Tech you miss/ new tech trends you hate - ok boomers

[byuu]

I think I see what you did there. Wasn't minidisk annoying because everything had to be converted to Sonys DRM-ed out the ass format?

The later models could play MP3s directly but you still needed Sony's software to transfer it.
That's the reason why I never upgraded to NetMD even though I loved MiniDiscs. Anything that needs extra software instead of just letting me drag & drop files on it like a USB drive can fuck off.

But the first MiniDiscs you just recorded like a tape from an analogue source.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

All websites feel exactly the same these days.

Modern website design is influenced by social media and smartphones. I miss the days before them.

 

[AmpleApricots]

computers that come with electrical schematics and tips to design your own hardware expansions. Now it's just all one big, black box with layers and layers of abstraction heaped on each other. What does my computer even *do*? Who the hell knows.

 

[SpEd Kaczynski]

Testify, brother! Smart TVs are bad and their manufacturers should feel bad. Sure it's only 37" and the power button is fucked (just have to turn it off and on at the wall ... no biggie), but imma keeping my circa 2007 Sony Bravia until it goes full autist. Even then I'll open it up in the hope that it's just a capacitor that's oofed; an easy fix for anyone with an internet, a soldering iron and a couple of shekels to buy a replacement cap.

Thats what I've been doing. I have an old RCA dumb TV. It stopped working a few years ago so I took it apart and started testing things. Turned out the power distribution board was bad. Ordered a new one off eBay for a few bucks and got it back up and running. I'm gonna keep it running as long as I can.

I've been doing the same thing with my 30 year old washer and dryer too. I've replaced solenoids, flame sensors, etc and they're still chugging along. Screw these new washers and dryers that email you when your wash is done thats gay as Hell.

 

[Slav Power]

I miss the good old Nokias, and I mean the real ones, before they got cucked by Microsoft. The only thing that left from Nokia is the name, now it's all cheap chink shit.

As for smartphone trends I hate:
-Rounded screens
-Screen notches
-Non-user replaceable batteries
-Unnecessary amount of cameras
-Removal of the headphone jack

Because of these, I'm scared about what I would buy next, when my beloved LG G3 finally kicks the bucket.

And some PC market trends I hate:
-RGB in everything. It can be useful when used in a keyboard or a mouse, but I don't want to have a fucking rave party inside my case.
-Removal of 5,25" bays, tempered glass, vertical GPU mounting, PSU shrouds. I hope that when I finally gather up some dosh for an upgrade, Fractal Design Define XL R2 will still be available, or a worthy successor of it will be available, because it appeals to me in many ways.

 

[Quantum Diabetes]

I'm getting sick of having to be consistantly online to play games. And people asking me to play embarassing shit like Roblox.

 

[He Who Points And Laughs]

I'm getting sick of having to be consistantly online to play games. And people asking me to play embarassing shit like Roblox.

Hear, hear!

I prefer single player games in general. My FPS of choice is Doom, and I like ARPGs like the Sekisoulsborne genre. Online RPGs destroy immersion. Watching some old wise wizard teabag a kill while calling everyone a nigger and making "your mom" jokes just takes me right out of the experience.

Having to be online to play a single player game is just obnoxious.

 

[Bepis]

Not a big fan of the direction ebook readers have gone, or the obsession with touchscreens in general. I don't like having to touch my screen to read stuff because that means I'm also having to wipe off my screen. Used to have a nice Aluratek reader with buttons and simple drag+drop file loading, and no internet connectivity. Screen died though and apparently every modern ebook reader is touchscreen with an online store that, if nothing else, bloats it up.
I also hate consoles telling my friends list when I'm online. I don't need people knowing when I'm playing a lewd bullet hell at 4 in the morning on a weekday.

 

[FadeIntoBolivian]

LCD is the shittiest thing to happen to TV display technology imo. Sure, it's enabled everyone to have 55" 4K TVs that cost $400 new, are 20lbs and 3 inches deep, and crank out a million nits brightness. They also suck for anything that moves quickly, displaying black, anything not 720p or higher, etc. Especially old ones. Old plasma and CRT sets are still desirable to enthusiasts. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to seek out an LCD TV from 2012 unless they wanted a $20 TV, it's the most poorly aging tech around and they are all bound for the landfill in even greater numbers than CRTs because they could make so many more of them so much cheaper.

 

[Strong Tomato]

I really miss phones with physical qwerty keyboards like the sidekick and g1. They were just satisfying to use.

I also am not a fan of physical stores dying or selling less in favor of shopping online because of shit like Amazon. I still like going out and buying things in person more than ordering online. I guess I'm impatient. The selection of items in store is just really bad and I have no choice but to order online sometimes.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I also am not a fan of physical stores dying or selling less in favor of shopping online because of shit like Amazon.

Online shopping is still ass in that you have to wait for delivery and pay shipping fee. Not to mention possible mail theft. I miss when there were a lot of bookstores around. Seemingly everything going online really adds to the feel that we live in the tech addicted cyberpunk dystopia* of Current Year.

*(For example, there was a lobby around here with a big aquarium of tropical fish. They took it out and replaced it with a lame screen that shows looping videos of various boring scenes.)

 

[AmpleApricots]

I wouldn't wanna go back to CRTs, they were heavy, huge, a bitch to repair and their lifetime was finite. I still have (had) early LCDs from the early 00s that still work just fine, and pretty much everything that can break in them is easily fixable or replaceable. Also CRTs have a power consumption that's through the roof, especially compared with modern LCDs with LED backlight. Also even the good ones were pretty blurry compared to an LCD running at native resolution and I still have very vivid memories of eye strain from the 80s and 90s. For text-modes in DOS and games that was relatively fine but for modern colorful GUIs that blurriness was eye cancer.

