Everything having a fucking app. Especially retail brands who already have perfectly functional WEBSITES that negate the use of a fucking app.
Target? Get the target app!!! Joannas? App!!! Why this. Theres no benefit in wasting space by downloading an app. None!! Most if these apps are fucking cloud run so you need an internet connection to use them. And if you have access to the internet then just use the website.
Recently, someone I know was promoting a vendor's smartphone app. As he rattled off different "benefits", I thought about reasons why I didn't need the app.
"Get instant notifications." (Gee, I already get notifications via text without the app.)
"Get notified when you get paid." (Hmm, I already set up email notifications for that without the app.)
"The company no longer charges a monthly fee, so it's now free." (Big deal, I can get all your touted benefits without wasting space on my phone with an unneeded app.")
For example, the city I'm in IRL made it so you can't get a food handling license in person anymore. Nope. Instead, you have to learn the stuff and do the test for the card all online.
It's a blessing and a curse. While it's good to not have to wait in line for something as mundane as a food-handling permit application/renewal, it's presumptuous to assume everyone has access to the necessary internet connection/browser requirements and has the ability to learn what they need to know via an online course with no chance to ask questions or discuss material. I'm also willing to bet the online process costs more despite the convenience.
I miss when websites used to have little sections where you can download things like wallpapers and desktop icons.
Usually it would be for a game/movie/book/show/toyline.
Does anyone remember this?
I think
@ToroidalBoat is right that with an age characterized by strict copyright and DMCA enforcement, people aren't as willing to lose their internet access/livelihood over fan art/creations like they used to be. It's a shame because there used to be some good stuff out there made by people who loved to share their creativity.
Yeah I remember those, sometimes they had those stupid mouse cursors available to download. I wonder if anyone actually bothered with those.
This ties into an annoyance of mine back in the day: sites that constantly nagged those browsing them to install their custom cursors with no way to say 'no' once and for all. Worse, many of those custom cursors were alleged to contain malware, spyware, or some combination of both.
In case it's not clear already, I'm not too much of a fan of cellphones either. It's unsettling how society has become so dependent on them now, when they were not needed before 2000.
Back then, mobile phones were good to have in an emergency when a payphone was unavailable or otherwise might not let you call who you needed to call. For whatever reason, they gradually morphed into internet devices on the go and people have become so attached/dependent to them that they can't function if their battery drops too low or their network goes down. Worse, with payphones all but obsolete now, not having a cell phone can truly leave one feeling stranded in an emergency with neither easy nor available alternatives for contacting someone in a pinch.
I miss those old small cheap radios people gave to kids at parties. I should of took care of the collection i had, had i known there's memes in local news
That brings me back to the memory of my first radio: a small AM transistor radio I got as a secret Santa gift when I was 11 or 12. the carrying strap was broken by the time I got it, but I enjoyed listening to local sporting events until the batteries died and I'd get a new battery and do it all over again. Best of all, this was when things were built to last, so I used that radio until it eventually stopped working even with fresh batteries.
I hate anything computer controlled in a car,
If your infotainment system is an attack vector to hack your car, you should look for another car.
I've always believed that stuff in today's cars such as the touch-screen display and infotainment centers are part of the reason we see more distracted driving in addition to making it more difficult to self-repair one's car while paying even more at the shop to replace these items when they malfunction. Also, as
@ArnoldPalmer said, the unnecessary introduction of internet access in vehicles has provided an attack vector for hackers -- more-so if there's no way for end users to secure or disable this connectivity themselves.
Software needing an internet connection to function. Fuck internet DRM, fuck having to download shit constantly, fuck having to host content on a server preventing me from having a full offline installer.
The main software at my dayjob is like this. If it detects an update that needs to be downloaded and applied, it will only give you two options:
- Stop what you're doing and let the program waste time updating itself, or
- Don't perform the update, which exits the program and won't let you use it again until you let it update.
There's no option for, "I'm in the middle of finishing something right now, let's install the updates later."
-Industry-standard planned obsolescence/anticonsumerism
This is awful not just for electronic devices but major appliances as well. When new items such as furnaces are only given a useful life of 20 years max when their predecessors lasted much longer, it's enough to make one wonder why today's stuff is being made so shoddy when the components should be of better quality than what they were 20-plus years ago.
They really go out of their way to make free and open source software look incredibly appealing.
With MS Office being so expensive and moving to the 365 cloud-based subscription model, Free alternatives such as OpenOffice and LibreOffice suddenly become more appealing. I installed one of those on our newest office PC simply because Office seems to get more bloated and expensive with little in the way of improved end-user functionality to justify the price and monthly-subscription model.
Like who the fuck is designing this stuff? It used to be that a newer version of a program was clearly better, but now it's better to keep a few older versions just in case something horrible goes wrong.
I recently experienced this when a program I use occasionally was discontinued and the vendor released a final updated version for free. Upon installing it, the features I used and needed most were either missing or so bug-ridden they refused to work. As a result, I uninstalled the newer version in favor of the older one that worked properly.
