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

[Tookie]

And speaking of smartphone screens, shit's getting worse! What's worse than a $1,000 phone that shatters when you drop it the wrong way? A $1,400 phone that gets damaged when it comes in contact with your fucking FINGERNAIL

I bought a new camera a while back and I swear it has the least scratch resistant screen I've ever seen on an electronic device. I ended up buying a screen protector for it because it got scratched to shit from fairly light use. My previous camera was the same brand and underwent 10 years of heavy usage without any noticeable scratches.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I miss rotary phones.

They were already out when I was a kid, but I liked dialing them.

(as said before, not too fond of mobile phones)

 

[AnOminous]

I miss rotary phones.

They were already out when I was a kid, but I liked dialing them.

(as said before, not too fond of mobile phones)

The original acoustic coupling modems were designed for the old style phones with round receivers and speakers. So if the only phone that shape you had was a rotary phone you'd have to dial them yourself.

 

[Stasi]

I miss portable tape cassette players and to a lesser extent CD players.

MP3s are obviously more convenient and the amount of music they hold compared to a cassette is absurd. There is a certain charm to recording songs to a cassette off the radio and making your own mix tapes though. I also cant remember the last time I listened to an album start to finish. Used to be you would pop your tape or CD in before leaving home and listen to it all the way and again (or stick another tape in if you remembered to bring one ). Now I have such an obscene amount of music on my phone I usually just put it on random because of paralysis of choice but them end up skipping most of the tracks.

 

[Harvey Danger]

I miss Nextel phones. The Bat Phone, that just had the walky talky shit and a battery life of a month.

I'm doing some global traveling and I'm leaving all my tech at home and finding the most basic electronic shit I can get away with as a test. I'll buy a damn chromebook in whatever part of the globe I need a laptop for because they are cheap and they just work for what I need them to do (Remote Desktop, Email, Web). I can toss everything in the trash when I'm done and fly through TSA with a smug "FUCK YOU" look as I carry nothing electronic beyond the RFID chip in my passport (and no you can't deactivate that, you'll waste more time dealing with why it's not working from basic TSA drones)

I usually just get a blank drive for whatever it is and then just do a vanilla install of the OS on the laptop, so I can boot it up if they do that shit. Then wipe it on the way back if for whatever reason that's necessary. You aren't getting shit, motherfuckers.

If you're traveling with an Android phone, you may want to look into something like this or this. Runs Android in desktop mode on a shell with no hard drive or wireless connections, for as low as $99 a device.

As much as I hate modern phones and the screen creep others have mentioned, the one thing is do like is that they are the most successful computer miniaturization effort to date. The "phone" is literally just a bit of software now, which is nice if you were around back in Ye Olde Days of coding dial strings to handle analog phone line interrupts. If you put the work into configuration, and buy the right peripherals, you can get a decent mobile computing rig so lightweight it makes your current-year laptop look quaint.

 

[Reverend]

If you're traveling with an Android phone, you may want to look into something like this or this. Runs Android in desktop mode on a shell with no hard drive or wireless connections, for as low as $99 a device.

That's far too much to travel with. I don't want an android, I want a goddamn jitterbug interface. Wherever i stay there will be wifi, hence the chromebook, the phone is when people need to call me from the US as I'll have international calling.

I quite literally want a phone that is stupid so if/when TSA decides to go random search happy I will have nothing for them to go through. Unless they want nice looking mens clothes that are dirty. Fucking fetishists...

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I hate Wifi and Wireless Mouses/Headsets/controllers.

 

[sasazuka]

I hate Wifi and Wireless Mouses/Headsets/controllers.

I prefer wired mouses, headsets, and controllers as well but it's a bit too inconvenient running long wires to the router in my basement for me to not want home Wifi.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I prefer wired mouses, headsets, and controllers as well but it's a bit too inconvenient running long wires to the router in my basement for me to not want home Wifi.

It is inconvenient yeah, but I hate random drops while I am playing a game.

 

[sasazuka]

It is inconvenient yeah, but I hate random drops while I am playing a game.

Not that I play much of anything online but the XBox 360 is the only device (not counting the Bell Fibe IPTV box) I have attached physically with a wire to the router (mainly for the occasional piece of DLC for those XBox 360 games where DLC is still an option).

The XBox 360 is only a few feet away from the router. The PS4 is in the guest bedroom upstairs and that's the one I have to use Wifi to download updates.