The upside of CRTs was for me the refresh that would make things absolutely smooth and their relative non-dependency on a set resolution.

 

[Orange Rhymer]

The worst part is when they misunderstand your command, so you append "you dumb bitch" out of frustration, and, oh, OH, now she understands you perfectly, and she's quick with the snarky response instead doing of what you wanted her to do.

When I was walking through a brand-new Windows 10 installation recently all I wanted was that bitch Cortana to shut up shut up shut the fuck up SHUT UP WHERE IS MY DESKTOP YOU BITCH. YOU GLOWING, ARTIFICIAL BIIIIIITCH.

Ok I'm back to the command line now. I love you command line, all these fuckups are my own and not yours.

"white people aren't afraid of the command line"
-St. T. Davis

My contribution.
I miss the old Radio Shack. Not the new Radio Shack (selling smartphones and drones).
The Radio Shack that I could go and buy a few components, some switches, and a nice (sometimes shitty) box enclosure. I bitched about RS back then (some components were way too high per item), but damn do I miss them. I miss fucking around with the display HAM and CB radios on a hot, boring Sat. afternoon.
Now I am having a harder and harder time finding shit online. When I do, I struggle to make the minimum to avoid shipping. So much is surface now, and sold in tape...

 

[Captain Manning]

What Apple did to the phone market still pains me. I know that the consolidation of the industry to strictly slate design was inevitable and Apple was just the first to figure it out, but the era of weird and unique devices was just so damn fun.

Do I miss different overall designs? Eh, sorta. Do I miss different charging port designs? Fuck no.

I am 110% on board with the phone industry (and finally, to include Apple) going with USB charging.

The before times were dark in this respect. Different chargers for every goddamed phone. If you ever worked retail, you know that when a customer came in for a charger, it would inevitably be the one you don't have in stock. It was lunacy. The wild west of tech design isn't always practical or convenient.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I wouldn't wanna go back to CRTs, they were heavy, huge, a bitch to repair and their lifetime was finite. I still have (had) early LCDs from the early 00s that still work just fine, and pretty much everything that can break in them is easily fixable or replaceable. Also CRTs have a power consumption that's through the roof, especially compared with modern LCDs with LED backlight. Also even the good ones were pretty blurry compared to an LCD running at native resolution and I still have very vivid memories of eye strain from the 80s and 90s. For text-modes in DOS and games that was relatively fine but for modern colorful GUIs that blurriness was eye cancer.

The upside of CRTs was for me the refresh that would make things absolutely smooth and their relative non-dependency on a set resolution.

Remember the feeling of using a CRT for you computer or watching TV during daytime? Can't see shit!

 

[Stormy Daniel's Lawyer]

I miss plugging my headphones into my phone. It used to mean, fuck off, I'm listening to Buck Owens in my household.

 

[FadeIntoBolivian]

I wouldn't wanna go back to CRTs, they were heavy, huge, a bitch to repair and their lifetime was finite. I still have (had) early LCDs from the early 00s that still work just fine, and pretty much everything that can break in them is easily fixable or replaceable. Also CRTs have a power consumption that's through the roof, especially compared with modern LCDs with LED backlight. Also even the good ones were pretty blurry compared to an LCD running at native resolution and I still have very vivid memories of eye strain from the 80s and 90s. For text-modes in DOS and games that was relatively fine but for modern colorful GUIs that blurriness was eye cancer.

The upside of CRTs was for me the refresh that would make things absolutely smooth and their relative non-dependency on a set resolution.

Obviously the CRT was always going to give way to something else, on account of the fact that they are large, heavy, and involved to manufacture, and were reaching the limit of what could be accomplished re: resolution, in addition to all of them being susceptible to geometry issues.

I have one that I picked up for free a few months ago, and for SD content/games it easily beats my 4k set. I have my old ps2 hooked up to it via component and it looks better than it would on any LCD even with a scaler or w/e. I thought my scaler made it look pretty good, but then instantly even just something like 2D sprites moving across the screen at 60fps, the absolute clarity of the CRT was immediately apparent. I still don't understand either why people claim they're blurry. Composite video looks like ass, yes, but it'll look like shit on a flat panel too. SVideo or component sources into a CRT TV look pretty good to me, and CRT computer monitors get up to 1200p or so.

I basically wish that motion resolution and contrast/black level was something prioritized by the general consumer market, but it's not. Plasma was a great technology, but for games it's pointless since even the best ones have input lag, which CRTs have none of and modern sets are finally starting to catch up in that regard.

 

[Syaoran Li]

I miss the abundance of physical stores as opposed to online shopping and the cashless economy that underpins it.

The politicization of payment processors in Current Year really makes me loathe Amazon and the inescapable retail apocalypse even more than I did before.

I miss physical media being the norm and I wish laptops and desktops still came with disc drives so you could burn CD's and DVD's.

DVD and Blu-Ray haven't died out completely like CD effectively did, but that's mainly because of copyright laws and rights issues making streaming services a byzantine nightmare for the consumer and certain titles being unavailable for streaming as a result, regardless of their age, popularity, or demand.

Other trends I hate are smartphones, touch screens, and the fact that fucking vinyl of all things made a comeback solely because of pretentious hipster audiophiles.

 

[ForgedBlades]

I'm still kicking myself over getting rid of the top of the line 27" Trinitron CRT I had. Literally just chucked it into a dumpster when I got my first LCD, thinking that it was completely worthless.

 

[ln18]

I kind of miss home video being niche enough that you could get pretty much any given movie on LD with the original sound mix. I think they mostly figured the market was too small to bother with tailoring the audio for tv speakers. Now everything pretty much gets remixed, dumbed down, less dynamic.