2.53, that i can phone up and claim.

the world is full of scammers, you are a dumb child, bank with us so we'll only give you some money if us adults have decided you can be trusted with it - frankly drives me up the wall and that most people seem not to mind at all is baffling to me.

It's the exact same here, and yet there was a case recently where a man was basically keeping his wife and children prisoner in their house and stealing all their money. He was able to open a bank account in his teenage son's name, deposit over €7,000 in it, then withdraw all but €100 of that money himself, with no involvement from the wife or the teenage son, and nobody in the bank seemed to think this was odd.

heh, my neighbor and I shared the cost for some tree trimming and he paid. I asked if he would prefer cash, a check, or PayPal/venmo and he joked that he was surprised I had checks since I'm younger than him. he accepted my check, though

if a banking transaction is convenient either someone is profiting from it by deriving interest from the delayed flow of money between entities or they are selling your purchasing data OR the bank has set it up so they aren't responsible for repayment if something goes wrong. if your bank won't do something for you, it'll be because one or both of these things is not possible due to banking laws, etc. you withdrawing large sums of cash is not something they can make money from, and if they fuck up and let the wrong person withdraw cash from your account, they have to cover it. they can't stick it to a credit card processing company or PayPal or whatever.

My city offers a family camp out in the mountains of Yosemite every summer and the method of payment includes a pay by credit card surcharge that keeps getting higher and higher every year (low three digits!) so I just called Parks&Rec and explained that I was replacing all my credit cards (a lie) and if I could bring a check to their office (not far from school) and they said "of course!"

it was the first check i've written since COVID i think?

I was in Sweden last summer and they're almost entirely cash-free.. so they actually looked at dropping paper currency altogether but then they did some analysis and realized the Russians could cripple their economy with some well-placed hacks and cyber attacks so they've backed away from that goal for the present

― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, May 30, 2025 12:32 AM (twenty hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm in Sweden regularly and it's kind of the worst because, as well as being mostly cash-free, in an increasing number of places payments revolve around an app called Swish, which is only available to Swedish residents. To get Swish, you need a BankID, and to get a BankID, to quote the website, you "must have a Swedish personal identity number, be a customer of one of the banks that issue BankID and be identified with a valid ID." It's very hostile to non-Swedes and even Swedes living abroad who are just visiting.

UKers, you may well be able to pay cheques in via the post office, if you have a debit card. I can't get to an open bank branch without a huge hassle but I've got a local post office.

It really annoys me how we have to pay by direct debit or online credit card for everything, but if a utility or government agency is sending us a refund, they are allowed to send us a paper cheque, which costs us money.

this reminds me of a technological backwards step that drives me crazy: I'm a self-employed person who does online banking, which means that every few days I check my checking account balance, my credit card balance, my Venmo, and my Paypal. Naturally, funds are often moved between these various entities, but if I happen to want to know what any of these balances are on a weekend (or, god forbid, a holiday weekend), I have to wait until the next work day to balance my books, because banking robots are apparently very religious and strictly observe the fourth commandment. And yet, whenever a bill is due on a weekend, suddenly we are not so concerned with observing these outmoded customs despite the rest of the world being forced to go into standby mode

I get that it wasn't long ago that no one had the privilege of knowing to the penny what their bank balance was on a Sunday unless they were very meticulous about balancing their checkbook, but why the digital age still observes holidays--and only selectively--is something I would like explained to me

For long enough, payments would be transacted immediately, but whatever interest that would be earned was lost to both sides for four days.

I know, pennies, but add 'em up and see who's winning.

There are delays for some transactions being reported or clearing (essentially)… and I notice a new emphasis on instant transfers (with fees) that sometimes you actually have to opt out of, or at least click the “not instant, no fees” option which is the same size as the instant+fee option. Like, I know this will take a day to hit my account. I have planned for this. Instead I have to click “no thanks” one or more times to do a basic bank transfer.

Yeah I don’t think this is a technological backwards step, more of “the future has inherited some dumb stuff from the old check-clearing days when counter-fraud and other mechanisms required x/y/z etc”

Since my partner has gone freelance and is getting her company off the ground, I had to liquidate an old 401K recently and it’s taken ages to 1) receive the check 2) deposit the check and wait for the hold to clear and 3) have part of the funds finally hit our credit card bill

Ebay pushed me to switch to instant transfers for 2% extra this week - the regular process only takes 2 business days for me usually.

PayPal really pushes the instant transfer on you

yep, it's annoying

Yes I was thinking of paypal & venmo!