 

[AnOminous]

I miss being able to use booleans in searches, something you were able to do even in the old altavista search engine. Google dumbed everything the fuck down to the point you can search for specific things and get a thousand fucking results that don't even have the most important search term. This is yet another example of the evil cunts at Google doing away with functionality that used to exist with no explanation other than fuck you we're Google.

If I could flip a switch and every piece of Google would come crashing to the ground like the end of Fight Club I'd do it without thinking.

 

[cjöcker]

I rarely use JavaScript because I hate the language but earlier today curiosity got the best of me and I wanted to use gatsby because I was really bored. I go to create a new Gatsby site, it installs 1,636 packages. What the fuck? Like every package a project depends on has like 10 packages that it also depends on, how the fuck is this an acceptable ecosystem? Do people even write their own code anymore, or do they just get everyone else to do it for them?

 

[PimpKramer]

Do people even write their own code anymore

No. This was linked somewhere else in the board but in case you haven't read it:
https://www.davidhaney.io/npm-left-pad-have-we-forgotten-how-to-program/

 

[cjöcker]

No. This was linked somewhere else in the board but in case you haven't read it:
https://www.davidhaney.io/npm-left-pad-have-we-forgotten-how-to-program/

Oh my fucking god, I can't believe people get paid to write JavaScript.

 

[Harvey Danger]

Oh my fucking god, I can't believe people get paid to write JavaScript.

It's worse than that. JavaScript frameworks are required components of certain organizations' enterprise level architecture.

The app that fucked up the Iowa caucus was a React.js project, with a Google Drive backend and an Auth0 generalized login. They're running elections on JavaScript now. Because fuck it, nothing matters any more, I guess.

 

[cjöcker]

It's worse than that. JavaScript frameworks are required components of certain organizations' enterprise level architecture.

The app that fucked up the Iowa caucus was a React.js project, with a Google Drive backend and an Auth0 generalized login. They're running elections on JavaScript now. Because fuck it, nothing matters any more, I guess.

We need to stop node, JavaScript is bad enough, jQuery is salt on the wound, but now these people are using it to run shit serverside? And parts of democracy are at the fate of this very ecosystem?

 

[Lurkio]

I miss the Nintendo DS. I always felt that was the perfect level of online connectivity without it being too "in your face" and made the feeling of meeting up with someone online special and still made meeting people face to face not feel unnecessary.

Not saying what we have now is bad or that the DS didn't have its fair share of problems, but there was something cool about it where it was still semi-important to connect with friend in person rather then strictly online.

 

[WhoBusTank69]

Optical mice can get fucked. One tiny bit of dust lands on my mousepad and bam, my cursor starts having a wild fucking seizure, dancing across the screen without me laying a hand on it.
What's that? There's a loose hair under your mouse? Well you're fucked now, buddy!

 

[The Littlest Shitlord]

I miss the Nintendo DS. I always felt that was the perfect level of online connectivity without it being too "in your face" and made the feeling of meeting up with someone online special and still made meeting people face to face not feel unnecessary.

Not saying what we have now is bad or that the DS didn't have its fair share of problems, but there was something cool about it where it was still semi-important to connect with friend in person rather then strictly online.

It was the last Nintendo game system I enjoyed. I bought a 3DS for Bravely Default, but it kept bothering me so it could get online and download updates I didn't care about but Nintendo very much cared about so that they could brick my device if they didn't like what I was doing with it. Fuck that garbage. Between that and the first boss in Bravely Default being long and boring, I never touched it again. It's still gathering dust somewhere around here.

 

[He Who Points And Laughs]

I miss portable tape cassette players and to a lesser extent CD players.

MP3s are obviously more convenient and the amount of music they hold compared to a cassette is absurd. There is a certain charm to recording songs to a cassette off the radio and making your own mix tapes though. I also cant remember the last time I listened to an album start to finish. Used to be you would pop your tape or CD in before leaving home and listen to it all the way and again (or stick another tape in if you remembered to bring one ). Now I have such an obscene amount of music on my phone I usually just put it on random because of paralysis of choice but them end up skipping most of the tracks.

I still buy CDs whenever possible. Some releases are digital only, and in those cases I want flac, and if that's not available I'll settle for a 320br MP3. So iTunes can suck it with their less than 320br.

I agree about albums. I love listening to a full album which was conceived as an album.