Whatever happened to... - A thread about tech trends and items that died a quiet death.

[Retink Retunk]

Something that always amazes me about physical media dying out is that there aren't just USB sticks for games. I feel like you can get full games on sticks and avoid CD limitations, but the nostalgia seems to keep discs alive while industry desires push to digital download only.

What was the gimmick for those? Was the whole hook just that they were smaller? Did you have to buy a different player for them? I literally didn't know anyone who owned one of those.

I think they were just small and new. I knew someone who had mini discs and the player in high school and by that point they were cheap but CDs and CD players were also cheap enough that you could get them. The difference was a CD player that was cheap was a bulky thing for a high school or middle school student to carry around and before the ipod came out the mini disc was actually nice as it was small enough to take on the go, with less skipping issues, but it also only stored a couple songs if I remember right instead of a whole album.

 

[geckogoy]

Something that always amazes me about physical media dying out is that there aren't just USB sticks for games.

Its because you vill own nothing and be happy

Like, you can get windows on a USB stick and it installs just fine. There is actually no reason not to do it for games.

 

[Spruce Supremacist]

Something that always amazes me about physical media dying out is that there aren't just USB sticks for games. I feel like you can get full games on sticks and avoid CD limitations, but the nostalgia seems to keep discs alive while industry desires push to digital download only.


I think they were just small and new. I knew someone who had mini discs and the player in high school and by that point they were cheap but CDs and CD players were also cheap enough that you could get them. The difference was a CD player that was cheap was a bulky thing for a high school or middle school student to carry around and before the ipod came out the mini disc was actually nice as it was small enough to take on the go, with less skipping issues, but it also only stored a couple songs if I remember right instead of a whole album.

I think we could still easily have games on a single disc - maybe not DVDs, but BDs for sure. I guess the the problem isn't as much capacity as it is read speeds and manufacture costs. Also the fact that current year companies really dislike the idea of the end consumer owning the media they bought, with subscription-based services dominating the market (Steam, Epic Games, etc.).

 

[Retink Retunk]

Its because you vill own nothing and be happy

Like, you can get windows on a USB stick and it installs just fine. There is actually no reason not to do it for games.

The worst part is Windows on a USB stick has a premium attached to it in comparison to Windows on a disc or key. I literally have a loose CD drive floating around for this reason out of spite.

I think we could still easily have games on a single disc - maybe not DVDs, but BDs for sure. I guess the the problem isn't as much capacity as it is read speeds and manufacture costs. Also the fact that current year companies really dislike the idea of the end consumer owning the media they bought, with subscription-based services dominating the market (Steam, Epic Games, etc.).

Even if they could, why not make really cool looking USB sticks? Obviously the answer is cost and desire to sell micro transactions, but I really have to blame the goy on the latter, as it wouldn't be a market if it wasn't so exceedingly successful. The criticism I'll throw at companies is that no one has really tried to make a kick ass package that included a nice USB stick game, and companies like Limited Run Games obviously have a market if they aren't managed by absolute retards.

 

[Spruce Supremacist]

Even if they could, why not make really cool looking USB sticks?

I'm all up for physical media. One could come up with some really cool designs for a video game USB storage device, maybe take an example from USB business cards if you want it to be something slim, or make it into a little figurine of a character from a game if there's a need to have it as a collectible.

Some examples that pop into mind:

 

[Battlefield42]

b

VR headsets are still around, but the hype has definitely died. It was less than five years ago that the corporate media was jabbering on about we were all going to move into the metaverse soon. All of these big corporate brands were investing in metaverse store fronts and branded virtual items. Fast forward to 2023-2024, and I can go months without seeing a headline about VR anything.

becauae retards killed pcvr. expenaive and games requiring specs making it a bad deal. quest stuff is cool but a walled garden. i guess devs making another copy paste vr mp games doesnt help either

 

[Mikoyan]

Good news.
View attachment 5825839
Ok, well, I guess there's one, maybe 2.
Planet Computers Astro Slide 5G.
Reviews, as expected, are mixed and it's not actually shipping.
Also, the Fxtec Pro1X.
All seem to be lagging 1-2 years behind state of the art.

If their telling of the story is to be believed their ODM got taken over by a PLA enterprise and proceeded to go 'no, our phones, comrade'. It's vaguely hilarious if true.

I say this with a Cosmo on my desk.

 

[Aljam]

Is the USB lighter still a thing?

 

[George Lucas]

Not really a whatever happened but why are they still a thing and that's those TI and HP graphing calculators and how the price point hasn't and to a lesser extent the designs haven't changed in like 25 years.

HP and TI overlap but also compete with different fields. TI is popular with schools whereas HP is popular with engineers and accountants (the HP-12C is famous for its ubiquity in accounting). You can get emulators for iPhone, but having physical buttons is better. The programming features on these calculators is still impressive, and there are entire libraries of programs for both brands.

The reason HP is so popular with engineers is for three reasons: one, they literally invented the modern calculator. They’ve just always been around and seen as ‘the best’. Two is RPN, which is a very efficient way of doing lots of calculations. Three, they were always miles ahead of everyone else programming-wise. I’m not sure if TI ever caught up. HP scientific/finance calculators have a simple stack-based language, whereas the graphing calculators use a high-level language. I think you can do assembly on the graphing calculators as well, but I never messed around with that part.

 

[Insuficiencia renal]

what ever happened to nigger atomizers?