Xp tom — what exception do you have for the early withdrawal peanalty?

Verifying your connection...

My exception is called “eating it” but if you have better ideas I’m all ears

Uh, take out a small biz loan and then put the 401k money back within 60 days or recharacterize it as a loan and repay it in accordance with rules about hardship loans?

If she can get a small biz loan, she can deduct the interest.

Thanks!

But back on topic … sponsored listings on sites like etsy and poshmark that make sorting results almost pointless

for years I have been using the texting service to get live bus info. Like each bus stop has a unique code and you text it the Metro number and they text back a live timetable update for a charge. I've just realised I've been pissing away money on this for years because you get the exact same service for free with the Metro Your Next Bus website version.

We have (or had) exactly that with our local bus company, a website where each unique stop id would give you the "departure board" for that stop. you could bookmark that page etc. and now the fuckers seem to have nixed it so every stop id redirects to a generic "plan your journey" page, on which you cannot find any stop in order to "plan your journey".

I've even contacted them to ask why it doesn't work now and whether the redirecting is intentional, and just got a "we'll pass on your comments" response.

that sounds shit. I hope they don't do the same to mine, now that I've only just discovered it.

stupidest thing with me is that every text I was paying for, possibly for at least a few years, contained a link to the free online version!

tbf there is an app which does the same. but I hate being forced to use an app for something that can be a webpage.

one by one the apps on my phone are informing me that they are no longer supported on my phone's operating system, and there is no way of getting to my account anywhere else online...


xp ha, that is a BIT amusing, sorry...

the arriva bus app is just dire, enough to stop you ever touching a bus app ever again. If that was my only option then forget about it! I don't know if that is a reflection of how bad all the other bus operator apps are.

I’m learning the UK charges for depositing a paper cheque, and also there isn’t unlimited text messaging (presumably sms) on phone plans? feeling slightly better about my own area’s backward tendencies now

but I hate being forced to use an app for something that can be a webpage

a while back my phone carrier got switched when the company changed hands and the new carrier are app-only. admittedly their customer service over the phone has been great but i hate not being able to check account details etc. on an actual computer.

xp I got charged for paying in a paper cheque for my old charity business account, as with cash, but never had on my personal account. what bank is that? most of them you pay in by a phone app too?

i dish out more personal cheques than most people (because of this role) and no-one has ever asked for cash due to cheque deposit charges.

that said, I wouldn't be surprised if charges started creeping in as they try and force everyone to go cashless.

also i pay less than £11 a month for unlimited texts, calls and as much data as I need (never approach the threshold). there are tons of plans and iirc most have unltd calls and texts (except for premium lines).

otoh i remember in the US (many years ago) having to pay to receive texts!

Yeah, never heard of paying for a depositing a cheque in the UK. And instant fee transfers between banks have been the norm for years. Retail banking is one thing the UK does do well, assuming you're not shut out of the banking system entirely.

Free transfers, not fee transfers. My typing is especially shit this morning.

Instagram doesn't let you put links in posts, X and Facebook do, but the algorithm will deboost you as they don't want traffic leaving the site.

― also like Tayler swift as she can relate to my cat (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

yeah this is the thing that gets to me, the fucking walled gardens

it's hard enough to get people to click on a link when the platform doesn't actively work to keep users from leaving their site

Shopping too! For items where you want to see a larger image. Plus filter/sort ability… it is so stupid… like, I don’t understand why it is as stupidly designed as like myspace 20 years ago

after not seeing a GP for two years, i tried to register with a new doctor’s surgery this morning… online

i logged into their portal with my email + p/w… but i hadn’t used it in 2 years, and 2FA was set to an old mobile number - so i got a code via email instead, and i’m logged in…

…registration required my NHS no. — 10 digits; couldn’t remember that. i followed a trail of hyperlinks to: ‘Find your NHS number by logging in here.’

this involved accessing into a third-party portal… which involved another round of 2FA… to link back to the NHS portal… only to ask me for my NHS no. to continue.

phone app updated yesterday and now it won't take or receive calls. i only noticed because the dentist tried calling to remind me about appointment tomorrow and it went straight to voicemail. phoning the voicemail number just sat there. as did every other number i tried. if she hadn't called it would probably be sunday before i realised.

airplane mode on/off didn't work. restarting phone didn't work. reinstalling phone app didn't work. taking the sim card out did appear to help, thankfully. and the internet connection has been fine all the way through but still...

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